Literature / Agatha H. and the Siege of Mechanicsburg

Franz giving Agatha a lift.

The fourth novelization of Girl Genius, beginning just as Zola revealed her true nature. It covers the second half (the back half of volume 10 through the first half of volume 13) of the third Story Arc.

The world outside of Catle Heterodyne is starting to realize there's a growing threat in Mechanicsburg that is currently near defenseless as the castle has been disabled, and within the castle itself Agatha has to fight off a very well prepared pretender to her inherited title and home. Working against the clock Agatha and her allies have to try to prepare to be under siege by Baron Wulfenbach's vast forces, though they do have the small reassurance that the Baron likely won't flatten the castle with his son inside.

This book is preceded by Agatha H. and the Voice of the Castle.

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Tropes:

• Adaptational Context Change: Agatha's musing on her relationship with Gil is set into the context of other women's struggles.
  Agatha: I guess. I just wonder how many other girls have to worry about whether or not it's smart to really trust their... you know, the guys they —
  Lady Vitriox replacing Van in the comic: All of them.
  Agatha: But mine has an army!
  Lady Vitriox: They all do, my Lady. It consists of other men.
• Adaptational Explanation:
  • As with the previous books, one point covered is how Lucrezia found out about the great movement chamber and set up her lab below it.
  • The scene with Zola and Lucrezia is expanded from the comics, with Lucrezia explaining more of her original plan to take over Agatha's mind and her new plan to Zola's body.
  • Gil and Tarvek's argument over the latter's role in helping Lucrezia in Sturmhalten is expanded upon significantly.
  • After knocking out Gil while under the effects of the slaver wasp cure Gil mixed up, Bang immediately contemplates either pouring the rest of it down Gil's throat or down the sink, wondering whether it'll annoy him more, whereas in the comic the scene cut out immediately after she knocked him unconscious, with no indication if she potentially fed him the cure. When Gil comes to, he notices has an awful taste in his mouth, implying that she decided on the former.
  • A later scene also reveals that Clank!Lucrezia ordered Klaus to install the copy of himself into Gilgamesh as an overlay to control him, because she knew Klaus would absolutely hate doing so.
  • The scene where Gil and Agatha argue on the rooftop mentions (among other cases of Gil acting Not Himself) that Gil's head twitched when talking to Agatha, with his tone of voice changing between twitches. As if he was arguing with himself.
• Adapted Out: The subplot of Maxim winning a new hat from Jaeger auxiliary turned sandwich maker Old Man Death was cut out. Also Franz meeting Agatha for the first time is cut focusing on his duel with Pretty Boy, similarly several of the Sparks attacking Mechanicsburg get their introductory scenes cut.
• Bowdlerize: The "Mechanicsburg Tourist Song" is revealed to be a bowdlerization of the actual Mechanicsburg national anthem, which cheerfully boasts about the city's history as the headquarters of the most feared brigands and mad scientists of Eastern Europa for close to a thousand years. Among the lyric changes is that "Jewel of Europa" was originally "Scourge of Europa".
• Cannon Fodder: The Wulfenbach vanguard who led the first change into Mechanicsburg were made up the Empire's most troublesome and unsustainable forces. The official reasoning is that the Spark-created units would be more capable of dealing with whatever mad inventions the town had, but the clear subtext is that if someone was going to be transformed into balloon animals or the like then it best choice would be established scientific abominations who might even enjoy the change.
• Character Alignment: Invoked in a footnote detailing the lengths the Hetrodyne Boys went to reallign the ethical praxis of Mechanicsburg. They largely succeeded, as seen below in Shout-Out; instead of cutthroats they're cutpurses now.
• Equal-Opportunity Evil: Mamma Gkika first joined the Heterodyne armies pretending to be a man and fighting the old Heterodynes' wars of looting and pillaging. Unlike other armies at the time, the Heterodynes didn't care if one of their best soldiers turned out to be a woman in disguise.
• Fighting from the Inside: Klaus was wasped in the previous book in the series, and now one copy of Lucrezia is close enough to give him orders. He shouldn't be able to fight back even subconsciously, but he is somehow managing it. He gives intentionally imperfect orders, carefully ignores when Boris begins noticing something is wrong, and Gil notes that his body language is oddly arrogant.
• Footnote Fever: Following on from the grand tradition set up by the previous books, it's used for jokes and the occasional Shout-Out.
• Foreign-Language Tirade: The prologue mentions that Von Pinn/Otilia cursed Lucrezia ("That which you have done here is blasphemy!") in Old French.
• Foreshadowing
  • The sideplot with Zeetha and Higgs foreshadows a few things that had only been recently revealed in the comic by the time the book was released. In addition to Higgs being a Jaeger and in the employ of the Heterodynes, Higgs notes that Mama Gkika did something to Zeetha in order to heal her, and is pleased that she immediately shows loyalty to Agatha. She was actually given the Jaegerdraught, theoretically transforming her into a Jaeger.
  • While using the equipment at the top of the Heterodyne Observation Tower, Agatha catches a glimpse of The Awful Tower in Paris.
• Gargle Blaster: Mechanicsburg's signature one is a substance called snezek, which is distilled from various plants and insects that were mutated by exposure to Dyne water. The name comes from the sound people make after they first taste it.
• Happily Ever Before: The novel ends immediately after Agatha has Gil kicked out of the city, revives the castle, and routs the Wulfenbach forces — and immediately before Tweedle kidnapping Agatha at the Mechanicsburg Red Cathedral, or Klaus setting off the Take Five Bomb. In this version, those events are delayed in favor of a Ship Tease moment between Moloch and Violetta, a scene between Gil and Klaus, and Agatha giving a speech to the people of the city — which suggests that the opening chapter of the next book is going to be a doozy.
• Heel–Face Turn: Played for laughs. After the Doom Bell has rung and Baron Krassimir Oublenmach realizes there is a lost treasure of the Heterodynes after all (while lying collapsed on the tower roof), he mentally gloats that he's on the cusp of claiming the treasure for himself and winning. The footnote immediately afterwards notes that this ended up starting his storied career as a loyal servant of the Heterodyne family, which he strenuously denies he is in the present day that the in-universe authors are writing the book in, but apparently it worked out really well for him. Then the footnote notes that the story is going to leave him lying there for the rest of the book because he's a relative bit player in Agatha's story and he's not gonna show up again for goodness knows how many more novels anyway.
• Heinousness Retcon: An example overlapping with Adaptational Explanation. That part in the comic where Klaus inflicted mind-control on Gil? In this version, it's shown that Lucrezia/Anevka made Klaus do it specifically because she knew he'd hate doing it.
• Irony: In a rather absurd historical example, the Cobbler's Guild of Mechanicsburg paid a philosopher to write some advertising pamphlets. What he ended up making was an award-winning 600 page treatise on free will vs predestination that uses shopping for shoes as the framework of its arguments, which resulted in the philosopher being kicked to death by cobblers who objected to the enormous printer's bill that resulted. The Heterodyne of the time was impressed by how well the cobbler's boots stood up through the mob beating, so he ordered a new pair for each of his soldiers, which meant that the "pamphlet" really did boost sales for the cobblers.
  What's worse is that he's memorialized in the Plaza of the great Five Ironies so something like this happened four more times.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Implied in the Prologue, where Von Pinn foreshadows (futureshadows?) that Lucrezia will spend centuries in a state of And I Must Scream if she continues her work of trapping people in different bodies. If this one scene in the comic's Vol. 15 is anything to go by, that's exactly what happened.
  Lucrezia: "I mean, it must have been terribly boring being chained up in that forgotten hallway for over a hundred years."
  Von Pinn: "You have no idea what it was like. But I take comfort in knowing that if you continue in this madness, you will."
• Literal Metaphor: In the scene (corresponding to Vol. XI p. 76 of the webcomic) where Gil says that Tarvek "failed 'Ethics in Government 101,'" a footnote explains that Ethics in Government was an actual class that students aboard Castle Wulfenbach were required to take. Many students had to take the class over and over again until they could at least make it look like they passed.
• Moral Myopia: Tarvek goes into this when Gil talks about how unethical he and his family is, pointing out that the Baron doesn't have much of a leg to stand on either, having conquered Europa through force and often eschews giving people fair trials.
• Named by the Adaptation: Jaegergeneral Kappelslav was never named in the original comic. Here we get that, plus a little nugget of backstory.
• Noodle Incident: Agatha set a record by taking more than two minutes to make her first kill after becoming the Heterodyne and ringing the Doom Bell. No explanation was given for why her heroic father Bill hadn't been able to do that.
• Razor Floss: Played realistically, Zola uses a wire of this to hold Agatha hostage, the footnotes point out that while these are deadly they can't cut someone to little chunks simply by walking through a tangle of them.
• Read the Fine Print: Due to the high chances of failure, and the possibility of mishaps even if the process does work, professional resurrectionists have the most ironclad "no refunds" policies in Europa.
• The Reveal: The novelization format explicitly states some details that could only be inferred or guessed from the original comic, such as Zola explicitly being in control over Lucrezia, even after the beating Higgs gave her, Gil not being a revenant, and Gil having the personality overlay installed by Klaus.
• Screw This, I'm Out of Here!: Moloch repeatedly makes it quite clear that he's planning to leave Mechanicsburg as soon as it's safe to do so. Interestingly, Agatha actually respects his decision, and tells her seneschal that he is to be given a generous severance package for his work as Acting Head Minion before he goes. Though as the novel ends, he has agreed to hang around for one more day at least.
• Self-Serving Memory: Used in comedic effect towards Professor Foglio, Author Avatar and in-universe writer of the novels, depicting himself as an unappreciated master story teller who was unjustly accused of getting the Deep Library infected with smudge beetles and treats Gil brusquely ordering him off of Castle Wulfenbach like it was his first act of tyranny.
• Shipper on Deck: As mentioned under Screw This, I'm Out of Here!, Moloch is eager to get the hell out of Mechanicsburg as soon as things calm down and the siege is finally broken. Agatha respects his decision at the end of the book, but Moloch is visibly torn when he asks Violetta to escape with him. Oggie then "subtly" bumps Violetta into Moloch's arms, Vanamonde the seneschal talks him into staying one more day (especially after Violetta asks him to dance with her at the party being planned), and Castle Heterodyne quietly orders Van to have the second-best dressmaker in town make a pretty dress for Violetta.
• Shout-Out:
  • To Gary Gygax, oh sorry, Garibaldi Gygax who wrote on an ethical system with terms suspiciously similar to the classic Dungeons & Dragons Character Alignment system. (The Heterodyne Boys referred to it when trying to reform the people of Mechanicsburg from outright thieves and brigands into simple Snake Oil Salesmen and shady businesspeople.)
  • Another footnote honors sex advice columnist Dan Savage, whose in-universe counterpart Dr. Danjharl Savage wrote a book about all the tempestuous Heterodyne romantic relationships down through the centuries.
• Spotting the Thread: When Klaus claims that Gil was wasped before he even met Agatha (an impossible claim likely cooked up by Clank!Lucrezia or by Klaus under her orders), Gil claims she never gave him any orders. Boris immediately realizes that she did—she politely asked them all to leave (which might not have counted) and screamed a Big "NO!" (which definitely counted). The fact that Gil easily ignored both orders means he can't have been wasped. Boris knows that Klaus would certainly have remembered and have come to the same conclusion, and when Klaus sees Boris' reaction to this realization, Boris notices a glimmer of relief on the Baron's face, as since Klaus' trusted right-hand man has come to that same conclusion, it is confirmation that Gil was never wasped.
• Toxic Friend Influence: Played for Laughs. The Baron forbid the Jaegers from returning to Mechanicsburg under the assumption that they were a bad influence and the cause of most of the town's problems. Instead, the Jaegers proved to be perfectly capable and loyal soldiers with a few quirks, while the townsfolk undermined the Baron at every opportunity. He began to wonder who had been an influence on who.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Otilla can modulate her voice to find the right frequency that will make people listen and obey her. The issue with this is that it's what gives Lucrezia the idea to make her Slaver Wasps and the revenants they create respond to her voice.
• Venturous Smuggler: Rumors of the "Wulfenbach Dark Fleet" portray them as a group of dashing rogues who skirt Wulfenbach's laws by smuggling goods around his vast airship fleet to those in need. There is absolutely no evidence that they actually existed, and the Baron was getting rather impatient that no one was filling the obvious niche.
  Footnote: He was beginning to think that, like so many other seemingly obvious things, he would have to do it himself.
• We All Die Someday: It's explained here that Cain Heterodyne specially designed the Doom Bell in such a way that, when it rang, the sound would force the listener to remember their inevitable death. It is this existential dread, rather than the volume of the sound, that makes people collapse when it's rung to announce Agatha's accession. Mechanicsburg's people are unnafected by it since they're used to the idea and have a joie de vivre with knowledge that they had limited time.

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