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Agatha Clay/Heterodyne

Agatha Clay/Heterodyne, Lady of Mechanicsburg

"People keep giving me rings — but I think a small death ray might be more practical."

The titular "Girl Genius", a Spark, raised by Parental Substitutes Adam and Lilith Clay. The story begins with her breaking through when the locket suppressing her abilities is stolen.

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• Action Girl: She starts becoming one after the Slaver Wasps broke free on Castle Wulfenbach, and got formal training to be one under Zeetha's tutelage. Though that training is far from complete, and she openly admits she's not as dangerous a physical fighter as her various companions.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: invoked
  • From this comic, is she a poor misunderstood woman who just wants this whole business over, or is she genuinely a classic Mad Scientist who can and will do anything that she needs to, and after she's done will sweep away the pieces of whoever and whatever gets in her way?
  • "Is it right to leave a fellow sentient strung up like this?" "Well, that depends upon the nature of the experiment..."
• Anti-Anti-Christ: She was meant to be the "holy child" of the Geisterdamen, the daughter of their goddess (who also is The Other). Except that she takes too much after her heroic father and was snatched away and raised from infancy to preteens by her equally heroic paternal uncle. That said, it's also been hinted that she might have been originally created to serve as a vessel for her mother's transfered mind.
• Aroused by Their Voice: Seems to find Sparky voices generally attractive.
  • Agatha finds Tarvek's normal speaking voice has the ability to give her 'pleasant tingles.'
• Badass Bookworm: Started as a bookworm, and became a badass.
• Badass Longcoat: Several of them, starting from her very first appearance and including an awesome labcoat.
• Berserk Button: Bringing up Lilith and Adam's deaths and half of what Von Pinn says to her.
• Bespectacled Cutie: Always wearing large, rimless glasses that enhance both her brains and cuteness.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished:
  • She regularly stays up for days at a time with little rest and no food, often under stressful and dangerous circumstances, but this has no visible negative effect on her body (though there are several suggestions that sparks are capable of going far longer without sleep than regular people are, especially when in The Madness Place).
  • The worst injury Agatha has ever received was a shallow stab wound to her chest given to her by Zola that was quickly and easily bandaged and covered by her clothes.
• Best Friend: With Zeetha, bordering on sworn sisters due to their sworn teacher-pupil relationship. If it wasn't for Agatha already pining for Gil and Tarvek and Zeetha for Higgs, one would think they were Heterosexual Life-Partners, that's how deep their relationship is. They even sleep in the same bed and have explicitly expressed platonic love for each other.
• Betty and Veronica: She's the Archie to Gil and Tarvek, though which is Betty and which is Veronica tends to flip-flop depending on the particular point in the story. Early on, Gil is Betty and Tarvek is Veronica, but they start to trade places around the time Agatha reaches Mechanicsburg and have fully switched by the Time Skip.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Generally one of the nicest Sparks around (especially compared to her ancestors) and prefers taking the peaceful solution if at all possible. Try her patience one too many times, though, or threaten her friends, and count yourself lucky if getting beaten to an inch of your life is the worst thing that happens to you. For example, Bang gets a nice friendly reminder that Agatha is a Heterodyne and far worse things than Bang will ever be are latent in Agatha's genes.
• Big Eater: When she remembers to eat at least. The novelization notes that her appetite started to increase, even while her waistline diminished, after her breakthrough, suggesting that the Spark accelerates one's metabolism.
• Blood Knight: Has developed aspects of this under Zeetha's tutelage. She expresses annoyance when the Castle interrupts a fight she could've handled herself, and Squees right alongside Dimo at Zeetha's robot-beheading kick.
• Bluff the Impostor: Tries this on Othar in their first meeting. Has it tried on her by Carson.
• Boobs-and-Butt Pose: Done unintentionally whilst trying to fit into too-small stolen pants.
• Cartwright Curse: Agatha's suitors so far have all wound up dead, shot, or turning funny colours. Or all three. The nature of the setting is such that being her love interest is exceptionally dangerous but death isn't necessarily permanent. So far only Lars, a non-Spark, has been permanently killed.
• Changeling Fantasy: She's the long-lost daughter to two of the most powerful lines of Sparks (a Spark princess?).
• Character Development: While she is still easily one of the most moral Sparks in the series, she has subtly become more jaded to heroics over time, going from the idealistic young girl who wanted to help the revenants of Passholdt to deciding that going around helping everyone like the Heterodyne Boys did sounds exhausting and preferring to mainly assist her friends and allies.
• Child Prodigy: Subverted. She starts breaking through as a child (even younger than Gil), but gets a Power Limiter put on her, which prevents her from using her Spark (and also damps down her emotions, positive and negative.) When it is later removed, she ends up as a Teen Genius instead.
• Chewing the Scenery: As with all good Sparks, she does this a bit when "Sparking out".
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: As shown on several occasions (lampshaded by Othar, no less!)
• Color-Coded Characters: Typically wears green.
• Combat Pragmatist: Snooty noble bitch talking down to you during a fencing match? Provoke her into running straight at your foil. Not capable of scoring a hit on a fencing clank with an Adaptive Ability to defend against whatever it's seen before? Throw an oil can at its off switch. Mad spark trying to steal your sentient Castle, fashioned an armband device to make the Castle unable to kill him in your defense, and coming at you with a knife? Smash his armband device with a wrench and let the now-unrestrained Castle drop a pillar on him. Agatha fights mean.
• Compelling Voice: While in the Madness Place, her voice has a notable hypnotic quality that can compel most others to do her bidding. Going full tilt, she can bring an entire theater audience to their knees. All Sparks are suggested to possess this ability, but Agatha's capacity for it is much higher than most. Almost certainly because they're likely all revenants (the shambling monster type is a statistical extremity), who were slaver wasped into obeying Lucrezia's voice and she is Lucrezia's daughter.
• Creepy Good: At times. She boasts an impressive Evil Laugh and can be disturbingly ruthless when the situation calls for it (especially when she's in her madness place), but is a fundamentally good person even at her worst.
• Crush Blush: Sure, Tarvek, surprise a girl with a comment that she's beautiful.
• Cunning Linguist: According to the print novels, even before her locket was removed, she had a talent for languages.
• Dating Catwoman: Gil and Tarvek could both count here.
• Deadpan Snarker: She has her moments.
  Agatha: It's a falling machine. I'm so impressed.
• Dismissing a Compliment: In the Cinderella story, Gil admires her entrance and she calls him a flatterer — rather flirtatiously.
• Dude Magnet: As Zeetha lampshades, the universe keeps throwing hot, shirtless men at her. Even Martellus, who started out merely seeing her as a means to an end, grows attracted to her for her own sake.
• Gadgeteer Genius: Part and parcel of being a Spark. She's mostly focused on mechanical inventions.
• The Fettered: Naturally, with a bad case of Chronic Hero Syndrome, she's this.
• Fighter, Mage, Thief: Well, Inventor, but she's the Mage to Zeetha's Fighter and Violetta's Thief.
• Geek Physique: Averted, especially after Zeetha's training. But she has a curvy, athletic figure and muscular arms from the beginning of the comic.
• Genki Girl: At least, when she is on coffee.
• Happily Adopted: Agatha has always known that Adam and Lilith Clay were constructs, and ostensibly "friends" of her uncle, but still calls them her parents, and obviously cares for them.
• Heartbroken Badass: Various times, mostly after Lars died.
• Her Heart Will Go On: Lars. It's also worth noting that both Tarvek and Gil have gotten hurt while chasing after Agatha. She just can't seem to keep her suitors healthy. And she's got serious issues about it, too — most likely due to Lars' death.
• Heroic Willpower: With enough motivation, Agatha can out-will Lucrezia herself.
• Hero with Bad Publicity: World opinion on her is quite polarized. Many look up to her as the rightful heir of her father's and uncle's heroic legacy. But between her psychotic ancestors, and the Baron's refusal to see her as anything but another Lucrezia, many people are concerned she might be the Other, or at least an old school Heterodyne.
• Home Sweet Home: One thing setting Agatha apart from her father, is that she'd rather stay with her own people in Mechanicsburg than go on adventures all over the world. Of course, the world thinks otherwise.
• Horrifying the Horror: The Polar Lords are older than the Queens or even the mysterious civilization that built the Mirrors. It's not clear if they're even human anymore. They're treated more like demons or Eldritch Abominations, and they're rumored to be outright Reality Warpers in a way that goes beyond even Mad Science as everyone else understands it. And one of them calls another a fool for provoking "a horror such as you" (that would be Agatha) "while he was weak and in retreat". Apparently these ancient horrors feel they need to be at their full strength before they take on a Heterodyne.
• Idiot Hair: Agatha's by no means an idiot (anymore at least), but the original meaning of the term applies. She has an eternal battle with the cowlick on the top of her head.
• Informed Flaw: It was originally stated that Agatha, despite being a powerful Spark, was limited by her lack of education, having been kicked out of college at 18. In Sturmhalten, she is unable to get her mother out of her head because she couldn't understand the complexity of the Summoning Engine. However, this problem almost never comes up again after the Sturmhalten arc and Agatha is seemingly capable of building and repairing whatever she wants with no difficulty.
  • It may also have simply been far too complex for her alone. It ultimately takes the combined efforts of Agatha, Tarvek, Gil, Trelawney, and Martellus to build a new machine to remove Lucrezia from Agatha's mind.
• In the Blood:
  • Sparkiness, being a blonde, and occasionally being The Vamp in habits are all details similar, or exactly like her mother. Fortunately, she's not the evil sort. Usually.
  • And from her father's side, she inherited the ability to hyperfocus by heterodyning, and also his Chronic Hero Syndrome. And apparently a "Heterodyne Ham" that makes it hard for her to find trousers that fit.
• It's Not You, It's My Enemies: Agatha wants Gil and Tarvek safely out of Castle Heterodyne.
• Kid with the Leash: To the Jägers and Castle Heterodyne.
• Kiss-Kiss-Slap: Sums up her relationships with Gil and Tarvek.
• Laser-Guided Tyke-Bomb: Lucrezia gave birth to her to accomplish... something. What exactly that purpose is remains unclear, though the Paris arc suggests it's at least partially connected to the Muse of Time.
• Last of Her Kind: She appears to be the last member of the Heterodyne family, considering no one's seen Uncle Barry for years.
• Living Legend: It has begun for Agatha. Read the next page for the full impact of this statement.
• Living MacGuffin: Of the Geister religion, due to her mother's influence. Also to the Knights of Jove, as a female Heterodyne is necessary for their plan to reestablish the Storm King. All in all, the fact of her existence as an heir of the Heterodyne Boys and/or Lucrezia Mongfish puts as many plot elements in motion as anything she actually does.
• Long-Lost Relative: To Theo DuMedd and Zola as a cousin; their mothers were a trio of sisters.
• Made a Slave: Many of the world's major powers want to do this to her. The Other is at least partially successful.
• Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter: As well as being a Mad Scientist herself. Also, the progeny of a Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter, who was a Mad Scientist herself. Being the descendant of two powerful families of Sparks, The Spark runs in the family. As, apparently, does being a very curvaceous girl, to the point Dimo the Jäger refers to Agatha having "Heterodyne Ham".
• Magnetic Hero: Thanks to the legend of her father and uncle, Krosp states that a lot of people will want to follow her (or kill her or exploit her, but that's beside the point). She's already collected quite an entourage of followers, including an heir to the Lightning Throne, the Baron's own son, a lost princess of a backwoods tribe, a talking cat, one of her cousins, a band of convicts who was repairing Castle Heterodyne...
• Meaningful Name:
  • Heterodyning means to alter a frequency by creating another frequency to interact with it. Part of the Heterodyne Spark is the ability to instinctively hum in a way that heterodynes with any background noise so that it gets cancelled out, removing distractions from their work.
  • Agatha's locket, which was created by her uncle Barry, is a true Heterodyne locket - when she wears it, it heterodynes her brain. When she was younger, it suppressed her brain waves so that she could never focus enough to truly use her Spark. Uncle Barry did this to her because her spark was starting to break through when she was barely five years old, and spark breakthroughs can get extremely messy and destructive, and counteractive to remaining hidden. Now that she has fully broken through, it can't fully suppress her Spark anymore, but the same properties cancel out the brain waves of the implanted copy of Lucrezia in her head, preventing her from taking over Agatha's body.
  • Agatha's first name is also poignant. It derives from greek, "Ἀγαθή" (pronounced "Agatay"), meaning "good, noble, brave", all traits consistent with her Chronic Hero Syndrome.
• Minored In Ass Kicking: She's a competent hand-to-hand fighter thanks to Zeetha's training and a crack shot with a Death Ray, but tends to be outmatched in physical confrontations more often than not. Thinking her way out tends to be her first solution to problems, at least when she can't just build a Bigger Stick to blow them away.
• Morality Chain: Serves as this for both Gil and Tarvek, who have on separate occasions made rather colorful threats of what they will do if anything happens to Agatha.
• Moses in the Bulrushes: Before the comic's start, after the Castle Heterodyne was destroyed, she was put under the care of Punch and Judy (under the pseudonyms Adam and Lilith) and her true parentage was covered up. She even had the Orphan's Plot Trinket in the form of her locket! It wasn't until her late teens that she learned she was a Heterodyne and a Spark.
• Most Common Superpower: Sure, lots of female characters are busty. But it's interesting that, out of the Agatha-Zeetha-Violetta trio, the one with the biggest chest is also the only Spark (that is, the only superpowered one).
• Ms. Fanservice: Less than Zeetha, but the Foglios do have a penchant for putting her in corsetry and lacy underthings. And then there's this little gem...
• Mysterious Past:
  • There have been hints that there's more to Agatha's origins than she knows, such as her encounter with Von Pinn in Castle Heterodyne, and her familiarity with the workings of Van Rijin's secret laboratory, though the full picture is unclear.
  • Agatha's conception alone is pretty shady. Especially since Lucrezia was apparently abducted by the Other and went missing for three years without a trace before the Heterodyne boys disappeared altogether. An alarming implication is that the Other somehow had Agatha conceived thereafter just in case, and that some impressive heroics from Barry saved her from being left with the Geisterdamen. Although Word of God has stated outside the comic that Bill Heterodyne is most definitely her father. And Lucrezia is definitely her mother. Who was never abducted by the Other and couldn't have been, since she IS The Other.
• Nerds Are Sexy: She's just as beautiful as she is brilliant.
• Omnidisciplinary Scientist: Agatha favors mechanical engineering as her specialty, but there isn't a field of science that she can't work with, from electrical medicine to mutant weasel-breeding to making coffee. (Except maybe medicine, since she was never allowed any hands-on training while at the University.)
• Omniglot: According to the novels, she speaks Romanian (apparently her native tongue), Latin, Greek, German, English, French, Arabic and Russian. The only language spoken in the series thus far that she hasn't been able to understand is Geisterese.
• One Size Fits All: Subverted; when circumstances lead her to try and steal the clothes from a male guard, she can't fit into his pants, which Dimo points out was never going to happen with her generous posterior.
• Only Sane Man: Compared to most Sparks of her caliber, though she still has her moments of madness. She doesn't seek adventures but doesn't loathe them either. She doesn't seek power for its own sake but will take it if she has to. And while she wants a romantic relationship, she won't let herself get swept off her feet without taking protective measures. Being raised among common people by a sane, loving couple has its perks.
• Orphan's Plot Trinket: Her locket, a gift from her uncle Barry, with pictures of her real parents. It was a device to shut down her Spark abilities, keeping her safe and hidden, since nascent sparks usually end up killed by an angry mob, a more powerful Spark, or their own creations. It later serves to suppress an unwanted Grand Theft Me occupant in Agatha's head: The Other/Lucrezia. . It is finally destroyed during the England plot-arc.
• Parental Abandonment: Her original parents are gone at least until Lucrezia shows up, her Uncle Barry who was like a father to her disappeared when she was seven, and her parental substitutes get ripped to shreds. They get better and have come back into her life after the time skip.
• Parody Sue: Gets played with in the Cinderella parody.
• Pimped-Out Dress: In the Cinderella parody, she makes a clockwork themed ballgown (which comes off at the press of a button), and first is seen wearing it through a Grand Staircase Entrance.
• Pragmatic Hero: Once she gets over her Chronic Hero Syndrome, she matures into this. She's willing to act the Terror Hero when it gets things done and she's a Combat Pragmatist in a fight.
• Power Fantasy: Agatha was a clumsy and bullied young woman who turned out to be one of the most smartest and resourceful people in the world and all her early flaws were caused by her necklace suppressing her true potential. She also turns out to be the last surviving member of the Heterodyne family, making her on the one of the most important and influential people in Europa. She has an entire city of people and monsters who basically worship the ground she walks on and she currently has at least three princes vying for her affections. She also regularly defeats powerful enemies with little effort and often escapes danger with barely a hair out of place.
• Power Floats: When she drank from the Dyne. To hear Higgs tell it, she's lucky she didn't explode.
• Restraining Bolt: The locket her uncle gave her was made to suppress her Spark and hide her true heritage. After she has the Other forcibly implanted into her mind, the locket now acts to suppress it and keeps the Other from possessing Agatha. The Other is eventually able to overpower the locket and destroy it while in charge of Agatha's body. Her/its triumph is short-lived.
• Science Hero: Spark.
• Science-Related Memetic Disorder: Like all Sparks. The page image.
• Skewed Priorities: Par for the course for a Mad Scientist. One of the more egregious examples would be when she actively helps the renegade Mad Scientists of Britain summon an Eldritch Abomination, which would be bad enough if said renegade scientists weren't already making active attempts to kill her and her friends.
• Supreme Chef: She can make coffee so exquisite that it makes coffee buff (and her future Seneschal) Vanamonde von Mekkhan weep with bliss.
  Vole (upon being scalded with a pot of the stuff): (smack, smack) Dot is verra good coffee.
• She Is Not My Girlfriend: Gil, assumed by a fair amount of people.
• Sleepwalking: Not just that, but sleep-sparking. Her spark finally broke through completely in such a state after the loss of the Power Limiter locket, and it wasn't for some time that she was fully cognizant of her spark and consciously exerted it.
• Teen Genius: She's eighteen, so she's at the outside edge of this trope, but she's still the youngest major Spark in the comic, as well as one of the most powerful.
• Terror Hero: Not by choice, but everyone seems to expect her to go Old Heterodyne on her enemies, and she can work with that. She's almost as good as Klaus when it comes to intimidating people into obedience.
• Took a Level in Badass: Before Zeetha's Training from Hell, Agatha played the role of Damsel in Distress much more frequently. Zeetha saw her need to be able to fend for herself, so she's giving Agatha the training of a Skifander warrior princess. It works, too...compare this and this.. These two scenes are set just two months apart...
• Training from Hell: She's regularly thankful that Zeetha put her through a comically vicious training regimen in her circus days.
• Traumatic Superpower Awakening: Subverted. Gil notes that her breakthrough was peaceful compared to other Sparks; she didn't so much as break through as "ease" through. Unlike many breakthrough creations, hers (the "search engine" in Beetleburg) was relatively harmless. No one besides Gil even suspected she was breaking through, least of all her, and most of all the Baron. Played straight in that, when she demonstrated heterodyning to Barry at the tender age of five, he panicked and scrambled to find some way to suppress her spark.
• Tsundere: Oh, yes. She definitely is one. At least, towards Gil.
• Underestimating Badassery: Too many powerful people treat her as a pawn in their game, when she's really another player in said game. To quote Gil talking to Vole:
  Gil: You're just like my father! You underestimated her and she bested you! She is a Heterodyne! Doesn't that mean anything to you?!?
• Undying Loyalty: Perhaps the most potent ability of the Heterodyne family members is not their ability to tune out distractions with their signature heterodyne humming, but their innate understanding of the nuances and reciprocal nature of Loyalty. Agatha carries on the family trait, and in her father's and uncle's new reformed method of expressing it: helping others along the way so they're inclined to rise up in reciprocation, or simply subverting the expectation of bombastic Sparky dominance towards a minion. One crowning example is the personal favor she paid her spymaster, Axel Higgs. He is a Jägermonster, albeit indistinguishable from a regular human unlike the rest of the Jägercorps. To assuage his inverted Freakiness Shame, she set up an elaborate plot to crash a gala thrown by Queen Albia of England... so Higgs could have a dance with his paramour Zeetha while dressed and made up to look more like a typical Jager.
• Unkempt Beauty: She cleans up nicely, too, but looks no less pretty when covered in dirt and engine grease (which is frequently). Tarvek even seems to prefer her that way.
• Villainous Lineage: Klaus suspects that she carries her families' evil in her. While Agatha seems to be heroic and generally well-adjusted, he points out that anyone can go insane over their lifetimes - and given the sheer amount of evil in both the Heterodyne and Mongfish lineages, he does not want to take chances by allowing her to marry Gil.
• Wants a Prize for Basic Decency:
  • Inverted Trope. Others treat her like a bastion of moral fortitude because she possesses things like "restraint" and "humility". Justified Trope because she's a Heterodyne, and that sort of thing isn't exactly "basic" for them.
  Vanamonde von Mekkhan: You have fifty generations of lowered expectations working for you.
  • Furthermore, when Queen Albia of England makes her wait for a while before speaking with her as a show of power, Agatha grumbles a bit, but nothing worse. Lord Womble assures her that the lack of a murderous rampage has been noted.
• Warrior Princess: Zeetha's princess lessons seems to be meant to turn Agatha into even more of a Spark Lady of War than before. Lesson #1 is "every princess needs a battle axe".
• Weasel Mascot: Ever since Tarvek brought her a bundle of Wasp Eaters after The Vespiary Squad airship crash, one of them has latched onto Agatha and went with her through the Time Skip portal. She's become dependent on the wasp eater's proximity after she substituted it for Martellus to subvert the alchemical "touch of the king" leash he tried to put on her.
• Weirdness Magnet: She doesn't actively seek out adventure or trouble and prefers to solve her problems as quickly and peacefully as possible. Unfortunately, as a Heterodyne she is placed in the center of various conflicts and conspiracies, attracts countless enemies who wish to see her dead or use her to their own ends, and she has to deal with all the problems her family left behind.
• White Sheep: Like her father and uncle before her, compared to the rest of their ancestors in the Heterodyne lineage and with Theo to the Mongfishes. That's two breed of madness and she is okay, at least.
• Wrench Wench: She looks good tinkering with machines. Plus, virtually all of the promotional artwork depicts her holding a wrench of some sort.
• Wrench Whack: Since she's usually carrying one anyway...

Ardsley Wooster

Commodore Ardsley Roland Wooster, British Secret Agent

"Destabilized Britain's greatest rival, and aided an innocent girl. A mighty good day's work, I'd say."

Wooster first met Gil in Paris and agreed to enter his service as a manservant. He claimed not to know Gil's true identity at the time, and was apparently very surprised when he found out. However, Wooster turned out to be more than a Jeeves; in reality, he was a secret agent for British intelligence, and therefore likely DID know who Gil was, which is very impressive seeing as Gil's childhood friends didn't. Turns out Gil knew Wooster's real identity, and was perfectly willing to go along with the pretense until events pushed him into making use of his knowledge, turning Wooster into his semi-minion and dispatching him to help Agatha. Wooster eventually convinces Agatha to come to England with him.

Classy and unflappable Wooster's ultimate allegiance is of course to the immortal and sparky Queen Albia of England, but he thinks well of Agatha, has indeed assisted her on more than one occasion, and has given every indication of being as honorable a man in his profession can be, leading to his being listed here on the Protagonists page.

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• Accidental Pervert: Walked in on Agatha while she was executing her Full-Frontal Assault plan to scare away assassins.
  Agatha: Tch. What kind of master spy stands around in the hall screaming at the sight of a lady dishabille, anyway? What would your Queen say?
  Wooster: She'd say: "thank you Mister Wooster, for not doing anything- that would make Gilgamesh Wulfenbach melt England!"
• Amazon Chaser: He's clearly interested romantically in Trelawney Thorpe, an internationally-renowned superspy who regularly carries around high explosives. (Whether her feelings towards Wooster extend beyond friendship to a colleague is less clear, though she weeps for him after he dies.)
• Badass Normal: He commandeers a rifle from one of the Baron's troops (after somehow ditching Agatha's party), fires from the top of one of the caravans and is ready to snipe the Baron (see Shoot the Dog below), delivers an Offhand Backhand to Bangladesh Dupree, and later enters and exits the Jägergeneral's airship from the window. He also survived being Gil's valet for at least a year before the comic starts.
• Battle Butler: While undercover working for Gil, although again, "valet" would be the more accurate term.
• Defiant to the End: When threatened by an enraged and newly super-charged Lucrezia occupying Agatha's body, he stoically maintains his loyalty to Albia, and pays the penalty.
  Wooster: Albia... is eternal...
• Die for Our Ship: invoked Ships Gil/Agatha because he's afraid that any other pairing means "Gilgamesh Wulfenbach is going to go on a rampage that will reduce everything Ardsley Wooster loves to a wet pile of used tea leaves."
• Dragon with an Agenda: A heroic example, as he is still loyal to the queen; how privy he is to Albia's plans towards Agatha isn't currently clear.
• Expy: Very much so for Mr. Bond. His only problem is that he lives in a world of high-powered Mad scientists. Meaning Mr. Wooster's Super Weight isn't nearly as great, relatively speaking, as Mr. Bond's genius bruiser status in his own stories.
• Friendly Sniper: The only member of the main cast who uses conventional firearms (rather than Death Rays and their ilk) with any regularity, and a damn good shot besides. And provided he's on your side, he's definitely a polite and respectful guy.
• The Jeeves: Played with. Despite the nod to Jeeves and Wooster right there in his name, Wooster is no mere super-skilled valet.
• Killed Off for Real: Killed by the Lucrezia copy in Agatha's body for refusing to submit to her.
• Master of Disguise: After seeing this page, now go back and try to spot that particular "corbettite" in the post-Beast-battle pages.
• My God, You Are Serious!: Very quickly realizes that Gil's threat to destroy Albia, melt England to slag and boil the seas for a thousand years if Agatha is treated as anything less than a guest is not an empty threat. Maybe he can't do it right now, but if Albia gives him a reason to, Gil will find a way to deliver.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Boris tries to invoke this when Wooster reveals the Baron's plan to level Mechanicsburg to the Jäger Generals, claiming that he's allowed The Other an opportunity to escape. Wooster doesn't buy it, but admits that the Queen will take an interest in the matter if things do go south.
• Noodle Incident: Apparently Hoffman landing on him reminded him of how he met Gil.
• Oh, Crap!: Wooster has an impressive one here, when, in response to Violetta wondering Who Would Be Stupid Enough? to hijack one of Albia's ships singlehandedly, he starts to reminisce about a time when Gil did something like that... then freezes in horror when he realizes the implication that Gilgamesh Wulfenbach, whose empire is on what could best be described as an uneasy detente with England, probably is involved somehow (and he's right).
• Offhand Backhand: Delivered to Bangladesh DuPree, of all people.
  DuPree: You're on my list, pal!
  Wooster: But you are most certainly not on mine. Good day.
• Reassigned to Antarctica: After being outed as a spy, not to mention sending Europa into chaos, his superiors assign him to stay with the Jägers guarding Mechanicsburg as punishment. He does eventually get back to England, and is put in charge of a murder investigation at the Queen's Society.
• Sarcastic Devotee: Though he grows out of it, he starts off as a man with little faith in Agatha.
• Servile Snarker: As Gil's right-hand-man. Gentleman Snarker might be more accurate now we know his real background.
• Shipper on Deck: Ships Gil/Agatha, principally out of fear that any other pairing "would make Gilgamesh Wulfenbach melt England!"
• Shoot the Dog: Is prepared to do whatever it takes to complete his mission, even killing Baron Wulfenbach. Although given his comment that "Gil won't like this", he may have been planning a wounding shot.
• Spanner in the Works: When he derails Boris' manipulation of the Jägergenerals.
• Spy Drama: This didn't really feature in the comic itself until this strip. There is, however, a custom ad for the Spy Battle browser game that portrays his past as being ridiculously martini-flavored. And he's later stated to be a Commander in HMSS with a designation including 00.
• The Stoic: He's rather nonchalant about Gil revealing that he knew all along that Wooster was a British spy. And he's again unflappable when throwing a monkey wrench into Boris's attempt to deceive the Jäger generals. However, even he is not immune to being minionized by Gil's force of will. As noted above, he dies maintaining this attitude.
• Tall, Dark, and Snarky: One of the tallest protagonists, dark haired, and he's British, so snark is a given.
• Wild Card: More heroic than most examples, but his first loyalty is always to Queen Albia and England. He'll help out the heroes if it interests the Crown or he's feeling especially sympathetic, but the particulars of his motives are always a little hazy.

Da Boyz

Ognian, Maxim, and Dimo, Jägermonsters

Oggie, Maxim, and Dimo

The three "wild" Jägermonsters. They were detached from the rest of their kin and sent out on a suicide mission to find an heir to the Heterodyne family so that the other Jägers could serve and be under the auspices of Baron Wulfenbach without having forsaken their oath to the Heterodynes. To their surprise, they discovered Agatha passing by in Zumzum, and followed her to protect her.

---

Da Boyz in general

• The Ace: For Jägers, they're incredibly intelligent and adaptable. They attribute this to the fact that, in order to honor their bond with the Heterodynes, they were tasked with being separate from the rest of the horde and survive on their wits. As a result, when the horde leaves Wulfenbach, Dimo is christened a general, and even Oggie and Maxim are shown to be quite clever, and not just by Jäger standards.
• Amazing Technicolor Population: Dimo is green, and Maxim is purple. Oggie is (relatively) normally coloured by human standards, which makes him the odd one out by Jäger standards.
• Badass Adorable: Oggie, and to a lesser extent Maxim.
• Badass Crew: They fight very effectively together.
• Berserk Button: Enough to even get them pissed at a Heterodyne. "Dot... vas... my.... HAT!" But even that's not enough to overcome the bond between Jäger and Heterodyne.
  Maxim: Forgiff me... Mistress.
• The Big Guy: Being the only Jägers loyal to Agatha before the Doom Bell rings they serve as the muscle of Agatha's group, especially while she was with the circus where they were her go-to guys to solve problems.
• Blood Knight: They're Jägers. It comes with the territory.
• The Bus Came Back: The bus FINALLY came back, after three years, when Maxim and Oggie finally showed up out of nowhere at Martellus' costume party. First revealed here, but seen a little earlier here.
• Chewing the Scenery:
  • When they need to stop Jenka from rampaging through town. "SCHTOP! Hyu horr'ble monstery ting of EVIL!"
  • Later, when they (briefly) entered Mechanicsburg before a Heterodyne was officially in residence, which is not allowed.
    Oggie: Hyu knife, brodder!
    Maxim: Right here, brodder!
    Dimo: [sighs] Ve didn't gets caught, hyu eediots.
    Oggie and Maxim: Whew!
    Gil: (annoyed Aside Glance)
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Da Boyz have funny accents, are generally not too bright and more than a little goofy. Then something happens, and suddenly all the goofiness is gone and you're reminded that Da Boyz are in fact 200+ -years-old Super Soldiers...
• Cute Little Fangs: Until they open their mouths and reveal that the "little" fangs are huge.
• Cute Monster Girl: Rare male example in Maxim and Oggie. Oggie, oddly, is more of a charmer than Maxim despite not being as pretty, even being able to sweet-talk human girls.
• Freudian Trio: Dimo=Superego, Maxim=Ego, Oggie=Id.
• Funetik Aksent: Iz de vay de Jägers tok. Even their applause is accented!
• Godzilla Threshold: With protecting Agatha their top priority and the Baron hunting her, it says something that Dimo and Maxim's reaction to seeing large numbers of slaver engines is immediately deciding to inform the Baron and bring his troops running to the city Agatha is in.
• Had to Be Sharp: Extended time away from the main corps of Jägerkin has necessitated them to think on their own. As a result, they've become smarter for it; even Oggie, and especially Dimo. This sharpening of mental acuity is what enabled Maxim to be the Jäger who finally claimed Old Man Death's hat.
• Hidden Depths: They're smarter than the other Jägers. And it seemed to have only come up after they split from the main group.
  General Zog: Dimo! Hy am shocked at dis behavior!
  Boris: Still, it was rather clever of him...
  General Zog: Hy said Hy vas shocked.
• I Owe You My Life: This was their excuse for watching over Agatha before her identity was revealed, that they need to pay her back for cutting them down in Zumzum.
  Zeetha: You already did. On the bridge.
  Dimo: Dat vas fer me. Maxim und Oggie still gots dere turns.
• Kavorka Man: They claim to be "irresistible to vimmen," although how much so remains to be seen. Given how many times women seem receptive to Oggie's flirting, he apparently lives up to it. Maxim and Oggie both found interested girls during Maxim's interaction with Old Man Death. Then again, apparently in Mechanicsburg and its suburbs Jägers are heroes.
  • As the backstory for Oggie and Higgs unfolds, it's becoming clear that the Jägers' non-human features are considered attractive in the Mechanicsburg area, to the point that Oggie takes it for granted that Zeetha will be disappointed if Higgs never develops them.
• The Man They Couldn't Hang: They're introduced swinging in the breeze in Zumzum, where they've been hanging for two days. The only thing they're worried about is Jenka finding them.
• Mr. Fanservice: Maxim is rather attractive and the other two have their fans.
• The Nose Knows: All Jägers have an acute sense of smell. Before any Jäger was even aware of the fact that Agatha was the long lost scion of the house they swore Undying Loyalty to, many of them commented on how she smelled good. The Jäger Generals debated on whether she could be the one based on the scent on her belongings. And Da Boyz are introduced picking up a whiff of Agatha in Zumzum as they dangled on their ineffectual nooses. Later, they were able to identify the hallucinogenic haze that the Circus members unleashed on the Wulfenbach forces to make an escape. They could also "schmell ze fear" on Lars moments before his Heroic Sacrifice, and the blood on Gil when he was shot.
• No Sense of Personal Space: The average Jäger has no qualms about being in everyone's space like they're old friends. Dimo in particular has learned to weaponize this by looming threateningly over people often by perching on something a person he wants unsettled is next to so as to surprise them with a well timed comment and when they turn they're faced with an uncomfortably close Jäger that is crouched like they're ready to pounce with all their very sharp teeth showing in a menacing grin.
• Obfuscating Stupidity:
  • Most notable in Dimo, but they're all smarter than most rank-and-file Jägers because of the time they spent by themselves. Dimo's best moments come when other Jägers, including Oggie and Maxim, decide to goof off and stop trying to think things through. Jägers tend to "turn off" their brains and just act silly and somewhat insanely when they are bored. Dimo is the smartest of the three because he can stay focused for longer than them. He tends to be the one who asks the "smart questions". Though occasionally he'll use his head to hammer in a nail instead of his metal hand.
  • While other people mock him about his ability to understand how love works, Oggie actually is very astute about relationships and not only figures out that Higgs loves Zeetha, but gives him advice that helps seal their relationship.
    Master Payne: “You cannot possibly be as stupid as you act.”
    Oggie: “Ken if hy vants to be!”
  • Maxim will at one minute talk about how it would be easy to defeat a 4th dimensional creature because they killed things that are older than that and the next minute point out that Agatha probably avoids sexual relationships because it's something she's unexperienced with in comparison to her mother. He further deduces that the Lucrezia inside her head would subsequently make a play to take over her mind if Agatha allowed herself to be in such a romantic position. Like Oggie, some of the stuff he believes or "figures out" seems to be incredibly stupid or based on insane logic, but other times his whole demeanor changes and he says something quite astute and wise. The only reason he isn't as good as Dimo at this is because Dimo almost always stays serious while Maxim likes to goof off with Oggie.
• Proud Warrior Race Guy: Comes with being Jäger.
• Put on a Bus: Oggie and Maxim, post Time Skip. Averted with Dimo. They finally reappear in Paris and join Agatha as she travels on to England.
• Really 700 Years Old: They don't look particularly old, but they're between two hundred and three hundred years old, and Oggie has at least one adult great-great-grandchild (who looks and acts suspiciously like the character telling the main story, who is an Author Avatar). They personally knew the original Storm King, and he really hated them.
• Secret-Keeper: Though not outright said, they are apparently aware that Higgs is actually a Jager General.
• Seen It All: Given that they've been Jägers for over a hundred years and Had to Be Sharp on top of the usual shenanigans, it takes a lot to take them off guard. Maxim and Dimo demonstrate this when escaping from an underwater exploding lab. They just shrug off the parade of ridiculous obstacles in their way, their response to a ghost pirate showing up is to just hand him a pearl for passage (and had a fake to hand him), and they deliberately play up Mr. Exposition about their current situation to bait out a mind-control spider. Worth noting that Maxim was the one taking the lead in the above (though Dimo was clearly just as much in his element).
• Shipper on Deck: Agatha/Gil is the Jägerkin OTP. Though, Tarvek impresses the Jäger Generals and several regular Jägers during the Siege of Mechanicsburg. There's now a betting pool started for which suitor she'll end up with. (Yes, there is a pool for "Both.")
• The Smart Guy: All three are pretty intelligent, especially compared to the average Jägerkin. Dimo is clearly the smartest of the trio. If you vote for Girl Genius at topwebcomics.com, the incentive even calls him "The Smart One."
  • Take a close look at the last part of this scene. The other two are shocked, but Dimo is just rolling his eyes like he saw this coming. Just like the Jägergeneral behind him.
• Suicide Mission: Their mission was to "find a Heterodyne", but no one expected them to succeed. The only purpose was to attempt to hold to the Jägertroth so that the rest of the Jägers could proudly say that they had not abandoned their masters. Then they found Agatha...
  Maxim: Vell... ectually she kinda found us. Doz dot still count?
  General Khrizhan: Ho, yez.
  Maxim: Whew!
• Super-Soldier: As with all Jägers.
• Those Two Guys: Three, but who's counting. Often get to fill this role. Exemplified by when Payne and Abner are trying to figure out how to integrate Da Boyz into the troupe.
• Undying Loyalty: Explicitly explained to be a choice on the Jägers' part. They are not compelled to serve the Heterodynes; rather, every Jäger has made a conscious choice and vow to serve the Heterodynes for life before they drank the Jägerbrau.
• You Can't Go Home Again: To stay true to their oath when they signed up with Baron Wulfenbach, a small group of volunteers were detached and not committed to the Baron's forces. It was determined that searching for the Heterodyne Boys or any possible offspring would not be a priority for the Baron, so these detached Jägers were tasked with searching for their masters. Da Boyz were three such Jägers, and it was considered a suicide mission because of the extremely long odds. But against those odds, they succeeded by finding Agatha and this trope was ultimately averted.

Dimo

The leader by default, due to being the smartest of the trio. Often the Only Sane Man as well.

---

• An Arm and a Leg: Dimo lost his left arm to the acid of mutated glowing slugs. Or more specifically, an emergency amputation by Oggie to prevent it from dissolving the rest of him.
• Artificial Limbs: Dimo gets a metal strap-on arm to replace the one he lost from the slug acid spit.
• Color-Coded Characters: His skin and hat are both green.
• Field Promotion: After the Siege of Mechanicsburg, with most if not all of the Jäger generals caught in the time-freeze bubble, he's received an unofficial promotion to general. As "official" generals are selected by age in addition to capacity, it's unclear whether he'll retain the rank.
• Four-Star Badass: That's General Dimo to you, after the Time Skip. He had to, as all the other (known) Generals are caught in the time-freeze bubble, and most rank-and-file Jägers aren't known for smarts. Seeing that there's a vacancy in the general staff due to hat-loss-caused-death of one General in the recent past, he may get to keep the post.
• Genius Bruiser: Not for the standards of the series a whole, but definitely for the Jäger. He tends to be the guy with the plans and the one who asks the right questions about a mess in front of the cast. There's a reason he was promoted post-timeskip.
• Handicapped Badass: Dimo, after losing his arm in the Sturmhalten Riot. Later receives an Artificial replacement that looks to have been made by some refugee in the caves after the Time Skip; Punch is a likely candidate for being the constructer.
• He Cleans Up Nicely: Invoked, amazingly; when he shows up with Jenka under Paris he's disguised, by shaving, neatening up his hair, dressing in formal attire, and standing up straight, causing him to look quite different until closely examined. Agatha's even surprised he can DO the latter. He doesn't seem to like it, though.
• Only Sane Man: he's the de facto leader of the trio. This quality later helps earn him a promotion to Generalcy after the time-skip.
• Perma-Stubble: He starts out with a reasonably neat goatee though. When he cleans up (see above), it's averted as he shaves it off.
  • Then again, the stubble quickly grow again when he's not in social function, even though it's just the next day! [1]
  • And its fully returned when he's talking about his and his fellow Jägers' monstrous past (and Heel–Face Turn) with Heterodyne Boys.
• Slasher Smile: Dimo is particularly good at this.
• The Strategist: He tends to ask the "schmot qvestions".
• Surrounded by Idiots: It was bad enough when it was just him stuck with Oggie and Maxim, but Dimo really HATES being a General.
• You Are in Command Now: Due to all the other (known) Jäger generals being trapped in the Baron's time-freeze bubble, Dimo took over leadership of the Jägers on account of being the Only Sane Man amongst Da Boyz.
• Your Costume Needs Work: Gets told this by an actor playing a Jäger, saying he got the voice right but he could use some more makeup.

Ognian, aka "Oggie"

One of the few Jägers known to have descendants, and a surprisingly competent sweet-talker.

---

• Butt-Monkey: He is frequently clobbered by one or both of the other Boyz mid-sentence for saying things that/when he shouldn't. Sometimes Jenka joins in too.
• Color-Coded Characters: Tan hair and skin with brown clothes.
• Dumb Blond: Oggie is... not the sharpest tooth in the mouth.
  Master Payne: You cannot possibly be as stupid as you act.
  Oggie: Ken if I vants to be!
• I Want Grandkids: Oggie wants great-great-great-grandkids. Becomes Heartwarming in Hindsight when he reveals that having descendants is a way to keep the memory of his long-dead wife alive, as Oggie can still see something of her in every one of them.
• Kavorka Man: Of special mention with Oggie, as he's the only one of the boys with known descendants so far.
  • Although a look at him pre-serum shows I Was Quite a Looker First panel in the middle
• Manchild: Oggie is a fun loving guy, but often comes across as highly immature.
• Mayfly–December Romance: it turns out Oggie was married, to a woman he met and got pregnant just before he took the Jagerdraught. They were together 64 years, which while a fair lifetime for her, was such a short time compared to the hundreds of years he's lived since. He still keeps a picture of her in that necklace he always wears, and the fez that the nondescript silhouette of her is wearing in the flashback implies that Oggie's fez was also hers too.
• Noodle Incident: Oggie apparently did something that pissed off Klaus, which may be part of the reason he was sent on the mission in the first place.
• Saying Too Much: As already noted, he has a real problem when it comes to blurting out sensitive information.
• Someone to Remember Him By: Played straight first, then Gender Flipped. As he reveals when Zeetha asks about his wife, she originally shared his tent but left the day before he took the Jagerdraught - the implication being that she tried to have his child before he took the highly-likely-to-be-lethal Super Serum and wouldn't have to see him die. She succeeded on the former, and she later was surprised that the latter didn't happen. Oggie now views all of his descendants as a way to remember her, as noted above, which is why he's driven to tell the one he's shown meeting in the comic's present that he wants great-great-great-grandkids.
• Super Serum: Martellus concocts some manner of potion that he has an injured Oggie drink during the bid to extract Lucrezia from Agatha in Londonium, and it makes him grow beastly large, bloodshot-eyed, and maniacally laughing as he rips the arm right off of a super-clank loaded with another copy of Lucrezia after she had put an end to Zeetha's onslaught.
• Ugly Cute: In-Universe. By his own admission, his wife was ugly, but in a cute way.

Maxim

The prettiest of the trio, and mostly human except for his purple skin.

---

• Art Evolution: While the whole comic has been going though it subtly over the decades its run, Maxim's design has changed the most of all Da Boyz, which is most apparent when you look at how his nose is drawn. Compare when he's first introduced here to his latest 2020 appearance here
• Attractive Bent-Gender: In the Cinderella story, Maxim... is beautiful. Oggie and Dimo avert the attractiveness.
• Cavalry Officer: Maxim's outfit and use of a saber in combat appears to have been based on various cavalry uniforms. Later when Da Boyz link up with the rest of the Jaegarhorde it's shown that he is indeed part of the Jaegar cavalry rather than the infantry.
• Color-Coded Characters: Purple skin and clothes.
• Due to the Dead: In honor of Lars's Heroic Sacrifice, Maxim goes out of his way to retrieve his corpse, then gives his first hat to be buried with him. If only for a short time, Lars "rode with the Jägers" (like Carson Von Mekkhan and Old Man Death), and it's custom for Jäger auxiliaries to be honored in death like a Jäger.
  "He fight vit us Jägers und die for the house of Heterodyne. Dot make him as goot as vun of us. Ve don't leave our own behind. (...) So ven hyu bury him, make sure he gots a hat."
• Long-Haired Pretty Boy: Goes along with his Bishounen factor. In fact Maxim was originally designed as an in-joke for Kaja. Lampshaded in the Cinderella side-story, when he's supposed to play an ugly stepsister... well, see for yourself.
• Loophole Abuse: After failing to get Old Man Death's hat by fighting him for it, Maxim then tells him he wants a sandwich. Old Man Death tells him "you name it, I make it". Maxim asks for a "Prince of Sturmhalten's Big Bet", which refers to a past Prince of Sturmhalten who lost a bet with the reigning Heterodyne at the time, and had to eat his hat. In order to live up to his boast, Old Man Death had to make Maxim a hat sandwich. On top of that, Old Man Death said he was going to give him the sandwich and then started to threaten him with what he'd do to him afterwards, basically trying to pull his own Loophole Abuse. However, Maxim then said he wanted the sandwich to go, so he pulled Loophole Abuse twice.

The Dingbots

"Agatha's Little Clanks"

The Dingbots are a horde of small clanks (roughly the size of a large pocketwatch) created by Agatha that prove to be immensely useful in a variety of roles. The original Dingbots created by Agatha herself (such as the fan-named "Dingbot Prime", created in her sleep aboard Castle Wulfenbach) appear to have the Spark, as they are able to create more Dingbots (though with diminishing returns in quality).

---

• Action Bomb: During the battle that eventually laid Baron Wulfenbach low, several of them went red-eyed and started charging at enemies and exploding.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: They're not evil, but Tarvek has hypothesized that the Primes have the Spark. And they did go a bit off the rails during the Civil War between the Prime and Deuce factions before the Dingbot Queen intervened.
• Ascended Fanon: While they aren't referred to in-comic as anything BUT 'Agatha's Little Clanks', when Prime and Deuce start fighting, one of the page titles of the Dingbot War is "Attack of the Dingbots!".
  • Ascended further in the novelizations, where they are called dingbots in the narration, though are still called 'Agatha's little clanks' by the characters. In the video game, the dingbot you control is labelled as such; and The Works card game has two cards: Agatha's Dingbots 1 and Agatha's Dingbots 2.
• Do-Anything Robot: Individually, likely not. But as a horde? They Zerg Rush the problem; odds are, some dingbot has/is the right tool for the job.
• Rebus Bubble: To Gil, and to the second Dingbot Prime ("Dingbot Deuce" as he's been called).
• Recursive Creators: Only a few of the Dingbots were made by Agatha herself, the majority of them were made by other Dingbots. However each sucessive generation is weaker and more specialized than the one that created it. So while the Primes and the early generations are capable of planning and organizing projects the later generations eventually devolve into what are essentially ambulatory tools.
• Reforged into a Minion: A loose interpretation of this trope can apply to the post-defeat Beast of the Rails and to the fragment of Castle found in Paris: Agatha recreated their physical platforms into speech-capable advanced dingbots.
• Ridiculously Cute Critter: All of them have at least one big round innocently curious looking eye.
• Science-Related Memetic Disorder: It's not that they have the ability to build lesser copies of themselves; it's more that their first instinct on meeting a foreign swarm (or devotion, if you will) is to declare total war.
• Simple, yet Awesome: They're lab assistants, designed when Agatha was a university student with no resources. That make more lab assistants, which in turn make more, and so on until the latest models aren't sophisticated enough to do so. So Agatha only has to build one, and literally overnight she will have a small army of lab assistants that can carry out her instructions and build her designs. Who says logistics are hard?
• The Speechless: They don't say a single actual word, their vocalizations consist of Rebus Bubbles and heterodyning.
• There Can Be Only One: Agatha lost the original Dingbot Prime and made a new one. The original turned up again and, well, they don't seem to like each other all that much... Soon after, Agatha made a third one, a "Dingbot Queen" who subdued Prime and Deuce and united the two warring factions following each of the "primes".
• Turned Against Their Masters: Even the typical Heterodyne creations Undying Loyalty cannot get the two Prime Dingbots to stop fighting. Then Agatha actually tries the old "you are my creations" line. They just whack her on the foot with a wrench and get right back to clobbering one another.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Despite being the size of a large pocketwatch there is every chance the Agatha-originated Dingbots are self aware, and possibly are Sparks themselves.
• Zerg Rush: Their biggest advantage in carrying out the tasks their mistress (or her associates) needs is their sheer numbers.

Gil Wulfenbach

Gilgamesh "Gil" Wulfenbach, Heir to the Pax Transylvania, Schmott Guy

"I am Gilgamesh Wulfenbach, little man, and there is NOTHING I could not do, had I cause!"

Son of one of the major antagonists, Gilgamesh is one of the possible pairings for Agatha, and has much more obvious motivations.

---

• Antagonist in Mourning: When Agatha fakes her death.
• Badass Boast: And it is awesome.
• Badass Bookworm: He'd actually much prefer playing around in his lab, and doesn't even have a death ray when Agatha first meets him.
• Badass Longcoat: A habit borrowed from his father. Gil owns several of them, of varying degree of fanciness.
• Berserk Button: You should take him seriously. He doesn't like it when you don't.
• Betty and Veronica: Agatha's Betty, to contrast with the far less trustworthy Tarvek. His Sanity Slippage later on starts to shift him into the Veronica role, however.
• Beware the Nice Ones: He is a friendly, generous, honest man who believes strongly in giving second chances. He doesn't even have any weapons by the time Agatha first meets him. But piss him off, and he can fight off Super Soldiers with his bare hands.
  Gil: I am Gilgamesh Wulfenbach, little man — and there is nothing I couldn't do, had I cause! And now... now I have one!
• Big Damn Heroes: He's not the only one to do this by a long shot, but he certainly loves to.
• Blatant Lies: "I'm a pirate."
• Brainwashed and Crazy: During the Battle of Mechanicsburg Klaus brainwashes him to be "loyal to the Empire," so that he will have enough free agency to inoculate himself against the slaver wasps and remain free from Lucrezia's control. The result is a Gil who is angry, dangerous, and insists on trying to capture Agatha for the good of all. Klaus also notes that in the worst case scenario, his advisers will be able to rule through him. It's implied that Gil found a way to rid himself of this, however. That's why, just to be on the safe side, Klaus implanted his own personality into Gilgamesh to keep him under control.
• Bullying a Dragon: Vole was talking down to this guy?
• Child Prodigy: He was eight when his spark broke through and he made Zoing, his little insectoid helper construct. This is even more notable if we remember that most Sparks break through as teenagers or young adults. It's suggested this happened because of him finding out that he's Klaus's son and losing Tarvek as a friend as a result was so stressful he broke through.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: Turns out to be his driving trait; when Gil has passed out from exhaustion, Agatha makes a good guess on how to wake him up:
  Agatha: Hey, Gil! All of Paris is about to go up in flames, and Zola has her head caught in a bucket! Up and at ‘em, hero boy!
  Gil: A bucket? Again? Okay, I’m comin’.
• Crazy Jealous Guy: Wooster certainly seems to think so.
• Creepy Shadowed Undereyes: After the time skip. He remains awake for weeks and gets dark circles around his eyes as a result.
• Color-Coded Characters: While he doesn't fall into this as much as others, brown seems to show up often in his outfits and matches his hair color.
• Dark and Troubled Past: It's hinted that being his father's son has been very trying if not near traumatizing for him since he found out the truth.
• Death Glare: Has unleashed a few. He is one of very few people that have managed to scare a Jäger.
• Death Ray: Notable for not having one until he finally built a really impressive one. Or two.
• Determinator: Gil has his moments, especially when Agatha is in danger.
• Deus Exit Machina/Holding Back the Phlebotinum: When Klaus freezes himself in time, Gilgamesh becomes the Baron Wulfenbach, and gains control of the largest army and biggest Empire in Europa... just in time for a series of rebellions to tear his new empire to pieces. After the time skip, he's using most of his resources to hold things together and steadily reclaim his empire.
  • However, his access to the full resources of the empire has allowed him to make major progress investigating the Mechanicsburg Time Stop.
• Deuteragonist: To Agatha, the Protagonist.
• Don't Call Me "Sir": A weird case; he refused to be called Baron at first, since that implied his father was dead even though they Never Found the Body. He's even less happy when he learns the alternative is "Your Highness."
  Gil: Oh, for ... I can't even imagine what that's about.
• Dragon Rider: After the time skip, he rides one of the "last great sky wyrms", having taken and tamed it after one of the Polar Ice Lords challenged him. Notably, it's completely capable of directing itself in a fight: when fighting Martellus, he sets it on the mooks to concentrate on the serious opposition on foot.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: He tries to be even-handed and fair, and people just dismiss him for it. And then he has to remind them that he is his father's son. Like with Vole over these three pages.
• Evil Costume Switch: Downplayed as it's less "Evil" and more "Brainwashed and Crazy Costume Switch". After the timeskip, he first shows up again in a red and black coat with a High Collar of Doom. It goes well with his Creepy Shadowed Undereyes.
• Fatal Flaw: Gil shares two with Tarvek: Pride and Wrath. His wrath being the more distabilizing trait. Gil is consistently nice to those around him to the point where when he does lose control, he reacts incredibly fiercely which contrasts all the more with his gentle nature. He almost kills Vole, which while completely understandable, turns out would have been an impulsive, and a long term blunder. Similarly, his hatred of Tarvek is not entirely rational. As for his pride, he tends to lose control and make mistakes when he is underestimated, though this also makes him exceptionally dangerous. He has a third fatal flaw in he can't handle his longing for Agatha which causes him to act like an idiot.
• Feed the Mole: He feeds suspected moles information, waits to see if his enemies react to it, and roots the moles out accordingly.
• Finish Dialogue in Unison: When Gil and Tarvek are both in The Madness Place they tend to reach the same conclusions and thus finish sentences in unison.
• Finishing Each Other's Sentences: Gil ocassionally cuts in to finish Tarvek's sentances such as in England when he finds the comparison of Tarvek and kidnapped princesses highly entertaining.
  Trelawney: Every one of those cases involved kidnapped royal princesses.
  Tarvek: My goodness, really? I had no idea. Nevertheless—
  Gil: It's totally applicable.
• Geeky Turn-On: Is the one most prominently shown to be highly attracted to Agatha's sparky-ness. In his defense, she's one of the few women he's met that can keep up with him on an intellectual level.
• Genre Savvy: From the first volume he had a hunch that it was Agatha who was the new Spark.
• Half-Human Hybrid: Gil's father is an Artificial Human construct. Several scenes indicate that he's inherited at least some of his father's Super-Strength and durability; it's also been hinted that Klaus made certain.. improvements to Gil when the latter was still a child.
• Hat of Authority:
  • Magnificently so, to impress the hat-obsessed Jaegers. - Also counts as a Brick Joke in this scene - Just when he thought he was rid of it for good, the Hat Came Back!
  • The Hat is so potent that it serves as instant identification of Gilgamesh. Except for the one guy. He gets a promise of promotion when the urgency of asserting Gil's identity has passed.
• Heroic RRoD: When his body can no longer handle the feats of epic badassery he's performing. Has happened at least twice: after he beat up Vole and after throwing Merlot's clank.
• Hereditary Hairstyle: His rather wild hair is akin to his father's, except his still has color to it.
• Hidden Backup Prince: Not quite a traditional example, but when Gil discovers that he can be addressed as "Your Highness" he is quite surprised. Word of God reveals that he's the Prince of Skifander, and judging by the fact that Orotine (the Muse of Geometries, who was built to advise the Storm King) is happy to advise him, it would appear that Gil is also somehow in the running for the Lightning Crown.
• Hidden Depths:
  • It's occasionally shown that Gil has major self esteem issues, feeling that he has no control over his life and never will.
  • Inverted when the slaver wasps are loose on Castle Wulfenbach. Agatha tells him to reveal his hidden arsenal of death rays that, of course, the tyranical Baron's son must built and just be hiding and it takes several attempts for Gil to tell her that he has not been secretly building killing machines and he really is as nonviolent a creator as it seems.
• The Insomniac: After the time skip. He spends weeks without sleep, apparently obsessing over getting Agatha and Mechanicsburg back. While he's been specifically conditioned (and/or remodeled) to allow him to survive this, it's clearly not good for him.
• Knight in Sour Armor:
  Zeetha: Hmf. She sounds like an idiot.
  Gil: Well, yes, but never a malicious one.
  Zeetha: Is that important?
  Gil: Heavens, yes! If I let everyone I thought was an idiot die, there wouldn't be many people left.
• Last-Name Basis: Tarvek always calls Gil by his surname "Wulfenbach" (or by "Holzfäller" before he learned his true identity), and Gil in turn always calls Tarvek by "Sturmvoraus."
• Last-Second Word Swap: After Gil sinks into depression following Agatha's apparent death, he tells Wooster that with all the other students gone and Klaus locked up in his own lab for the last two months, he has no one left. When Wooster replies that Gil still has him, Gil responds with "You—?! You're only here—" before cutting himself off. This serves as Foreshadowing to the fact that Gil knows Wooster is a British spy, with Gil cutting himself off before he can reveal that he already knows.
• Like Brother and Sister:
  • With Bang, to the horror of Klaus. After the time skip, Gil finds nothing odd about waking up with Bang in bed with him. When the two get to serious bickering, it can get as nonsensical and impenetrably self-referential as you'd expect of the trope. With a very high chance of bruises or worse. But, you have to feel sorry for anybody else who tries harming her near him. And, vice versa.
  • During their time together in Mechanicsburg he develops a more downplayed version of this with Zeetha. Their fight includes a lot lighthearted teasing which extends to later moments. Subverted as they're actually twins.
• Loved I Not Honor More: There's liking Agatha, but first there's containing the Other, as he explains to Zeetha. He also makes this argument while she's charging the Castle, but it's not clear whether it's actually him making it.
• Love Makes You Stupid: Agatha thinks he's been pretending to be an idiot around her. He was not. He's even willing to lampshade it when he's fighting Vole.
  Tarvek: So, Wulfenbach - just checking - Is this going to be some kind of macho exercise where you insist on battling a potentially superior opponent alone in some kind of misguided attempt to "prove" your intrinsic worth?
  Gil: No, NO! I'm only that stupid in front of Agatha!
• Made of Iron:
  • He took several bullets and kept standing unfazed while facing down the army of war clanks attempting to invade Mechanicsburg. And then he kicks a former Jäger's ass for underestimating him while being dragged off for medical care.
  • After being kicked by Zeetha into a wall, the wall had a number of cracks— with him not even bleeding yet.
  • The print-novels at least establish that this is more literal than some cases: Klaus made numerous physical improvements to Gil while the latter was still a child.
• The Madness Place: He's known to slip into it a bit easier than many other Sparks, getting the distinctive speech bubbles and maniacal glee even when he simply has a really good idea for saving Agatha. After the time skip, his speech bubbles imply that he is in a low-level Madness Place for months. He only finally returns to normal when he rescues Tarvek from the time stop and confirms he's okay.
• Marry for Love: He isn't happy when his father announces it's time for him to get married and that he will arrange for a suitable match. He would prefer a girl he likes, who understands his Sparky ideas and can keep up with them. He already has his heart set on Agatha, who has a strong spark herself which may very well surpass his own.
• The Medic: While most of the main characters have some degree of medical training it's Gil who spends the most time patching up his friends. Tarvek is his most common patient as Gil has had to save his life from numerous assassination attempts and other injuries.

  Gil: Let me take a look at that.
  Tarvek: ... Already doing it.
  Gil: Hey! I am a doctor, you know.
  Tarvek: pft. And who isn't?

• Minored In Ass Kicking: He's really a reasonable guy who prefers talking things out to fighting. But he can do unreasonable if the situation calls for it, and he can wipe out armies and pound Jägers into the ground when that happens.
• Missing Mom: The only time she's mentioned in the main comic is when Klaus grumbles that he hasn't seen his wife in years, and Gil claims Von Pinn is the closest thing to a mother he's ever known. Judging from a few hints in the comic and a few more outside the comic, all signs point to his mother being Zantabraxus, Warrior Queen of Skifander... who is also Zeetha's mother..
• Mr. Fanservice: Observe.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Named for the protagonist of the oldest epic we still have records of.
• Nice to the Waiter: Zola mentions that he was her only associate in Paris who was always nice to her.
• Obfuscating Stupidity:
  • While studying in Paris, Gil cultivated the image of himself as a womanising layabout and opium fiend who was involved with pirates and constantly getting involved in the schemes of crazed minor Sparks, in order to keep anyone (especially Tarvek Sturmvoraus) from figuring out that he was the Baron's son (though the trouble with crazy Sparks was mostly for the sake of an absent minded chorus girl he had befriended).
  • In fact, Gil tends to pull this off so often that a lot of people are routinely surprised that he's already figured out their secrets. For example, he had long ago figured out that Higgs was a Jäger General, much to the latter's annoyance.
• Omnidisciplinary Scientist: When it comes to the Spark, Gil is something of a dilettante...which means he's amazingly versatile. He works with heavier-than-air flight (which is bleeding-edge in Europa), built the most powerful and impressive Death Ray yet shown, and is better at building constructs than the young Heterodyne Boys, rebuilding the somewhat-flawed Punch and Judy as fully-functional Artificial Humans.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: The combination of brainwashing and personality transfer Klaus subjected him to out of paranoia of him being brainwashed by the other has predictably lead to at least one group concluding his erratic behaviour is due to him being controlled by the Other herself.
• Out of Focus: He drops out of the story for most of the second arc. Lampshaded with a gag panel here.
• Pet the Dog: The first sign he's nicer than his status as the tyrant's son would suggest is when he gets hit by the avalanche of junk in Beetle's lab, he makes a point of catching the occupied fishbowl that flew at him. He then protectively cradles it for the remainder of the scene and a throwawy line of dialogue indicated he brought it with him back to Castle Wulfenbach.
• Poor Communication Kills: A recurring problem in his relationship with Agatha is his tendency to say all the wrong things. A good example being her objections to the way he treats Othar. Despite that treatment being because Othar is a Serial Killer of Sparks, Gil never actually mentions that and not only seems far more cruel than he is in her eyes, but also leaves her in danger of Othar herself when she mentions being a Spark to him.
• Porn Stash: Apparently teenage boys really are the same everywhere. Even steampunk mad scientist ones. By the way, a "seraglio" is another word for a harem.
• Post-Kiss Catatonia: A brief one, when Agatha kisses him after destroying the Hive Engine.
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: Do. You. Understand?
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Red to Tarvek's Blue, oh-so-very much. Gil is passionate, dogged and relentless in everything he does, and prefers Crazy Preparation to Chess. This means he's hopeless in situations that can't be prepared for... like romance. He has to get by on honesty... and can be a bit brutal about it.
• Sanity Slippage: After the time skip. His father's brainwashing, combined with losing nearly every single friend and family member he had all at once, has not been kind to him.
• Science-Related Memetic Disorder: One of the first things he does is go crazy while examining the machine Glassvitch and Merlot built. He's even been the page picture.
• Secret Test of Character: His father gives him a lot of these. His introduction is a two-part one: To see if he's intelligent enough to notice that his father's theory is fundamentally flawed, and to see if he has the ability to confront his father when he is wrong.
• Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: The Manly Man to Tarvek's Sensitive Guy, he's more action oriented and a little less socially apt. On the other hand, he's the attentive one who pays attention to Agatha's moods and desires while Tarvek tends to attempt to assert his will over her, so he could be considered the Sensitive Guy to Tarvek's Manly Man.
• She Is Not My Girlfriend: Gets a bit of this regarding Agatha, though not as much as she does regarding him.
• Sherlock Scan: Gil quickly figures out that Agatha (not Moloch) is the Spark his father is looking for by merely looking at their hands: Moloch's hands are relatively clean, while Agatha's are smeared with machine oil. Instead of pointing this out to his men, however, he keeps it to himself until he can confirm it.
• Shirtless Scene: Enough that the wiki had a poll at one point about when editors thought he would next put a shirt on. One of the options was "Gil owns a shirt?"
• Shock and Awe: Can call down the lightning - with certain preparations. The most notable example of him doing this, interestingly, is also an example of the Trope Namer- rapid dominance through a spectacular display of power.
  Crab-Walker Crews: We surrender!!
• Sketchy Successor: He's not capable of maintaining control of Europa like his father did. He's good and smart, but nobody was going to hold the Empire together under the circumstances in which Klaus was taken off the board.
• The Sleepless: His father taught him some mental exercises that can let him go without sleep for a few days. Zeetha implies that this is an ancient Skifandran warrior discipline, but happily deflects any further questions.
• Speak in Unison: Gil and Tarvek end up saying the same thing at the same time on occasion, especially when they're synced to try and save Tarvek's life. At one point in Castle Heterodyne they start speaking in unison even though they're each talking about a different occasion:
  Gil & Tarvek: I thought you were dead! After losing you like that once, I'm going to make sure you're safe if it's the last thing I do!
• Super-Strength: He can lift and throw an armored clank, though this does a number on his muscles. Again, this is probably due to his father's physical improvments.
• Those Magnificent Flying Machines: He's one of the pioneers in fixed-wing, heavier-than-air flight. (Other variants, such as rotor-driven "copters" and even hovercraft, have been seen here and there.)
• Those Two Guys: He and Tarvek are somewhere between this and Vitriolic Best Buds. Whenever the two of them align on something (usually Agatha or both hating a new suitor of hers), they practically talk in sync and are able to do anything incredibly efficiently, be it working on an invention or mercilessly mocking someone... right before going back to trading barbs between the two of them.
• Took a Level in Badass: While Agatha was "dead."
• Tragic Keepsake: After Agatha faked her death, he started wearing the ring he made her on a necklace. He kept wearing it even after meeting back up with her, as they had yet to become a couple, but seems to have ditched it after the timeskip.
• Training from Hell: Everything does, apparently, have to be a test.
• Traumatic Superpower Awakening: Implied. The timing of his breakthrough, 8 years old to be precise, fits the chrononogy for when a) his friendship with Tarvek ended and he was sent from Castle Wuffenbach, and b) when he found out his true parentage. The fact he made a very cute construct as a friend/assistant suggests losing Tarvek's friendship was a major driving factor.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: In the brief periods when they're distracted from the fact that they kind of hate each other, he and Tarvek actually get along exceedingly well together.
  • Turns out they were best friends during their schoolboy years. Despite the immense political turmoil between as heirs between two different regimes, the rivalry to win Agatha's heart and just the times they caused each other immense annoyance, the two still care about each other greatly and do not react well when the other is in danger.
  • Gil has spent his every appearance since the Time Skip in the Madness Place, but getting to speak to Tarvek not only snaps him out of it, he stays out even after Tarvek passes out and he moves on to other matters. When Tarvek is then taken by the Incorruptible Library, Gil immediately forgoes diplomacy and resolves to chase them down and take him back by force.
• Wacky Marriage Proposal: "To annoy your father?"
• Warrior Poet: Is as at home designing art as he is designing weapons.
• Warrior Prince: Technically not a "prince", because the Wulfenbach name wasn't exactly high nobility before the Baron enforced his rule. But Gil is very much his father's son, and knows how to throw down just as well as his father. He may well be a more literal example after all. When he refuses to be styled as "Herr Baron" after his father's disappearance, Boris decides to use one of Gil's styles: Your Highness. And the infamous "Chump picture" has all but confirmed that Gil is Prince of Skifander; plus there are hints that he might be a contender for the crown of the Storm King.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Played with. Gil has absolutely no reason to doubt that his father loves or wants him, and genuinely wants to make him proud and show himself worthy to be his father's heir. Klaus, in the mean time, doesn't hesitate to show approval when warranted, but tests his son constantly, has very high demands and has made it abundantly clear he won't hesitate to break Gil down for bits and build a new son if Gil, through design or general incompetence, becomes a threat to the political stability of the Wulfenbach Empire.
• We Used to Be Friends: With Tarvek. They were best buddies back when they were kids. But they had a falling-out after getting caught sneaking into Castle Wulfenbach's archives: Tarvek was accused of spying on the Baron and using Gil for his own ends, and Gil believed it. They still treated each other with respect and worked pretty well together. It took the ordeal of surviving Castle Heterodyne, the siege of Mechanicsburg, and a disease that nearly killed them both before they patched things up between them.
• Wild Hair: Just like Daddy's.

Krosp I

Krosp I, Emperor of all Cats

"I like him. He thinks like a cat!"

Created by the Spark, Dr. Vapnoople, to control cats to act as a spy network, Krosp I is a failed experiment with delusions of lordship who has given Agatha much valuable political advice. Or possibly not so failed after all..

---

• Badass Longcoat: He's given quite a nifty red and gold one while he's with Master Payne's Circus with Agatha. At first he complains about the coat, but for reasons unknown to any but Krosp himself, he's kept it.
• Bears Are Bad News: Not for him, it turns out. Dr. Vapnoople's bear army was real, with sentient bear constructs. And they are all programmed to obey Krosp.
• Buffoonish Tomcat: Zigzagged, much of Krosp's comedy comes from having a brilliant military and logistical mind bolted onto the brain of a young cat. That said when he becomes love stuck he's a goner.
• Canon Immigrant: He originated in the Magic: The Gathering days of What's New? with Phil and Dixie.
• Cats Are Snarkers: Yes. Yes, they are.
  • So as a consequence Deadpan Snarker
• Chekhov's Gunman: First seen as an apparently normal cat getting into Agatha's food, and just one page later is shown drinking from the glass like a person instead of a cat.
• Color-Coded Characters: The white of his fur and the red and gold of his coat.
• Cut His Heart Out with a Spoon: When his animal side takes over.
  Krosp: [to Gil on their first meeting] I'm serious! Mess with me and your shoes are mine!
• Everyone Has Standards: While he has a different sense of morality to his human companions, he dislikes Martellus as much as the other heroes do.
• Genre Savvy: As this page among others helps demonstrate, Krosp knows what happens around Sparks, and he also fully anticipates people's reactions to Agatha's claim of being the heir. He also loves their reactions.
• Gone Horribly Right: A humorous example; his creator wanted an intelligent cat capable of exercising control over his non-sapient brethren. He succeeded perfectly, but it turns out that cats don't really make good spies...
  • Turns out Vapnoople also figured this out at some point before the story and made Krosp a sentient bear army to command instead. Or the whole "cat king" thing was a cover story all along, and the bears already existed when Krosp was created; the whole timeline of events here is not yet clear.
    • Cleared up in Albion arc: he made bears, got captured by the Baron, got lobotomized, THEN he made Krosp, in his child-like state not thinking the whole attention part through. Seems like he built his master command signature into Krosp to make ALL of his creations obey him, but so far only bears were encountered.
• Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal: Once he picks up a snappy jacket that one of the kids in Payne's troupe outgrew.
• Intellectual Animal: Though the intelligence wasn't the point of the project.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: For all that he is a snarky, unethical cat, he seems to care deeply about Agatha and her well-being.
  • He also refers to his creator as "poppa" and seems genuinely touched, if a bit startled, that the man made him an army of bears.
• Meaningful Name: It's an anagram of "spork", a combined spoon/fork eating utensil, and while not as useful as a separate spoon and fork, still pretty handy to have around.
• My Instincts Are Showing: For all his intellect and articulate speech, his pragmatism and insight on Realpolitik, he is still ultimately a cat. He gets sidetracked by table scraps and mice, threatens to shred shoes, and irrationally hates getting wet. And when he gets mutually lovestruck by Martellus's newly uplifted female cat, both he and she stalk each other enamored... only to recoil and hiss at each other like normal unfamiliar cats.
• No-Sell: He is the only one able to consistently ignore Agatha's Spark command voice.
• The Nose Knows: His olfactory senses have been useful. Most notably, during the Passholdt incident.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: In the print novel, he mentions that when the Baron was testing his abilities, he hid his intelligence, though he admits this might have been a mistake. This explains why the Baron was willing to kill a highly intelligent creature when he is later shown to be excellent at "finding the right monster for the right job."
• Only Sane Man: Well, usually. He gets pretty useless when his cat instincts take over.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: When Krosp turns down free eel pie, everybody takes note.
• Put on a Bus: Ever since he discovered the army of uplifted bears his "poppa"/creator Dr. Vapnoople made for him and stopping the sentient train with the others, he has since taken a leave of absence from Agatha's side, stating he has business to take care of. Ardley Wooster is understandably quite worried.
  • The Bus Came Back: After being absent for the entire Paris arc, Krosp confirms Wooster's worry by extracting his creator off of Castle Wulfenbach, commandeering a Wulfenbach airship and heading straight to England to meet with Agatha.
• Realpolitik: He is a font of wisdom on this for Agatha.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: When Agatha sarcastically swears fealty to him, he takes her seriously and accepts her as his subject. He considers it his responsibility as her king to keep her safe.
• Smart Animal, Inconvenient Instincts: While Krosp would like to claim that his 'cat-instincts' have no hold over him, but Agatha rather enjoys proving otherwise. Using a piece of string. In the main comic, a young minion earns Krosp's respect by bringing him dead rats.
• The Smart Guy: Of the tactical and political variety.
• Smart People Play Chess: He plays it. In the novels, he's good enough to win against Master Payne, who's a total cheat.
• Snarky Non-Human Sidekick: And well aware of it.
  Krosp: Is this one of those situations that involves "ethics"? 'Cause I'm a cat, you know. I've never been very good at those.
• Turned Against Their Masters: His creator, Dr. Dimitri Vapnoople, hardwired complete loyalty into his creations, including Krosp. Despite the fact Krosp never should have been able to even consider it, Krosp manages to defy him anyways and describes his creator as a nutcase.
• Uplifted Animal: Created to be a spymaster of cats. The problem lies in that the cats he were to be the spymaster to were... not uplifted. Well, until it turns out that he's been given another purpose with uplifted bears that works just perfectly.
• Your Costume Needs Work: A Running Gag during his time with the circus.
  • He's a real, live cat that can sing and dance — very, very badly. Not good at all given that all the Sparks and constructs with the circus are hiding there. He ends up shoveling manure.
  • During a performance of the Circus, audience-member Prince Aaronev is shown laughing about the "midget in a hilariously bad cat costume". The reader assumes that he has been fooled by Krosp, but it turns out a page or two later that, no, it really was Circus-member Embi wearing a cat costume.
  • Played straight in the third novelisation, where one or two people who see Krosp think he's someone in a bad costume.

Tarvek Sturmvoraus

Prince Aaronev Tarvek Sturmvoraus, Heir to the Lightning Throne

"If someone can't handle an unpleasant truth? Lie to them. If someone won't listen to reason? Make them. If people don't choose to live peaceably? Don't give them a choice. If you don't like the rules... Change the game."

First encountered when Agatha travels through the city of his father, Tarvek is the the Prince of Sturmhalten, and a descendant of the legendary Storm King. He's seemed to be on everyone's side, playing everyone against everyone else, though later he seems to be genuinely on Team Agatha. He is a powerful Spark and a keen intellect. The other possible pairing for Agatha.

---

• Amazon Chaser: Aaronev muses when he first appears that he'd probably like Zeetha. It's ultimately Downplayed, as he's interested in Agatha, who, while not on Zeetha's level, is quite the Action Girl herself.
• Anti-Hero: A manipulative scoundrel who happens to be on Agatha's side. Mostly. Even after he gets out of the Heel–Face Revolving Door, he's still pretty ruthless.
  Villain: These continental science heroes are always wittering on about the sanctity of human life!
  Henchman: Ooh, that's true! It's in all the books! DIE, OUTSIDER!
  [FOOM!]
  Tarvek: [holding a death ray to the villain's throat as what is left of the henchman burns in the background] I've never really considered myself the "hero" type. Are you the "take his secrets to the grave" type? Just asking.
• Aroused by Their Voice Apparently, Agatha finds his normal speaking voice 'very nice', and he doesn't have to be in The Madness Place to have her wanting to listen to him talk forever, according to the novelizations.
• Awesomeness by Analysis:
  • His specialty as a Spark, not unlike Klaus. He's not the best at making his own tech, but is practically peerless when it comes to grasping and recreating the work of others.
  • Only person to successfully reverse-engineer a Van Rijn.
  • Simply glancing at an abstract operations table tells him that an entire Wulfenbach military unit has been subverted and was about to flank and destroy much of the Wulfenbach army.
  • When it comes to the network that allows the Master to control Paris, he probably knows more than anybody save Colette, who's spent her entire life learning the stuff.
  • Even when acting as a Hostage MacGuffin, he's able to quietly keep watch for trouble as the others fight over him, noting that an incoming third-party is acting peculiarly, and getting the two sides to stand down in response.
• Badass Bookworm: Like most Sparks, although special mention goes to his reverse-engineering Tinka, a Van Rijn.
• Badass Longcoat: Often wears one.
• Bastard Understudy: A problem for Tarvek in gaining others' trust, especially since he's so candid about how he worked with Lucrezia.
• Betty and Veronica: The Veronica to Gil's Betty, largely because he's far less scrupulous and more slippery than either Agatha or Gil. It was also unclear for a long time whose side he was really on, but later events put him pretty solidly as on Agatha's and against The Other.
  • Post-Time Skip, he's become the Betty, in-between his own Character Development and Gil's deteriorating mental state.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Zola learns this the hard way.
• Butt-Monkey:
  • In Paris, he was apparently on the short end of a number of the adventures Gil got involved in, which resulted in him getting strung up, kidnapped by pirates, and losing girlfriends. He also spitefully notes that Gil somehow managed to come out "smelling like a rose" every time he looked like the fool.
  • After the Time Skip, we find that half of his family is supporting his claim to the throne not because of him, but simply because he'd make a better king than Martellus.
    Agatha: Am I the only one who actually likes Tarvek?
    Krosp: I like him. He thinks like a cat!
• Cain and Abel: He's the Abel to Anevka's Cain, though it gets a bit more complicated upon the revelation that the "real" Anevka has been dead for years. He and Tweedle are cousins rather than siblings, but still have this dynamic.
• Character Development: Gradually becomes kinder, more honest and altruistic, and far less self-serving, in large part thanks to Agatha's influence. He also shifts from being somewhat ambivalent towards her to openly risking his life for her cause.
• The Charmer: Is quite a sweet-talker when he puts his mind to it.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder:
  • Apparently congenital. He may be recovering, but readers are wary. The most obnoxious part of it? He genuinely means well when he does it. Agatha finds it insulting as all hell.
  • Gil feels that as long as Tarvek's breathing, he's scheming.
• Color-Coded Characters: He has the red hair of his family and primarily is seen wearing white and grey.
• Cultured Badass: Is well-dressed, and can be very polite when he means to be.
• Dark and Troubled Past: His life hasn't always been the best. His family is the major cause.
• Deadpan Snarker: Probably the most sardonic member of the cast.
• Designer Babies: The Mongfish family "made sure" that he would be throne-appropriate: male, Sparky, and free of problems like predisposition to alcoholism, non-Spark-related insanity, lycanthropy... Even spark-related insanity seems to be at a minimum with him; the only one that can match him for level-headed sparkiness is the Baron.
• Didn't Think This Through: Insisted on personally confronting Higgs on concluding the person is a Jäger General, and actually personally wraps Higg's hand around his throat in the process, apparently forgetting Jägermonsters have less than zero issues with killing people if they think they're threats. He only lives because Higgs decides he'd be more useful to Agatha alive.
• Died in Your Arms Tonight: Subverted. After being poisoned by Tweedle he collapses into Van's arms but after the Take Five Bomb goes off they're frozen in time and eventually Gil manages to save both of them.
• Discussed Trope: Tarvek notes fondness for the various media of the setting (operas, Heterodyne plays, novels, and more), befitting a Cultured Badass, and as such he'll sometimes remark about the various tropes playing out in their adventures (apparently, the particular subtype of Back from the Dead involving a girl's parental figures used to gain her affection is seen as a Dead Horse Trope In-Universe).
• Dysfunction Junction: "The only way to keep my family in line would be to bury them in a row."
• Extreme Mêlée Revenge: His brutal beating of Zola evokes this, especially considering the epic speech he delivers in tandem with said beatdown.
• The Fashionista/The Dandy:
  • You expect royals to be very well dressed. So this was not evident except one phrase out-of-continuity, but remember how he sat "doodling girls and clockwork"...? Later, approved the Jäger Generals' style. He also apparently will be perpetually reminded of his propensity to "dress up" Agatha like a doll (and sometimes slips into it without realizing it in Imagine Spots).
    Kaja Foglio: Yes, Sturmvoraus is apparently a house of evil fashion designers...
  • It takes on a new meaning in the books where it's revealed that the original Storm King distracted his vassals from fighting each other by making them one-up each other through fashion.
    • And another when we meet a zombified Andronicus himself. The original Storm King had a predilection for golden armor with monster faces on it.
• Fatal Flaw: He shares two with Gil: Pride and Wrath. His pride is the more destabilizing factor for him. His pride forces him to try and prove that he's the smartest in the room. When he found out Higgs was the hidden Jäger general, he HAD to openly confront him about it. He wanted to make sure Higgs knew that he knew his secret by forcing a discussion on it even after Higgs gives him a warning. This almost gets him killed. This is in contrast to Gil who knew the secret, but was way more subtle in revealing it and didn't force Higgs to openly admit it directly or indirectly. As for wrath, he almost kills Zola despite her having a wealth of information that the heroes probably desparately need. His hatred for Gil is also a little bit unreasonable. He, like Gil, becomes a bit of an idiot around Agatha, though less so. He does get more freaked out than Gil by women when they openly flirt with him, however.
• Go Mad from the Revelation: After getting exposed to a friendly but extradimensional alien's effect on time and possibly absorbing a small amount of energy from an Eldritch Abomination, he gains a much greater understanding of the universe and loses quite a bit of his sanity.
• Guile Hero: What he ultimately ends up as - he's no slouch in the physical department, but he almost never overwhelms his opponents even when he can (unless sufficiently pissed off). He instead prefers misdirection, politicking, and social engineering to pull out a victory, and he sees part of his role with Agatha teaching her to do the same, and part being doing so independently to her benefit.
• Heel–Face Revolving Door: Though it looks like he finally decided to stay on the Face side.
• Heel Realization: In the midst of arguing with Gil about having worked with Lucrezia in order to achieve his goals of becoming king, Tarvek stresses that it was his father and the Knights of Jove who had provided the bulk of the alliance. When Gil distractedly says that even Tarvek wouldn't have wanted Agatha controlled by the Other, Tarvek has a moment of realization: he was previously happy to use slaver wasps on other people to get what he wanted, but now realises just how horrible a thing it is to do to someone. (While no doubt also thinking of all the girls he failed to save from his father's attempts to find a new body for Lucrezia.) "It shouldn't happen to...well, to anybody."
• Honest Advisor: Both to Gil (twice in Mechanicsburg and Paris) and to Agatha, which is surprising given his family generally not being good with the whole "honesty" thing. Ironically, it's exactly his self-serving tendencies that make Gil think's he's honest.
  Gil: Listen to everything this duplicitous snake says! His tail is on the line here, too, so he'll give you good advice.
• How Dare You Die on Me!: Invoked towards Gil.
• I Did What I Had to Do: Narrowly averted during the fight with Zola. If an enemy angers him sufficiently, he will not accept a surrender.
• Impossible Thief: Thanks to Smoke Knight training, he can do this too occasionally. Such as when Tarvek is going once more into the breach to recover important research notes in a crashed Vespiary Squad research airship full of slaver wasps.
  Vespiary Soldier: ...And there's monsters! And crazy killers! You've got nothing!
  Tarvek: Nonsense! I have your knife and your gun.
  [soldier looks down, surprised]
  Vespiary Soldier: ...Oh man, I am gonna hear about that...
• It's Not You, It's My Enemies: Non-romantic example towards Violetta. He pulled strings to get her Reassigned To Mechanicsburg because of the truly horrendous survival rate of Smoke Knight bodyguards assigned to him. She's not happy when she finds out, even though (as Tarvek points out) she never wanted to be a Smoke Knight in the first place. The reason is she spent the entire time assuming she'd been sent there because she was a screw-up.
• Jerkass Has a Point: After Gil sees a copy of Agatha's original message (from all the way back to Sturmhalten), he calls out Tarvek for all the bloodshed he caused by tampering with it. Tarvek has none of it and correctly points out that Klaus would've dismissed the original message as a trick of Lucrezia and that the end result would've been more or less the same. Gil is forced to concede that Tarvek is right about that.
• King Bob the Nth: Tarvek is the fifth (in the novels, seventh in the comic) Prince in the history of Sturmhalten to have the given name of Aaronev. Given that the Principality of Sturmhalten has only existed for about two hundred years, Aaronev is apparently a very popular name in the family.
• Last-Name Basis: Gil always calls Tarvek by his surname "Sturmvoraus," and Tarvek in turn always calls Gil by "Wulfenbach" (or "Holzfäller").
• Licked by the Dog: Though he has a very checkered history with the Heel–Face Revolving Door, signs point to being ultimately on the "Face" side, such as how all the wasp eaters love him.
• Lineage Comes from the Father: Averted. He is directly descended from the Storm King through his mother.
• Love Redeems: Falling for Agatha proves to be the foundation for his path to redemption.
• Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter: Well, son.
• Meaningful Name: "Sturmvoraus" means "storm ahead" in German.
• Meta Guy: Not nearly to the level of von Zinzer, and typically only when he's not near Agatha, but part and parcel of his Cultured Badass persona is being able to comment on the current situation in terms of tropes (such as criticizing Gil for the In-Universe cliche of "bringing a girl's family Back from the Dead" - he continues to rant on the topic on the next page).
• Middle Name Basis: Because he shares his first name with his father, Aaronev Wilhelm Sturmvoraus. His full name wasn't revealed until 2020.
• Minored In Ass Kicking: He relies on others to fight for him whenever he can. Since arriving in the castle, though, he's had to reveal that yes, he's a match for Gilgamesh in a fight (which means any fair fight with him would rip Europa apart).
• Missing Mom: The only thing we know about his mother is the identity of one of her ancestors. We learn why she's missing in the second novelization, though. Anevka killed her.
• Mr. Fanservice: Spends the first part of his stay in Castle Heterodyne clad in nothing but the bedsheet he was under when Violetta whisked him out of the Great Hospital of Mechanicsburg.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: There's really no other way to describe his last encounter with Zola in the Castle.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Though he obviously doesn't act like a fool, it turns out that those beatings Violetta kept giving him were just a charade to convince everyone else that he was useless in combat.
• Omnidisciplinary Scientist: Played with. Although capable of a wide variety of mechanical and scientific feats, his understanding of aeronautics is apparently quite poor, at least according to Gil.
• One-Steve Limit: Tarvek is actually his middle name, but he answers to it because his father was also Prince Aaronev Sturmvoraus of Sturmhalten (middle name Wilhelm).
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: The aforementioned No-Holds-Barred Beatdown. Tarvek has been in various levels of anger and distress throughout the ordeal in Castle Heterodyne, and he's been already seen in an antagonistic relationship with Gil, so it's pretty clear what he's usually like with a rival or a general foe. But with Zola, it was so personal after how much they attempted to ruin his life that he completely loses it, foregoing his usual subtlety to attempt to outright murder his foe. It's one of the clearest indications just how much Agatha means to him, that he'd lose it over someone nearly killing Agatha.
• Pet the Dog: Had Violetta Reassigned to Antarctica, which she hated him even more for... then she discovered just how many of his bodyguards had been killed since.
• Put on a Bus: And a very good thing for him, because he was mortally poisoned, has minutes to live, and the bus is actually time-frozen.
  • The Bus Came Back: Through much effort on the part of Gil and the Empire, Tarvek was extracted and cured of the poison.
• Rapid-Fire "No!": His response to being told that he's being returned to his Big, Screwed-Up Family.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Blue to Gil's Red, oh-so-very much. He's calm, cool, collected in everything he does, and prefers to dominate his surroundings through constant manipulation. This makes him as charming as the very devil... unless the girl realizes that he's simply being polite about staying in control. It also means he's rather dependent on others once outside of a support network... At least until he gets a new one.
• The Rival: To Gilgamesh Wulfenbach. In principle, he resents the Wulfenbachs in general (since they were a minor noble family who rose to power despite not playing by the rules of the game if you will) and Gil specifically for the swaths of his messed-up life that weren't directly caused by his own family. Furthermore, they are also romantic rivals for Agatha's heart. In practice, his relationship with Gil hovers somewhere in between Friendly Enemy and Vitriolic Best Buds. Justified since they were inseperable childhood best friends, even with their spats. When not on each other's case, they get along quite nicely.
• Royal Blood: Apparently, he's the rightful heir to the Storm King.
  • Royally Screwed Up: A natural state for anyone in his family. There's a reason he laments being kicked off of Castle Wulfenbach as a kid: he got to be away from all the cynicism and plotting of his family.
  • Royals Who Actually Do Something: Being aware of major parts of the plans of Lucrezia, and the Storm King/Knights of Jove, he tries to derail them as much as he can, even through aiding Wulfenbach and using Wulfenbach troops and equipment to defend Mechanicsburg.
• Science-Related Memetic Disorder: Significantly less than other Sparks, though he still has moments...
• Screams Like a Little Girl: if Bangladesh is to be believed. One wonders just what happened...
• Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: Sensitive Guy compared to Gil's Manly Man. He's calmer, more thoughtful, and less prone to fits of violence. On the other hand, he often attempts to sway Agatha to his will while Gil dotes on her, so he could be considered the Manly Man to Gil's Sensitive Man.
• Sharp-Dressed Man: Well, he is when we meet him, anyway. He deteriorates sharply later. But found something better as soon as possible.
• Shipper on Deck: For Higgs/Zeetha, of all things.
• Skewed Priorities: A discussed aversion of the trope, according to Higgs:
  Tarvek: If [Violetta] is dead, then the only people I have left that I really care about are Agatha and Wulfenbach- and this time, I'll destroy anyone who threatens them! STARTING WITH THESE CLOWNS!
  Higgs: (puts a sympathetic hand on Tarvek's shoulder) Good priorities, sir - and when you're done? I'm buying you a drink.
• Smug Snake: Most Sparks only think that they're surrounded by idiots: Tarvek actually tells the idiots so.
• Stealth Hi/Bye: He has some Smoke Knight training, and while not as fast on the draw as Violetta, can still do this when the situation calls for it. Observe.
• Stoic Spectacles: Tarvek is a lot calmer and more levelheaded than most sparks.
• Strong Family Resemblance: According to Lucrezia he looks like a younger version of his father.
• Take a Third Option: His entire schtick, basically.
  Tarvek: If someone can't handle an unpleasant truth? Lie to them. If somone won't listen to reason? Make them. If people don't choose to live peaceably—don't give them a choice. If you don't like the rules—change the game.
• Token Evil Teammate: A self-confessed example. He's really not evil, but is definitely the most amoral and untrustworthy member of Agatha's inner circle, at least early on. Character Development gradually eases him out of this role, and by the Time Skip he's grown out of it entirely.
• Too Clever by Half: A problem he has. Gil claims to be better at sneaking around and manipulating people because unlike Tarvek, he doesn't feel the need to demonstrate how sneaky and cunning he's being. A good example being them both learning Airshipman Axel Higg's big secret. Tarvek almost immediately starts dropping hints to the man in question that he has figured it out, while Gil gives no sign he knew until the secret is already out.
• Tritagonist: With Gil as the Deuteragonist and Agatha as the Protagonist.
• Tyke-Bomb / Phlebotinum Rebel: He was intended since before birth to be a figurehead for the Storm King conspiracy, but he'd much rather pursue his own plans.
• Unreliable Expositor: One of the reasons the Sturmhalten arc is so confusing is because he keeps lying to everyone.
• Unstoppable Rage: Unstoppable enough to curb stomp Zola, when she is under the influence of a Psycho Serum.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: See Gil's entry for more info, but despite their past events, the thing with Agatha and the clashing royal issues, the two truly care about one another. Hurting one is a good way to upset the other. Even their friendship goes beyond other matters that usually bother them, such as Tarvek having serious reservations about accepting his cousin's plans to help him be with Agatha (namely so she can swoop in and take Gil during his heartbreak and retreat to logic).
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: He was definitely willing to do, aid or condone all sorts of evil at first. He's now on Agatha's side, but he's still helping her out of personal affection and a desire to "fix" Europa, not from any personal code of morals.
• We Used to Be Friends: With Gil. Continuing on from Gil's entry in this, Tarvek would be sent home, away from Castle Wulfenbach (where, despite technically being a hostage there, was the place to be for aspiring young aristocratic sparks), and back to his cynical conniving family back in Sturmhalten. Tarvek would then encounter Gil again as a philanderer during college in Paris, where their animosity would be cemented. However, despite the political rivalry, their rivalry for Agatha's heart and all the times they screwed each other over, they still very much care for one another. When Tarvek realizes that Gil was kidnapped by the Baron, he tries to rationalize the importance of keeping him before he just admits to himself and Agatha that they could've kept him safe with a look of utmost worry and concern. After the timeskip, he finds himself concerned about what the Baron did to Gil in terms of the brainwashing.
• What You Are in the Dark: Tarvek, much as he normally projects the image of a cold, efficient, ruthless and pragmatic hero, carries a stabbed and unconscious Ruxala out of the burning remains of the Vespiary Squad's crashed airship instead of abandoning her. And then, already struggling under Ruxala's weight, he stumbles across the crippled Jäger Jorgi in the wreckage and throws him on his back as well, despite even the Jäger telling him to Go On Without Me (and refusing to shut up while Tarvek is carrying him). And then he stops to pick up a litter of orphaned baby wasp eaters! Even when nobody can see him, Tarvek really is a good person.
• White Sheep: Of the royal members of the Sturmvoraous family, he's by far the nicest, most heroic member. Which, considering his predilections for backstabbing and Machiavellian scheming, is really saying something.
• Would Hit a Girl: Once he grasps the extent of Zola's plans, he furiously attempts to throttle her to death.
• Xanatos Speed Chess: He tries to do this practically all the time, with varying degrees of success.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: It's unknown how Tarvek contracted Hogfarb's Resplendent Immolation but it's hinted that it was his family that infected him in order to remove him from the line of succession. It's made even more explicit in the novels where it's revealed that he was shot with a blow dart by an unknown assailant beforehand. This would explain why Martellus first appeared claiming to have replaced Tarvek as Storm King.
• Young Conqueror: He wanted to be this, but things aren't working out for him.

Violetta Mondarev

Violetta Mondarev, Reluctant Smoke Knight

Violetta is a Smoke Knight, although she herself says she's not very good at her job. She's also a member of a cadet branch of Tarvek's family. Her job is to keep Tarvek alive, which is proving to be far more difficult than it should be considering he was confined to a hospital bed when she took that duty.

---

• Acquired Poison Immunity: Thanks to her Smoke Knight training, some poisons have no effect on her. Such as the Corbettite cakes that were used to defuse a potential catastrophe when Klaus-Gil, Tweedle, and Agatha (who was supplanted by Lucrezia at the time) were in the same room. Tweedle is too, but his head is not so thick that it's immune to a good blackjacking from Vio...er... an invisible hand out of nowhere.
• Action Girl: Though at her best when sticking to stealth and trickery, she's pretty handy with a knife (or several) when the situation demands it.
• Art Evolution: Her hair, initially shown (as seen at right) to be smooth like Tarvek's, becomes a lot more dishevelled after her time in the castle, and afterwards stays that way.
• Badass Normal: She's not a Spark, a Designer Baby, or an Charles Atlas Superpower warrior, and is one of the only protagonists to not fit into any of those categories. She's just a highly-trained McNinja with a couple of daggers and poison darts. This by no means indicates that she isn't dangerous or competent - indeed, it very frequently leads to Underestimating Badassery, even from her own family members.
• Big, Screwed-Up Family: A cousin of Tarvek's from a cadet branch of the Sturmvoraus family, which has been guarding the main house for generations. Surprisingly sane, considering the lineage, but then being not of the central bloodline could be what saved her.
• Blade Enthusiast: She loves her daggers almost as much as Zeetha loves her swords. By the time Vole manages to shake her off during their scuffle in Castle Heterodyne, she's impaled at least a dozen knives in his back.
• Bodyguarding a Badass: Violetta serves as such to Agatha, helping deal with less obvious threats of the sneaky variety while Zeetha takes care of the more overt threats (and any that get past them still have to deal with Agatha herself).
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Violetta apparently isn't a star as a Smoke Knight, but she doesn't seem half as bad at her job as she tells everyone she is. More "not really into this sort of career". An alternate interpretation is that she really was that bad, but that being around Agatha has forced her to up her game.
• Color-Coded Characters: She has her family's red hair and the Smoke Knights' purple gear.
• Cute Little Fangs: She had these early on though they went away eventually as seen by the comparison of her image above and this page.
• Establishing Character Moment: She's introduced trying desperately to save Tarvek all while complaining about him and her job, this is followed up by her beating him up.
• Fiery Redhead: And poor Tarvek is usually the victim of her fury. Only apparently though, as it turns out it was a long-running gambit to trick his family into thinking he's an oaf.
• Fighter, Mage, Thief: She's the Thief to Agatha's Mage and Zeetha's Fighter. The latter describes her as "the sneaky", leading Violetta to complain that she's been spending too much time with Jagers.
• Grappling-Hook Pistol: Seems to be standard Smoke Knight gear.
• Guile Hero: Though not too shabby in combat, she's severely outmatched by most of the incredibly badass cast in a straight-up fight. Instead, she specializes in misdirection and trickery. See Impossible Thief.
• He Is Not My Boyfriend: She gets quite huffy when her romantic rival Snaug messes with Moloch.
• Hidden Depths: She knows a lot about fashion due to growing up with Tarvek
• Impossible Thief: Emphasis on impossible, and played for laughs. She can do it off-panel. Or between panels. Here's a particularly astounding example.
• Informed Flaw: Claims she sucks at her job, despite being incredibly competent. It may be that even as badass as she is, the standards for Smoke Knights are supposed to be even higher, but it's implied that she's suffering from self esteem issues due to being Reassigned to Antarctica. She believes she was sent to Mechanicsburg for being a screw up, though it was really Tarvek trying to keep her from suffering the same fate as all of his other bodyguards.
  • Subverted. We later meet two other Smoke Knights who have not only been following Agatha's group for a while without anyone except Violetta noticing, but looked at Agatha's notes while Zeetha and Dimo were on watch duty. Violetta explains it's Not Hyperbole thus:
  "I keep telling you guys I'm not a very good Smoke Knight. These two? They're good."
  • Her greatest feat, however... is besting the infamous master smoke knight Madwa Korel, who is rogue and aligned with The Other and has been one step ahead of the heroes constantly up to that point. Through classic Smoke Knight guile, she outplayed Madwa who had the nigh-storybreaker-powered Prende's Chronometric Lantern at her command, and just by staying perfectly still, masterfully exploiting Madwa's fatigue-impaired deduction (from extended time patrolling) and limited area effect of the Lantern to drive a dagger into Madwa's back and to pilfer the Lantern for Team Agatha. Not bad for a screw-up Smoke Knight...
• Invisibility: it's not clear how she and other Smoke Knights do it, but she can apparently go practically invisible. Bang can detect it, but not exactly see through it.
• Legacy of Service: Her branch of the family has served Tarvek's for generations.
• Like Brother and Sister: Her relationship with her cousin Tarvek has a strong dollop of this going on rather than anything else. She bullies and bickers at Tarvek mercilessly, but very obviously cares, regardless. It's reciprocated in a slightly quieter (but no less underhanded) way on his side, and seems as intense. Both practically gag if anybody even remotely suggests they're compatible in that other way.
• McNinja: She's a Smoke Knight, which have this trope as their hat.
• The Medic: As a Smoke Knight, part of her training is being an expert in diagnosing and treating poisons. She's also the most competent member of the main cast when it comes to first aid.
• Minion Shipping: with Moloch von Zinzer. Loath as Violetta might be to admit it, she's definitely into him, though whether or not he reciprocates is ambiguous.
• Ninja Maid: She used to serve Tarvek Sturmvoraus and wants to do the same for Agatha, only with less "ninja" part.
• Noodle Incident: Tarvek responds to seemingly ridiculous talk from her as her "licking her knives again." Suggesting that there was at least one incident where her knives were coated in poison or drugs, she licked them, and Hilarity Ensued. Based on her blase dismissal of his comment, perhaps more than one.
• Offscreen Reality Warp: Her sleight of hand is so impressive that not even the reader can see it. Examples one and two.
• Only the Knowledgable May Pass: She tried to pull this one on Moloch when they first met, arguing that he had to be trained or have secret knowledge to have survived.
  Violetta: You're trained in the Way of the Smoke?
  Moloch: Nah, Ma always said that stuff'll kill ya.
• Servile Snarker: She gets away with way more abuse of Tarvek than most Sparks would probably allow. Hell, he even rewards her by allowing her to switch allegiance to Agatha.
• Shipper on Deck: Agatha×Tarvek.
• Stealth Expert: Part and parcel of being a Smoke Knight, and taken to virtually superhuman levels. As long as the other person isn't specifically looking for her, she might as well be invisible.
• Tomboy with a Girly Streak: Her Smoke Knight training mostly requires her to be a tomboy, but Agatha earns her loyalty with the promise of a party and a pretty dress. If anything, she becomes even more badass once she has the promise of a pretty dress to fight for.
• Tsundere: Type 1 towards Moloch, big time. Even when he's not even in the room.
• Uncertain Doom: She gets in a bloody off-screen fight with Lady Steelgarter. The latter woman claims to have killed her, but there's no sign of a body, and, again, Smoke Knight. Krosp later suspects she's dead simply on the grounds that she hasn't been seen in awhile, stating she's too loyal to be missing this long and be ok, much to Tarvek's horror.
  • She turns up alive and being used as a sacrifice by the monster-summoning cult; she survives this, too.
• Underestimating Badassery: Many other characters tend to not take her seriously because she's humble, relatively anonymous and isn't a Spark, while those that do know her tend to disrespect her for essentially the same reasons. Never mind that she's an extremely dangerous Ninja Maid who routinely hangs around with some of the most dangerous sorts in Europa and survives. Tweedle in particular has a nasty habit of underestimating her skills.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: She and Zeetha grow into this dynamic over the course of the Mechanicsburg arc. They tend to bicker and argue quite a bit, but it's obvious that they also respect each other's talents, and both are equally dedicated to keeping Agatha safe.
• White Sheep: Every other major character in the Sturmvoraus/Blitzengaard clan is treacherous and manipulative (or, at best, given to Pragmatic Villainy). Whether this is because she's not a Spark, because she's not in the line of inheritance, or because even this family has to have somebody sane to do the actual work is not yet known.
• You Can See Me?: Bangladesh DuPree demands at an apparently empty chair that she cut out whatever it is she's doing. Violetta then appears in said chair the next panel quoting the trope, and DuPree answers that she couldn't and it was giving her a headache.

Zeetha

Zeetha, Daughter of Chump, Warrior Princess of Skifander

"And yes, I know what 'Chump' means in your language."

Warrior princess from the lost city of Skifander, she no longer knows how to get back and, until Agatha mentioned it, was uncertain as to whether her homeland even existed. She has trained Agatha to be a warrior and still fights for her interests.

---

• Action Girl: And how. It even scares Higgs... and attracts him too.
• Always Someone Better: Gets the concept explained to her by Higgs. Interestingly, he doesn't do it by beating the crap out of her (although he probably could), but by explaining the concept while she's convalescing after someone else beat the crap out of her. Fortunately, she has taken this to heart - the next time she was defeated, she decided to learn from the experience and try to figure out a counter for the move that her opponent used on her, and steal the move for herself since it's so useful.
• Audience Surrogate: Downplayed. She's unfamiliar with the weird world of Europa but is conditioned to its oddities making her reactions similar to those of the audience.
• Badass Teacher: Teaches Agatha how to be a princess (the battle-ax-wielding kind). She's also badass enough that Dimo, a centuries old super soldier, asks her to teach him some of her moves. Even if he wasn't 100% serious, that's a serious level of badassitude.
• Battle Couple: this moment with Higgs, of course.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: A multiple-time aversion. Her physical appearance deteriorates quickly after getting impaled through the gut by Zola, and she spends a significant amount of the Paris arc sporting multiple bruises and a black eye after getting beaten up by a Geisterdamen. Played Straight in the sense that she's essentially back to normal not long after getting over both injuries. Possibly justified by the fact that she was previously given a dose of the Jägerbräu.
• Best Friend: With Agatha, bordering on sworn sisters due to their sworn teacher-pupil relationship. If it wasn't for Agatha already pining for Gil and Tarvek and Zeetha for Higgs, one would think they were Heterosexual Life-Partners, that's how deep their relationship is. They even sleep in the same bed and have explicitly expressed platonic love for each other.
• Big Eater: In the third novel, Zeetha frequently eats large amounts of food. From her phrasing, it's quite normal for her.
• The Big Guy: When the Jägers aren't around she serves as the muscle of Agatha's group.
• Big "NO!": When Agatha reveals that her uncle is the one who actually knows about Skifander and he's missing.
• Blade Below the Shoulder: Her swords are Type 1.
• Bodyguarding a Badass: Zeetha guards Agatha, and also serves as her trainer in the Skifandrian martial arts.
• Buffy Speak: She describes what Violetta brings to the table as "the sneaky." The Smoke Knight takes this as a sign that hanging out with Jägers took their toll on Zeetha's vocabulary.
• Charles Atlas Superpower: Train in the Amazon way, and you too can kick heads right off of battle clanks!
• Crazy-Prepared: Like most female performers, she wears leather underwear to guard against the Wacky Weave Destabilizer.
• Color-Coded Characters: She has bright green hair and her normal outfit is blue.
• Cute Little Fangs: As seen here. Conspicuously shown during Christopher Baldwin's guest strip run (such as here). The print-novels confirm that it's not just an artistic quirk, and that her canines are longer than normal.
• Deadpan Snarker: She's prone to the occasional quip about whatever's annoying her at the time.
• Defeat by Modesty: Tried and failed.
  Zeetha: What? You said you wanted to draw a crowd.
  Gil: Not that kind of crowd!
• Didn't Think This Through: Zeetha was sent on a mission from her homeland, fell ill with a fever and hallucinations, and wound up kidnapped by pirates in a foreign land. After recovering, she slaughtered all the pirates on the ship, then destroyed their fleet, then razed their fortress... then promptly realised she'd just killed everyone who could tell her how to get back home. Justified, as she later explains that she had not completely (mentally) recovered from the fever, and wasn't quite thinking straight.
• Dual Wielding: With an exotic Skifandran weapon called a Quata'ara, which resembles Katars and/or Patas, weapons used in our world's India with H-shaped grips and often with some kind of hand guard added to the grip.
• Emergency Transformation: It's eventually revealed that Mamma Gkika gave Zeetha the Jägerbräu to save her from dying after she was Impaled with Extreme Prejudice. While drinking the Jägerbräu is only part of the ritual to turn someone into a Jägermonster, it's quite likely that Zeetha may become one. Zeetha avoids the angst usually associated with this trope, as she's practical enough to realize she'd be dead otherwise. and admittedly, becomeing a Jeager wouldn't be much of a change for her.
• Empowered Badass Normal: After the above, though the extent isn't known yet.
• Establishing Character Moment: She's introduced offering a bowl of food to Agatha, a complete stranger, then freaking out and destroying the pot she was cooking with after Agatha reveals that her missing uncle knows about Skifander.
• Expressive Accessory: Her headband matches her facial expressions. It's unclear for a long time if this is Sparky tech or just Artistic License, but it's finally established here (warning: mild spoilers) that it's something that happens in-character, to the point that Gil states he's often wanted to examine how it works, and she can use it as a very rudimentary form of long-distance communication.
• Fighter, Mage, Thief: The boisterous, sword-wielding Fighter to Agatha's Mage and Violetta's Thief.
• Friendly Enemy: Is cultivating such a relationship with Bangladesh DuPree in the aftermath of the Beast of The Rails arc. Both are eagerly anticipating testing each other's mettle in a fight (but can't at that time due to Sanctuary rules at the Corbettite depot). Granted, the high probability that it was Bang's pirates that originally kidnapped Zeetha (and thus, Zeetha who took out the entire pirate fleet) means that the "friendly" aspect of this Trope might well be short-lived.
• Going Native: Post-Time Skip, she's become a lot more boisterous and goofy, implicitly as a result of spending two and a half years running with the Jagers.
• Good Bad Girl: Her sex life isn't exactly highlighted, but she has been referred to as "an expert" on the subject.
  Zeetha: "Hey, Skifander's patron goddess is Ashtara. She who, among other things, controls fertility. Our holy days are fun! (Cha cha cha!)"
• Good Counterpart: To Bangladesh Dupree. Both are Action Girls who follow a Spark, extremely competent fighters, and each one is a Boisterous Bruiser, but Zeetha is a Spirited Competitor (who granted, does border on Blood Knight at times), while Bang is a full on Psycho for Hire. And both are eagerly awaiting the time when a fight between them is justified.
• Her Boyfriend's Jacket: Apparently some time during the Time Skip. The first time we see Zeetha and (confirmed to be) Higgs after the skip, Zeetha appears to be in possession of his hat... and his striped shirt. He in turn has possession of her Expressive Accessory.
• If You Ever Do Anything to Hurt Her...: Gives one such threat to Gil.
  Zeetha: Yes. She's a smart girl, so she doesn't trust you, but she obviously likes you. But — no matter what — I don't care who you are — Agatha is my Zumil. If you hurt her, I will kill you.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: By Zola, with one of her own swords.
• Improvised Weapon: A chair is not a weapon.
• In Love with Your Carnage: One of the biggest reasons she falls in love with Higgs is because of how overwhelmingly powerful he is in a scrap. The prospect of him having to fight her mother when they meet makes her giddy with excitement.
• In My Language, That Sounds Like...: Daughter of Chump. And yes, she does know what it means. Though since it's all-but-confirmed "Chump" is/was Klaus, it's possible that he gave himself the name in reaction to being tricked by Lucrezia and shipped off to Skifandar.
• Interspecies Romance: She eventually ends up in one with Higgs, although she doesn't know that he's a Jäger General. Subverted after it was revealed that she was healed from being Impaled with Extreme Prejudice using the Jägerbräu. While there is more to the transformation than just the Jägerbräu, Zeetha may very well become a Jäger.
• Leeroy Jenkins: Not to suicidal levels, but on more than one occasion she's done or said things that were not strategically smart. As the woman herself admits, she's "not good with the subtle".
• Like Brother and Sister: During their time together in Mechanicsburg, she develops a downplayed version of this with Gil. Their fight includes a lot lighthearted teasing which extends to later moments. Subverted as they're actually twins.
• Luke, I Am Your Father:
  • While it has yet to be revealed in the comic, the Foglios have released a picture of her father, "Chump, the great warrior". Resemble anyone we know?
  • On a related note, she and Gil now have the same (or similar) eye colour — most notable during their conversation after he wakes up at Mamma Gkika's. They used to be green in earlier volumes.
  • Foreshadowed here and here.
  • Possibly even foreshadowed here, with Klaus's extreme aversion to slashing her throat and presumably demanding in Skiff that she stop fighting, despite having her dead to rights and previously having given orders to kill everyone. At a minimum, he wants to question her about her presence in Europa, if he hasn't explicitly figured out their relationship..
• Metamorphosis: This strip heavily implies that she's slowly becoming a Jäger.
• Minion Shipping: With Higgs.
• Ms. Fanservice: As well as being a strong character in her own right.
• Muggle Born of Mages: Her (unbeknowest to her) father Klaus Wulfenbach is a Spark. It's strongly alluded that her mother, Queen Zantabraxus, was one of the many "women with the Spark that tried to kill Klaus". Her (mutually unknowing) fraternal twin brother Gil is a Spark. She is decidedly not Sparky, or at least has not had a breakthrough yet.
• Noblewoman's Laugh: Busts one out while playing Fairy Godmother in this non-canon strip.
• Not Quite Dead: Zola had impaled her in the stomach, but it's revealed a little later that she survived (although she did need to be taken to a hospital for it).
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Against the pirates. Unfortunately, the pirates were the only ones who might have had a clue where her homeland was.
• Shameless Fanservice Girl: Slightly downplayed because it's a PG-rated comic, but Zeetha is not ashamed of nudity at all. It especially stands out due to the setting, where a bikini would be considered hardly any different than going naked.
• Shipper on Deck: Is highly supportive of Agatha/Gil. She was likely the one who claimed he would "wed her most vigorously" when making a spectacle of Gil entering the castle (being a self-professed Good Bad Girl), and apparently "hand gestures" were involved in that show as well.
  • She also shipped Jiminez and Larana, encouraging Larana to talk to him and confess her true feelings (without letting her know that he was the prince she'd been arranged to marry).
• Strong Family Resemblance: Every now and then, her facial expression makes her look a lot like Gil. Fitting, seeing that Word of God confirms that the two are unknowing fraternal twins.
• Sweet Tooth:
  • Zeetha shows some signs of a cake obsession while in Paris.
    Zeetha: Oh yeah. You guys didn't wake me up for lunch! I'm starving!
    Violetta: You were asleep because you ate too much drugged cake!
    Zeetha: So it's important to face my fears!
    Violetta: You have fears? Cake fears?
    Zeetha: Of course! Now I know that any cake — any cake at all — Could be stuffed full of duplicitous evil! I shall overcome this fear by eating every cake I see!
    Violetta: —And how is this different from before?
    Zeetha: Now eating cake counts as training!
  • She warns an "actor boy" that he'd better learn fast not to get between a girl and her cake, before realizing she's talking to Higgs. She promptly forgets about the cake.
• Tomboy Princess: As expected from a warrior-princess. But even minus that she's more on the boisterous side compared to even some of the Sparks. An interesting thing to note is that when the ladies were all dressed up, Zeetha was wearing pants while the others were in dresses.
• Training from Hell: Bestowed it upon Agatha, and suffered through it herself when growing up.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: With Violetta, especially post-Time Skip. See the latter's page for more information on that.
• Warrior Princess: A princess who is able to take on all manner of clanks and monsters because she believes that Rule #1 of being a princess is "every princess needs a battle axe".
• The Worf Effect: Even if there are qualifiers for most of the instances of this, she has been injured or fought to a standstill in order to highlight the badassery of:
  • The Monster Horse Beastie.
  • Baron Wulfenbach.^note He is her father, and much more experienced in combat than she is, nevermind knowing how to fight a Skifandrian.
  • Zola. See Worf Had the Flu below.
  • A Geisterdame.^note She took notes, however, stealing the combo attack move that took her down for herself and learning how to counter it with some help from Bang, and Dimo did warn her that Geisterdamen were tough fighters even for Jagers.
  • A Lucrezia-possessed Agatha.^note Though the first time was because she got distracted and Lucrezia was running on revification rush, and Zeetha was doing a fairly good job keeping her busy otherwise. The second time Zeetha was winning until Lucrezia decided to effectively become a Physical God.
• Worf Had the Flu: Her worst defeat was when she was not at her best, specifically when she was stabbed by Zola, as she was under the effects of a happiness pheromone that caused her to lose focus and severely underestimate her opponent.
• You Can't Go Home Again: Due to unfortunate circumstances, she has no idea where Skifander is. Agatha is the first person she met who even knew the place existed. Before Agatha, she wasn't entirely sure herself, and feared it was all something she hallucinated in a feverish delirium.

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