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See Protagonists for Agatha.

Bill and Barry, The Heterodyne Boys

William and Barry Heterodyne, Lords Emeritus of Mechanicsburg

Bill on the left, Barry on the right.

The heroes of the previous generation, Bill and Barry Heterodyne were a pair of brothers, the first good apples in a looong line of villains. Their tenures as masters of House Heterodyne led to an age of peace and prosperity for much of Europa, lending their immensely powerful sparkiness not to conquer like their forefathers, but to lend a hand wherever they could. Their adventures were so fantastical that they have been immortalized in a series of theatrical productions. They were close friends with Klaus Wulfenbach, and built the constructs Punch and Judy. Bill eventually married their old rival Lucrezia Mongfish, and is Agatha's father.

The Boys went on a crusade against the Other after it attacked Castle Heterodyne, killed Bill's infant son, and kidnapped his wife. (Or at least that's current semi-public description of that eventful day.) Eventually, they both disappeared, but Barry returned in disguise with a young Agatha in tow, and left her in the care of Punch and Judy before disappearing once again.

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• Beware the Nice Ones: Agatha set a Heterodyne record by NOT killing someone within the first two minutes of her reign. One of their first acts were to purge Mechanicsburg of its monsters, most of which only survived due to being taken in by the residents of Mechanicsburg. They later condemned the Court of Gears, forcing them into hiding.
• Big Good: They were, more than anything, a beacon of hope in a world that had been nothing but a playground for mad scientists for far too long. They always tried to negotiate before fighting, and helped install town councils and other long-lasting forms of government before moving on.
• Boring, but Practical: In the novelizations, the Castle describes Bill's approach to the Spark as "refreshingly simple" and figures if he'd been alive during the time of the Storm King (and, presumably, as mad as the rest of his family) no-one would've been able to stand against him.
• Celibate Hero: Possibly Barry. Upon learning Agatha's true parentage, Klaus notes it would be "a surprise" if Barry had any children. In the Heterodyne stories, Barry is just paired off with any spare woman the story has at hand, often "The High Priestess."
  • However, Maxim does mention that both of them did kiss a lot of girls back in their days. So while Barry definitely had interest in women, Klaus might've meant that he would not be the type to settle down, at least back then.
• Cool Uncle: Barry, a legendary hero, raised his niece Agatha until she was seven years old. It's also implied that he saved his infant niece from Lucrezia, by breaking into the Citadel of Silver Light and taking her to safety.
• Covered in Scars: Dimo says that Bill was more scars than skin towards the end of their public adventuring career.
• Dating Catwoman: Bill and Lucrezia Mongfish. By all indications she did actually love him. Then the Other came...
• Deceased Parents Are the Best:
  • Mother Teodora Heterodyne, the one who raised them to be good, was killed by the Castle shortly after killing their villainous father.
  • Bill is probably this for Agatha. Especially given he's not been seen since, and Barry returned from wherever it was he went alone, and the Other seems pretty convinced he's gone.
• Disappeared Dad:
  • Bill. Barry never explained what happened to him, or at least word never reached Agatha or the reader. The Monster Guild story set in the future confirms that he's gone.
  • Uncle Barry himself disappeared almost eleven years ago.
• The Dreaded: Barry apparently has become this to the Geisterdamen and to The Other after his One-Man Army assault on the Geisters' citadel to liberate baby Agatha in an Offscreen Moment of Awesome.
• Establishing Character Moment: Burning down the Flesh Yards made clear to Mechanicsburg that these two were not the usual sort of Heterodynes.
• Evil Parents Want Good Kids: Utterly averted, Saturnus Heterodyne really wasn't happy to learn that his children weren't acting like Heterodynes, and had been planning to kill them and start all over again.
• Famed In-Story: Not only do they have their own series of very popular pulp novels, there are traveling shows who specialize in performing their adventures.
• Fantastic Racism: They considered the loyal monsters of Mechanicsburg to be just more of their family's old horrors that needed to be purged.
• Fat and Skinny: Bill being the slim one, Barry being the more portly one.
• Folk Heroes: They are revered across Europa as the greatest heroes of their generation. There are plenty of books and plays about their adventures, which are assumed by many to be greatly exaggerated. This is unlikely, as ridiculous story elements such as "Mechanical Camels" are plain truth. However, no one said a single damn thing about them being accurate.
• The Ghost: Outside of a single photo, Bill has yet to properly appear in the comic, flashback or otherwise.
• Good Cannot Comprehend Evil: Specifically, they didn't understand the Villainous Friendship between the human Mechanicsburgers and the monsters, and how the former would actually defy orders from their Heterodynes to protect and shelter the monsters when the Boys destroyed the Monster District.
• Good Is Not Soft: Mentioned in the novels. They'd try and redeem their opponents as much as humanly possible, preferring reason to violence, but if it came to it, they would kill.
• Greater-Scope Paragon: They're never seen in the comic outside of flashbacks. At the same time, they are the Precursor Heroes that all of Europa looks up to, and that Agatha finds herself in the boots of.
• Heroic BSoD: It's revealed in the novels that Bill was emotionally hollowed out by the death of his son and disappearance of his wife. He barely ever spoke and never showed any emotions. However, his abilities were seemingly heightened during this period of despondency.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Their mother Teodora killed their father Saturnus before he could kill them for forsaking the Heterodyne way, and was herself killed by the Castle for it. This allowed her sons to grow up to redeem the family name, and she is later made a saint - patron saint of those who run afoul of Sparks, according to the novels.
• History Repeats: Much like Andronicus Valois, Bill fell in love a Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter and believed he could sway her to the side of good, only for her to betray him (or at least somehow become The Other) and destroy the peace he had worked to build. The irony being that this time it was a Heterodyne being betrayed by someone allied with the Knights of Jove.
• Horrifying the Horror: When two copies of Lucrezia talk, they both display terror at the idea of Barry turning up alive.
• Ideal Hero: They were such a complete 180 from their ancestors that it's almost suspicious. They were friendly, egalitarian, always saw the best in people, and always won. There's a reason they became folk heroes overnight.
• I Did What I Had to Do: Uncle Barry created the locket that he mandated that Agatha needed to wear for much of her life, because her Spark was breaking through at a young age and he knew that preventing that was necessary for the sake of keeping her safe. The flashback where he gives it to her makes it clear that he certainly wasn't happy with what he was doing, and knew that she'd suffer as a result, but he had to do it for her sake. Agatha herself, in the present, would probably reluctantly agree with his reasoning despite what she went through, and the locket did end up (mostly) shutting down The Other when she was downloaded into Agatha's brain, with the additional side effect of helping Agatha be able to think better and eventually overcome her mother's mental strength, so it can be argued that Barry made the right call.
  • The novels also note that one of the main reasons Agatha is so relatively well-adjusted and sane by Spark standards is because the locket helped her ease through her awakening rather than breaking through, which prevented a lot of trauma associated with breaking through. It's also implied that Barry intended for Agatha to only wear it for a relatively short time (only months or even a couple of years at most) for precisely this reason, but then he disappeared and never gave Punch and Judy orders to tell Agatha to remove the locket after a specific amount of time. The fact that this kept Agatha under the radar until she was an adult was probably just a fortunate accident.
• Kill It with Fire: Mechanicsburg used to have a large section known as The Flesh Yards. Day One of Bill and Barry's exploits was them getting rid of it this way, then building the Great Hospital where it had been.
• King Incognito: After returning from places unknown with young Agatha, Barry did everything in his power to remain hidden. Likely so that the Other's forces wouldn't come after Agatha; also, he evidently felt he had reason to be deeply suspicious of Klaus.
• Living Legends: They were famous thanks to their adventures and all good things they did for Europa.
• Love Makes You Dumb: Implied to be the case with Bill, who married Lucrezia and gave her the run of his castle in spite of her clearly cruel and selfish nature.
• Magnetic Hero: They apparently had a reputation for gathering followers and hangers-on during their adventures.
• Meet the In-Laws: Bill's marriage to Lucrezia Mongfish made things... well, "awkward" for all parties involved, what with the Mongfishes being long-time rivals to the Heterodyne family. It got especially bad at holiday season. Apparently gatherings changed venue each year, to minimise the inevitable loss of life.
• Not So Above It All: Barry held that the ways birds flew was "silly", and designed a flying bicycle contraption for Franz to use.
• One-Man Army: Possibly, with Barry, who apparently went and recovered an infant Agatha from The Other's Geisterdamen forces, who were expecting someone to try and rescue her.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Barry, seemingly the "lesser" famous of the duo, gets deadly serious after the Castle Heterodyne incident. His Offscreen Moment of Awesome is assaulting the Geisterdamen's citadel by himself to liberate his infant neice from their clutches. It's chilling insiunuation of just how (more) terrifingly dangerous Heterodynes are when they dispense with the usual Scourges of Europa/Heroes of Europa silliness.
• Precursor Heroes: Bill and Barry were the two heroes who traveled the world before Agatha's day, and made their name as the most famous heroes in Europa by the time the comic starts.
• Really Gets Around: Barry has this reputation in the stories; "The High Priestess" is an in-universe trope that means "Barry's Girl Of The Story." Although, see above under Celibate Hero. However, when talking about them (in the midst of arguing over joining Master Payne's Circus), Maxim does note both brothers kissed plenty of girls in their days.
• Sanity Slippage: Bill, after the attack on Castle Heterodyne that took his wife and child. Mention is made of him being so out of his mind with grief even the Jäger Generals had difficulty restraining him. After that, he spent the next three years suffering a major Heroic BSoD.
• Tranquil Fury:
  • When the Boys came back in the aftermath of the Castle attack. Bill was an emotional wreck, while Barry was "deadly calm." Seeing that the mere mention of Barry freaks out The Other...
  • According to the novelization, the "tranquil" part stopped a few hours after they returned, and the brothers spent hours screaming at one another.
• Upbringing Makes the Hero: Despite Heterodynes' bloody legacy, they turned out good thanks to efforts of their mother.
• Uncertain Doom: Barry was last seen eleven years ago, and had promised to be back in a few months. He's almost certainly dead, but the Other is still worried. Bill is an even bigger question mark.
• Unwanted Assistance: Bill and Barry, eager to not elicit memories of the Old Heterodynes, were not eager to have the Jägers helping them even on the sly.
• White Sheep: After centuries of bloodthirsty Heterodynes dedicated to nothing but chaos, destruction, and mad science, Bill and Barry dedicated themselves to heroics, goodwill-building, and mad science. This had a slightly darker side; because they were the opposite of their family in every way, they hated everything to do with the Old Heterodynes—especially the Castle and the Jägers. The Castle couldn't understand why they hated it so much, while the Jägers did understand, but tried to protect them anyway.
  • This is also Agatha's advantage over the Boys; she's a good person, but she's very fond of the Jägers and even the Castle and is willing to use them to help people.
  • Bill and Barry did have a pretty good personal reason for not wanting to do much with the Castle: It killed their mother, the one who kept them safe from their father and raised them to be good-hearted men. The fact it never occurred to the Castle that killing the parent who saved them could be why Bill and Barry hated it says a lot about the castle.
  • As for the Jägers, while they did not hate the Jägers, they were still symbols of the old ways of fear. As such, Bill and Barry ordered them to no longer follow when the two eventually found out. Even Dimo, one of Da Boyz, admits that on several levels, this was a good move, as the base reaction to seeing Jägers in the "modern" day is lynching. Of course, the first mission they went without them following was the one where they went to stop the Other. The Jägers are painfully aware of this.

Punch and Judy

Punch and Judy, AKA Adam and Lilith Clay, Surrogate Parents

Left: Judy/Lilith.
Right: Punch/Adam.

A pair of constructs — the Heterodyne Boys' earliest creations — Punch and Judy are common characters in Heterodyne stories. As student work, they are both somewhat flawed; Punch lacks a voice and Judy has mis-matched eyes, although most people don't know that. Punch is often portrayed as a foolish klutz, but Da Boyz report that he is a very intelligent and cunning planner as well as a funny and kind-hearted individual who spent his spare time making toys for children. They were loyal and were given the job of looking after Agatha under the pseudonyms of Adam and Lilith Clay.

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• Artificial Human: They're both "Type 3/Frankenstein" Constructs according to the fandom classification system for Constructs.
• Action Girl: Judy has been seen taking on all comers as effectively as Punch. When Agatha learns Lilith is hiding somewhere safe (to protect others) her reaction is "Did you have to lock her up?"
• Art Shift: One of the most prominent examples of the evolution of the Foglios' style change over time, as they were Put on a Bus for a really long time and never seen back on their feet in the few glimpses we saw of them during that period. Compare their appearance during the Castle Wulfenbach Escape and their reunion with Agatha in the Mechanicsburg Refugee Camps.
• Babies Ever After: When Agatha reunites with them, they have a baby, Maxinia Agatha Gilliana Heterodyne Clay, despite being previously sterile before Gil's repairs.
  Adam: Apparently, when young Wulfenbach sets out to repair something, he doesn't do it halfway.
• Back from the Dead: Thanks, Gil!
• The Big Guys: The duo acted as this to the Heterodyne Boys back in their heyday. Due to Punch's muteness, he (and by extension Judy) were portrated as dumb comic relief in Heterodyne plays, despite the fact that Punch was anything but Dumb Muscle. Naturally, the duo aren't real fond of Heterodyne plays.
• Came Back Strong: When Gil reconstructs them, he fixes the flaws the Heterodyne boys inadvertantly left in due to their inexperience.
• Covered with Scars: Naturally, since they're Frankenstein-type Constructs. Even moreso after Gil put the meat puzzles that were their remains back together after Von Pinn had her way with the duo.
• Flawed Prototype: They're amazing work for kids' creations, but they're still kids' work; Punch couldn't talk, Judy had mismatched eyes, and they weren't sexually functional. When Gil reconstructed them, he fixed these flaws. To be fair, according to Puch/Adam, the Heterodyne Boys DID offer them to try and correct their flaws, but since Bill and Barry couldn't guarantee that their memories would survive the reconstruction, they declined.
• Genius Bruisers: They have Super-Strength, and were able to evade the Baron for quite some time. Once Punch gets a voice and is well again, he is quite verbose.
• Gentle Giants: Superstrong constructs would have to be this in order to raise a little normal girl to adulthood while in hiding and not result in disaster. Adam more than Lilith, the Jägers describing him as being kind and gentlemanly to everyone, the notoriously unpopular Jägers themselves included, and his fondness for making toys for children.
• Goggles Do Something Unusual: Judy has special glasses to make her eyes look the same size, to hide the fact that she's a not-quite-perfect construct.
• Improbable Weapon User: Punch throws rivets at bullet-like velocities and with the accuracy of a pistol marksman.... except against Von Pinn.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Punch is very capable of his namesake.
  • According to medieval apocrypha the first man and woman — Adam and Lilith — were made from clay (later Lilith left Adam and became a demon, and Eve was created as her replacement).
• Parental Substitutes: To Agatha, when Barry disappeared. She knows full well they're not her biological parents, but she doesn't care.
• Put on a Bus: Last seen in recovery after Gil pieced them back together after Von Pinn shredded them. Mentioned by Gil to soothe Agatha's anger over Von Pinn shredding them and once by the Baron about Gil not knowing that he knows about them, but otherwise bussed away.
  • The Bus Came Back: Agatha finally reunited with Punch (now with a voice!) in the Jägers' forward cave after the Time Skip, some seven or so years later in real-time. Judy is tending a refugee nursery elsewhere as well, and has finally reunited with Agatha as well.
• Shout-Out Theme Naming: Their names allude to the Punch and Judy puppet show.
• The Speechless: Punch until Gil's repair, as it's Punch who gives him a strained "Thank you." for his actions to save Agatha. Gil apparently did some upgrading while he was in there.
  • Suddenly Voiced: after the time skip. Now that his speech is unrestrained, Punch's prose is, well, quite wordy. And unceasing according to General Dimo.
• Super-Strength: Punch can hoist up a steam tractor single-handed (though not for long) and flick rivets at bullet velocities. Judy can rip bulkhead doors right off their frames and toss people quite high up into the air. Attributed to the fact that they're both Constructs. And apparently it's hereditary, because their baby Maxinia (see below in Surprise Pregnancy) clobbered Agatha good when expressing her dislike for baby talk.
• Surprise Pregnancy: Apparently when Gil sets out to repair something, he doesn't just half-ass it. In addition to correcting Punch's mute-ness and Judy's mis-sized eyes (on top of solving their meat puzzles), he apparently made them... ahem... "fully functional". Witness Maxinia Agatha Gilliana Heterodyne Clay.
• Undying Loyalty: Like almost every other Heterodyne creation capable of sentience, they're loyal to the family. Uncle Barry was confident enough in their loyalty and capability to entrust the care of the latest scion of the family to them.

The Old Heterodyne Family

House Heterodyne, Scourge of Europa

An old picture of some of Europe's most deranged lunatics.

An ancient lineage of mad scientists that even other mad scientists thought were mad. And science-y.

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• Actually Pretty Funny: When Ognian talks about the minstrel who became his wife, he mentions that the Heterodyne at the time loved her jokes, including the ones about him.
• Admiring the Abomination: A footnote in Agatha H. and the Voice of the Castle mentions that the Black Heterodyne brought a species of blood-drinking bat he discovered to the Mechanicsburg ecosystem because he was "so enchanted by the thought of nature having produced something so dreadful, all by itself, that he wanted to share it with the world."
• Aerith and Bob: A bit of Freeze-Frame Bonus in the Heterodyne family crypts shows that amidst the typically unusual and / or malevolent names the Heterodynes had, one of them was simply called... "Bob".
  • For that matter, Bill and Barry, just one more way that they contrast with their ancestors.
  • For even greater contrast, Agatha herself. Her name has greek etymological origins, and has connotations of inherent goodness and nobility of character; a stark contrast to the Heterodynes of old. She probably wasn't named by her mother, since she was meant to be just a backup vessel for Lucrezia, so Barry probably named her, with the intent of raising her as a good person (he, Punch and Judy fortunately succeeded, even if she does have a bit of a mischevious streak).
• At Least I Admit It: The fourth novel put forth the theory that part of the reason why the Heterodynes is the oldest surviving Spark House, despite being universally hated since their founding, is because they made no excuses for their actions. Unlike the rest of Europa's Spark nobility, they did not act like they were inherently better or claim to be favored by the heavens. They didn't hold themselves to any moral or elitist standards that restrained them or had consequences if they failed to uphold them. They proudly made it clear that they were just of a bunch of maniacs indulging in their sick curiosities, and are, at their core, scientists, who adhere to the scientific method without reservation, and are more than willing to be flexible and recognize if something isn't working and change it, or consider new methods of getting things done.
• Axe-Crazy: "Two minutes and she hasn't killed anyone! A new record!"
• Badass Family: They tamed the river Dyne (capable of turning anything into a rampaging monster) by first drinking it then using it to power their castle. And that's where they started.
• Bad Boss: While the Old Heterodynes had their share of Evil Virtues and tended to respect their minions, they still could be rather callous when it comes to workplace safety. Older Mechanicsburgers rejoiced when Agatha merely cared about protecting the town.
  Vanamonde: You have fifty generations of lowered expectations working for you.
• Benevolent Boss: In a very specific sense, mind. Moloch feels the convenient array of labs shows a decent amount of consideration for their minions. After all, they're the ones who have to carry everything. This is actually why they lasted so long. They treated their minions and monsters with respect and garnered Undying Loyalty from pretty much all of them. Whenever their own people did go against them, it was usually for something more petty like "Valentine Day Riots" where one of the romantically minded Heterodynes got many of the local women in a frenzy. It was their enemies that they took much of their sadistic streak out on.
  • In the fourth book, it's stated that "family tradition" frowns on wholesale slaughter of Mechanicsburg citizens, even when the entire town (very briefly) rebelled. That's extremely benevolent by the standards of both Spark and non-Spark nobility in Europa.
• Big, Screwed-Up Family: When you have Mad Scientists raising bad villains, things are bound to get a little... screwed up.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Giles Heterodyne joined the church, and while there was some suspicion, after 42 years of work, he ultimately did well enough to be ordained Pope. He then grafted wings onto the the entire college of cardinals and looted the papal library, much to the family's pride.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: When Robur Heterodyne thought he had brought angels looking to punish his sins, he wasn't entirely sure which specific sin it was they were after.
• Cain and Abel: The Red Heterodyne and the Black Heterodyne, according to the novels. Their aptitudes lay in different areas, and the two frequently disagreed. Although the novels also specify that their agreements were philosophical, they were spark-style philosophical arguments. This generally meant misery for everyone else.
• Complexity Addiction:
  • Par for the course with sparks, but because they were successful sparks, they spent centuries working on one location... Castle Heterodyne is kind of ridiculous.
  • The books elaborate that this was part of the Heterodyne's Sparky nature. Every one of their devices had multiple functions. Invariably, one of these functions was to "surprise".
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: A law in Mechanicsburg requiring everyone to learn how to play musical instruments was passed after the Incredibly Brief Rebellion (so called because it lasted less than four minutes). The reigning Heterodyne of the time, Queeg Heterodyne, didn't want to kill anyone from his town, but was required to do something. So he hit upon the idea of forcing all children in Mechanicsburg learn how to play an instrument, a decree which causes suffering to this day.
• Cutting the Knot: Faced with imminent Dreen coming through a vortex he'd made, Robur Heterodyne freaked out, smashed the machine, and then had pie. Crisis (mostly) over.
  Castle Heterodyne: In many ways, he was a refreshingly simple man.
• Dancin' in the Ruins: Apparently they have a distinctive reputation for it, if Vole's idle comment can be believed. He figures nothing the early reports on Zola have said corroborate she's a Heterodyne or not. However, if she were to burn the town to the ground and dance naked in the ruins (among other things), that'd cinch things.
  Gil: (beat) Well that goes without saying.
• The Dreaded: They were monsters who made monsters and adored monsters. They rampaged across Europa for centuries and no one could stop them. (Though the Storm King managed a pretty good defense..)
• Dysfunction Junction: Their idea of a toy for the nursery is a giant, maniacal kill-bot.
• Enfant Terrible: There's probably a reason the Castle's nurseries include metal cages.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones:
  • They appeared to genuinely care about their family members and their minions. This has fostered a level of Undying Loyalty highly atypical in Sparks' minions among the local populace ("Sure, they were monsters, but they were our monsters.") and especially among the Jägers.
  • By all accounts Bill and Barry's father, Saturnus, was genuinely in love with their mother Teodora Vodenicharova.
• Equal-Opportunity Evil: Heterodynes aren't particularly picky about who they have working for them, regardless of how they came into their employ (kicking and screaming, usually), but this does mean Mechanicsburg is surprisingly cosmopolitan.
• False Reassurance: The "Good" Heterodyne's name was not because he was a good person, just that he was a good Heterodyne.
• Fantastic Honorifics: ZigZagged as the Heterodynes do use real-world honorifics like "Lord/Lady" or "Master/Mistress," both of which are standard terms for all members of the family. The only title specific to the head of the family is "the Heterodyne." Nobody says "the Heterodyne Agatha," but it appears "Lady Heterodyne" could be read as meaning "Mistress of [THING]" just as much as it could "Miss [SURNAME]"; the only thing stopping it from being Just the First Citizen is how much of a name the Heterodynes made for themselves over eight-hundred years.
• For Science!: One of the family's primary motivations.
• For the Evulz: One of the family's other primary motivations.
• Gadgeteer Genius: Again, common to sparks, but thanks to their ability to Heterodyne, the Heterodynes take it up a notch.
• Generation Xerox: Temporal shenanigans seen as an interesting day out. Appreciating and collecting the weird and dangerous tech around them. Circumventing other people's schemes by cutting to the chase. Doing his/her own thing, regardless of expectation. Adapting with Sparky charisma. Heterodynes.
• Horrifying the Horror: There is one thing that the Heterodynes decided they really didn't want to mess with - time manipulation. Especially the stopping of time. Why? Clock Roaches. When Robur Heterodyne tried to mess with time, they spooked him so badly that he had a genuine crisis of faith (for all of five minutes, before he had some pie), but the experience spooked him so badly that he established a binding agreement with the Corbettites to keep a bunch of artifacts that are far too dangerous to use locked away in exchange for the Heterodynes never attacking the Corbettites or any of their railway infrastructure, one that the family has never broken.
• I Gave My Word: Robur Heterodyne rarely kept his word. That he did keep his agreement with the Corbettites speaks volumes of just how badly the Dreen spooked him.
• Ignored Epiphany: When Robur Heterodyne thought angels were coming to punish him, he experienced a genuine crisis of faith. So he smashed the machine from which said "angels" came, ate some pie, and moved on with his life.
• Inconsistent Spelling: In the comics the name of Agatha's grandfather is Saturnus, in the third novel Agatha H. and the Voice of the Castle it's just Saturn.
• It Runs in the Family: The Heterodyne Spark is apparently, if not unique, then at least distinctive among the sparky traits of Europa, and definitely one of the most powerful.
  Van: You didn't tell us she was a spark!
  Wooster: She told you she's Agatha Heterodyne.
  Zeetha: It should be no surprise that she's a spark, too.
• Kill It with Fire:
  • The Black Heterodyne's favourite flavour was "charred".
  • Saturnus Heterodyne, Bill and Barry's father, once set Mechanicsburg town hall alight during the Year of Three Winters, and managed to keep it aflame for five whole months.
• Living Legend: The Heterodynes who survived childhood tended to terrorize Europa. The Heterodyne Boys (Agatha's father and paternal uncle) put an extra gloss on their own legend by being the only Heterodynes in history to be heroes.
• Loves the Sound of Screaming: Iago Heterodyne certainly did, so he built a scream generator to use whenever he didn't have a victim to provide said screams.
• Loyal Phlebotinum: One of the reasons the Heterodynes were such a long lasting evil dynasty; their creations were/are all fanatically loyal. Most sparks are killed by their creations.
• Mad Scientist: A whole lineage of them. Mad, science-y, and generally evil.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Iscarriot Heterodyne, Everyman's "Friend", obviously had a history of betraying people. Remind you of Judas Iscariot?
  • The father of Bill and Barry was named Saturnus. Saturnus tried to kill his sons, but his wife Teodora turned against him to protect the kids, who would sit in his throne after he died. Pretty obvious analogue to the Roman Titan Saturn (Kronos/Cronus in Greek) from Classical Mythology.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Almost all of the Heterodynes had given names or nicknames to inspire terror. Given their history, just the name Heterodyne was enough. And then come Bill, Barry, and Agatha.
• Nightmare Fetishist: All the Heterodynes, being ridiculously sparky sparks, have a thing for the creations of other mad scientists. Saturnus even let the war machines of other sparks into the city (to make war) because he wanted to get a better look. The Black Heterodyne brought the Bloodbats to Mechanicsburg because he thought they were positively wonderful.
• Our Vampires Are Different: At least one of the Heterodynes was a vampire-style being. And they're evidently still alive(-ish) beneath Mechanicsburg. A possibility is the Red or Black Heterodyne. The Black Heterodyne lived an average human life time, but his crypt is marked "do not open". The Red Heterodyne was supposedly his brother, but was still kicking in the early 18th century, three hundred years after his birth.
• Pet the Dog: A 2021 short story explains that the Old Heterodynes welcomed persecuted monsters to have sanctuary in Mechanicsburg. Whether or not every (or any) monster refugee did something that warranted persecution isn't stated, but the ones we see in the story seem to be genuinely alright guys who just wanted a home.
  • One of the books states that, for a while, nearby populations used to force monsters, criminals, and suspected witches into Heterodyne Valley, intending it to be a Fate Worse than Death. Eventually, everyone realized this was not the case, and that they were pretty much just gifting incredibly dangerous individuals to the Heterodynes.
• Plague Master: Given that Vipsania Heterodyne had a "Cabinet of Contagion", there's a good chance she was one.
• Please Spare Him, My Liege!: The means by which some Heterodynes acquired romantic partners, such as Saturnus and Teodora.
• Power Floats: Igneous Heterodyne briefly managed to float after drinking unfiltered Dyne water. Then he exploded.
• Pragmatic Villainy: The Heterodynes are for the most part quite evil, but they're not stupid, they're just generally untethered to any sort of true moral code, but they understand when to be practical, hence why they're one of the oldest surviving noble houses in Europe and why nobody has successfully wiped them off the face of the planet. They are, at their core, scientists - amoral scientists, but scientists all the time, and they are perfectly willing to identify faults and change something if it isn't working.
• Psycho Serum: They invented the jäger-draught, which they use to create jägers. They also drink the water of the river Dyne, and sometimes even survive doing so.
• Really Gets Around:
  • The Heterodynes sometimes built "small" things: the Master's bedroom "only" sleeps SIX.
  • The Castle has a seraglio^note what would also be called a "harem" in the original sense of the word, being an area for wives/concubines to live.
• Red Baron: Vlad The Blasphemous. Given the average Spark, and the average Heterodyne, he likely got the name for ramping those traits up (he is the one that made the Jägerdraught, after all).
• Shared Family Quirks:
  • Seriously, most of these tropes even apply to Agatha, her father, and her uncle, and they're the good ones.
  • Also, as the castle notes, the family rarely produces female descendants.
• Sigil Spam: The Heterodyne trilobyte is everywhere in Mechanicsburg.
• Single Sex Offspring: The family is known for almost exclusively producing male children. The four exceptions we know of are Vipsania, Roxalana, Euphrosynia and Agatha.
• Something Only They Would Say: Basically, the more mad a response is, the more Heterodyne it is. The more time someone spends Admiring the Abomination, the more Heterodyne they are. The more they want to do something absurd and dangerous... you get the point. When Agatha is excited to see giant spider clanks advancing on the town, it strengthens her claim, as her grandfather felt the same way—except he used to get a better look by letting them in.
• Split Personality: Apparently, according to the novels, several Heterodynes have had a severe case of this, which made for an interesting variation of "good cop / bad cop": "bad cop / utterly evil and insane cop", and they're the same person.
• Strong Family Resemblance: According to Dimo, who would know, the typical Heterodyne is generously endowed in the buttock area. Makes mid-battle trouser shopping difficult.
• Super-Fun Happy Thing of Doom: The Heterodynes have an interesting take on that sort of thing: they actually mean it. Each and every construct has various bags of a suspiciously similar Big Fun personality to go with the danger.
• Supervillain Lair: Although Castle Heterodyne is the centerpiece of their power and the focus of much of their mad science, Mechanicsburg and the surrounding countryside both benefited (sort of) from their overlordship.
• Thicker Than Water: If there are any Evil Virtues the Heterodynes had, it was family loyalty. With the one exception of Saturn tying to kill Bill & Barry, the Old Heterodynes aren't shown to be prone to kinslaying. Meanwhile it's exactly their loyalty to their own that makes it hard to trust them as as outsider; Rerich explained that the reason Euphrosynia betrayed the Storm King is because she feared any attempt to tame the family would destroy it.
• Unholy Matrimony: The Castle fondly recounts how the Skull-Queen of Skral sent a legion of homunculi to get Dagon Heterodyne's "attention". In the novelization, it notes that she's Agatha's ancestor, so that apparently worked out pretty well (just not for anyone else).
• Undying Loyalty: An underlying theme among all the followers of House Heterodyne is this. It may very well be the true power of House Heterodyne. And it's not "installed" (as opposed to instilled) like some other sparks do their creations and minions, it seems to be truly earned through reciprocity.
• Unperson: The novels tells us that there are no known records of Roxalana anywhere. All we know is that even the Jaeger generals considered her a cautionary example and there are multiple areas of devastation near Mechanicsburg known as "Roxalana's Chasm," "Roxalana's Blight," "The Melted Mountain of Roxalana," and "Roxalana's Comeuppance".
• White Sheep: The latest two generations of Heterodynes have turned/are turning out to be this. Bill, Barry, and Agatha are downright sterling in moral caliber and heroic reputation compared to their predecessors. It was due to the actions of Bill's and Barry's mother, who nurtured the two into better people than their ancestors.
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: Again, another spark trope taken to eleven. Bathing in the Dyne kills people and drives them mad, and at least one of the Heterodynes drank it. (And survived; as noted above, Igneous Heterodyne evidently ran into problems..)

Teodora Vodenicharova

Teodora Vodenicharova, Mother of Bill and Barry

Mother of Bill and Barry Heterodyne, she was forced to marry their father Saturnus Heterodyne to protect her kingdom. Despite this she managed to keep her sons free of their father's influence and protected them from his eventual decision to murder them.

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• And Now You Must Marry Me: It's never mentioned what she thought of him, but the marriage was less than consensual, as it was done to stop Saturnus from destroying her homeland.
• Doomed Moral Victor: The Castle killed her, but she died knowing her children were safe and just over ten years later she'd been canonized as a saint.
• Good Is Not Soft: She was fully willing to kill to protect her children.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Twice. The first time was non-fatal, she was forced to marry Saturnus to protect her kingdom. The second time she murdered Saturnus to stop from murdering their sons, which resulted in the Castle killing her. Less than twelve years later five of the seven popes declared her a martyr and the Patron Saint of Those Who Fall Afoul of Sparks^note which she certainly would qualify as.
• Heroic Willpower: She married a Heterodyne and lived the rest of her life in Mechanicsburg back in the days when that meant being surrounded by villains, but is noted to have been extremely strong-willed and defied Saturnus on a regular basis, especially when it came to keeping Bill and Barry free of their father's influence.
• Mama Bear: She was willing to spend at least years married to a Heterodyne, but do not make the mistake of threatening her children. Her husband found this out the hard way.
• Present Absence: Died decades before the story began, but if not for her choices either her sons would have been raised as traditionally villainous Heterodynes, or Saturnus would have killed them. Either way the story would have been very different without her.
• Small Role, Big Impact: She never makes an appearance or even appears in a flashback, is only briefly mentioned twice in the comics, and virtually all information on her comes from a footnote in Agatha H. and the Voice of the Castle. Her efforts to raise her sons to be heroes and protect them from their father made everything that happened afterwards possible.

Euphrosynia Heterodyne

Euphrosynia Heterodyne, Bride of the Storm King

Left: as depicted in the Opera.
Right: as depicted in Klaus' story.

Daughter of Clemethious Heterodyne, sister of Bludtharst and object of romantic interest of Andronicus Valois, the original Storm King. Very little is known about her for sure, besides the fact that she probably played a significant role in destroying the Storm King's regime.

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• Arranged Marriage: Her marriage with Andronicus was arranged as a part of peace treaty with the Heterodynes.
• Damsel in Distress: In The Storm King opera, Andronicus first meets her when she is menaced by Ogglespoon. She also ends up kidnapped at the end of the second act. According to Voltaire, what apparently actually happened was that she tried to search Van Rijn's workshop for secrets to steal, ran afoul of "something none of us understood", and disappeared as a result; there's been no mention of Ogglespoon outside of the opera.
• Foil: Much like Lucrezia, there is the driving question as to whether or not she planned the hero's downfall all along or something else was afoot. She is also often paralleled to Agatha as a Heterodyne loved by the Storm King whose presence endangers Europe and shatters a great peace (Euphrosynia with the Storm King's coalition and Agatha with the Empire).
  • There is a bit of irony in comparing her to Lucrezia. Both Euphrosynia and Lucrezia married a hero and led to their downfall. However, the hero Euphrosynia married was the Storm King, while she was of the House of Heterodyne; meanwhile the hero Lucrezia married was the Heterodyne himself, and her family (the Mongfishes) were of the Knights of Jove, which was the Storm King's old honour guard.
• The Ghost: She is yet to appear in person, either in the comics or in the novels, unless you count a rather fanciful tale told by Klaus. We've heard a few tantalizing eyewitness comments from a Jäger and the Master of Paris, and Martellus mentions some correspondence of hers is still around.
• Historical Hero Upgrade / Historical Villain Upgrade: Quite possibly both in-universe given the wildly-disparate versions of her as either a straight up damsel in distress or a villainess plotting the Storm King's downfall all along.
• Honey Trap: She is believed to have manipulated the Storm King and used his love for her to enact his downfall.
• In the Blood: Rerich the Jäger pointed out that even if she did love the Storm King she was still a Heterodyne, making her just as much of a chaos-loving monster as the rest of her family, meaning that she would never have submitted to his wishes for peace and submission.
• Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter: The opera presents her as a classic example of this trope: beautiful, innocent and a love interest for the hero to rescue from her evil, crazy family. Other sources, however, suggest she was either a type that agreed with daddy's evil plan and faked being in love with the hero to distract him or loved him truly but betrayed him anyway since his success would mean destruction of her town and her people.
• Never Found the Body: Andronicus claims he saw her disappear before his eyes in Van Rijn's workshop, and assumes it was Rijn's fault. Voltaire counter-claims that she was only there in the first place because she was trying to steal his secrets, only to run afoul of something horrible.
• Princesses Prefer Pink: The actress presenting her in the opera wears a pink dress.
• Really Gets Around: When Martellus asks Rerich if she loved Andronicus, the Jäger mockingly replies that she "luffed lots ov pipple!"
• Star-Crossed Lovers: In the opera she and Andronicus are tragically separated when Euphrosynia is kidnapped by Ogglespoon. How things really looked is uncertain. Especially since more reliable sources suggest that she may have not been in love with Andronicus at all and only played along to fulfill some plan of the Heterodynes, or loved him but betrayed him anyway. The latter comes from a Jäger who had some limited contact with her, and invokes the trope by noting how her marriage to the Storm King would have meant putting Mechanicsburg under his power, which Euphrosynia could never allow even if she did love him.
• Strong Family Resemblance: As noted above, we still have no idea what she looked like, apart from the "Evil Witch" from Klaus's story. For whatever it's worth, the actress who plays Euphrosynia in the latest staging of the Storm King opera looks a great deal like Agatha, and in his last moments, Andronicus Valois mistakes Agatha for her, at least in regards to her voice. That said, no one else has yet mentioned any undue similarities, even among people who knew Euphrosynia, such as the Master of Paris and her personal guard Jenka. Even Valois doesn't show any recognition, when meeting Agatha earlier in a somewhat more rational state of mind.
• Thicker Than Water: According to Rerich at least, the reason Euphrosynia betrayed the Storm King is because she feared any attempt to tame the family would actually just destroy it.

Ht'rok-din

Ghengis Ht'rok-din, founder of the Heterodyne Family

"Behold my instrument of Conqvest... UND VOE!!!"

Ghengis Ht'rok-din is a historical figure known for engaging in campaigns of conquest and woe in the medieval era of Europa, and for founding the equally conquest-and-woe-inducing Heterodyne family. A guest strip omake series titled "Homecoming King" involves a not-too-distant future where a reckless sparky university student brings Him into the modern time using forbidden time travel science.

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• Blood Knight: Par for the course for the founder of the Heterodyne family.
• Clarke's Third Law: Recognizes and name-drops the trope when faced with a stun-gun:
  VAT KIND UF SUFFICIENTLY ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY IZ DIS?
• The Dreaded: The Heterodyne family's legacy of conquest and woe? He started it.
• Eternal English: Or German or Romanian or whatever they speak at Transylvania Polygnostic in this timeline. He refers to it as "de Nordd'man tongue" and while his accent is thicker than the Jägers' he can understand students living a thousand years after his time.
• Expy: Visually, he is clearly one for Conan the Barbarian. The fact that he is also a warrior and conqueror from 'the North' who uses a sword takes the resemblance even closer.
• Founder of the Kingdom: Of Mechanicsburg at least. And of the Heterodyne family and their legacy of Conquest and Woe.
• Funetik Aksent: He appears to have a very Jäger-like accent when talking in English (or whatever "modern language" is being spoken via Translation Convention).
• Genius Bruiser: He's a muscular, brutal Expy of Conan - already a Genius Bruiser - but unlike the original model he's a Spark, and a powerful one at that. He immediately understands the causality problem his presence in that time poses: He's told he has descendants... but does not recall having any (legitimate) descendants (yet). He also seems to know quite a few languages.
• Pet the Dog: He's not entirely ungentle with the students, at least by his usual casually murderous standards. He was more violent before he learned that they were subjects of a sort to his descendant, so perhaps he considered them his own subjects by proxy, invoking the Heterodyne family's Benevolent Boss tendencies discussed above. Or maybe he just thought it would be rude to break something that belonged to her.
• Smarter Than You Look: Only looks like the kind of character who thinks with his muscles. He's a Spark, and spends the whole comic building a device to take him back to his own time, fully aware of the damage it would do if he stayed in the future.
• The Spark of Genius: He has the Spark, natch.
• Stable Time Loop: According to Homecoming King, he concentrated on building his legacy and siring a family after being pulled into the future and seeing the extent of his descendants' domain:
  Ht'rok-din: Hy tought hy hed run out uf places to make mine. But now hy see hy overlooked time itself.
• Violation of Common Sense: The locals around the spring that eventually became the source of the River Dyne were superstitious about it: those who bathed in it often went mad. What did Ht'rok-din do? He drank the water.
• Walking Shirtless Scene: Par for the course for his barbarian motif.

Klaus Barry Heterodyne

Klaus Barry Heterodyne, toddler

The first child of Bill and Lucrezia, killed during the attack on Castle Heterodyne that began the Other's war on Europa.

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• Death of a Child: Crushed by falling debris in the attack on the Castle.
• Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: Conceived a whole two years after Lucrezia removed Klaus from the picture... and yet somehow this didn't stop people from ignoring that fact and speculating anyhow.
• "Near and Dear" Baby Naming: Bill named his first kid after his brother and their mysteriously missing best friend.
• Offing the Offspring: While it doesn't look like the Other deliberately killed him in the attack, and Agatha momentarily pauses because she doesn't think even Lucrezia might've been capable of that, no version of her at any point has ever mentioned her son in any capacity.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: Died at a little over a year and a bit old.

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