I’ve gone back to the beginning to work my way forward to present day when I came across this strip. It’s in the Storm King’s castle. Tarvek is just taking over and Lucrezia is in control of Agatha’s body. Now for the question: Who’s in the chair? I’ve scanned ahead a bit and I don’t think they get back to the castle and I don’t recall any big revel the first time through, lo these many years ago.
It’s an old development in the strip, but I’ll put it in a spoiler box, just in case:
It’s the Lucrezia construct.It’s very oblique and the connection is never outright stated, but I’m confident about it.
I thought the same as Bosstone. Of course, it’s easy to get lost in the maze of Tarvek’s complicated plots in Sturmhalten.
Except he says “It’s an honor to meet you”. Wasn’t it Tarvek who activated the Lucrezia clank in the first place?
Activation came after.
[ul]
[li]Lucrezia.1 gets downloaded into Agatha.[/li][li]Lucrezia.1 downloads Lucrezia.2 (using the original Lucrezia copy, not a copy of Lucrezia.1) into the clank head, which Tarvek had either made at Lucrezia.1’s request or had built for Anevka not long ago.[/li][li]Lucrezia.1 introduces Lucrezia.2 to Tarvek. They tell him their plan off-camera.[/li][li]After confronting Anevka, Tarvek shuts her down and swaps the heads.[/li][li]Lucrezia.1 and Lucrezia.2 squee in stereo.[/li][/ul]
A question on your second bullet point:
Lucrezia.1 gets downloaded into Agatha: here
Lucrezia.1 downloads Lucrezia.2 (using the original Lucrezia copy, not a copy of Lucrezia.1) into the clank head, which Tarvek had either made at Lucrezia.1’s request or had built for Anevka not long ago. - this is never shown, right? which is why you say “It’s very oblique and the connection is never outright stated, but I’m confident about it.”
Lucrezia.1 introduces Lucrezia.2 to Tarvek. They tell him their plan off-camera. - this is on the page linked to in the OP.
After confronting Anevka, Tarvek shuts her down and swaps the heads. - this is on the page you linked to in post 2.
Lucrezia.1 and Lucrezia.2 squee in stereo. - here, a couple of pages after the page you linked to in post 2.
A related question: there is one page in the strip where someone explains that girl sparks don’t survive for very long. Does anyone remember who said that, and when? My theory was always that girl sparks don’t do well because Prince Aaronev of Sturmhalten (Tarvek’s father) was kidnapping all the girl sparks he could find to try and download Lucrezia into their brains, and instead they were turned into vegetables.
It was Lilith/Judy, who said, “Girls with the spark–they usually just–disappear.”
I hold the same theory as to the cause as you do.
It happens waaaay back in Volume 3, here. And I like your theory, I’m not sure I would have ever considered that.
I really need to read this thing from the beginning again. I keep forgetting how relatively little in-comic time has passed and so events that are really far apart for me are still recent for the characters.
I said that because of this:
We’re never told it’s Lucrezia.2 in the chair, it’s only suggested by Lucrezia.1’s interaction with her and by Tarvek’s later lack of surprise at holding a head with Lucrezia’s personality. He goes on to say “This really is some of my best work,” so he had to have made Lucrezia’s head at some point, whether specifically for her or not.
But yeah, there’s a lot of supposition going on in that whole interplay that’s never outright stated in the comic.
I don’t think the shortage of female sparks is down to just one person. Sparks are, on average, absolutely horrible, monstrous people. And the average non-Spark hates and detests them. Society, in Girl Genius, is somewhere around the 18th century, which was not a particularly enlightened time, when it comes to women’s rights. So my assumption on the lack of female Sparks is that the ones who survive the mobs of villagers are snapped up by any of a wide selection of established, male sparks who have a variety of unsavory uses for a female spark. Prince Aaronev was almost certainly one such person, for the reasons stated, but I don’t think he was unique in this regard.
Huh, when we learned about the Lucrezia Machine, I thought it was just taken for granted that that was why female sparks tended to disappear.
I seem to recall, though, reading somewhere that female sparks were also rarer than male sparks to begin with.
Thank you all. When I was scanning ahead I’d paused at that page linked to where poor Anevka’s head is uninstalled and Lucrezia’s put in its place so I thought it was her but was not sure at all.
I think I’m gonna have to go back and read it through again.