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Girl Genius
Girl Genius
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Open Questions

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Signature traits of the Girl Genius storyline are its unresolved questions, maddening mysteries, and often unpredictable plot twists, which inevitably become subjects of discussion among the fans.

Questions left open by the story, both major and minor, are listed below, with relevant links. Later revealed answers are shown in italics. See also the Fan Theories forum for some possible answers. Thanks go to all those who are contributing to this list. Keep 'em coming!

Warning: Spoilers ahead! New readers may wish to get current with the story before going further.

Heterodyne Issues[]

On Agatha specifically[]

  • Why does she smell good to Jägers? Answer: She's a Heterodyne.
  • Why do Heterodynes smell good to Jägers? Because they are their masters/creators?
  • Heterodynes rarely have girls. Was Agatha's gender random or somehow selected ✣ ?
  • Where, when and how was Agatha conceived? Was it by wholly natural means?
  • Where was Agatha born? (most likely at the Citadel - Lucrezia arrived heavily pregnant, then at least Barry arrived and took Agatha away) Who was present besides Lucrezia Heterodyne? (geisters, maybe Barry) Typically, important people are born with other important people around to bear witness to their birth.
  • Did Lucrezia know she was pregnant before the night of the attack? She did in the novel. Did Bill know? What about others? Geisters knew.
  • Was Lucrezia pregnant before the night of the attack? Yes, the fourth novel, Agatha H. & the Siege of Mechanicsburg starts with prologue of Lucrezia getting ready to transfer Castle Heterodyne into the newly emptied Otilia body. Both her servants, Mozek, a defrocked priestess, and Glimtockka, a Geisterdamen, say she is pregnant. Glimtockka calls her baby the holy child.
  • Did Bill Heterodyne sleep with the enemy? He could, but Agatha was conceived before Lucrezia revealed her true colors, see above.
  • How much time after the attack before Agatha reentered the castle? She tells Vrin she is eighteen in Sturmhalten. The various words of god put the story almost twenty years after the attack. The baron refers to the attack on the castle as nineteen years ago. Whose account is true? Whose is reliable? Whose is irrefutably true? Since Lucrezia is a confirmed time-traveller, and Barry's implied to be one, Agatha's age may be fudged a little bit.

On Agatha's Locket[]

  • (Discussion: Agatha's Locket)
  • Did it really kill Omar von Zinzer? (An alternate theory is that he was a revenant and she accidentally ordered him to die. Though when Lady Vrin was ordered to die ✣ by Lucrezia controlled Agatha, it seemed to be rather immediate. -- This, however, is probably because she literally told them to "die slowly like the miserable rats you are!" ✣ ) Answer: Yes.
  • Originally, Agatha's locket had the effect of preventing Agatha's spark from breaking through. How did it do this? Answer: It somehow drained her life-energy (the world turned gray when she put it on and returned to color after she lost it; also, it appears to have drained the life out of von Zinzer's brother), and it gave her powerful migraines to prevent her from Heterodyning or going into hyper-focus.
  • After Moloch smashed the locket, it seemed to break the effect. Now that it has been returned to Agatha, it has the ability to suppress Lucrezia's possession of her. Did Klaus repair it ✣ ? Is its apparently repaired ✣ state the same as its original state? Did Klaus have any idea what it did? Answer: Yes, Klaus repaired it; that's why he gave it to Lucrezia-possessing-Agatha in the first place. (Although Lucrezia technically took it from him, I'm sure the Baron intended to put it on her anyway.) I believe he thought it would control her somehow, and it kind of did by stopping Lucrezia.
  • How exactly did it shut down The Other? Answer: Because it once worked by suppressing Agatha's mind, it suppresses Lucrezia instead. Agatha's mind has become too powerful for the locket now, but Lucrezia is, in a way, only a ghost of her former self, so she can't overcome the locket.

On Unfinished History, The Other, and Lucrezia[]

  • Who was responsible for the near-destruction of Castle Heterodyne, how did it happen, and what were they trying to accomplish?
  • What were the circumstances ✣ of Klaus Barry's death ✣ ?
  • What terrible thing did Barry and Beetle believe ✣ Klaus had done, but Klaus insisted didn't make sense? Answered in the print novel: "Barry Heterodyne claimed that I [Klaus] worked for The Other." What did Klaus learn from Beetle's notes? Partly answered. ✣
  • Was Lucrezia really a villain all along or is there more to her story?
    • What transpired between[citation needed] Von Pinn and Lucrezia to make the former so angry? And what are Von Pinn's intentions ✣ regarding Agatha? Answers here ✣ and here ✣
    • What was Lucrezia working on at Sturmhalten? Partially answered (in this background ✣ , this page ✣ , and this comment ✣ by Lucrezia/Agatha): she was at the very least rebuilding the Summoning Engine.
    • What are the Geisterdamen going to do with this ✣ Hive Engine? (May be a part of the Lucrezia Mind-Imprint Machine. It is known that it was taken apart and moved by Lucrezia and the Geisterdamen.) Where and when with the Other resume her attacks on the world? Answer: Here and there - Queen of the Dawn subverted the Polar Lords, while Othar in his Twitter claims Holfung-Borzoi is thoroughly wasped too. Possibly irrelevant, since lesser Sparks under Others command now make miniature engines.
    • Did the Other exist in some other form before the attack on Castle Heterodyne? Is the later combination of Lucrezia-as-Other a form of possession? Is this a stable time-loop?
    • Albia notices a change in ancient Lucrezia from early present day Lucrezia ✣ , saying that the Lucrezia that appeared in ancient time has mind "so shattered,,, in a way we have never seen since." What happened to Lucrezia to break her mind? (Were the Dreen involved?)
  • Dupree claims she wasn't responsible ✣ for the burned out town where she witnessed the time window. If not, then who or what was? Is it significant?
  • At what point in the future is the time travel device being used by ✣ Agatha and Gil? Why is future Gil dressed like ✣ a Geisterdame? Why are they looking for von Zinzer's gunboat crew? Von Zinzer is wearing a Heterodyne Trilobite; perhaps he will continue to serve Agatha after their current escapades in Castle Heterodyne? Partially answered in 3rd novel: the gunboat is manned by Von Zinzer 's brothers, and he doesn't know if they survived, thus the gang may have used this point to test the device.
  • What allowed Lucrezia to travel back in time ✣ ? How far back did she travel? Answer: for how far back, at least 5000 years according to Albia. attacks on the mirrors ✣
  • What happened to her, warping her into such a state? Was she trapped in a distant time for a very long time, and if so how did she survive? Partial answer: She spent 200 years trapped in Van Rijn's lab (whether there was a longer captivity is unknown), and at some point she switched to clank bodies, which do not age or need sustenance.
  • Why was the Other murdering God-Queens ✣ ?
  • What happened to main Lucrezia's body after she gave birth to Agatha? She was relatively young ✣ at that time, but the one murdering Queens was visibly old ✣ .
  • What was the world of the Geisterdamen where Lucrezia found them? How did they travel to and from there, and when? How often did Lucrezia travel there? Did they actually exist before Lucrezia's involvement? Partial answer: page 48 of the Girl Genius sourcebook says that while on vacation, a very young Lucrezia and "Mongfish clan discovered a lost race of warrior women, the Geisterdamen".  They declared Lucrezia their goddess.  She "visited their Citadel of Silver Light as often as she could", because she likes being worshipped. Also, she travelled there through another mirror.
  • Where was Lucrezia staying or storing herself before returning to the regular world via personality transfer and possession? Was her previous instance, stored in the Engine, even alive after the recording?

On Castle Heterodyne[]

Jäger Qvestionz[]

Wulfenbach Issues[]

On Klaus specifically[]

  • What happened to Klaus's brothers? They became part of the construct Klaus?[1] Answer: Page 35 of the source book says because Klaus is a composite construct of the 3 Wulfenbach sons, and he "has the mental capacity of three Sparks" because of this. And this is "The reason the Baron is not completely controlled by Lucrezia is that parts of his brain remain free".
  • How old is Klaus? If Klaus is made up of Himself and his two brothers, how old does that make him? Do you count the oldest brother or take the average of their ages? Of course it would be interesting to know when the combination happened.
  • Is there a simple reason why every woman with the spark that Klaus has known has tried to ✣ kill him? (Other than the fact that his personality just seems to invite that sort of reaction, that is. :P)
    • Does this imply that his wife was not a spark? (Note: according to the Works, Zantabraxus (who may or may not be Klaus’ wife) is a Spark.)
    • Or does it imply she tried to kill him? If so, why? He kept Gil alive. ✣
    • Or is it a misperception on Klaus’ part?
  • What use was Klaus planning ✣ to make of a Heterodyne body with a non-Heterodyne brain? Possibly guessed (correctly) that the Castle would identify a Heterodyne by blood or tissue sampling ✣ .
  • We saw Klaus enslaved ✣ with a special Spark-infecting wasp. What became of that? Since a copy of Agatha's copy of Lucrezia was made in/captured by Zola ✣ and Zola contacted the copy of Lucrezia in the Anevka clank (“Lunevka”) ✣ , Lunevka has been mostly in control of Klaus ✣ .
  • How much of the "time-stop" and Gil-mind control were actually Klaus's plans? How much autonomy did he have? Klaus being able to put himself (and Mechanicsburg) out of business seems to imply that he had a fair bit of control (why remove the emperor from the game when you control him?). Lunevka wanting him to more or less commit suicide doesn't seem reasonable, but neither is it reasonable to assume Lucrezia underestimated Klaus enough to let him out of sight. Why wasn't Lunevka hovering over his shoulder from the hospital on? Was she destroyed when the hospital was? In that case, why wasn't this shown? Answer: from page 35 of the source book When it was clear the battle from Mechanicsburg was lost "Lucrezia told Klaus to “do something .” Thanks to his partial immunity to the Other, Klaus was able to come up with a plan that followed the letter of Lucrezia’s dictate". (This comes from him having a composite brain and the mental capacity of 3 sparks).
    • Upon some more consideration, it seems rather clear that taking himself (and as far as he knew, Agatha) out with the time-bomb was more or less the only part Klaus had any real control over. It would have been far better for the empire for Klaus to either not show up at all, or explain the situation to Gil + a few trusted and then abdicate to smooth Gils assumption of power than showing up like this and wreaking a bunch of havoc.
    • Gil speculates that Klaus may have been aware of his predicament and felt the only way to prevent the Other from using him was to lock himself, (and possibly Agatha and Lunevka) in a timeskip as an attempt to avoid more bloodshed throughout the Empire ✣ .
  • What would a wasp eater think about Klaus now? The weasels found 170 infected people ✣ in Castle Wulfenbach not long before Klaus was infected; have the weasels moved to testing people elsewhere? Klaus seems to have that problem partially under control ✣ ; the remainder of the Vespiary Squad has escaped to Mechanicsburg ✣
  • Who sabotaged ✣ the airship the Baron was on as he was being rushed to the hospital? Was it just another random assassination attempt? Or was it simply Glowy Monsters ✣ ? No indication of sabotage; they were escaping a war zone.
  • Barry came back and seems to have told ✣ people ✣ not to trust Klaus...why? Given that Klaus thinks it makes no sense ✣ , what was he supposed to have done? From the second novel (Agatha H. and the Clockwork Princess), page 324, fourth paragraph: "there's one place where he mentions that Barry Heterodyne claimed that I worked for The Other." Was this comment thanks to Bill also making use of the device to time travel previously and learning Klaus was wasped?
  • Why is England closed to Klaus as long as Albia lives? Is there a sinister reason behind it? Or she is just another woman with spark who wants kill Klaus? (We now know Albia is a God Queen, not just a woman with spark, but the main question still isn't answered.) It's not so unusual for Albia to ban people; besides Klaus, she's banned the Heterodynes and Vapnoople, that we know of. Or is it the fury of a woman scorned? ✣

On Skifander, Gil, Zeetha, and Klaus[]

  • Is Gil really Agatha's older brother, hidden by Klaus all these years? He looks a bit like Bill. ✣ He is not affected by the bell. ✣ There was mention of a baby boy ✣ who died. But did he really? He was named after Klaus. Perhaps Klaus wanted to keep his namesake alive, raise him up to rule properly, and not mad like the usual Heterodynes? ✣ The professors have said that Agatha and Gil are not Leia and Luke.
  • Gil won't assume title of Baron, but he has his own titles. Which, and how many, does he have? Does he have the title of Storm King? A title from Skifander?
  • Why does Gil wear a unique ✣ house badge that is different from the Wulfenbach badge?
  • Gil appears right at the beginning of the stories dressed in Geister clothing in the anomaly ✣ as reported by DuPree to Klaus. Agatha in the same anomaly is wearing a different house badge, a Heterodyne Trilobite modified with Wulfenbach wings, while Zinzer appears with an unmodified Heterodyne badge. Gil refers to Agatha sarcastically as 'Mistress'. Was this to reasure the Geisterdamen, or to fool DuPree...or just sarcasm in general?

On Higgs[]

Pretty much all of these questions have been answered ✣ : Tarvek calls him "General" and he doesn't deny it. He also tells Agatha his background here ✣ .

  • What is Higgs? He's the secret ✣ seventh Jäger General.
  • Why is he so unstoppable? That's how Jägers are!
  • What treatment did he receive at Mamma Gkika's, if any?
  • Who are his folks?
  • Who exactly is Higgs?
    • Is he the son (or possibly father) of Old Man Death? No. Higgs is much older ✣ than Old Man Death, who is human. There is no indication of other family relationship.
    • Is he some kind of kin to the Elder Von Mekkan?
    • A Jäger prototype? Kind of. He wasn't the first to take Jägerbräu from Vlad "The Blasphemous" Heterodyne , the creator of it. here ✣
    • Possibly a construct? His appearance here ✣ seems to indicate extensive work.
      • Those look more like battle scars. From the castle's reaction to him, and the way he keeps going, even with a sword wound to the chest, he could've picked up a lot of scars over a very long life. If so, where and when did he get all those scars?
    • Castle Heterodyne recognizes him and he seems to have a detailed understanding of Heterodyne history, including the effects of drinking source water. What is his relation to the Heterodynes and the Castle?
    • Tarvek seems to suspect something about him, but what? See above.
    • He looks an awful lot like Klaus Wulfenbach and Lucrezia Mongfish. Is he their son?
    • The Loyal Servant of the rumoured Heterodyne treasure? ✣ This turned out to be Franz Scortchmaw the Great Dragon ✣ of Mechanicsburg

Storm King Issues[]

  • Who will be the "new Storm King"?
Apparently ✣ Zola and ✣ Tarvek Sturmvoraus are of the expressed opinion that Tarvek Sturmvoraus should be the next Storm King.

On Tarvek, The Council, and the Knights of Jove[]

Is Tarvek really a bad person? Did he know or participate in turning every man, woman and child in Strumhalten into revnants - as well as killing the numerous 'pretty girls' - or did he merely know about it and was unable to stop it? Has he been collaborating with The Other, the greatest mass killer of Europan history to restore her power, or completely take over from her? As of here ✣ it's pretty clear that he's a good guy. He suffers from having spent his youth with his horrible family instead of on Castle Wulfenbach, so his methods are often... indirect.

  • What plans did he mean when he was fighting Zola in the library ✣ ? We may never hear about that again. At the time, it was pretty clearly his version of the Storm King plan to take over Europa, but back then he was maybe going to be a bad guy. Now he's been rehabilitated.
  • Is Tarvek the patron behind the recent bit of culture in Vienna? Is there a reason that the actors look so much like him, Agatha, and Gil or is it just a bit of artistic foreshadowing?
  • How does the Storm King opera end? What was the true version of those events? How does it all relate to what's taking place now? The Prologue of Agatha H. and the Clockwork Princess tells the historic version of Andronicus Valois and Euphrosynia Heterodyne. It is not the opera. They are married and she is her father's cats paw to bring down the Coalition and Andronicus. The opera would appear to be part of the Order's effort to create a Storm King shaped hole in the world. ✣
  • Was Tarvek's humming (here ✣ and here ✣ ) just ordinary music or Heterodyne humming? If so, how was Tarvek able to produce it? Was it from ordinary memory, an innate ability, recorded and replayed, or mechanically produced? (Discussion: Tarvek's humming)
  • What sort of deal ✣ did he make with Lucrezia while she was still in control of Agatha? Do they still have a deal after she shot him ✣ in the back?

The deal is probably off as Lucrezia seemed to be getting rid of the witnesses.

On Zola[]

  • What's her version of what she and Gil did back in ✣ Paris?
  • What is her grip on Gilgamesh Woflenbach? Why does he come running whenever Zola screams for help? It is his instict, one might say a kind of muscle memory. In Paris, Gil had to save Zola from one thing or another almost constantly.
    • Did Zola Deliberately train Gil to have a Pavlovian response to her being in danger?
  • Is this just the authors having fun and milking laughs out of the story or is there something more sinister at work?
  • Is Zola one of the good guys or one of the bad guys?
    1. Currently seems to be pretty well in the "bad guy" camp.
    2. So bad she is a danger to other bad guys?
    3. Bad guys in this universe? Of course she's a threat to every other bad guy; even the ones who are, putatively, on her side.
  • How far back does her involvement with the Knights of Jove go?
  • What did she learn from Milvistle? How to trap Lucrezia in a neural network isolated from the rest of her brain so Lucrezia can't take Zola over as she did Agatha.
  • Who taught it to her? Her mother, Demonica (Mongfish) Malfeazium, she studied Loremistress Milvistle the high-ranking Geister to learn how to stop her sister.
  • Why did the Order pick Zola?
  • Did the Order simply request Zola from the Mongfish family breeding units?
  • Did the Order have Zola built to their request?
  • What has she been doing during the Timeskip? Is she even still alive? She turned herself into The Queen of the Dawn.
  • What is Zola trying to achieve?
    • A Zola centered universe?
    • Something else also?
  • Command voice seems to be more a matter of anatomy more than nurture. For example, Agatha exercises it by accident, without knowing anything about it, during the slaver wasp battle on Castle Wulfenbach. Clank-Lucrezia has to have her voice box carefully rebuilt to achieve it. So how is it that Zola can pull it off? If having a copy of Lucrezia in her mind is enough, it should have been easier for Clank-Lucrezia. But... That clank didn't have Lucrezia in her head at the time Tarvek was doing the voice adjustments. He was trying to simulate command voice without Lucrezia's involvement.

Internal Chronology Questions[]

  • Did the events inspiring "Race to the West Pole" happen just before Lucrezia became Bill's fiancé?
  • What is Agatha's birth date?
  • What is Klaus Barry's birth date? 1872
  • Gil?
  • Zeetha?
  • Tarvek?
  • Zola?
  • On what date did Lucrezia last update the Beacon server?

Major sequence question[]

Background[]

In the cast list Bill and Barrys entry "Today, close to twenty years later, ..." appears. Yet in the comic itself Klaus refers to the explosion in the castle as happening nineteen years ago. The latter implies plus or minus half a year. Both AFAICT are referring to the same incident. From the other clues we have been given the castle incident happened during harvest time and Agatha was born in the Winter or early spring. She is eighteen as the action of the story begins. The story takes place in the late winter and early spring of whatever year its in.

Questions[]

So this leave open some questions of sequence and timing?

  • Did the other war last three years?
  • Did it end roughly eighteen years before the story begins? It ended around 16 years before the story starts. Source: Agatha H. and the Airship City - Prologue
  • Did it start before the castle incident?
  • Did it start just after the castle blew up? The explosion in the Castle is believed to be the first act of the war.
  • Was Lucrezia pregnant with Agatha at the time of the castle incident? Answer: Yes, the 4th novel says so in the prologue.
    • If so, how many months pregnant. Answer: It was a harvest time, and Agatha was born at winter-spring, so around 5-6.
    • If not, when during the battle did Bill spend the night with Lucrezia. Apparently not as the novels have Bill still worrying about Lucrezia three years later.
      • At whose instigation? Under what circumstances?
      • Since the Mongfish were "very gifted—especially when it came to biology", ✣ did Bill have to be present at Agatha's conception? Agatha was conceived before the explosion. Artificially or no is irrelevant, since the pregnancy would not be suspicious anyway.
  • Which of the details of the Great Pumpkin Conjecture are correct or close? Probably none as Kaja has laughed at the "forensic astronomy" it uses. Full moons are easy to draw and are dramatic backgrounds. Phil does seem to use them to provide the relative time of night. Also the Foglios have stated they deliberately do not specify dates.

Miscellany[]

  • How did DuPree start working for the Baron?
    • This might have to do with DuPree's problem ✣ that she was hoping for word from the Baron on (which she didn't get). Just what was/is this problem? Semi-officially answered:The first novel says that she's hoping Klaus can find out who destroyed her base and followers.
    • Who destroyed her base, airships, and crew? Answered here. ✣
  • What does the Heterodyne Device (Atlas Controller, Mary's bedside lamp) really do? (Discussion: The Heterodyne Device)
  • What is the nature of Moxana's abilities and what are her goals?
  • At the beginning of Volume VII, a young lady named Arella is telling Carson about the latest rumors. Who is she? Answered here. ✣ She's Vanamonde's mother, presumably Carson's deceased son's widow.
  • What is the given name of Agatha's new assistant-to-be? Vidonia Orkalina.
    • Why does her cloak clasp at one point appear ✣ to have a Storm King logo?
  • What is the correct spelling of "von Mekkhan/Mekkahn/Mekken"?
  • Was it Zeetha who destroyed Bang's fleet? Will they have a cool fight over it? Yes ✣ and yes ✣ .
  • Wasps have stingers. Why do you have to swallow a wasp to be wasped? How do wasps work, anyway? Responding specifically to Lucrezia's voice is a lot to encode, even in DNA.
  • What is the key ✣ that was with the Van Rijn notebook, and why can you find it with a Neuralistic Singularity Detector? The key to the Hermitorium ✣ ?
  • Who is the Eye Guy?
  • Who ✣ killed ✣ Smokes?

Missing Persons (collected)[]

References

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