Girl Genius/WMG

= The Other =

The other is a time traveling evil clone/hidden identical twin of Agatha, an evil AI and a hive mind.
The hive machines were created when the clone/twin was a novice and the Geisterdamen were created when she was advanced and time-traveled back to when she was a novice (although the Geisters may have existed before, in which case the clone/twin of Agatha was combined with their goddess.). Lucrezia had a slaver shoved down her throat one night and became a stealth revenant and was made to marry Bill (or, maybe Barry) and get pregnant, creating Agatha (and if the combination was involved a twin, the twin as well.). The other, after that, possessed Lucrezia and combined with her but pushed Lucrezia's mind into its subconscious. Other people did not notice that anything had changed. The other then time-traveled to were the Geisters were and got them to create the downloading device so she could go into her daughter (The other had possessed Lucrezia before Lucrezia's pregnancy but after the marriage. That technically makes Agatha the other's daughter.). The other then attacked the castle to kill the son and damage the castle.

Othar is The Other
Well, they're only one letter off. And this comic notes that the Other seemed to focus attacks on the major Spark houses.
 * Except the Other is running around underground at the moment, and Othar's quite alive (some more).

Lucrezia Mongfish is not The Other, The Other was written over her like it was over Agatha.
Lucrezia Mongfish clashed with Klaus and the Heterodynes more than once. You would think that she would have gone all out with her sparkings giving Klaus a good indication of her true power and yet Klaus believes that she was too weak to have been The Other, that she could never have designed the Hiver Engines. So what if the Geisterdamen came from wherever they came from, all those years ago, to find the distant descendant of their now dead royal-divine line? Lucrezia Mongfish, and thus Agatha, are related to that line and as such are suitable hosts for a far older intelligence that is the thing that the Geisterdamen worship. And whose side is von Pinn on now? Can you say wild card?
 * I like this theory. Also interesting to note that the Geisterdamen and the slaver wasps do not even remotely look like they were made by the same people, despite sparks, including Lucrezia, having enough of a "style" that the Baron could link the engines to Lucrezia. Only problem: If this were the case, the Geisterdamen should already have had to build a device for downloading the Other, and have it work. So why did their second involve so much failure, and why did they at first think they'd failed? Perhaps they had the help of a powerful spark (perhaps the Heterodynes or Lucrezia herself; after all, they could've lied about what it would do) the first time but didn't have his notes when they went to Strumvoras for the second.
 * A) The Geisterdamen were NOT made by Lucrezia and B) Von Pinn doesn't look much like a glowing butterfly or a slaver wasp, now, does she?
 * Agatha herself appears to suspect this, based on her reaction when she's informed of the death of her brother. It would also set up a Luke/Vader/Emperor moment at the climax of the story
 * One problem with this theory is that Lucrezia indicates that she designed the overwrite-machine that stuffed her into Agatha's cranium. Also, the statement that the Geister-Goddess always came 'in the same lovely aspect', when the transfer machine clearly doesn't change what whoever gets turned into The Other looks like tends to throw doubt on the statement.
 * Ah, but was that 'Lucrezia' (who was possessing Agatha at the time) really Lucrezia or the Other maintaining her disguise? And Vrin clearly states that the Other always wore the same lovely aspect when she was a novice, which clearly implies that 1. She has visited the Geisterdamen in other aspects and 2. She wore Lucrezia's aspect for a specific period of time.
 * On the other hand, we have no idea what the normal lifespan of the Geisterdamen is supposed to be, or how old Lady Vrin is, so....
 * Two things to point out: Von Pinn, and Agatha's locket.
 * When Von Pinn realizes that Agatha is Lucrezia's daughter, she does not rest in trying to kill her. Why would she do that do the daughter of her creator? Because Lucrezia informed Von Pinn about the possible transference of the Other's consciousness to Lucrezia's daughter. Lucrezia, for a variety of reasons, has given Von Pinn standing orders to kill her and anyone else who may be embodying The Other.
 * Well, maybe not. She says that Agatha is "MINE" but that does not mean she wants to kill her. After all Von Pinn is a children's nurse and Agatha is one of her charges.
 * It comes out later that Von Pinn was specifically created by Lucrezia to be her childrens' governess. Von Pinn was merely informing Klaus that Agatha literally belonged to her.
 * On the other hand, Von Pinn tried to attack Agatha before, but that was probably more to do with the "threat" she posed to the students rather than because she is Lucrezia's daughter.
 * That was well before Agatha was outed as the missing Heterodyne.
 * Agreed to the counter-arguments. Von Pinn wants to protect Agatha now that she knows. Her 'programming conflict' between protecting Gil's virtue and Agatha's... well, self... that should be a Crowning Moment of Funny
 * Speaking of von Pinn, when we first saw her she was a monoped. Now that she returns to the castle, she is a biped, and the drawing makes this very, very clear. It was apparently her monepedalism that kept her from leaping after Agatha or climbing once Lilith had thrown Agatha up out of reach. Given the amount of planning that has gone into this story's visuals, I do not believe that this was an accident or 'oops'. There must be a reason. Maybe it is the removal of a restraint applied by Klaus. Maybe it is removal of a self-imposed restraint.
 * Von Pinn was never a monoped, she just wore a very tight skirt (with heavy strapping keeping it tight). See here - the one age in her first scene where one can just about make out her feet. The unbinding of her legs, that might be a removal of restraint, but she has always been bipedal.
 * Agatha's locket belonged to Lucrezia before her, and Uncle Barry Heterodyne gave it to Agatha to prevent her Spark from acting up. But the locket has the convenient side-effect of also nullifying the Other's consciousness within Agatha. We presume that Uncle Barry endowed the locket with that capability. But wouldn't it make more sense for Lucrezia to have designed some way to oppose the Other for herself, knowing, as she probably does, the exact mechanics that make the Other's possession possible?
 * This may have been Jossed already by the fact that The Other, who responds to the name Lucrezia, had no idea what the locket does. But, it could be that the copy of Lucrezia's or The Other's mind was made before the locket was made. Discuss.
 * It may also be a different locket. Other-Agatha found this locket on Klaus in a case with the Heterodyne signal. Assuming that Klaus did get his hands on the broken locket and assuming that he would repair it, why would he create such a case for it and carry it around? I am leaning toward the idea that this is some kind of Heterodyne "Crown of The King" (see the Trelawney Thorpe story).
 * Von Pinn was constructed by Lucrezia Mongfish-Heterodyne as a nursemaid. But for that purpose she is incredibly overbuilt. This makes sense only if she was originally designed for another purpose OR if she was designed to defend her charge(s) as well as rear them.
 * Confirmed. Von Pinn's mind is the transferred mind of Otilla, the Muse of Protection, so it definitely fits to build the body as a protector as well as a nursemaid.
 * On the other hand, there's the possibility that Lucrezia might simply have been hiding how powerful she was to give Klaus et all the impression that she wasn't capable of that kind of thing, so when the Other began striking against other Sparks, she wouldn't be suspected.
 * Since there is time travel, it's possible that Lucrezia is fighting HERSELF as The Other, as in: Lucrezia's Spark causes her to develop greater and greater megalomania to the point where she becomes the other; however, earlier Lucrezia is visited by The Other, and seeing what she will become, develops fail-safe plans that she gives to Barry and Von Pinn(ie plans for the locket, instructions to kill Agatha).
 * For that matter, forked timelines haven't been ruled out yet.
 * Klaus himself did describe her as "ruthless, manipulative, and a consummate actress." You'd think he would have considered that maybe, I don't know, she was ACTING. Heck, maybe with all the Genre Savvy in the Girl Genius universe, Lucrezia knew that, as the Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter, it was pretty much just a matter of time before she shacked up with either Bill or Barry (or maybe even Klaus, hence her sexual relationship with him). Therefore, in the fulfillment of her role as "Femme Fatale with a heart of gold who's ultimately harmless and doesn't REALLY want to hurt anyone", she pretended to lack her phenomenal talents as a Spark and just created glowing butterflies (see the page where Klaus mentioned that she never displayed the level of talent the Other possessed), as opposed to the slaver wasps that take over people's minds and would probably put her over the Moral Event Horizon for the only two Heterodynes with anything resembling a moral compass since the dawn of time.
 * I'm still holding out for the "Lucrezia possessed" theory, because it promises the most heart-wrenching tragedy at the denouement. But then again I've always been a romantic about such things.
 * I am holding out for the "Possessed Lucrezia" theory because I suspect that the slaver wasps were re-tasked by the Other, and were originally a means of protecting people against mind control.
 * Alright, WMG, riddle me this: As stated above, the Other responds to the name Lucrezia almost reflexively and has the same speech patterns/facial expression/body stance/gloating style as the Lucrezia Klaus was very intimate with. This could conceivably be the proposed 'actual' Other 'pretending' to be Lucrezia, despite the fact that most of this is subconscious and the fact that the Other has no access to any of Agatha's body language/memories, hence the Other would not have access to Lucrezia's; the fact that she seems genuinely surprised when Klaus guesses her identity; and the fact that if the Other could fake such cues, wouldn't it make more sense to turn them off in the presence of an adversary familiar with such things who could blow your cover completely?!? Ahem. In any case, why does the Other refer to Agatha explicitly as her daughter in a private and whispered conversation with herself??? Who is she pretending to be Lucrezia for there, the readers??!
 * Okay, I like a challenge. As noted above, Lucrezia is described as a "consummate actress," from which we can infer that she is capable of expressing a wide range of personalities and characteristics. Perhaps, this is merely a misinterpretation of an internal battle between "actual" Lucrezia and "the Other" Lucrezia. In infiltrating the Heterodyne family, the Other learned to respond to her name, and all the speech patterns/facial expressions/body stance/gloating style that everyone thinks belong to the "actual" Lucrezia are really indicative of the Other's personality. Ergo, her hatred of old rivals, her issues with Klaus, and even the decision to 'have' a daughter in the first place come from the Other, not Lucrezia. It would therefore make perfect sense for the Other to refer to Agatha as her own daughter. All of this points to an entity which is not in perfect control of its actions and responses, but is in fact very human-like in nature, which is consistent with what we've seen of the Other.
 * How about this: The Other is an alien entity from another reality/planet/etc that passes it's memories and goals down each generation. The host keeps their own personality, however, which is why the geisterdamen and the hive engines look so different--the geisters were created by a previous incarnation of the Other, but the hive engines were created by Lucrezia, after the Other got downloaded into her brain. However, Lucrezia didn't like the whole "give up this incarnation's personality" thing, and decided to design/redesign a summoning engine to copy her entire mind, rather than just the portion designated as the "Other."
 * Recently "glorified slaver wasp" theory got a few more points. "The Other @ Agatha" considers the self-destruction as a perfectly normal act as long as other copies will go on. If she was a former human and served herself rather than a "higher purpose", one could think the possessing entity have at least modicum of self-preservation.
 * This comic shows one version of the Other addressing another as "Lucrezia, darling". She could still be acting for Zola's benefit, but given that Zola can now see all of her secrets that's becoming unlikely.
 * When Lucrezia locks up Zola, Zola claims that the rogue geisters learned to see Lucrezia "for the fraud you are." Here's my theory: The original Other created the geisters hundreds of years ago and repeatedly imprinted itself on members of the Mongfish line throughout the generations. But when it got to Lucrezia, she managed to destroy it instead. But then she crossed the moral event horizon when she proceeded to steal all its secrets, pretend to be the Other, and invent the slaver wasps.

The Other is an older Lucrezia Mongfish.
At some point, Lucrezia developed time and/or dimension travel technology and went to another time and place, where she stayed for decades or even millenia, developing her skills and her army. In doing so, she became so alien as to not even be human anymore, instead becoming something Other than human. Then she went back to her past, staged her own kidnapping, and started the war. Klaus even decides that Agatha is the Other because the Other's devices are similiar to Lucrezia's, but far too advanced. Lucrezia learns how to build such advanced devices during her time away. Using her technology, she disappeared the Heterodyne boys and Klaus to someplace else, although both Klaus and Barry are known to have come back. Also, the geisterdamen refer to being brought by their goddess to "this shadow world". The time machine also explains why the geisterdamen have worshipped her forever--remember Vrin's quote? "No matter how long she was gone, we always knew she'd be back"? Lucrezia just hopped in her time machine and travelled ahead, leaving the geisterdamen to catch up with her the long way. Later in the comic, Agatha will discover her mother's time machine, and this will lead to the portals seen earlier by Agatha herself in Beetlesburg, and by Captain Dupree in the wastelands.

The woman in the Time-Window is the true form of The Other.
Furthermore, she is - at that time - locked in a battle of wills with Agatha. Her visible arm looks exactly like the one choking Vrin in the flashback, and she's clearly pointing directly at (pre-breakthrough) Agatha. Her full sentence, as cut off by the window, is "Do you want to go back to being like THAT?!", indicating that Agatha has found some way to permanently destroy The Other, but risks her own Spark in the process. So The Other pulls open a time-window to remind her what she'd turn into if her spark was lost...
 * Define 'true'.
 * We can see that these 'windows' occur in reverse order, and Klaus has guessed that they are windows into/from the future. But his conclusions surrounding Agatha are not as reliable as his others have been. Is it possible that they are windows into/from the past? (Once you have time windows, the question of past and future starts to become fuzzy anyway.)

The "Other" is (was?) really just the old Heterodynes.
Lucrezia is clearly a scheming power-hungry person, but this whole mess isn't entirely her fault. She just got curious while the boys were off adventuring and let loose some old stuff that had been hanging around for who knows how long. Since she married Bill, the castle/machines decided they could recognize her as a Heterodyne (after all, the castle is somewhat less than saintly, it would love the chaos). Of course, she was more than happy to run with the idea, apparently.
 * First: the Meaningful Name. Heterodyne is really just some gratuitous Greek that means "other power". Now, Greek being Greek, depending on the story this could stretch as far in one direction as "powered by the other" or in the other to "power over the other" - but whatever, there's clearly a plot-important connection to the Other.
 * Second: the revenants - at least one of them - recognize Agatha as the Other, well before possession by Lucrezia (if that really is the Other). Probably the Heterodyne bloodline being the key.
 * Also the Mechanicsburg citizens seem suspiciously loyal to even the idea of a real Heterodyne, almost as fanatical as the "normal" revenants in Sturmhalten.
 * Oh, and the Jaegers have been around for how long, still loyal to the Heterodynes? Probably revenant prototypes, they're clearly not your "normal" constructs. They also recognize Agatha instantly.
 * Third: Heterodyne history. The "Heterodyne Boys" are popular heroes, the older ones... not so much liked at all. If they developed these machines, would it even have been noticed in the general chaos they caused?
 * Fourth: Claus predicted Lucrezia would end up trying something. Messing with ancient Heterodyne toys because she got bored seems like just the sort of something she would try.
 * The Geisterdammen clearly have to fit in here somehow, that's the biggest problem.
 * Possibly related: the hive queen sings. See: http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20040607
 * Seems to be Jossed at least in regards to the loyalty of the Jaegers, who would'nt be loyal to the people who treat you like you're a person instead of a tool to be thrown away.

The Other is, in fact...
Lucrezia Mongfish. Not a time-travelling version, not an ancient demon whatever-the-fuck from beyond the Moon possessing her, but the genuine one and only Lucrezia fucking Mongfish. Utterly mad, I know, but this is WMG.

The Other is going to pull a Grand Theft Me on Zola, forcing Agatha to make a Sadistic Choice.
Mainly, whether or not to give Zola her locket in order to suppress The Other. While this would seem like the third option in a classic "Kill the possessed victim Y/N?" scenario, giving up the locket would put her at risk of being completely overwhelmed by Spark-induced insanity. This would also be risky because Zola may not be as good at suppressing The Other, even with the locket's help -- and if The Other managed to wrest control while she was wearing the accursed thing, naturally its first move would be to smash it. But if she doesn't try it, even as a stopgap measure while working on a better third option, we'd be right back to "Kill Y/N?"... and how would Gil react?

The Other's master plan is an evil Assimilation Plot
The Other/Lucrezia Mongfish has advanced knowledge of downloading and switching consciousnesses and minds, as seen with the Summoning Engine and the lab under Castle Heterodyne. The Hive Engines produce slaver wasps that prevent anyone infected from disobeying Lucrezia or her daughter. Also, Agatha's dingbots are self-replicating and have the spark themselves. If The Other gets full control of both Agatha and her dingbots, and combines them with the other two concepts, on a more massive scale, she could overwrite the entire planet. 1) The dingbots would act as a Grey Goo vanguard, dissembling cities and armies and then rebuilding them into more dingbots, with the added bonus of more summoning engines (they can only focus on one minor project besides replicating themselves at any given time, it seems). 2) The slaver wasps take over all the humans that were not scrapped for parts (though the dingbots have not been seen to do that at all yet). 3) The Other/Agatha/Lucrezia commands all dingbots and revenants to have their minds overwritten with her's, if possible. All Sparks that might resist are killed for good measure. Then, the dingbots and revenants, now extensions of The Other, rebuild the world into Lucreziaburg, which is also an extension of The Other (intelligent like Castle Heterodyne). She showed them all.

The Other is similar to the Reapers from Mass Effect
The Other really is T'Otheron, Dragon King of Mars, Du Medd did not make him up (mostly), and his plan is similar to that of Mass Effect's Reapers. The martian dragons sent the Spark to Earth countless years ago, so the humans-turned-Sparks would build impressive and useful biological and mechanical constructs. When the humans have built everything the dragons need, the dragons activate "The Other" causing a program loyal to them to manifest in someone and take out any threats that might cause problems for their harvesting. Then, the dragons come through a portal, and strip the Earth of all life and machines. They use the parts to build more dragons.

The Other went back in time and created itself
An incarnation of Lucrezia did not turn evil and start the war. Rather, an evil Lucrezia sent her consciousness back in time, into her past-self's brain. So, the Other just came into existence.

The Other didn't vanish mysteriously, it found a capable proxy.
Baron Klaus Wulfenbach didn't fight The Other to a standstill. He got infected, and now his campaign to force order on Europa -- by dominating increasingly large parts of it -- is a cover for doing The Other's work for it.
 * More-or-less jossed. There is the fact that the Other disappeared before Klaus returned - IE, as far as is known he didn't fight it to a standstill, but there is also the question of.

The Other didn't vanish mysteriously, it's already won.
Which means that the characters aren't trying to avert disaster, but actually attempting to overthrow the Evil Overlord.

MASSIVE SPOILER! This page reveals that the early revenants. Total direct control isn't needed if no one has a meaningful way to combat or contradict its wishes.

The Other was created by Lucrezia's parents
Mr. and Mrs. Mongfish had three beautiful, sparky daughters. only two of them were evil. Their family's reputation hinged on making sure all three were evil, so they managed to create an artificial, evil personality to implant in their good daughter Lucrezia. They called it "Other Lucrezia" and raised her like they did the rest of their daughters. But as this daughter got older, the other personality split from Lucrezia's real personality. It was at this time, Lucrezia learned of her other personality. She decided to separate her personalities once and for all. The good one remained in her body, and the bad one was stored in a device, ready to be copied downloaded into a suitable body. The Knights of Jove became Guardian's of "Other Lucrezia" while "real Lucrezia" married Bill Heterodyne and bore him a son. When she was pregnant with Agatha, One of the Knights of Jove got "Other Lucrezia" a body and it attacked the castle. It saw how good it's former body had become, and was disgusted and no longer wanted anything to do with her, so she dropped the "Lucrezia" part of her name. The Body the other was store in was destroyed in the attack, but as long as that machine has the ability to copy and download the other's personality, it will live forever.
 * Explain the naughty flashback scene.
 * Lucrezia Mongfish was good by the standards of the Mongfish family, not by the standards of the Heterodyne Boys.

The other is Lucifer Mongfish.
The Other was a spark on the Mongfish family line, but according to Klaus, showed far more skill than Lucrezia. If I remember right, she worked with her father, explaining how she would know how to work The Other's machines. Her father used her to control the Geisters since they already worshipped her, and the ones that deflected did so because they learned she was just a puppet. It would give a motivation for the attack on Castle Heterodyne- he could hardly risk her telling them everything. And Lucrezia's a smart girl who would have realized that; according to the castle itself she betrayed the Heterodynes, but it also recalls her putting a fair deal of effort into making both a functioing backup of the castle system and a fierce protector for her son. That's awfully conflicting. The airship accident Dr. Mongfish died in that Zola mentions could be why The Other dropped off the face of the planet. Could be where Barry and Bill caught up to him.

= Jäger powers, becoming Jäger, general Jäger matters =

The Jägers draw some sort of power from their hats.
This is why "any plan where you lose your hat is a bad plan" and also why Jenka wants Gil to wear a big hat with his name on it.
 * Alternatively, the Heterodyne that first made the Jägerkin had some sort of strange hat fetish, which he passed on to his creations. Given the other strange things that Sparks do, this isn't that far fetched.
 * It also conveniently gives the artist license to the full range of historical European regimental headwear in all of it's wild and wacky glory. Many of those hats are even goofier than the jaeger hats depicted, so anyone seeing you wearing one in public would know "There goes a brave man."
 * Interesting to note, either one or two (depends how you count Goomblast's skullcap) of the Jäger generals are hatless.
 * Krizhan's hat could be the one that Gilgamesh 'inherited' along with the rest of his outfit in Mamma Gkika's. The Jägers probably changed it slightly. This leads to an interesting conflict of interest if Krizhan sees Gil wearing his hat.
 * If anything, Gkika's knife/hairpin thing could be considered her hat.
 * Mama Gkika doesn't wear a hat in her "human" guise because she is specifically NOT dressed as a Jager. The hairpin/knife is just part of her generally outlandish dress sense.
 * However, Maxim gives up his hat to bury with Lars and still seems to function with no problem.
 * Quod erat demonstratum. Amusing thought, but it's more military vanity than anything metaphysical.
 * What if it's a sort of fail-safe? The jaegers were designed as soldiers by a line of bloodthirsty geniuses--presumably, there's not an easy way to limit their destructive impulses. Therefore, it could be that the jaegers are given hats, and the masters say to them "Any time you cause enough chaos to lose your hat, you've done a bad thing." Easy method of control. It also explains why they gave Lars a hat: He did something "worthy of jaeger," and he didn't have a hat, so they didn't want it to look like he had messed up.
 * The jaegers could work on similar principles to warhammers orcs, hats DO increase their power the same way that painting things red makes them go faster.
 * With new info from recent pages the Hetrodynes made the hat fetish exist to keep their army from killing each other for fun. Take hats, not heads.
 * It's heavily implied that they are required to take the hat from their enemy's still cooling corpse.
 * In the above linked comic filler arc, it's stated that it's possible to steal it or trick him out of it, which (for a Jaeger would be more impressive), but the normal way is to make sure the original owner no longer needs it.
 * Maxim makes considerable efforts to obtain Old Man Death's hat, which seems to be quite sufficient for the purpose despite OMD being human, not Jager

The Jaegerbrau is more reliable than is being let-on.
The casualty figures for users of Jaegerbrau are artificially inflated due to the early Heterodynes not selecting for physical compatability when chosing Jaeger candidates, they were chosing for Loyalty. The Jaegermonsters are soldiers to their bones and consider things like espirit de corps and regimental honor to be things not unlike their very life's blood and breath. This keeps the Jaegers in-line, not any kind of implanted compulsion, but their own sense of duty and loyalty.
 * Also, Vole may be a result of a Heterodyne seeing what would happen if the 'Perfect' physical specimen were given Jaegerbrau, the result being a tall adonis-like Jaeger with few extranious monster-y features.. and precious little use for the Jaegertroth.
 * There certainly doesn't seem to be any "physical compulsion" aspect to any oaths they've taken, what with Oggie, Maxim, and Dimo sneaking into Mechanicsburg. On the other hand, we know Vole was a proper Jaeger once ("Hyu is no longer a Jaeger!"), and Maxim and Jenka are also not terribly monstrous.
 * Well he was probably too scared to act out while Heterodynes were still running around. Especially the older ones. I mean would you betray them? Once they disappeared and Wulfenbach came to power Vole took his chance. Maxim and Jenka might just be both loyal to the Heterodynes and lucky enough to not get too monstrous from Jaegerisation. It's not like loyalty and compatibility would be mutually exclusive.
 * It's said at some point that Vole turned against the Jaegertroth due to a personal grudge against the Heterodynes and not because of any biological characteristic. From what This Troper can remember he was thrown out of the Heterodynes' service (presumably as a punishment for something) and he subsequently abandoned his oath and swore vengeance on the family.
 * According to Tarvek, Vole tried to kill Barry and Bill for being weak - i.e. not enough like the old Heterodynes. This would indicate that Vole approved of his former masters because of what they let him do, rather than because of who they were - more or less what I would expect from someone with all of the typical Jaeger aggression and none of the typical Jaeger loyalty.

The Jägers are sparky, or would have been.
The creation of Jägers using Jägerdraught only has a 30% success rate, tops. The first Hetrodyne drank the water and became something very like a Jäger. As he was a Hetrodyne we can assume he was a Spark. Perhaps the Jägers, when human, were (weak) Sparks, or Sparks that had never broken through. Drinking the stuff causes a breakthrough and mutation, redirecting the power.

Both Sparks and Jäger are pretty durable, Jägers more so. Their speech bubbles are similar to a Sparks when they are in the madness place, AND both are immune to Slaver Wasps.

The Jäger Generals do have hats.
They're just too big to wear. Look at the one for impressing them and defending the town.

Gil is turning into a Jaeger

 * The "bad side effects" of Jaeger Battledraught on humans hasn't been described in any detail, and the only clues we have are a few pages of Gil acting uncharacteristically irrational. His voice bubble also gets all spikey, though not quite like it does when his Spark is showing. Though it could merely be a sight-gag, his teeth look peculiarly sharp. Mamma Gkika warns him to avoid losing his cool, saying "his face might stick like that". It is thus a distinct possibility that a spike in adrenaline (or pineal whatsists, or who knows what...) could trigger a reaction resulting in his transformation into a Jaeger. Given the sheer saturation of the universe with mad super-science, the supposition that Jaegers were created from humans through some kind of Super Serum isn't improbable. It would also serve to explain how Oggie's great-great-grandson (aka, Phil Foglio) is somehow human.
 * Word of God has confirmed that Jagers are transformed humans, made by drinking Jagerdraught. Whether this is the same as Jager Battledraught is unclear.
 * No offense, but Gil's been drinking lots of weird stuff lately. There's got to be more to it than just drinking a single bout of whatever the magic potion is, or else the adventurous half of Mechanicsburg would ALL be Jagers.
 * Which is not out of the question entirely. New Jagars have to come from somewhere, and making them out of Mechanisburegians ensures pre-existing loyalty to the Hetrodynes.
 * Klaus would not risk his only son and heir on the unpredictability of Jägerbrau, even if he had the formula. Aside from what, does Gil look the least bit Jägerish in the time window? G'wan, look again, I'll wait for you to get back.
 * Gil's strength seems to have increased somewhat, I think. But then Mama Gkika says that Klaus may have more of the Jaegers' secrets than he lets on.
 * Can this troper point out that, recently, Gil has (to quote Agatha), "got shot, and then threw a clank across the room. And now you're insisting that you're fine." Does this sound like a Jager to anyone else?
 * As of 19/11/09, His evil grin is even more Jaegerish than the usual evil grins given by the non-Jaeger cast. I'd say plausable. It would certainly make it seem like Gil was dead, as per Othar's twitter. The Time windows where he's fine? Agatha made an anti-Jaegerbraw somewhere between him becoming a Jaeger (Likely of whatever color he is when the Si Vales is done) and when he ends up in drag (ish).

Oggie is only part-Jager.
Aside from Mama Gkika, he's the only flesh-coloured Jager we've encountered; and whatever that ram's horn thing is, he's only got it on one side of his head. His lineage clearly becomes diluted somewhere down the line, judging by his great-great-grandson - who's to say it hasn't already started with him?
 * There seem to be all kinds of Jager lineages with different skin tones - the Orks, the vaguely-drow-ones like Jenka with the bear, the purple ones, et cetera. Since about the only constants of the Jagers are "speaking vith Funetik Aksent", "being bound by their oath" and "enjoying breaking stuff far too much", assuming that one with pink skin and one horn isn't full Jager blood...well...like Stosh, who was clean-shaven, pretty much humanoid and appeared to be blond. Some of the early ones have distinctly simian appearance, with bow legs and elongated arms, but this seems to have been less conspicuous lately.
 * Jagers seem to be pretty much any shape, size or colour that they see fit. Even in their first appearance in black-and-white, there were obviously different ones. This is probably the reason for the elaborately non-uniform, cod-European "uniforms - ie that there is no single Jager style, although some wear unit-specific uniforms (such as the laminar leg armour and flat-crowned hats worn by Klaus' bodyguard) and some, like Da Boyz or Jenka, wear just about anything that takes their fancy
 * Again, there are no part-Jagers. See below point.
 * His great-great-grandson isn't proof of anything. Word of God has said (somewhere) that Jager children are 100% human.
 * Interview with the girl!Maxim at the con. It's in the Wikia.
 * Besides, there's no reason to assume that Oggie fathered any children as a Jager. It could be that Oggie had a family before becoming a Jager, and that his great-great-grandson is descended from a child fathered while Oggie was still human. That's how I always understood it.
 * No such thing as 'part-Jäger'. The Brau either killed you (90%), drove you mad or feebleminded (9%) or turned you into a super-soldier. Kinda like the Wild Card virus, really....
 * I don't recall seeing anything anywhere that says that Jagers can, or can't father children as Jagers. The pseudo-Jager bar girls seem to find Da Boyz attractive, and it seems to be reciprocated. Mama Gkika is VERY feminine in a sort of Wild West, Frenchy-from-Destry-rides-again sort of way.

One of the Jager family trees is based on Ork DNA
It explains everything! They're green, they have tusks, they speak with a Funetik Aksent, they really enjoy big shootas clenk gunz, they're nearly impossible to kill, and they're never happier than when fighting. It's just that one of the old Heterodynes combined a few Ork spores into a huge bio-experiment, giving us the Jagers we know and love.
 * It's possible, but unlikely. Still, one of the recent Dark Heresy splats mentions a (mostly) Feudal World (called Heterodyne) that serves as an Adeptus Mechanicus experimentation base. But remember-not all the Jaegers are green.

The Jägers originally adopted Nice Hats to make them more recognizable.
Jäger appearance is all over the map, so if you see only one or two of them you might just think they're some random construct. But if you see a dangerous-looking humanoid wearing a fancy hat of whatever variety, you immediately have reason to consider that you may be dealing with a Jäger. The association with their honor would have come over time.

Jagers were created in part by a stable timeloop for this time.
Jagers like to eat bugs. Slavers are bugs. They were created to fight slaverwasps, and other stuff.
 * And Jägerkin are immune to slaver wasps. Noize!

Anyone who turns Jaeger gets the accent.
It's not just a sociolinguistic thing, and it might not be just because of the fangs. There are certain things the Jaegerbrau changes in consistent ways (biologically improbable muscle tone and bone density, pointy teeth, that sort of thing), maybe changes to the structure of the tongue and the top of the ventral side of the throat are one of them.

Jaegers don't automatically get sharp teeth (except for the ones that do).
Most of them have to file their teeth into points. If they didn't, they would have a disadvantage against the Jaegers with tusks, the other Jaegers who do file their teeth, and anything with naturally pointy teeth (as well as being more attractive, in the opinions of the Jaegers who care about being aesthetically pleasing in ways other than intimidation). Some sort of increased bone density and/or constantly growing teeth keep this from being a structural problem (and they may also file their teeth to keep them from growing uncomfortably long; Dimo, for an exception that implies the rule, doesn't mind having longer teeth than most). The exception is Jaegers with tusks (like the General). Those are unusual but not extraordinary side effects, like Oggie's horn.
 * Confirmed by Mamma Gkika: Jägers get variable properties and "nize" teeth apparently are part of those variables.

Jaegerbrau works differently for girls.
It completely skips the "9% go feebleminded or gibbering" and cuts down significantly on the 1% that get turned into Super Soldiers, but the neurological results (most importantly the insanely strong loyalty pattern) work out differently. That, or it's only recently that feminism has gotten to the point where more than a very rare Heterodyne (or the Heterodyne who ran the first clinical trials of the Jagerbrau) could consider a woman a viable candidate for the brew, no matter that she might be able to outmatch some of the weaker post-Jagerbrau males even as a human.

Jagerbrau works differently for Sparks.
It is (I think) canon that strong Sparks are just plain physically better. They're also neurologically different in a way that makes them incompatible with the Slaver Wasps. Perhaps the Brau makes Sparks physically better without mutating them (much), and drastically cuts down on the risk of dying horribly or going uselessly insane. Perhaps the Heterodynes generally never bothered wasting Sparky test subjects and underlings by turning them into foot soldiers with a 99% chance of never being a useful spark again, and the ones who did (just to see what would happen) declared the experiment either tainted by improperly made Jagerbrau or boring because nothing interesting happened (this may, of course, explain the Unstoppable Airman Higgs).

Mamma Gkika is an extremely senior Jaeger, from before the Heterodynes really bothered using the Jagerbrau on a massive scale.
She doesn't have the hat thing (unless her hairpin is her hat), she has human-pink skin (except when it is green, blue or grey), and she expresses loyalty to the Heterodynes the way a human would, rather than the way a Jaeger would (not to say that the Oath is coerced, just that it is... ahm... "strengthened"). Presumably, she was made with an early formula of the brew and, because she wasn't put in the army, didn't get the "hats, not heads, hats=very big deal" training.
 * Except Mamma IS a General (it's canon) and does have a hat with her uniform when she comes to meet the new Heterodyne.
 * That page was released after the guess was submitted. It Josses the hat-stuff and the extrapolation that she doesn't have a hat because she wasn't a soldier, and confirms the authority (and probably but not necessarily the seniority), but doesn't say anything about when she was created in the scheme of things.

Jagerbrau works differently for Skifandrians.
And Mamma Gkika was a wanderer from Skifander who decided that the Jagerbrau was something she should drink, and that the warnings not to drink it were an affront to her awesomeness as a Skifandrian. Oggie might be half-Skifandrian.

= Spark matters =

Sparks are just BETTER when they are in the Madness Place, it even gives them access to genius outside their purviews.
Like, bringing Spark level Genius to bear against predicting an enemy's moves and how to move their own bodies to maximize damage. Neatly explaining their occasional superhuman abilities in a fight.
 * All nigh-on superhuman combat ability so far has been shown by people either highly trained (Zeetha as a Warrior Princess, Violetta, Zola and Tarvek by the Smoke Knights, Gilgamesh as a badass put through a Training From Hell by his father) or drugged with a super-powered stimulant (Moveit). Sparks do tend to be physically powerful and have fast reflexes, but these abilities aren't necessarily beyond human capacity.

Sparks are not limited to intellectual enhancements.
They also have enhancements of other nervous system functions such as reflexes, perception and coordination; every major Spark that has been shown is also a Badass Normal when it comes to physical combat, taking out Jaegermonsters and War Clanks single-handedly. Additionally, when Agatha's De-Sparking medallion was fully functional, it make her a klutz as well as limiting her intellect and concentration.
 * Well, first off, the spark has been shown to be able to cause "mad" fits such as what Gil used to defeat Vole and to intimidate Wooster. And we already know that the spark grants unearthly charisma (especially the Heterodyne spark, though we've also seen Gil draw upon it for such and most sparks we've seen are ruling something and visa-versa). But don't rule out that Klaus is probably decked out with physical enhancements (that scar across his chest in the flashback with Lucrezia looks amazingly similar to that on, say, Punch), Gil may be slightly as well, and both have extreme training. But even as I type that my words ring hollow, as in all other cases the Jagermonsters seem nigh-invincible and the cast page even describes them as "possibly immortal", yet the Wulfenbachs have both beaten them up bare-handed. Perhaps the spark gives some recipients more of one gift than another; the Heterodynes got charisma out to wazoo while the wulfenbachs are superhuman in a way that surpasses even the best living war-machines. We already know that some get a longer or shorter stick overall.
 * In Klaus' case, The Secret Blueprints hint (confirmed by Word of God) that he is a construct like Punch, in his case built from the three sons (all Sparks) of the Wulfenbach family, who were blown up in a lab accident; also recent comics hint that Klaus has somehow used certain of the "Jagermonster secrets" to enhance Gil. Thus we can't use either of them as the baseline as to how a Jager compares against a "typical" Spark.
 * If Klaus is a construct, it adds a chilling context to the seemingly offhand joke made by a Jager at the University (about the time Dr. Beetle was killed): "If Gil fails his father's tests, he'll be broken down for parts!".
 * Oh, Klaus is definitely a construct, and yeah - he knows how it works from the inside. The Word of God though didn't say he was made up from his brothers; that was a suggestion in the Secret Blueprints that's been latched onto as a Plausible Theory.
 * It would be simpler to assume that he, as a friend of the Heterodyne Boys, would have been rebuilt by the boys when he got too badly hurt during one of their adventures. This would especially fit the "construct like Punch" description, as Punch was also made by the Heterodyne Boys.
 * Mama Gkika did comment that the Jaeger healing potion she gave to Gil did work unusually well on him.
 * I think Gil and Agatha have both demonstrated that a Spark's physical powers are also due to the force of their personalities. Even Vole hesitated to face Gil when he was 'in his madness place' and Agatha's powers didn't fully manifest until she got really, really mad. It's pretty hard to prevail physically over people who can actually bend reality itself by sheer force of will.
 * Part of it's just plain berserker strength.
 * I think it's mostly berserker strength, backed up with mad science steroids and exercise routines. Imagine if all those crazy adds actually worked...

The spark is partialy social in nature.
Whilst there are some people just born with it there are also those with the innate ability lieing dormant but it can be brought to the fore by the presence of other sparks. I base this on 5 points:


 * 1) Ordinary people who spend a lot of time around sparks (like the citizens of Mechenburg) can develop sparkish tendencies.
 * 2) We are given the impression by Master Payne that rural sparks tend to be less powerful.
 * 3) Many of the most powerful sparks have university educations and many seem to hold university posts.
 * 4) Merlot's current speech bubbles are the ones used for sparks, yet he is not supposed to be one.
 * 5) Strong emotion can trigger a breakthrough.


 * Interesting concept, but:
 * 1.) Mechanicsburg has been ruled by probably the strongest Spark family in existence for hundreds of years. There's a good chance a large portion of its commonfolk have a sliver of Spark blood in them, whether Heterodyne or otherwise.
 * 2.) The way I see it, rural Sparks are not less powerful per se, they just don't have access to the knowledge and equipment that cities and especially universities provide. Similarly why Leonardo da Vinci, undoubtedly an amazing genius, never built a functioning space-ship.
 * 3.) Universities are institutes of higher learning and science. Sparks are amazingly skilled scientists. Where else would you find them?
 * 4.) He may or may not be a (minor) Spark, but he's definitely absolutely insane. That does things to a man's voice.
 * 5.) No comment here.


 * In fact, Sparks need not be scientists. It seems more like they apply the Spark to the skills they already possess. It is implied that witches were Sparks who used the Spark to make their love potions and whatnots work. Also, the Chef from Master Payne's Travelling Heterodyne Show is a Spark who works solely in the medium of pies. No real dent in your argument, but I thought I should bring it up.

The madness place is contagious.
In the last few pages, while discussing possibilities for Tarvek's treatment, Agatha, Gil, and Tarvek have all slipped into the wavy-lined "madness place" speech bubbles - even though Gil is clearly trying to stay clear headed, and Tarvek is dying. I propose that one Spark going into the madness place sets off other Sparks (perhaps only the particularly strong Sparks) in the area, either by some biological agent or in a purely psychological process, in a similar way to how yawns are "contagious."

Agatha will become a light.
The 'spark of brilliance' is a transition point, which can branch off into a 'flame', or a 'Light'. Flames bring illumination and heat, but burn you if you get too close, like Madboys and girls. They build monsters, death-machines, and enslave the populace for fun, but at the end of the day, they get radio. Electric lights, on the other hand, steadily emit light, aren't that dangerous, and are fueled by electricity, like Agatha. She makes things that are practically useful, driving her 'minions' into constructive work, instead of destruction. Also, she eased through her 'break-through', and didn't go nuts.
 * On the other hand, she did once design a merry-go-round capable of levelling a small town, and for every dingbot or coffee engine there's a death ray, each one bigger than the last.

Sparks can't build anything precise
Or more precisely, can't build anything that requires tight tolerances, math or precision. There may be exceptions to this, of course, but as a general rule, Sparks are chaotic and build things in a chaotic fashion. The world still runs on steam, because internal combustion engines cannot be built to sufficient tolerances. We don't see complicated electronics, because that requires ultra-pure silicon and cleanrooms. No nuclear weapons, either, for the same reasons. Or it could be something slightly different, but a bit broader.
 * Sparks are chaotic and this prevents them from building anything that requires significant calculations, precision, or repeated experimentation. This is a world of mad science, not the scientific method. Discoveries are made almost solely by accident. Crazy things are built, yes, but there is a lot of stagnation. The nature of a Spark precludes proper science, in favour of SCIENCE!, which is not very effective at determining underlying causes or doing any sort of directed research. The nature of a Spark also prevents them from building anything particularly precise or requiring tight tolerance. Not a very good explanation, but I think you can get the gist of it.
 * This is likely why Wulfenbach is so powerful. Remember, his specialization is in analyzing other Sparks' inventions, determining how they work, and then implementing that tech across his empire. Sparks make inventions, Wulfenbach takes said inventions and turns them into technology.

= The Unstoppable Airman Higgs =

Airman Higgs is a descendant of Lancer from Fate/stay night
Check out each one's Crowing Moment of Awesome. I dare you say that it doesn't run in the family
 * Is Higgs Irish?
 * * Backhands above statement with Wrench* That doesn't even qualify as a question in this troper's opinion. Even if he Isn't Irish, they can still be related. This IS An Alternate reality to our own... even if this was our own (see above theory) it could STILL happen.
 * Chuck Norris once read one episode of Girl Genius. The result was Airman Higgs.

The Unstoppable Airman Higgs is Bill Heterodyne.
Just look at all the amazing things he's done. It's hard to believe that an ordinary person could do them. He's clearly got mechanical knowledge, super-strength, and knows the Castle.

As to the physical facts, he has about the same build as the Bill in the sepia flashback. He and Barry invented Agatha's locket, so it isn't out of the realm of possibility that they could make a stronger version that would supress his Spark. In this theory, he returned at the same time Barry did, and joined up with the Wulfenbach army as a way of quietly taking a look around. Now that he's encountered Agatha, he's trying to protect her without revealing his identity. Presumably, age has changed his face slightly (Possibly with the help of SCIENCE! Plastic Surgery). Combine that with a different hairstyle, attitude, and clothes, and if he stays in the background nobody will pay close attention to him.


 * Hmm, I'd be more inclined to believe that the unstoppable Airman Higgs is Klaus Barry Heterodyne, who is not as dead and buried as people think. This also explains why he does not look exactly like Bill AND why he has the same color hair as Agatha.
 * If the above "this is happening nowish" WMG is true, that makes Higgs/KBH a 30something (30 exactly in 2002) which seems about right.
 * Oooh, I like that idea. What if some test revealed that young Klaus had all the heroic traits of his father, but lacked the spark (he seems a skilled engineer, but the closest we've come to seeing him build something sparky is rigging an autopilot). Since the castle may have been set to kill a non-spark Heterodyne, Bill faked his son's death and sent him away to be trained as a hero.
 * Unlikely, given the information provided in-universe. Klaus disappeared for only about 4 years, and KBH was born halfway through his disappearance. Klaus has also being back for less than 20 years. So KBH would be about Gil's age, not in his 30's like Higgs. Of course, time travel, a series of tragic (yet hilarious) accidents, or some period of rapid aging could account for the difference.
 * I suspect that he did in fact die, but was revived by Jagerdraught, which brought him back with Jager-like strength and speed (and accent, once his control slips) but burnt away his spark. He has been hanging about Klaus because its the safest place in Europe to be.

The Unstoppable Higgs is a predecessor to Punch and Judy.
As above, mostly. Bill and Barry's homonculi are definitely the strong, silent type (which Heterodynes themselves tend not to be) and the castle's reaction to recognizing its masters would likely be stronger than "I know you!" One of its fellow servants, not so much. It's also a more direct explanation of his superhuman physical prowess.
 * A related theory, Higgs is a construct made by Barry to protect Klaus and potentially Agatha, and to keep an eye out for the Other.
 * Given that this strip suggests he's far older than he looks, this sounds the most likely of the current theories.

The Unstoppable Airman Higgs is a nephew or younger brother of Lucrezia Mongfish.
The Mongfish family had evidently been involved with the Storm King plot for some time before the whole Other business, so it's not unreasonable that a member of that family might get access to Muse-related data, explaining Higgs' familiarity with Otilia's components. A Mongfish married in to the Heterodyne family, so it's not unreasonable that other members of the family might have visited before the Kestle-Shattering Kaboom, explaining Kestilia's recognition of Higgs. The Mongfishes were very gifted in biology, explaining Higgs' superhuman attributes. Lucifer Mongfish had at least three daughters (Theo's mom was "one of the less famous Mongfish daughters", meaning that there were at least two other than Lucrezia), two of whom had Names to Run Away From Really Fast (Lucrezia, Serpentina) and (most likely) personalities to match, so a lone male nephew or younger brother would probably learn from an early age to stay low-key and hidden lest he be subjected to the Mad Science version of forced dress-up/tea parties/whatever else the girls could find to torment him with, explaining how Higgs has managed to avoid drawing any attention despite his great talent and ability. Anyone associated with the Mongfishes enough to know the truth about The Other but who opposed it for some reason would want to support Baron Wulfenbach but not let him know of said association, explaining why Higgs is a Wulfenbach airman. Finally, Lucrezia and Higgs are both blond.

The Unstoppable Airman Higgs is actually Jolly Jack Tar
Trelawney Thorpe's sidekick, who NOONE thinks is for real? Trewlawney will certainly come into play in the inevitable England arc, and being the actionsurvivor hypercompetant sidekick of one of the greatest heros of the age would explain many things.

The Unstoppable Bosun Higgs is actually a Time Lord
I can't believe everybody missed this one. A strip as genre savvy as Girl Genius has got to have a Time Lord. English accent? Check. Always in the right place at the right time? Check. Able to recover from being stabbed in the heart? Check. Looks like he's trying to pick up Zeetha as a Companion, too. (Lila anyone?) Most probably a descendent of Agatha's from the future. Also its funner to call him Bosun Higgs, you know, like the particle... (Higgs Boson)

The Sparks are actually subconscious Reality Warpers, and their technology is all Magic-Powered Pseudoscience and Magic Feathers.
Explains how their devices can selectively violate the laws of physics pretty much at will.
 * Well YEAH...

Higgs is a construct meant for espionage.
Likely been in "cold storage" for some time and taken out to keep tabs on all the major players in this plot to install a fake Heterodyne. Explains, among other things, why he saved Bang along with Klaus and why he also answers to Tarvek. If Higgs is gonna be any kind of important to the plot, there's gonna be a major problem with loyalties later on.

Higgs is a variant Jaeger
The muse/castle's comments suggest that he's older than he looks, and he's ridiculously strong and durable, just like a Jaeger. Maybe he drank a slightly different recipe of the Jaegerbrau or it was a .00001% chance that he would look like and speak like a normal human.
 * Now that Higgs has started talking like a Jaeger, this seems more likely.
 * At first, This Troper just assumed he was Central European (you know, serving the Baron Wulfenbach?), but given what he says in this comic, I'm gonna have to go with I Knew It! (Well, not 'knew it' in the sense of having the slightest idea, but I knew there was something I didn't know.)
 * He no longer has the accent, but he seems to have retained some of the speech patterns.
 * Or he rode with the Jägers back in the day, like Old Man Death.
 * Or Higgs is half Jager
 * Part-jäger have been Jossed. Jägerspawn are all normal human.
 * Or Higgs is a normal human in the process of going through the Jäger transformation process. He was normal on the airship, got really banged up during the rescue, was taken to Mama Gkika's to be patched up, and was in such bad shape that even the Jäger battledraught wasn't enough, and they had to give him the Jägerbrau to save him. It's implied from the scene with Gil at Mama's that anger causes problems for those who have drunk Jäger potions, and Higgs, who is normally unflappable, does finally lose his cool when Zeetha is stabbed.
 * Or Higgs is a fifth Jager General, explaining why he's highly intelligent, human-looking and able to speak without the overdone German accent.
 * Now that it's been revealed that there are actually seven Jägergenerals and one is in hiding and that some Jägers can change the colour of their skin, this is becoming more and more likely.
 * Or Higgs is Vlad (the Blasphemous) Heterodyne, who first brewed (and tasted) the Jaegerdraught.
 * Last panel. "He's a smart guy." Pretty schmott guy, anyone? Also, Nice Hat.
 * He also put Gil's special hat on to convince that crowd.
 * I do Hereby note that Higgs ALWAYS has that hat on. We have NEVER seen it off him, even when he gets stabbed, kicked, punched, beat on, etc. by Zola... the hat stays on. When he is at Mama's, bandaged up, covered in hurts, smoking his pipe with his shirt off... the hat is still on his head. The man has some connection to the Jaeger... Maybe he was an attempt to make a Jaeger that had a higher success rate? Instead of the process by which less than 30% survive, they wanted something with a higher success rate so that they could have more Jaegers (they being older Heterodynes) and Higgs was the result?

Higgs is a Wulfenbach
Based solely on facial resemblance to Klaus in the last panel here. Note; it distinctly changes shape to appear that way.
 * I don't know, people who are really really annoyed tend to look a lot different, though your idea has merit.

Higgs is The Stig of Top Gear
Some say that his elbows don't bend...and that he is imperturbable in the face of staggeringly absurd danger while showing a taste for wearing all white...all we know is, he's called Airman Higgs.

Higgs is Bill Heterodyne.
Just take a look at the flashbacks involving the Heterodyne Boys, and compare to Higgs' face. It would also explain how he could find his way to Lucrezia's bedroom (remembering that Lucrezia and Bill were married), and how he could be so Badass in combat. We know that Klaus had to patched together after "coming back", and that at least one of the Heterodyne boys did. He also know that revivification can lead to varying degrees of memory loss (hence why he doesn't recognise his daughter, and, for that matter, why he's serving as Airman/3c in the Wulfenbach air navy). The only problem is that the Jaegerkin don't recognise him as a Heterodyne, but that may be an artefact of whatever happened before he "came back", or the revive process, or he might just eat a lot of garlic...

Higgs is the original Heterodyne
And has been living in/near castle heterodyne since it was built. Higgs is showing signs of being a Jager, but has almost 'no' monstrous features. The first Heterodyne to reach the sight of Mechanicsburg drank the waters of the river, but did not undergo a Jager-like transformation. The Jagerdraught was developed later to create (mentally) inferior super soldiers.
 * This seems to make some sense, but my theory is that he's one of the originals, but not "the" original. The castle knows him and chats with him, but doesn't mention it after he beats the living tar out of it. Although my other theories are even more far-fetched... I like your thinking.

Higgs is a Cylon
What?

Higgs is a Jaeger
It's not just that he's Made of Iron. In the comics pages from 01/28 and 1/31/2011, he refers to Tarvek as a "smart guy" (standard Jaegerspeak for Sparks) and seems overly concerned (given the situation) about being seen as a deserter.

Higgs is a darker and edgier Barry Heterodyne
Well, multiple characters are anticipating his return, and in the old Heterodyne stories, Barry is the one commonly shipped with exotic high priestesses. Would that explain Higgs's relationship with Zeetha?

Airman Higgs is Agatha's brother
In this comic, part of the castle recognizes him. He's blond, like Agatha, Higgs begins with the same letter as Heterodyne, and he's awesome.
 * And they've got the same hairflippy thing, like how
 * However Higgs also mentions an old Heterodyne performing a similar experiment to Agatha's, suggesting a long lifespan. Of course that could just mean he's an ancestor. Or that time travel was involved.

Higgs is one of the Heterodyne Boys
Does this even need to be addressed. Look at all that he has done.

Higgs comes with the Dyne.
Higgs belongs to the family of priests and priestesses who took care of the Dyne spring. The family was around before the Heterodynes arrived in Mechanicsburg. One of them showed it to the first Heterodyne. Higgs became unstoppable when Egregious unstoppered the Dyne and Higgs was rushed into the waters by the increased current. He kept his hat, though he had a different one then. It is all in the comic.

Higgs used to be a Spark and a Heterodyne.
We know it's most likely he was at Mamma Gkika's to be patched up, and presumably drunk the Battledraught. But there seems to be hints that he's a Jager (using Jager lingo, being very strong and durable, getting a bit of a Jager accent when angry). But he's not as dumb as your average Jager. The Jagers were likely not all that stupid before they became Jagers, it seems to dumb them down. Perhaps it did dumb Higgs down as well- it's just that he was a Spark and thus incredibly intelligent beforehand, and it just brought his intelligence down to a more normal level. There's also some evidence he knows mechanical things (getting on course to Mechanicsburg without any ranking as a pilot or navigator, see this http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20070406 and also analyzing Otilia's apparent brokeness http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20100217 ), while although not enough to merit a Spark, we've already established he may have lost that. As for being a Heterodyne, he knows about the layout of the castle, knows some family history, and the castle recognized him. Of course, this raises the question of why a Heterodyne got turned into a Jager. However, it's possible that he invented the Jagerdraught and decided to test it out on himself (remember that Sparks tend to be unreasonable in the Madness Place) without knowing the side effects. And... Here we are.


 * Okay, I take it back about Higgs inventing the Jagerdraught. That was apparently Vlad the Blasphemous http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20091102 and he looks nothing like Higgs. Still, the theory stands, though it needs an alternative explanation.

Higgs is a Heterodyne cousin who helped run the Jaeger armies.
Part of the old family, someone close enough to not only run with the Jaegers but to have a familiarity with their generals and Mamma Gkika but outside of the purview of what makes a descendant of a Heterodyne part of the Jaeger-smelt, castle-commanding Heterodyne line. Possibly a lack of Spark, or a much weaker (but, as we've seen by comparing various sparks, not necessarily less effective) spark. If he was given powerup potion (and the healing draught necessary to keep his overpowered body from permanently ravaging itself) often enough that his body adapted to it, in order to keep him near the top of the Jaegers' "people in charge" list, it could account for increased lifespan and possibly strength beyond the typical Heterodyne.

Higgs is a royal/noble, possibly a Heterodyne, who was revived from death sometime after the first "physically dead, legally dead" edict was put in place.
Assuming he was a Heterodyne (he does have more than a passing resemblance to what would happen if Bill and Barry were combined), the castle recognizes him as someone who was one of her masters, but now he's not legally qualified to be in charge. He's old enough that he doesn't smell much like Bill, Barry, and Agatha (to the Jaegers), but rather like their great-great-great-great-great grandfather. Assuming he is of some other noble lineage (such as a Wulfenbach from before Gil's time, and possibly even the reason for the first "physically dead, legally dead" laws) who was revived and subsequently went for broke on collecting power-ups, this doesn't have much evidence for it but it also doesn't have any evidence against it.

Higgs is Chuck Norris
...Well, we were all thinking it.
 * Explain the notable shortage of roundhouse kicks.

Airman Higgs is god.
ok, so it's a bit of a stretch, but would Airman Higgs be about the airborne equivalent of Bosun Higgs? and there you have the Higgs Boson!

Airman Higgs is the seventh Jaeger general
The castle knows him, he's well acquainted with the Heterodynes and their history, the other Jaegers (including at least one other Jaeger general) appears to know him, and if he's the 'shadowy' member of the generals it would make sense for him to infiltrate the Baron's ranks as part of his service instead of serving openly.
 * This overlaps with the theory of Higgs being a Jaeger, the most glaring evidence being his little accent slip back when.
 * He's also endured massive amounts of damage without flinching multiple times, done things no human character would be capable of, and he's rarely seen without his famous Nice Hat. Mamma Gkika has also more or less subtly confirmed this theory by mentioning that Higgs has a lot of secrets that he'll only reveal when he's ready to, which is very similar to the Jager Generals' lines about the mystery General.

= Other theories =

The Muses weren't Van Rjin's ultimate master pieces, it was the Storm King Bloodline
It's very hit or miss, of course because genetics can be tricky. But consider this:



He also takes "No" for an answer rather well. Consider a ruler, a king, a bright and powerful spark, a madboy self absorbed and filled with a natural greed. It's only Klaus's intelligence and will power that keeps Europa in line, that keeps himself in check. Other sparks end up killing themselves as they try to order their giant human eating mutants around.

Imagine a king with all that brilliance, but none of those tenancies. Isn't that the kind of Spark that could bring peace to Europa? And if those madness controlling genes got into the bloodlines of the worst of the worst sparks, like say the Hetrodynes...


 * Jan 17 2011: Tarvek seems to be going into the mad place. seems like he's just got a lot of control over his emotions like Baron Wulfenbach does.


 * He actually is in the Madness Place whenhe is introduced.

America nuked itself back to the stone age during the Civil War.
hence no contact or anyone wanting to go there and check on them. Think Fallout meets Queen Victorias Bomb.
 * Unlikely, people want to go there, they just can't get there. It's implied that the expeditions all die or disappear.
 * Mutants get 'em.
 * I agree with the 'missing expedition' part, but I'm pretty sure that America is GROSSLY unlike anything in our timeline. As in, no colonization. Ever. Why? Native American Sparks, natch! There is probably some limited degree of communication, but check this out and think of two things. One, why would the girl in the bottom right be the stereotype people have of the Americas unless the Natives were still running the place? Two, why would they have ANY American stereotype unless there were some communication back and forth to provide a frame of reference?
 * It could be the stereotype of just the natives and they have a different stereotype of the colonists.
 * She's also saying "Hoka hey". That's a Lakota Sioux phrase, inferring they have at least gotten far enough westward to encounter the Plains tribes.

Fraulein Snaug is an ongoing experiment being conducted by Dr. Mittelmind.
Her unusual and unstable personality is the result of intentional meddling on the part of the mad social scientist. Wiping her mind every year not only helps her cope with their terrifying lifestyle, but gives Mittelmind a clean slate to work with or, if new variables crop up, give him a new control group to which he can compare his experimental data. Her fanatical devotion to him is also a result of this meddling. The ultimate goal may be to find a cure for Snaug's apparent status as a (high-functioning) revenant.

Ardsley Wooster is related to Trelawney Thorpe, Spark of the Realm
It's not British nationalism that he claims the books of her exploits are the truth-he knows they really happened because she's related to him (WMG she's an aunt or other slightly removed relative.)
 * Unlikely, since Gilgamesh uses the example of the Heterodyne stories to refute his claims. Even if Trelawney Thorpe did exist and was a hero that's no guarantee the stories are actually factual.

Gil and Dupree had a affair back in Paris
Tarvek's flashback as far as showing Gil and Dupree together was indeed the exact truth. Obviously it didn't work out.

Theo DuMedd is dating Sleipnir O'Hara.
He promised to meet his cousin Agatha in Mechanicsburg, but she never did, and none of their other classmates are there. And when they first entered the castle, Theo referred to Zeetha's raunchy dancing and said to Sleipnir "I don't suppose you could..." and she retorted "No, I could not." Why would he even ask his classmate in all seriousness to dance erotically for him if they weren't dating? This is going to come back to bite them when Sleipnir's engagement comes up again.

Klaus Wulfenbach attacked Castle Heterodyne 18 years ago.
At some point, Klaus will time travel to kill Lucrezia at Castle Heterodyne. Barry told Dr. Beetle not to trust Klaus for a reason. Bill and Barry were shocked when the castle's security systems revealed Klaus attacking Lucrezia, and causing the death of Bill's son.
 * Would make more sense if the Heterodyne Boys stated they where going after Klaus, rather than an utterly unknown "The Other".
 * Unless they believed they could turn him back to their side, and wanted to protect him from the distrust and suspicion he would suffer from the world at large if the truth were known.
 * What would make Barry not trust Klaus? The possibility that he is a revenant certainly would. Now he's a revenant.

The very first page of Othar's adventures talks about both transdimentional harmonics AND time travel. What if the incredible effectiveness of Bill and Barry Heterodyne in battling evil came from access to these things? This would be another familiar device (see Blish's The Quincunx of Time, for instance). And it would agree, in a way, with the Dragon from Mars story.

What secrets still lie in the Heterodyne library?
 * Keep in mind, though, that the lab and assistants were wiped out by the Geisterdamen traitors. Compare Von Mekkhan's account with Vrin's, you'll see.

Gilgamesh Wulfenbach is half-Skifandran.
This would explain how Klaus knew Skif, how he recognized Zeetha as a warrior from Skifander, and why he hasn't seen his (Skifandran) wife in years. As for why Klaus is convinced that Zeetha was sent to kill Gilgamesh -- I'd wager that obscure cultural laws forbade that particular pairing, which is why Klaus had to leave so quickly!

There's another small point in that last example. Most of the time when we get a closeup of Zeetha, she's expressing something with her eyes: anger, surprise, curiosity. Here the word that seems to fit is mischief, which has the eyes narrowed rather than opened. It's hard to tell, but it looks like her eyes are drawn with the epicanthic fold typical of people from central and east Asia. Compare to Dr. Sun, here.
 * Not necessarily the pairing in itself, but probably the breeding aspect- "I let you live" implies it wouldn't have bothered anyone if Gil hadn't come along. Which raises questions about his mother's part in this....
 * Actually the line was "I kept you alive" which has a different connotation all together.
 * I agree, remember the rules about being forbidden to teach anyone but your daughters the Skif fighting arts? I bet the baron was taught by his wife and he taught his son, which was against the rules but certainly DID keep him alive.
 * Keep in mind that Zeetha specifically tells Agatha on this page "I am allowed to train one other besides my own daughters". Perhaps the Skifander culture is one of warrior-woman, which demands that sons born of their women are killed at birth (and, by extension, only the greatest warriors from the lands around are permitted to mate with them).
 * It seems more likely that the Skifandran culture is an expy to the Greek Amazonian legends. They have men, but their men aren't warriors.
 * When Gil wakes up with Zeetha looking over him, he tells her that his father said that someone looking like her might be trying to kill him. When she reacts with extreme interest, he tries to escape. What's interesting is that later, when he gets dressed in the Jagergeneral's clothes Zeetha says Ashtara above, it's PERFECT! WEAR IT! WEAR IT! and Gil's reaction is So it's true. You HAVE been sent to kill me. Now this might just be an over-the-top reaction to humiliation. But then again, it might not be. Zeetha gave away her cultural background with "Ashtara" and Gil's extensive library probably has at least one story involving Skifander or a similar, fictitious place.
 * (I figured Skifander was somewhere around the Middle East, since "Ashtara" sounds so similar to Astart/Ashtoreth/Asherah, a Caananite goddess of fertility.)
 * Note also that Zeetha goes a long time in her leather underwear but soon after she and Gil guess that they are related, she robs the striped tunic (?) from Zola's pipe-hatted minion. We are distracted by the humor of I can get the clothes off of anyone quickly and by Gil's blushing when she offers to show him her goosebumps. But given the hardiness to which she is training Agatha, it doesn't seem likely goosebumps would be a big concern for her. Parading around in just-barely-modest leather underwear before a long-lost (half?) sibling is something else.
 * I don't see the conflict. In context it would mean that the Skif folks wanted to kill him and Klaus stole him away or hid him. He might think Zeetha was sent to track down the half-breed and finish the job. It would certainly explain Gil's fighting ability.
 * Klaus mentions once (during the almost-torture scene with Othar) that he hasn't seen his wife in years, so that suggests his Skifander wife is still alive and maybe even that Klaus occasionally slips out to visit her.
 * Actually, Gil's fighting ability comes more from having the best possible teachers all his life, and maybe a little Jägerish augmentation on the side.
 * Okay, for the nuance of "I kept you alive," perhaps it's something similar to Zulenna's dilemma? I don't mean that the Baron got Gil "zapped back," but perhaps there's some rule about "if a person is so far gone, just let him die" or "if the infant or toddler didn't pass these tests for suitable warriorly hardiness, let him die." So Klaus could have "unnaturally" prolonged Gil's early life (and not "pulled the plug" so to speak) or rescued him from the people who were going to leave him on some mountaintop to die.
 * That's not bad, and works in with a possible infanticide reason. It has also been put forth that he misunderstood a ritual or comment as threatening infanticide of some sort, and fled for that reason.

Zeetha is Gil's half-sister!
In which case, there might be a different reason, in theory, for her to kill Gil. It might be a question of succession to a position of power. (This trope was already used with Zulena, so we know it is valid in the GG universe.)
 * Now they have met, you think that she may have mentioned it. After all she would have been told at some point (probably).
 * Maybe her memory isn't 100% after her bout of illness.
 * Or, more likely, she was just a baby herself when he was born and she simply doesn't know.
 * Agreed, in general. This seems likely, and I'd find it a fun twist (as if my opinion counts).
 * A point in favor: when Klaus first sees Zeetha, his response is "YOU!", as though he recognized her. Was Klaus mistaking Zeetha for his wife?
 * I bet Zeetha is Gil's FULL sister! Klaus was in Skifander for at least three and a half years before the attack on Castle Heterodyne. Plenty of time to father two kids.
 * Zeetha's father is named Chump. Unless Klaus was called something else by the residents of Skifander this makes it likely for her to be Gil's half sister, with them sharing a mother.
 * Given that the warrior tradition of Skifander seems to travel in the female line, and that Chump was a great warrior, I suspect that Chump was Zeetha's mother.
 * In a vote incentive picture, she specifically uses the pronoun "he," as she insists that "he" is a great warrior.
 * Or else Chump was a false name or a mistake in translation. Klaus probably wouldn't have purposely used that as an alias, but it's possible that someone called him a chump, and the Skifandrians only assumed it was his name. (This is the kind of thing that would happen in a Heterodyne story, where Klaus would be the bumbling comic relief.)
 * It is entirely possible Klaus was not entirely stable when he encountered Zeetha's people and possibly in his mental state referred to himself as "A chump", and there was confusion on the matter--Lucrezia certainly had just played him for one and he was probably not feeling like the world's smartest person at the time.
 * Indeed, if there's only Klaus and Gil, without them she's the closest to an eligible heir. Whether she really knows this or not herself. If so, for him she's not only allied with The Other, but can try sort-of-legitimate takeover the moment himself and Gilgamesh are out of the picture.
 * This Picture is an effective confirmation of this theory. She IS his daughter...
 * This leads me to another idea. What if their mothers were different? and that's why Gil had to die... he wasn't born of Chump's (read Klaus's) original mate?


 * After rereading this comic, I think I might have come up with a way the Baron and Gil's mother could have met. Two Words: Holy Days.


 * In addition, both Zeetha and Klaus know how to condition themselves to function without sleep for a few days.
 * The way she puts emphasis on the sentence "Hardly ever taught to outsiders," and just the look on her face in the following panel...I think she's figured it out. She seems to be delaying Gil's revelation just so she can learn more about him.
 * Gil's probably on the verge, too. He was about to ask who had taught the Skifandrian technique to his father before Zeetha cut him off.
 * She is so stringing him out.
 * If bookplates drawn at fan requests count, then
 * Evidence.
 * I would love this theory, except for one little hitch: Tarvek's analysis if Gil's heritage here. I highly doubt Tarvek was lying, since a few pages before he asked "He's Gilgamesh Wulfenbach, isn't he?" --anyone have an explanation for this?
 * Misdirection. Layers within layers. Search and find a reasonable reason for the secrecy, you stop searching. He DID find that information... but it'd been planted.
 * It isn't totally impossible that Gil could have been adopted but what we've seen so far (and the fact that Klaus warns Gil about Zeetha) suggests otherwise.
 * In the next page, Tarvek concludes with " Arrgh!  It's so  obvious  now! He's the Baron's son!  Of course  that's what he was hiding!", so the adoption is not the case and Gil is really the son of Klaus.
 * It's entirely possible that Gil and Zeetha are FULL siblings. Gil doesn't want to take on his father's title right away. But apparently he has another title: your highness. Zeetha is a princess. Her mother is a queen. If Zeetha's mother is also Gil's mother, then Gil is a prince. Why else call him "your highness"?

Gilgamesh Wulfenbach is Agatha's brother
Complete with Star Wars kiss (and ring, and brother-sister incest, and...). Even the castle expects a male heir. Klaus talks about "keeping him alive". The promise of revealing "everything" on Gilgamesh's return to the hospital room. They way Vole is scared of him when he shouts. So the Jagers don't seem to detect him as a Heterodyne, but Agatha had her spark hidden - how hard would it be to hide something like that?
 * Alternatively, he's her half-brother. We don't know who Gil's mother was, but we do know that Lucrezia was having an affair with Baron Wulfenbach...
 * Word of God says Nooooo!!!
 * Absolutely NO Leia/Luke. Aside from which, the male heir was . C'mon, the Foglios are both twistier than that, and subverting most of the tropes anyway.
 * In any case for this to work he would to have had the affair with Lucrezia whilst Lucrezia was in her full blown "The Other" phase. Klaus clearly has no idea the two are related at the start of the comic.
 * He had a glimmer.
 * He had far more than a glimmer. He says that he had been "forced to conclude that it was her."
 * Jägers can tell a Heterodyne by his/her smell, so very hard according to Krosp.

Captain Vole loves Jenka.
Vole was expelled from the Jägerkin after Jenka disappeared, and the Jägers refused to help find her. Vole didn't know she was on a secret mission to find the Heterodyne heir.
 * It is implied that all Jägers know about the mission. How else would they be able to know that they had not abandoned their masters?
 * Then why didn't he say something to her at the Sneaky Gate, hm? Look at her and pause? Anything?? [pulls out the Mythbusters 'Busted' sign]
 * Hell, there's more evidence for a prior love interest with Maxim. Let that one sink in...
 * Jossed, or at least that wasn't the main reason. Vole apparently tried to murder the Heterodyne boys because he thought they were too soft. Also it seems to be suggested that the mission to find a Heterodyne heir was kept secret from Klaus and the regular world but was a loophole in their code that allowed them to serve Klaus.

The Geisterdamen are constructs, created by Lucrezia.
Hence why they worship her as a god.
 * Yeah, that's less WMG and more Really Blatant Obviousness.
 * Likely wrong. Word of God is that they lived near the Mongfish summer house, and the family were always puzzled by the worship. If Lucrezia created them, they wouldn't have been puzzled.
 * The wasp sniffing ferret thingie identified Vrin as a revenant. If they were constructs, she would have no need to waste her slavers on them.
 * Easy enough to explain away. She was around hive engines, so she might still smell like one, or the Geisterdamen and the wasps are made of the same 'stuff'
 * No, not Really Blatant Obviousness. The sheer number of Geisterdamen is a huge amount to create in one lifetime - even factoring in the Alternate Dimension WMG below. We've seen what a race of constructs looks like - the Jagers - and no two of them are identical, being made as they are from individual humans. Finally, we have an example of what a Lucrezia Mongfish-style construct looks like - Von Pinn. Certainly less attractive and less well-hinged than your standard Geisterdame.
 * Not to mention Vrin says something about being "trapped in this shadow world" since Lucrezia disappeared. She and her father were experimenting with time travel, so who's not to say they haven't been to Alternate Dimensions as well?
 * You don't know they were experimenting with time travel. They're more bio-Sparks than hardware.
 * This makes more sense if the "The Other was dowloaded into Lucrezia" theory is true as it give much more time. Also they may have the appropriate bit of the reverent in them to make them loyal, thus setting off the weasels.
 * I always figured that they were made from the all the female sparks that went missing as young girls. Can't remember the page, but Lillith says this is one of the reasons they suppressed Agatha's spark when she was a kid. All those girls had to go somewhere.
 * But they're all infected by slaver wasps. No spark can be infected by your basic slaver wasp.
 * Perhaps they're meant to be her equivalent of the Jagers... which may mean they're altered humans.

Gil's Invisibility Device is sentient, has been following Agatha around, and in fact shows up in every panel.
Nobody notices because it works.
 * Making it... the steampunk version of Jack from Gears of War?
 * Gil's invisiblity device is the Heterodyne "power source", notice how the others keep thinking he vanished when looking through the telescope
 * Not quite jossed, but called into severe question in this comic.
 * Actually, I think it's quite thoroughly jossed!

The story is a valid historical account; Othar won.
All Sparks end up killed off. Before dying, Othar convinces the rest of the world to cover up their existence, to avoid any possibility of new Sparks getting ideas.
 * In other words, Girl Genius is our world.

The setting is an alternate history in which Germany won World War One.
...and the emergence of Sparks is what helped them win it. All of the German language influences and theatre ranging from Wagnerian opera to gypsy-like travelling bands are evidence of the culture. Also, the proliferation of zeppelins in the real world was arrested by Germany's war reparations and many of the creators having ideological conflicts with those wacky Nazis.
 * But there were apparently Heterodynes and their Jaegerkin around at the time of the Storm King (in the opera synopsis), which I believe was mentioned as being in the 13th century. I have always just assumed that the story was actually set in the Germanosphere. Mechanicsburg is in Germany. Passholdt and Sturmhalten are in the Austrian alps. Beetleburg is in Germanophone Transylvania (look up Transylvanian Saxons). German crops up elsewhere because Germany is still the most populous counntry in Europe today, so imagine how important it is culturally in a world where America is apparently almost unsettled by Europe, Britain is shut out of continental affairs, and presumably Germans were never ethnicly cleansed from east of the Oder. If you assume Agatha left Castle Wulfenbach somewhere over Hungary, references to the Danube, the Carpathians, and Bucharest all seem to fit in. As to language, I think almost everything, spoken or written, is actually in German but comes under a Translation Convention. Look closely, and German appears on unimportant notices. Things like "Jaegerkin" are for effect, and their accent is meant to have on the reader the effect their dialect has on the characters: make them hard to understand and not very sophisticated-sounding.
 * What are you talking about, Mechanicsburg is in Germany?? Look at the Map, it's in Wallachia if it's anywhere. Passholdt and Sturmhalten are probably southern Carpathian passes. You're too far west.
 * The opera synopsis does not mention the 13th century. And it's very unlikely that date is accurate, because the Storm King was 200 years prior to the events of the comic (Van Rijn, who lived around 200 years before "now," built the Muses for the Storm King), and the comic takes place at least long enough ago for "1677" to be ancient history.
 * Actually, the Storm King is 200 years prior to the Synoposis, which may not be contemporary with the main story at all. In fact, it's quite unlikely, since the character presenting the synopsis is also one of the history professors (Kaja Foglio) who is presenting the story of Agathe Heterodyne to us. All of which means the opera could be an allegory about Agatha, Gil, and Tarvek set in the era of the storm king, much as Shakespeare used historical settings for his contemporary allegories (Hamlet, Macbeth, and Julius Ceasar being the most notable).
 * Of course, it could also mean the Foglios like to play silly games with the timeline, shmott guy.
 * I'm saying from in-canon comments and one rash assumption based on a gravestone that the Storm King, being he's also a parallel of the Sun King's, is late Ren - 1600s. Add in Van Rijn, and 1300 is way too early.
 * All that said, you're right about one thing: the Translation Convention. According to Word of God, which I'm not going to track down, yes; the language is something Germanic, translated for our sympathies. Given that America is apparently "sealed off" somehow, I suspect that Europe Europa simply turned inward.
 * As to the lingua europa, agreed - Word of God that it's German, but it probably has a tonne of Roumanian loanwords, considering the effect the Heterodynes had on their western neighbours for centuries. Check the GG Wikia for the actual reference, it's easier to find there.
 * Whoops, that 13th century thing was me becoming muddled about the Storm King and the building of the castle. Anyway, 1677 doesn't have to be ancient ancient. All the Heterodynes up to Bill and Barry (who is far from dying of old age) were mad, bad, dead, and presumably buried in the family crypt. Also: in a sketch, Klaus fills in his journal for 1882, is I could only find it. In any case, 1677 actually Josses the original point: sparks well before WW 1. And it's an unnecesary point, too. German really was the influential as a business language in much of Europe, once, but assuming German would suddenly overspread Europe because of a German military victory in France is a bit far-fetched.
 * No... Germany overspread all of Europe because Klaus conquered it. In a matter of years. Alone. While carrying a lollipop-eating baby on his back. Uphill, both ways, through the snow, in a burlap sack, curing cancer on the way. Because he's Klaus.
 * Nonono, Transylvania overspread all of eastern Europa. The empire stops roughly at the Rhone/Saone valley.
 * The sketches are Word of God uncanonical. We are not allowed to snatch at crumbs that might interfere with The Funny. :grin:

18 years ago, Lucrezia Mongfish waited until she was pregnant with a girl heir to finally launch her massive strike against Castle Heterodyne.
She needed a female child to ensure that if anything went wrong, the Stormvoraus would be able to bring her back in the body of her daughter. She killed her lab assistants, made sure that her war engines crushed the castle defenses, and then fled with her geisterdamen to become The Other and take over Europa. (Well, it almost worked.)
 * How would she know she was carrying a girl? Steam-powered ultrasound machine?
 * Mad science!
 * If alchemy can un-rot a corpse, Mad Science can create a conveniently portable womb for either a test tube baby or a premature delivery (deliberately, at a time the gender was calculated to be differentiated). I need to stop before this line of thinking gains Squick.
 * The Mongfish family can apparently manipulate biology well enough to ensure the creation of a proper heir for the Storm King, and if they can ensure that the next Storm King is male, they can certainly ensure that the next Heterodyne is female. For that matter, if they can eliminate alcolism, unintelligence, and lycanthropy, what other genetic legacies might Lucrezia have given Agatha in the womb test tube?
 * The Geisterdamen trashed Lucrezia's lab - compare Von Mekkhan's account to Vrin's. Who attacked the rest of the castle is another question.

The story is taking place during the Napoleonic Wars of the GG Universe
Leaving out the death rays, about everything (clothes, hair, architecture) is mostly early 19th century. We've all ready had some clear historical reflections: (Rembrant?) Van Rijn and the Storm (Sun?) King. And if you look at the political situation, it seems remarkably familiar despite the very different characters: after sudden events sparked chaos and devastation across Europe, a brilliant leader has brought order. But people have grown tired of him, his vast armies do battle with constant insurrections, the British remain defiant, and his "vassals" and "allies" are liabilities. He is determined to have a suitable heir because the other royals of Europe see him as a usurper and one of his biggest worries is a conspiracy to restore an ancient house to his throne (a house founded by somebody awfully like Louis XIV). And now, events which unfolded rapidly in a place full of Russian people threatens to cause the mass mutinee of the behatted German people who fill his armies and bring the Empire to its knees!
 * Bzuh? The last substantial insurrection was 'dot Magnetic Prince guy' three years before the story-as-current. The empire has more than enough resources to handle the 'vassal' states if they get frisky, but they're hardly micromananged. And what Russian people?

The queen of Skifander, or some important person there, is a very VERY powerful spark.
Look at Zeetha's headband. That may be a joke by the artist, or it could well be that there is a spark in Skifander who can make jewelry that match your emotions, and who can do it so easily they don't bother giving it other abilities, just making it for fun/appearances.
 * Uh, guys? I think you'd better take another look at the astrolabe in this frescoe.
 * Zeetha didn't have the headband when she was captured by pirates. She picked it up in Europa.
 * But she had the headband in Skifander. It's possible that the pirates stole it and she picked it back up before she left, or that she had it somewhere else on her person when she was kidnapped.
 * From that image, it's likely her possessions were taken from, and later found by, Zeetha, since her (very large and unique) swords were also not present when she was captured, yet she has them as she ransacks the pirate base.
 * Well, assuming it's not just a little fun with the visuals and the headband is actually doing that, it's still quite possible that the headband does do other stuff that Zeetha forgot about, making it a sort of concealed-carry Chekov's Gun. This is minor enough that I wouldn't even bother adding this, but I really wanted to use the phrase "concealed-carry Chekov's Gun."
 * The Queen of Skifander's hat is also tricked out with what looks like fans... Very sparky.
 * We know she's a powerful Spark because we've been told she's a powerful Spark. She has a card in The Works.
 * That is, it shows the wearer's mood? Indicating where it's the good time to start running if the wearer happens to be a well-trained warrior? Hmm...
 * It doesn't just seem to match the wearer's mood, it looks like it is almost completely replicating Zeetha's facial expression, albeit in a simpler form.

The comic takes place in the late 20th-early 21st century.
Agatha's slightly-older brother Klaus Barry was born in '72. What century isn't given, but the shape of the numbers visible suggests either "18" or "19." The easy answer is 1872: it puts the comic smack in traditional steampunk time (turn of the 20th century), matches up with the fashions and the German-influenced culture, and given that the description of the comic is "The Industrial Revolution became all-out war," there's already a sense of the 19th century. That in and of itself should be enough to point to 1972, really; but the establishment of the Wulfenbach empire becomes much more impressive if you throw in a hundred years of that all-out war before Order was reestablished. And if there was constant warfare, and the pseudoscience of the Sparks so effective, some of the science we know took place in the 20th century might not have happened.
 * I don't really follow. You present all the best arguments for 1872 (you left out the sketch showing Klaus with his 1882 journal)... and then an argument for 1972 that I can't make head or tail of. I don't see how shifting that death of Klaus-Barry a century down the line adds in a century between it and the Wulfenbach restoration of order.
 * Sketches don't count.
 * I think our friend made a typo. 8 and 9 are right next to each other on the keyboard.
 * I think it's late twentieth century too, but for completely different (and, I hope, slightly more sensible--or at least, better expressed) reasons. The Queen of England (presumably Victoria) is referred to as "The Undying Queen". Now, in my book, you don't get to be called "The Undying" until you're much older than it's possible for a human to be. In our continuum, Vicky died in 1901, and, given that we didn't have life-extension technologies back then, she presumably wasn't older than a human could possibly be. So, whatever the date, it's got to be long after 1901. Beyond that, I think the technology suggests a near-contemporary setting. Some of it is older than what we have today, and some of it is advanced far beyond our present capabilities. Now, in a world where mad scientists rule, they're going to horde that technology, and the technology available to your average peasant- or minion-in-the-street is going to be rather behind what we have today. So, to me, the gaslamp technology available to the "normals" suggests late twentieth century.
 * History has been mucked up enough that we have no reason to believe that the British royal family went the same way as ours did, and to my knowledge the Undying Queen has not been named in-comic. She's probably an ahistorical monarch. Or maybe the Undying Queen Elizabeth.
 * No, she has been named. It's Albia.
 * Queen Elizabeth, Queen Mary and Queen Victoria have all been referred to as "Albia" in the more overblown propaganda about them. So it could be any one of them, or even someone like Empress Maude!
 * Why are people so obsessed with making the timeline have similarities to our history? The experiences that shaped this world are so radically different from ours - the Storm King, the Heterodynes, Europa torn apart by generations of wars between Sparks, the Other, an ineffectual Church split seven ways - that any correspondence rationally ought to be no more than a curiosity.
 * What evidence is there to really support the timeline being 1872? First and siliest of all, Klaus Barry Heterodyne was born in '72 the current year should be at the least '92 and '95 at the latest in order for the cast to be early-twenties. Sparks and their Clanks and Constructs have been around for a very long time, but important events that should have happened by 1892 clearly haven't, England isn't ruling the British Empire, its just a minor kingdom, Europa lacks any of the recognisable nation-states, governance seems to be various city-states spread across wide barren areas that are united by the Pax-Transylvania enforced by the Baron. America is a barely known landmass, so that means any of expeditions either haven't left, haven't returned or their news was overshadowed by something more important. Haiti gets a mention so we know that some Spark settled there and that a Spark who was Native to America toured Europe with the Heterodyne Boys and had a pair of Six-shooters. Africa seems to be quite unknown.
 * The entirety of the story has so far been set in Europe (apart from a third-party related flashback set in Skifander, but that could be anywhere). The British Empire was not in Europe, and its' influence in Europe was minimal. The British Empire had colonies in Africa, Asia, India, the Pacific and the Americas, and barely bothered with European affairs, unless it looked like one power was going to get too strong compared to the others around it, or threaten an access route to parts of the Empire. In such cases, the solution would either be throwing vast amounts of money at the problem (which it could afford due to the fact that it was, y'know, an Empire, or to send in the Navy (as the senior service and most effective naval combat force in the world for over 300 years) or the Army if there wasn't any handy coastline. The British Army was fairly large, but most troops were needed for garrison duties, so any involvement in Europe would usually be in concert with an Ally (with France and Turkey vs Russia in the Crimea; with Portugal and Spain, then Belgium, Netherlands and Germany vs France in the Napoleonic era), and the number of troops sent would be comparatively small. However, they were the best trained at rapid firing, so much so that in World War I, German officers thought they were facing massed machine guns when they only up against a rifle regiment. In the last two panels of this comic, Wooster's actions and words are in accordance with the general modus operandi of the British Empire, and Boris' reaction makes it clear that "Her Majesty will take an interest" is a credible threat. In other words, it is totally unsurprising and expected that we have not seen anything of the British Empire, America, Africa, or anywhere else.
 * Another interesting point is that the Sparks aren't a case of Reed Richards Is Useless, so maybe what we're seeing here is 19th Century schizo-tech in the closing days of 14th Century Central Europe, which puts the year at 1392 if we assume the Seven Popes are the Avignon Papacy, the Antipopes, and the Rome, as the numbers fit and the dates match if we assume "How To Communicate In The Work Place" is published between 1352 which is roughly when Klaus started adventuring. If we assume it was something he published in the year 1352, then it is not implausible he was able to get at least 4 of the Avignon Popes and 1 of the Avignon based Antipopes to ban it, making 5 Popes. If the present year is 1394 then it is likely that Benedict XIII was able to issue a papal decree against the book, bumping the number to 6 Popes. The one remaining Pope is likely Urban VI, if we're going to assume a loose interpretation of the Pope that gets us 7 Holy See's that disapprove of the Baron's book. However the whole argument I just laid out above is probably meaningless due to the fact that odds of them explicitly choosing this obscure time-period for an off-hand joke are far less then them throwing in a random number of Popes as a way to shake up the alternate history and make us think that this version of Europe that the authors are creating is even more screwed up then we thought. Other points of interest: No Holy Land and no mention of conflicts between the Eastern European states and Asia Minor which is interesting if we're led to believe that Transylvania is the centre of Wulfenbach Europa.
 * Stockholm is mentioned though, and seems to be a rather large industrial city (Zola's airship was built there) and by 1394 is doubtful that Stockholm would be more than a minor northern fishing town, even with all the sparks running around.

Trelawney Thorpe, Spark of the Realm is related to ZÃ¢mÃ® Yahy Ã¢ Ahmad ibn Sulim Ã¢n al-Sinh Ã¢jÃ®.
We know she is a real person and some of the stories may well be based on fact. His father is the Iron Sheik and we do know which Trelawney Thrope story Gill likes the most after all...
 * That'd be amusing. It's hardly implausible.

The Heterodynes are originally a Russian family, and the Jagers speak with a Russian accent.
The authors have admitted that the language being spoken isn't English, but rather German or Romanian or something similar. Whenever I look at the Jagers' speech, I am reminded of the stereotypical "Russian Accent" that everyone and their father does. Ergo, while they may speak in German, the Jagers have a thick Russian accent that marks their speech and thus gives them the distinct speech patterns that remain when "translated into English".
 * It's closer to a stereotypical German accent. It could be meant to convey a cruder or more archaic version of German, or perhaps they're from Germany and everyone else is speaking Romanian, Austrian, no, that's way too difficult to be a lingua franca, but you get the point.
 * It would make sense given their names: Maxim is a Russian name, and Dimo is apparently a nickname for Dimitri. "Ognian" is Bulgarian, though, so I don't know where they were going with that.
 * Or perhaps the Jagers' speech is affected by their large fangs. Say 'water' and now say it again with your lower teeth touching your lips. Say 'this' but don't let your tongue go past your teeth. The rest of it is a sort of a Pidgin English, only Slavic routes instead of Hawaiian/Filipino (though Jagers wishing each other aloha is an amusing image).
 * Response to the above: The fangs, I think, are certainly part of it, as are the fact that they probably have lower class backgrounds than many class characters, the fact that German is likely not the native language of all of them ("Vole", if you say it "Voh-luh", is a Germanish sort on name, and the Captain speaks with a thinner accent and better vocabulary, backing up my theory), the fact that they're centuries old, and the fact that they probably speak a differant dialect: "Wir kÃ¶nnen alles... Ausser Standarddeutsch!". These are all rendered by a German accent in the English dub that made it to our world. Why pidgin English? Britain is a foe of the ruler of Europe, and highly isolated. German as a lingua franca in central Europe, where it historically was, under the rule of a dude named Wulfenbach... that makes more sense.
 * The bit about the class background of the Jaegers is backed up by this strip, in which one of the lower class crowd Gil and Zeetha draw to Castle Heterodyne speaks with a suspiciously similar accent, making the Jaeger accent most likely a lower class Mechanicsburg accent spoken around fangs.
 * To the guy above him: True, but none of this, however, makes the Heterodynes Russian: the Jägers all come from diverse ethnic backgrounds (Russian, Bulgar, whatever Andre is, German if that's what Vole is...), whereas the Heterodynes are definitely Transylvanians descended from a steppe warlord, which would make them Szecklers (Transylvanian Hungarians).
 * I think the Ht'rok-din predates the Szkely; I also think they came from further east, preceding the Mongols by a century or so.
 * To the guy still further up: Given that Graf Klaus von Wulfenbach, ruler of Europe is, going by the name, a Transylvanian Saxon, German is seen in the background a few times and in names (Lars, Snarlantz, von Zinzer, various Wilhelms, Passholdt, Sturmhalten, various Burgs...), and the real historical language-of-business status it had, German is probably being spoken for most of the comic. Romanian, I think, is used in the earlier part of the comic, where native Transylvanians are conversing. Austrian isn't a language, it's a type of Hochdeutsch (mountain/hill German, spoken by the Austrians, Swiss, and Germans south of the Main). Hungarian, though likely the Heterodyne native tongue, is, as you say, unlikely to be a standard language.
 * He doesn't use the 'von', and he's not a Graf.
 * To the orginal poster: One question: what's "German or Romanian or something similar"? They have as much in common as Catalan and Norwegian! Anyways, I can fake a German or Russian accent enough to fool the gullible, or at least impress them, and I'd say that Jägers are German. Besides being biased by the fact that they're called Jägers, turning a "th" to "d" is more German, in Russian accents you get a "z" sound. That-Det/Dot-Zet, among other things.
 * The obvious similarity would be that they're both consonant-stacking languages... although I might be inaccurately perceiving German this way due to the number of consonant letters put together (given that a common German grapheme can be three letters (sch, for example)). German does allow a few consonant stacks not generally accepted in English (pflanze?); Russian goes all-out crazy with the number of consonants it stacks around a poor defenseless vowel, and even has words without any vowels at all. This puts both languages on the opposite side of the fence from "vowel languages" that stick to the CVCV model (like Hawaiian: pikapika) or allow vowels to touch but not (many) consonants (Japanese: tatewaki, shinsen).
 * WMG:I write way too much!
 * Consider that they're mostly Mechanicsburg natives from a couple hundred to several hundred years ago, with some adventurous boys from out of town, and you have them speaking a German trade-tongue with archaic Roumanian accents filtered through tromping all over Europe killing t'ings. Through fangs.

The Muses and their Functions
Look at this mural from the Girl Genius Wiki the tympanum hall of Transylvania Polygnostic University. They are not meant to correspond exactly to the Greek nine, but their purposes are, from Left to Right: And the last two, of course, are divination and dance. It is also possible that more than two survived, or that prototypes exist.
 * Music, specifically musical instruments
 * Astronomy (as evidenced by the astrolabe in her hands)
 * Literature, probably oral and written storytelling
 * Comedy (the dark hair)
 * Hymns, or music for worship (the one with wings)
 * This one has actually been revealed as Otilia, Muse of Protection
 * Tragedy or drama (silver hair is mature)
 * Mathematics (it's an art form for the Greeks!)
 * Did you know that the original Muses for the Greeks numbered one, three or four (before Hesiod settled on nine), and were named after such things as musical notes, or Memory, Practice, Song, Heart-delighting, Beginning and Meditation?
 * Not Important - But Interesting! :D

The Knights of Jove are trying to set up a puppet ruler, and Tarvek's aware of it.
If he wasn't told about Zola, but knows the plan anyway, he may be attempting to outflank his own allies by allowing Agatha to live. With a fake, highly trained and manipulative Heterodyne, and a real Valois blood descendant, the Knights may be attempting to set Tarvek up as a figurehead, while they use Zola as a means of controlling the real power through him, underestimating his own Byzantine-style devious streak. By attempting to get Agatha (or Lucrezia in Agatha's body) on his side, once he attains enough power, he could denounce the fake Heterodyne plot and those behind it as traitors to the true purpose of the order, consolidating power even more because people would flock to Agatha instead of Zola.
 * Wait, you're saying they're thinking they (the Council) will be able to play Tarvek once he's enthroned?
 * If they've monitored his breeding/creation and upbringing as closely as Zola implies, it's very likely they've overestimated their ability to continue micromanaging him, especially once Anevka threw a spanner in the works by killing Papa Sturmvoraus.

Jenka is a Jager made from a Geisterdame.

 * She consistently keeps her mouth covered, possibly to hide an important marking or a scar.
 * Her hair resembles that of a Geisterdame.
 * Vrin says that while the Loremistress Milvistle was killed, we haven't seen a body, and Vrin even admits there may have possibly been other traitors in the ranks. It wouldn't be completely inconceivable that either Milvistle was found by the Jagers and changed, or one of the traitor Geisterdamen went to them willingly.
 * This only really works if the Geisterdamen predate Lucrezia, rather than being made by her - turning someone into a Jaeger is a complex and difficult process, and I somehow doubt that Bill and Barry made any. Painfully mutating people into shock troops wasn't really their style. So it's unlikely that there have been any new Jaegers in, say, the last forty years.
 * The Geisterdamen do predate Lucrezia. Her family was always perplexed by the fact that these strange creatures worship them. It wouldn't be very perplexing if Lucrezia had simply made them that way.
 * Dude, this story has time travel. (Unless of course you say "They can look in the past but not physically affect it," which is still a possible method of working out the details so far.) It's entirely possible for Lucrezia to have gone into the past to make the Geisterdamen, or to have sent some to the past, or to have visited the past just long enough to make a few of them... or it might be that the traitor went into the past to escape, and ended up being made into a Jager.
 * Anyway, a lot of Jagers have eclectic colouration. Unless Maxim and Dimo both had pink hair as humans.
 * Jenka has pupils. She can't be a Geisterdame.

The Storm King and/or Geisterdamen are responsible for the deaths of every other Female Spark in Europe (besides Agatha)
Just before Agatha's escape from Castle Wulfenbach, Judy explained that Female Sparks "disappear" as soon as they're discovered. While the culture of Europe at this time isn't going to be the best one to raise a female Spark in anyway, both the Storm King and the Geisterdamen remark about how many girls they've killed with the machine that transferred Lucrezia into Agatha's body. Given how long they've been looking for ANY Female Spark, could they have single-handedly kidnapped/murdered them all in their zeal to find Lucrezia's daughter? (and oy, something ELSE for Agatha to feel guilty about...) Also, now that they've "finished" with the machine, will we start to see other Female Sparks appear now that they're no longer hunting them down?
 * Well, even if that was the only reason, it'll probably be quite a while before we see any effects, probably years in-universe. Also note that I'm fairly sure there was at least two female sparks in the circus (Dame Aedith and Professor Moonstock), so it's not "female sparks are unheard of", just "female sparks have an even lower survivability rate than male sparks".
 * According to the Cast List, Dame Aedith is not known to be a spark. She's just an insane knife-thrower who hates (probably fictional) vampires.
 * She certainly seems to be toting a stake gun during the Monster Horse Incident; either she had one of the actual Sparks whip it up for her (which, considering one of them was discussing the use of steam-powered feet and another is designing emotion control pies, seems rather...well..the phrase "foolhardy" doesn't cover it quite as well as "suicidally insane" does) or she built it herself, which implies at least mild sparkiness.
 * This troper personally doubts that the Sturmvoraus family and the Geisters would have bothered with every girl spark they ran across. Minor sparks probably went beneath their notice, while they focused on the ones that had a strong gift or came from a noble family, and would thus probably have a higher probability of being tied to Lucrezia and being a suitable subject. Which does raise some interesting questions about Anevka, now that this troper thinks about it. Had the prince merely gone insane from frustration and devotion by the time she was used as a subject, or did he have some reason to think that his daughter might have a genetic link to the woman's consciousness he was trying to bring back?
 * My impression was that all of those myriad tests led to the conclusion that it had to be her daughter for the machine to work, but that at first they were hoping to get it to work on any female, then any female spark, then any strong female spark, then any noble female spark, and so on, whittling down the options until Lucrezia's own daughter was the only one it could possibly work on.
 * Are all of you people entirely forgetting Countess Marie? (Master Payne's wife, sparky chemist)
 * Is it possible that Othar got to the rest?
 * Is it possible that Geisterdamen are created * from* female sparks? There's hints that Jagermonsters are made from normal humans (something about a jagerdraught), and it would explain how the Geisterdamen keep up their numbers without a spark to create new ones.
 * It's not all that hard to figure out once you realize that Girl Sparks are a) valuable and b)vulnerable. The instant one shows any talent at all she's going to get targeted by every lecherous male spark in the vicinity hoping to make her his own. How much chance would a teenage girl stand against someone like Dr. Beetle, for instance?
 * There's also the children on castle wulfenbach. Children, male AND female, of sparky royal lines.
 * At one point, Agatha was told that, while minor sparks living in the countryside never really managed to amount to much, FEMALE Sparks would've burned as witches. (I have no idea when this page ran. The minor sparks thing was during the circus arc, after the monster horse attack, but I can't recall when the other part was explained.)
 * Judy explained this when she and Punch came to rescue Agatha.
 * If you pay close attention to the phrasing, countryside sparks are burned as witches and female sparks disapear.

The pirates who kidnapped Zeetha served Captain DuPree.
According to the Secret Blueprints, "Her plans collapsed when she returned from a solitary excursion to find her fortress a smoking ruin. Every last pirate was dead and the munitions and supplies that she had stockpiled in preparation for the attack were destroyed. There was no trace of the attacking army, and no hint of who was behind the destruction." Sound familiar?
 * IIRC, this is implicitly confirmed in the comic. Compare the design of Dupree's fortress as seen in her flashback to the design of the unnamed pirate fortress in Zeetha's flashback.
 * Rule of Funny makes it nearly inevitable.

The Heterodyne Boys, if they're still alive, are in America.
I've got no factual basis on which to back this up. I just mention it because A) America's unexplained inaccessibility has to be a plot point, B) Bill and Barry traveled there extensively, and C) it's the one place on Earth nobody could find them.


 * By that logic Australia or New Zealand would be a better location:
 * A) Despite most likely being set in the late 1880s-early 1890s, geographical knowledge is far under-developed compared to our world, The Americas are barely known, but Haiti gets a mention so it seems people are aware of at least one landmass across the Atlantic, it may simple be a case that with an alternate history the sea powers responsible for global exploration like Britain, Spain, Portugal, France and the Dutch are not in the position to make those discoveries, the Conquistadors like Cortes and Pizarro never set sail because there was no one to fund the expeditions of Columbus, of the five countries that crossed the seas only England gets mentioned as an actual nation, not as the British Empire either so one could say that because of the presence of Sparks the pivotal events of history never happened because the Sparks caused ongoing wars that demanded funding from the governments over the expeditions for new colonies, were eclipsed by the importance of the wars between the various mad scientists or that no major nation-states really seem exist to provide the impetus to spread and colonise. Africa is barely touched upon, East Asia gets a reference with Doctor Sun Jen-djieh and his family, but things such as the Mongols reaching Hungary, The Silk Road and Imperial China were very widely known by the 1500s in Europe. That is unless the presence of Sparks caused faster technology development and we're actually dealing with an alternate history of 1290-ish Europe...
 * B) Bill and Barry loved to explore, seeing what's beyond the American Continents is certainly something they'd do, Flat-Earth/Counter-Weight beliefs aside, going back to North or South America (its never mentioned which, but Thundering Engine Woman doesn't sound like she's from any of the South American cultures) sounds a little predictable for them and other groups trying to make the voyage across might blab their whereabouts in order to gain public support in Europa.
 * C) Being so isolated from Europe it seems no one would find them at all if they layed low in the Antipodes. Also Australia isn't exactly the easiest country to explore, considering that Europe is a Crapsack World, imagine the horrors of Downunder?

The comic takes place on the Universal Studios Back lot.
The true homeland of all Mad Scientist cliches. Complete with torch-waving 'eastern european' villagers with inexplicable Cockney accents.
 * They do seem to be mining all of the old Universal monster movie cliches, don't they?
 * I suddenly have this vision of a great Sparky battle accidentally interrupting rehearsals for "The French Mistake"...

== Bill and Barry really did go to Mars in a rowboat, aka Theo's allegedly made-up story "The Heterodyne Boys and the Dragons from Mars" is a lot closer to what actually happened than most people would dare to think == Think about it: An experiment gone awry in the belly of Castle Heterodyne leads to someone being possesed by an otherwordly intelligence with tragic and horrific consequences... and Theo's Mother is a Mongfish, after all. He may actually have insider information, even if it's just a half-remembered bedtime story from his chldhood.
 * This troper notes the following:
 * Giant biomechanical wasp-controlling monsters: here, of course. There's also one in Castle Heterodyne's basement.
 * Lucrezia possessed by the Other: Still a candidate for WMG.
 * Giant mechanical fish: Could be fantasy, could be these things.
 * Could also be the giant spiders the Geisterdamen ride.
 * My guess is it is the Giant Mechanical Squid many retellings of the stories.
 * Aperture science technology: Ta-daa! Also here.
 * Power glove: Well, Maxim has one, as does this mysterious character, but more importantly take a close look at the only view we have so far that we can be sure is the Other (central column, bottom half). (The two views of Lucrezia in the upper row do not resemble each other, though the first one looks like Lucrezia does at the other times we've seen her; conceivably the Geisterdamen are Lucrezia's invention that the Other took advantage of. This image is the only time we're sure we've seen "Lucrezia" between the attack on Castle Heterodyne and the present.)

Likewise, The synopsis for "The Storm King" is a veritable stew of industrial strength foreshadowing (served with a good helping of Red Herring, of course!)
Um, yeah. Why else would it have been in the comic?
 * Author Appeal
 * or Backstory
 * Actually, sort of post-Backstory. The opera explains the plan the Knights of Jove had, which Gil and Klaus discuss here. The opera's prophecy is what Klaus calls "practically a fairy tale."
 * Not to mention propaganda

Trelawney Thorpe, Spark of the Realm and Gilgamesh Wulfenbach have a romantic (or at least sexual) connection.

 * When Agatha is first brought to Gil's lab, she looks over the books he has and begins reading "Trelawney Thorpe in the Seraglio of The Iron Sheik" Gil instantly tries to distract her from it, and keeps doing so when she tries to go back to it. In that book, then, is an account of a night he spent in said Seraglio, and had a steamy encounter with Trelawney, which may have ended badly (or even more embarrassingly, with Trelawney actually having slept with him to gain information about the Wulfenbachs). He didn't want Agatha to a) think he was a sort of female-spark-player or b) he was too embarrassed by the outcome of the encounter to tell Agatha when he was trying to impress her. He even says that the stories are great, but total British propaganda - perhaps the Trelawney of the books (whom Gil, say, developed a celebrity crush on) was different enough in reality for Gil to be highly disappointed. Of course the book makes Gil out to be a sort of bumbling idiot prince who falls hopelessly in love with Trelawney. He keeps it around as a sort of schadenfreude to remind him of his own failures and not to repeat them.
 * Unlikely. Wooster and Othar have both alluded to Gil's history as a ladies man in Paris, but Gil complaints to Wooster that none of the girls he met really understand him. If he'd dated a Spark, he wouldn't have that problem. The Seraglio of the Iron Sheik is probably just pornographic, and he doesn't want Agatha seeing it/knowing that he reads that sort of thing.

Agatha's time windows are still affecting the plot
Jenka says she has it on the "highest authority" that Agatha likes Gil. Who would a wild Jaeger accept as highest authority -- who would also know how Agatha feels? One of Agatha's time windows opened in front of Jenka, and either future-Agatha explicitly told Jenka to look after Gil, or Jenka saw future-Agatha and future-Gil acting in a way that had "happy couple" written all over it.
 * Alternatively she could have heard it from one of the Jager Generals who seemed to be trying to set Gil and Agatha up.
 * Alternatively alternatively, she's spent five minutes with Agatha and has functioning eyes.
 * Functioning nose.
 * Jenka never has spent five minutes with Agatha, and certainly not in any situation which would make Agatha's feelings for Gil evident to eyes or nose.
 * Considering that Jenka left to go get "clarification" on their mission, I'd say the Jaeger Generals are her "highest" authority. They were certainly trying to matchmake, and Agatha had a pretty obvious crush on Gil (the little kid "kick you in the shins and run away" kind of crush, or "the lady doth protest too much" crush, at that point.)
 * Supported by a line in the novelization narrative, showing that General Zog smelled something he evidently found promising after he asked Agatha what she thought of Gil.

The Geisterdamen are connected with Skifander somehow.
Both seem to have matriarchal societies of warrior-women, and their languages are similar. Perhaps Zeetha really was sent to kill Gil, but she forgot about it when she became sick.
 * Tenuous, but perhaps:

The Geisterdamen are Skifandrians from the future

 * Years pass, and Lucrezia/The Other uses time travel to supplant the local Goddess, assuming control of Skifander and occasionally pulling the Geisterdamen back in time to the "shadow world".

The Geisterdamen are what happens when Skifandrians get the Spark.
We've already established that, biologically, they've diverged noticeably (green hair, anyone?), and being a matriarchal society, it's not unlikely that male Skifandrian Sparks would suffer the same fate as female European Sparks, or even have sufficient incentive to change their own sex en masse.

The polar ice lords are dragons of the Llewellyn family.
All we know about them is that they tax fire. Need I say more?

Zola was always fully aware of who Gil is.
She is the one playing him and he is underestimating her.
 * Remember, Gil has that ring he once gave Agatha on a chain around his neck ... and it has the Wulfenbach insignia on it.
 * Unless Zola is a very good actress, Jossed. Zola seems flabbergasted to learn Gil's surname.
 * But Zola is a good actress. How much she's acting around Gil is still up in the air, however.
 * I don't see this as likely, even without recent events.
 * This appears to be confirmed as of June 2010.

Zola is still in contact with Tarvek/Violetta in some fashion.
Because she stated she will "Dance with all the boys" just like Agatha said. And she is saying it aloud to the castle to send it (and maybe Agatha) a message for some reason.
 * Oh please. That was just Rule of Funny. Everybody's reading way too much into a stylistic thing.

Zola is the Lucrezia-Muse/clank, or an even newer Lucrezia copy.
The Zola Gil knew from Paris is dead. This WMG is compatible with the previous two.
 * Wow, so the count of people who are, were, or will be the Other totals...about 714 by now.

The Queen of England developed the mind-control Voice used by Lucrezia
Gil has recently claimed that to go against the merest whim of Albia of England is "literally unthinkable", a statement which might imply she uses mind-control. Lucrezia uses a kind of mind-controlling voice, which Agatha has partly inherited. When Agatha first meets Sleipnir O'Hara, a Scottish spark and member of a noble family, Sleipnir inquires if Agatha is from England, a question which makes little sense, considering that Agatha is from an Eastern European family, and was raised in Transylvania. Thus, Sleipnir is at least partly familiar with Albia's Voice (and as a spark, would be unaffected by it), which is at least partly based in the English accent. Lucrezia learned the Voice from Albia at one point, and it was passed on to Agatha, meaning that when Agatha spoke, Sleipnir unconsciously recognised the English undertones to the Voice, prompting an instinctive inquiry if she was English.
 * Where did it say Sleipnir was Scottish? 'Cause last time I checked, O'Hara was an Irish name (in fact, pretty much the archetypal Irish name).
 * Sleipnir's the daughter of the king of Little Ireland, which is under Wulfenbach control currently.
 * Not only is it an Irish name, but in case ya'll hadn't noticed the Union Jacks in various background images, England and Scotland are one country. Which is not called England. Just because Germans and Englishmen make the mistake all the time doesn't mean you have to! [/Scotsman]
 * Albia is referred to as 'Her Brittanic Majesty' at one point, but 'England' seems to be used as a synonym. :/ [/fakeWelsh]
 * Oh, and another thing. Basing mind-control on an "English accent" doesn't work because they have about a thousand of 'em. Yorkshire mind control, anyone? Cockney mind control? Presumably you mean one accent, probably the literal Queen's English. While the idea that the classis BBC announcers sound so trustworthy and authoritative because of their sinister powers is amusing, I don't see it. While sinister vocal powers could plausibly be inherited, Agatha has been raised in German/Romanian/Hungarian/Whatever from day one and accents are not.
 * Please note that a) Ireland was under british occupation/protection/controll/... untill IWW. IT IS EVEN REFLECTED IN UNION JACK by having St. Patric's cross c) Both England and Scotland are two separated countries which are part of United Kingdom
 * This whole discussion is actually moot, since if I'm not mistaken Sleipnir's comment was about Agatha's "relaxed dressing habits". Taking the speech bubbles together "We're not all as relaxed about running around half-naked as you are. Where are you from, England?" This was a real stereotype around the end of the Napoleonic Wars, when the blockade had cut Britain off from over a decade of every other country in Europe becoming less scandalous, and something similar might happen given the apparent cold war between Britain and Wulfenbach.
 * Whuh? The blockade of the Napoleonic Wars was enforced by Britain, not against Britain. The reason for the stereotype of scantily-clad English women is because during the Napoleonic wars, the guy in charge was Prince George (later George IV), who was a noted womaniser and libertine, and so fashions for the upper echelons of British society became daringly low cut at the bodice, easy to hold onto at the waist, and easy to slip out of.
 * Not only that, but a country that's mostly submerged is going to involve a lot of swimming, and therefore fashions suited to quick changes, drip-dry and NOT DROWNING.
 * Not to mention, think about what the climate must be like in what's basically an underwater greenhouse--it's either the ambient water temperature (unlikely as that's 'freakin' cold') or warmer than what real-world Great Britain is with no need to climate changes--no seasons, no winters, and a LOT of exhaled CO 2 to deal with in a closed-air system, even if you are close enough to the surface for direct ventilation. You wouldn't want to be wearing three or four layers or wool.
 * At the same time... The idea that there's some link between Albia and Lucrezia may not be out the window. Lucrezia jumped at Wooster's offer to be shipped over to England, if I remember correctly. Her reasoning was that she'd be protected from Klaus, but there may be something more to it.
 * Specifically, she said "Klaus will never be allowed into England while Albia rules." The use of her first name definitely insinuates some familiarity.
 * How else would she be called? Lucrezia's not the type to say "Her Majesty", in the real world the Queen is called "Elizabeth II" by people in casual conversation all the time, and as far as we know Albia has no last name. It seems most likely that Lulu just wants away from Klaus, and Gil's threats to Wooster notwithstanding she's confident Albia can keep Klaus out. And there's the old "enemy of my enemy" thing. Britain didn't put an undercover agent practically in Klaus's back pocket because they're on cordial terms.

Gilgamesh Wulfenbach is the new Storm King.
Think about it. Charismatic, powerful, exceptionally strong spark, probably going to marry Agatha and have peace, carries around a stick that can call down storm bolts from the sky...seems fairly obvious to me.
 * Tarvek is the True Heir by descent but Gil is shaping up to steal his thunder. Paralels both the political animosity between them (Tarvek hates the Wulfenbachs as (extremely competent) usurpers to the real royal families) and the Love Triangle with Agatha. And there's a fairy tale about the Storm King and a female Heterodyne...
 * Don't forget, Tarvek is probably responsible for that propaganda-laden production of the Storm King opera, and is milking his current incumbent state for as many Agatha-sympathy points as possible. The difference is, Tarvek is making an effort to convince the public of his sovereignty, and Gil isn't. How that's going to end up, who knows.
 * While the latest production might have something to do with the conspiracy, staged by members who are still in Vienna, the opera itself is likely older than Tarvek.
 * "Might"? The Storm King looks like Tarvek, the Heterodyne Princess like Agatha, and Ogglespoon like Gil. Subtle as a brick to the forehead.
 * As above, total propaganda move.
 * This could be the Foglios just making sure everyone knows who's who. If the production is taking place during the same time as the Castle Heterodyne plot, Gil's face was not well-known to the public, or even most of the Knights of Jove, and even though Agatha's giant image had been seen at Sturmhalten, descriptions of her had been distorted enough by the rumor mill that Pinky was able to fake being her without anyone questioning her physical features. If the casting was actual propoganda, the actress in the opera would have looked like her, not Agatha.
 * Maybe Tarvek and Gil were Switched At Birth somehow.
 * Gil's mother is unknown, so she could be a descendant of the Storm King. Trouble is, if Baron Wulfenbach knew that, he shouldn't have been surprised when Gil brought up the Heterodyne/Storm King prophecy.
 * Volume 9--which focuses mostly on Tarvek and Gil--is called "Agatha Heterodyne and the Heirs of Storm." That's basically confirmation.

The Klaus Wulfenbach we know is a construct.
In the hospital scene, we see his chest covered with a scar pattern similar to Punch's, and definitely too extensive to be explained even by the massive injuries sustained by having a house dropped on him. He is also very strong, and resilient enough to survive previously mentioned house. He also has dropped his more "traditional" (read mechanical) mad science in favour of the research of the Spark, presumably to transfer it to himself, which is exactly what this troper would do if he was trying to imitate a powerful Spark. It would also explain why he is so extremely picky about who is doctor is, but that could just be standard run-of-the-mill paranoia...
 * There was talk about him being made by his father from 3 of his sons somewhere in first chapters.
 * And apparently Word of God has confirmed it. DAMMIT! And I thought I was being clever...
 * Sorry Charlie. You forgot the Naughty Flashback scene, too. Very very visible stitchwork. The theory about his origin comes from a subtle comment in the Secret Blueprints. There were three Wulfenbach sons at one point, but nobody's heard about or from two of them in a very long time. Fan theory is a massive lab accident, and his poor parents had to save who and what they could from the remains they found. Hey, at least it keeps the Fifty Families scared about him never dying (not with good maintenance!), although Gil seems to have them just about as twitchy.
 * Oh, and no 'von'. Why does everyone keep putting in a 'von'?
 * It's just von of those things.
 * Because "von" signifies nobility in German. My guess is that the Foglios aren't (or at least, weren't) aware of this, explaining why the ruler of all of Europe has a commoner's name, while a lowly soldier (Moloch von Zinzer) is apparently of noble descent.
 * Von does not signify "nobility" but rather "very old nobility". "Von" means something along the lines of "of" or "from", the last name being a place. All Von Somewheres are noble, but not all nobles are Von Somewheres. Besides, it's not at all unlikely that many old noble families lost everything except the name when the Sparks became a force to be reckoned with, or when society shifted from agrarian to industrial, or that strong Sparks could rise to, or for that matter, claim nobility without anyone daring to argue.
 * In our world, 'von' signifies merely 'nobility'. Von something, on the other hand, signifies old nobility (old nobility: von [hometown/castle name], newer nobility: von [previous surname]). That said, considering Dutch took exactly the opposite route (dropping the nobility angle but keeping the origin one), and that Girl Genius' history diverged from ours quite a bit into the past, nothing says it has to work like that in the Empire.
 * They could simply not take it just to humiliate the rest of the royalty... "You got stomped by somebody who isn't even royal, nya nya nya..."
 * Clearing up this "von" confusion, I quote the other wiki's Page on the word, "...it can be said that almost all German nobles use von, but not all users of von are noble." It could just be where they're from/ the name of their father.
 * One more interesting thing... Baron is the second-lowest noble title in Germany, above Knight. Klaus humiliating the rest of the royalty cannot be ruled out.

Zola and Tarvek: Spares to pair?

 * Dear God, I hope not.
 * However, Moloch and Violetta have been getting pretty chummy...
 * Although Moloch was clearly mooning over Wilhelm when Agatha came in.
 * That could have more to do with Violetta and Moloch both being top-grade minions.

Klaus will learn Agatha's locket is suppressing the Other, but will keep trying to "deal with" Agatha just to ensure the Other doesn't re-emerge.
And now for the most bizarre WMG logic in history: I had a dream about this. It involved a small dog at some point.
 * I am NOT a small dog. I'm merely short.

The Wulfenbachs don't use the 'von' as a sign of democratic unity with their subjects, and to tick off the Fifty Families
Hey, as long as I'm here, might as well throw in one. The 'von' has never been included in canon, yet shows up all over fan commentary. A barony in the Siebenbergen would certainly qualify for the particle in German or Sachsen, but Klaus at least doesn't use it. We know from the Secret Blueprints that his parents were responsible and caring rulers, and likely sided with the villagers and peasants rather than dabbling in the power games of nobility. I think it's a way of thumbing the family nose at those who are more interested in what they can accrue to themselves, rather than who they're responsible for.
 * Interesting... amusingly, that would be the exact opposite of Ribbentrop's fake "von". And of course there could be a legalistic aspect. Klaus is on top because he knocked heads, and Gil will be on top because he's the one Klaus taught to knock heads. Heriditary doesn't enter into it (I'd imagine that if for whatever reason Klaus couldn't produce a satisfactory heir, he'd just find one). Being "von Wulfenbach" would imply that his title, like those of the 50 families, is what gives him the right to rule. He doesn't hold for a second with their ideas of "legitimacy", so he's deliberatly abandoned any "legitimacy" that he had.
 * Or maybe the Wulfenbachs were just a minor house and never used "von".

Othar is Bill Heterodyne.
For one reason or another he has decided it is best that there are no sparks. This is why Othar was going to save Agatha for last and goes after the Wulfenbachs. Not to mention his personality does somewhat match the showy-ness of the Heterodynes in tall tales. As the Dragon of Mars WMG above shows there is more than a passing resembelance to reality in those stories.
 * Something happened. Bill went Othar, Zen Survivor and Knight Templar, but Barry became jaded.
 * Look at Othar's love of Heterodyne shows.
 * It would also explain the treatment of Othar by the Wulfenbachs. They don't really treat him as a major threat considering his abilities and endurance. More of an annoying uncle who can take a great deal of punishment. Even the attempted lobotomy comes off as the Baron didn't have his whole heart in it, or else he would have sealed the door.
 * I.e. they kind of treat Othar as a living version of Gilgamesh's fencing clank. An acceptable rival. The Baron even left that thing besides Othar hoping he'd escape. It was just another test to see how Othar could/would escape, and if anyone could it would be him.
 * If not Bill, then some old sidekick to the Heterodynes.
 * Pretty much Jossed by Othar's twitter.
 * he has Twitter?
 * anyways, it could actually make a certain sense, if bill bascially went insane. which seems to be entirely possible. somebody was killing sparks after the attack on castle Heterodyne, they killed a lot of them. it is implied it was the other, but Othar claims to be killing sparks (not that we've ever seen him succeed once, and he let Dumed go... how could he NOT realize the cousin to the heterodyne was a Spark?) but if he really has killed sparks for being sparks, it might have been Bill way back when, steadily losing it.
 * "not that we've ever seen him succeed once"... Er, Twitter!Othar killed at least on Spark and her (possibly non-Spark) father (in his first outing IIRC); to paraphrase: "Her father pleaded with me to spare his daughter, saying that a parent's greatest nightmare was to see their child die. I couldn't put him through that. So I shot him first."
 * In one comic, it said that after the attack on the Castle, "Master Bill was nearly insane." Hmm...I don't suppose, in 18 years, he crossed into full madness?

The Heterodyne Boys knew Lucrezia was the Other, and designed the locket to shut down the Other if it surfaced in Agatha.
This is slightly supported by Dr. Beetle's panic at Agatha's missing locket, and more strongly so by the effect of the locket on the Other after the download. I imagine at the time they didn't know if the Other would be transmitted from mother to daughter, and therefore saw Agatha's (very, very early) breakthrough as being the manifestation of the Other. This one is premised on the Other being a sort of parasite. That it shut down her Spark is just a side effect (and one she overcame).
 * One wrinkle in this theory is that Uncle Barry was scared by child!Agatha's heterodyning-- it's her humming, a manisfestation of the Heterodyne spark, that prompts him to give her the locket. Also, it's been said that Agatha's breakthrough went so smoothly because she'd been eased into it. She'd started designing dingbots back at the university, and the sleepbuilding came shortly after she'd lost her locket. It wasn't until the locket's affects had worn off completely that she was able to use her full Spark abilities. The gradual growing of abilities meant she didn't go insane like most.
 * It's far, far more likely that Dr. Beetle was afraid that Agatha would give herself away if her spark was exposed and reveal his treachery.

Heterodyne trilobytes with Wulfenbach wings: The ultimate ending of Girl Genius is literally coded into the wallpaper.
But... in this comic we see that Tarvek's crest also has wings. So the trilobyte with wings can either be Tarvek + Agatha, or Gil + Agatha.
 * However, if you look carefully Tarvek's wings and the Wulfenbach wings are different designs, and the wings on the wallpaper are Wulfenbach's.
 * Or the wings indicate not a marriage alliance but adherence to the Baron's Peace, which is why some of the Sturmvoraus insignia don't have it (presumably predating that).
 * It could be that Agatha has gained a mobile floating castle like Castle Wulfenbach (remember that Wulfenbach's crest was originally wingless), either by getting a new airship or turning Castle Hetrodyne or Mechanicsburg into a floating island. Remember how the Castle want to go exploring the world as a yurt? Well, after Agatha revives it, maybe it can.
 * I always assumed the the Non Sequitur was due to Gil poking around in the Castle's innards.

Von Pinn is a muse.
In this comic, Von Pinn states that she has existed for over two hundred years, and was created by a "beloved king", likely the Storm King. According to Master Payne, the muses have been in hiding for over one hundred years, and were likely in circulation (and being disassembled)for some time before that. Lucrezia's connections to the Knights of Jove could explain how she got a hold of Von Pinn.
 * I'll give you the "created by/for the Storm King" thing, but I think it's pretty obvious she's a construct, not a clank. Unless you mean there are nine other muses, only constructs instead of clanks?
 * von Pinn is almost certainly a construct; we have seen her bleed and experience pain. The Jaegers seem smitten with her, too. On the other hand, the non-canonical Cinderella story has an impossibly realistic clank ... so who can be sure?
 * Alternately, the modifications that Lucrezia added to her made her look more of a construct than a clank. This is why she looks like Lucrezia; Lucrezia is a narcissist.
 * Alternately Alternately, Von Pinn is Otilia's mind transferred into a construct body. Lucrezia wanted to create the ultimate bodyguard/nanny for her babies, and while she was quite confident in her ability to create a construct who could take and dish out massive amounts of damage, she wasn't so sure of her ability to give it the right personality - she'd spent most of her life being Daddy's Little Villain, so she didn't have a lot of experience building things to protect and nurture the defenseless. But what's this? The Castle says the legendary Muse of Protection is tucked away in an old storage room (probably sent by the Storm King and Rembrandt Van Rijn to keep Euphrosynia and any future female Heterodynes "safe")? Why, that'd be the perfect personality! Let's just look at old Faustus's notes on personality transfer ... Then, after transferring Otilia into a body hardwired to interpret "keeping  safe" the way Lucrezia wanted, she thanked the Castle by transferring a backup copy of its mind into Otilia's old (and possibly now vacant) body. Of course, as a side effect of all this, Lucrezia then had experience with copying and transferring minds - and the Castle had a spare mind running on different hardware, hardware that could move around and wouldn't be affected by a device designed to shut down the Castle, which Lucrezia would have to lock away should she ever need the Castle fragmented and unable to stop her. Thus, Von Pinn is both a construct of Lucrezia's and a centuries-old guardian sent by a certain "beloved king" and instructed by her not-Lucrezia creator to keep the next female Heterodyne "safe"; and what appears to be Otilia doesn't answer to the Storm King's heir, wants to kill traitors to the Heterodynes, is ticklish, and, in at least one case, talks in a way that'd be quite in-character for the castle ("Heh heh heh. I'll get you loose. OOOH YEEEES..."). How did Lucrezia manage to lock it away? Well, it's a male personality in a female body - she may have surprised it while it was occupied with self-discovery (yet another reason for Von Pinn/Otilia to wish that Lucrezia's bones burn green).
 * Well, we now have confirmation of Der Kestle's mind being in control of Otilia's body. Otilia's mind being Von Pinn's (and both being thus due to Lucrezia) is still a WMG, though.
 * This makes the Otilia-transferred-into-Von-Pinn theory look a lot more likely - Von Pinn fell down the hole to that pit a while ago and the result of an mechanical-to-biological transfer has now been noted as being down there.
 * And now it's all but confirmed.
 * So, Von Pinn we know and Jagers love is in fact Otilia, stuck in this construct body after a mind transference (by Lucrezia). If she yells at the castle for bad handling of the Muse body--which appears to be the case, because the party mishandling her current body is on the other side. That explains a lot.

Jenka's scarf is hiding a missing nose
Look at the lower left panel in this comic. Doesn't that area of Jenka's face look a little bit too flat?
 * Corollary: This is somewhat negated by the fact that you can sometimes see the bridge of her nose, so perhaps she's just missing a chunk of it.
 * Compare Gil in the second panel and Agatha in the last panel of this comic. Everyone is drawn with very flat faces in profile.
 * One one hand we can clearly see the bridge of Jenka's nose here, however, face to face with Agatha, she doesn't smell her.
 * She doesn't smell because her nose is covered.

The Undying Queen is not one person.
As noted a fair ways above, Albia (the only name we ever hear for her) is used for many queens. She has a progression through the maternal line, and each simply follows the political ideas of the previous queen(s), so the ideas never die. Alternatively, the queen is a clank or construct (the latter of which would be more than one person, just a little differently).
 * Albion was one of the first names for England. Albia is just a feminized version. Also note that on this page Gil mentions "What's left" of the island of England. Not only is Albia an undying anquitarian thinking machine, she's also ENGLAND, full stop.
 * He also threatens to "destroy" Albia, which suggest she is an Clank or AI instead of a living organism. Or maybe just that he will destroy her entirely so there is nothing left for resurrection.

Othar is Klaus.
Both of them are very hard to kill. Granted, Gil's comment was in the context of disease, but Klaus is nothing if not thorough. And since the guy lives on an airship, some sort of tweak to avoid defenestration makes sense. We also know they both like waffles, and both have a "my way is the right way" mentality. And finally, we know time travel exists in this setting. Put them all together, and you have a later-period Klaus driven insane by temporal paradox or attempts to get that wasp out of his head jumping back in time to "fix" all the problems he's experienced by eliminating the causes of them: Sparks.
 * And makes a special point of opposing himself and his son... why?
 * Haven't we all had one of those days where we could just go back in time and stop ourselves from doing such **** ing stupid things? Othar could be trying that with about thirty years of moves that seemed like a good idea at the time.
 * Why can't it be the other way around? Klaus looks a good deal older than Othar, not to mention all the surgical scars he has. Plus, it might explain, in a completely insane way, how Othar keeps surviving. Othar MUST go back in time, because Klaus is already there, and has even had at least one son. The universe simply won't allow Othar to die until the time-loop has been satisfied.

Von Pinn is a revenant, of the stealthy variety
The facts we know for sure: Von Pinn was not created by the Heterodynes or Lucrezia, but was given to them as a gift. She was originally charged with keeping Agatha "safe" for those around her, and then with "protecting" her, but she found loopholes to do both of those without Agatha having to survive. Even though she disagreed with her king she says she wouldn't even want to betray him if she could. But Lucrezia then gave her an order to keep Agatha alive, and she would very much love to be able to disobey that but cannot.

Now the speculation. We know from Klaus that it's at least possible to make a slaver wasp that'll work on constructs, whether they all do or not (the only thing special about that one was that it'd work on a spark, so it's likely that they actually all would've worked on a construct). She's compelled to obey Agatha's voice until she realizes what's going on and makes a conscious effort to resist it; the same was true of Vrin, so at the time it seemed like this just meant this was a feature installed on all of Lucrezia's creations and Von Pinn was one of them. It was never explained why Von Pinn declared that commanding her "wouldn't work again", but it seemed up until recently that it was just like Vrinâ€”the command voice carries a lot of weight, but if a sufficiently strong-willed creation knows that it's not really Lucrezia speaking they can resist. But then we learned that Lucrezia wasn't VP's original creator or the first to give her orders (though she's the only one whose orders she openly would like to be able to disobey). It would make a lot of sense if Von Pinn were a revenant; perhaps Lucrezia realized she'd figured out a workaround to her original orders and took matters into her own hands. However, this requires that:


 * Disproved

Lucrezia really has been using her "Stealthy revenants" all along, sneakily.
The Baron and his people claim that they're new, but think about it. A tool like that is much more valuable if kept secret, since they can just step up security and add four security keys to every important mechanism or something if her enemies found out about it. Everyone would be second-guessed, and eventually they'd find a countermeasure (read: the bug sniffing dogs). Far more useful is to have a few key players infected and ready to sabotage things or lead their troops to certain death, without leaving any evidence that she'd made them do it. The reason they're in the open now is that Agatha wasn't in on this subterfuge; Lucrezia never would have wasted her trump card by ordering one of her stealth revenants to activate the hive engine, but Agatha didn't even do that on purpose and certainly wasn't trying to keep anything hidden. Once an action had been taken which couldn't be attributed to anything but stealth-revenants, the Baron figured it out, ran whatever tests were necessary to verify it, and had his countermeasure in under three months. The reason these revenants are "new" is because this is first time they've acted so inexpertly as to be noticed.
 * Confirmed: The shambling revenants were the exception, not the rule.

Omar was a stealth revenant.
As pointed out by Dr East on the forums, everybody assumes that the locket killed Omar, but when he steals it Agatha, in full madness mode (which makes the command voice much stronger, or at least makes her voice closer to Lucrezia's), orders him to die slowly and painfully. By the end of the day, he caught an unexplainable illness which killed him. All that locket was was a mental suppressor--I could imagine it giving the wrong person a headache or making it hard to think, but we don't know that it should be strong enough to kill a non-spark. Wheras we know that the command voice can be used to command someone to die (not to kill themselves but to die), since Lucrezia orders Vrin to die in book six and she seemingly chokes to death the instant the order is given. So while the amulet could have been what did him in, he might have simply died because he was a revenant and he was ordered to. This also has the bonus effect of explaining why the protagonists are so interested in retracing Moloch's steps once they get the time window--if he was a revenant, he had to have been infected somewhere, and figuring out where might help them find the hive.
 * It's worth noting that when Agatha tells her parents the locket was taken, they look in the thieves' market instead of the local hospitals, which means that they at least weren't expecting it to cause illness. Now, since it's presumably a unique piece of technology, it's possible they didn't know what kind of effect it would have on a non-Spark, but it's still suggestive.
 * It also had a label on the back, "return to Agatha Clay" and her address. Again, not something you put on what is basically a time bomb.
 * In addition! Moloch suffered NONE of the effects his brother did, even though he held onto the locket for quite a while. If it was the locket that did it, shouldn't he have dies as well, or at least gotten weak and ill?
 * Moloch broke the locket by throwing it in frustration, almost as soon as he took it from Omar's corpse. The other points still stand, though.

Othar is going to save Gil's life

 * In a timeline where Othar never went into Castle Heterodyne, Gil is dead. However, we know from the 'future' scene that not only is Gil alive, but he's important to some stuff. Now, the only thing different in the two timelines, is Othar's presence. Thus, Othar is going to save Gil's life. Albeit it, probably on accident...

Zola La Sirene d'Or is Glinda the Good.
Okay, another strange story, but some time after the end of it, Glinda looks at Oz, thinks it's hopeless and leaves after installing a shadow government and Figurehead (Probably a fake Scarecrow) She manages to tough through a lot, but gave up her magic for some reason (Emotional Baggage?) and ends up in Paris. Her money is no good there and ends up as a showgirl. She gets caught up with a lot of strange sparky schemes because through it all, she believes the best in people. She started finding her own two feet and quite possibly decided no more strange things when she meets Gil, and it's the Fiyero thing all over again, even if she doesn't know much of the Wulfenbach empire (Or even that he's the Baron's son).

And she likes pink a little too much. Even when she ditched the very Glinda-ish dress, she still has a lot of pink. Just who does she think she needs to fool into believing that she's a Heterodyne in the castle?


 * Thoroughly disproven by this point, I would think.

The comic is the original timeline of Genius: The Transgression
It's stated that time travel and Bardo shenanigans pretty much destroyed the previous timeline as we know it, and the Terminals had to remake it in a way that could survive alteration (and may well have destroyed themselves in the process). Othar may have a point; Sparks will eventually get into time travel, and the resulting time wars and temporal paradoxes will make time collapse on itself, and the Geniuses of the new timeline are a faded reflection of the power of the Spark.

There's gonna be an "amusing" incindent with the revival process.
I've got a hunch that Agatha,Gil and Tarvek are going to mess Si Vales Valeo up - somehow - and end up exchanging their bodies for some time. Hilarity Ensues.
 * This Troper is betting that they'll screw up the Si Vales Valeo, and that the Other is going to end up in somebody other than Agatha's head... most likely Tarvek's...

Agatha is the daughter of Lucrezia and Barry Heterodyne
Various forms of drama could have had Barry and Lucrezia get together in the time where they were missing. An affair, possibly due to Bill going insane and sending her into his brother's arms? Closeness after his possible death, turning into something more? What we know is that Barry, not Bill, was the one who brought Agatha back to live with Punch and Judy; and he had a locket which could shut down the Other - something which could have been used to rescue Lucrezia previously, if we got with the "the Other took over Lucrezia" theory. In any case, guilt over this emotional betrayal of his brother could have had Barry decide to tell Agatha he was her "uncle". Since she would no doubt hear all the Heterodyne stories growing up, it would after all be a rather sordid thing to inform a young child of. This theory may also account for Barry's general atmosphere of regret/shame in his flashback appearance, though that may simply be from the necessity of repressing Agatha's talents.
 * Disproven by Word of God. Agatha is absolutely, positively Bill's daughter.

The thing that emerged from the pit January 20th 2010 is one of the Muses shown in the mural.
Compare (what's currently today's) strip and the one in back of http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20050928 and tell me they aren't the same. (Note the headband, in particular). Edit: Called it!

Moloch will be the next to contract Exploding Disco Syndrome

 * Lucrecia!Agatha just bit him. Earlier, she got it from Tarvek by kissing him. Therefore, Moloch has it now, too. This does not bode well.

Zola is an agent of the Master of Paris.
She pretends to be a Dumb Blonde, but she's actually smarter than she looks and perfectly capable of killing when needed without loosing her cool - skills that come in handy when you're a spy. She kept getting involved in the schemes of minor sparks - and subtly nudging them towards failure - because the Master of Paris needed them stopped for the safety of his city. She knew who Gil was all along - getting Gilgamesh Wulfenbach involved whenever possible in order to evaluate his abilities and character was an important secondary mission of hers, since the Master of Paris would want to know everything he could about the heir to the empire. While in the course of her stumble-into-conspiracies-and-screw-them-up job, she became a part of the Knights of Jove's plot, and the Master of Paris realized that this was something much bigger and more dangerous than the other little problems she'd been solving for him and ordered her to drop the dumb act enough to get picked as their fake heir so she could do ... whatever would be most convenient for Paris. Once Zola gets in touch with her boss again and provides enough information for him to realize that Agatha is A) really a Heterodyne and B) not a threat to Paris (either directly via trying to take over the world or indirectly by destabilizing Klaus's peace), she'll probably be ordered to help Agatha - and to get the new Heterodyne to Paris ASAP. When the current crisis is over, she'll run into Wooster and they'll recognize each other and reminisce over some martini-flavored Noodle Incident before engaging in a long and entertaining series of backstabs as they each try to get Agatha to their respective governments first.

Tarvek is a decedent of van Rijn
Weather or not he's the scion of the Storm King is another question completely.

Tarvek is the Storm King
Not "the heir to the throne of", but the original, thanks to a stable time loop which (obviously) hasn't happened yet (after all, Tarvek was capable of sending Twitter!Othar back in time.) Alternatively...


 * Okay, I'm an idiot: Tarvek was capable of sending Twitter!Othar's consciousness back in time.

Tarvek is van Rijn
Again, a stable time loop which (obviously) hasn't happened yet; after being thrown back in time, he will construct the Muses for the Storm King - as somebody who is fascinated with van Rijn's designs, who has constructed a replica - which became sapient! - of a van Rijn design, and who would have a knowledge of future technology at his disposal, he'd have no difficulty in claiming to be "the greatest spark of all time" - the only oddity is that Tarvek doesn't seem to enough of an egomaniac to make such a claim.

Tarvek is Agatha's half-brother
Much as in the theory about Gil above. No affair has been explicitly shown, but Aaronev was clearly infatuated with Lucrezia. Problems include the description of Aaronev's consort as a Valois (which, admittedly, Lucrezia could be for all we know) and the Summoning Engine failing to work correctly on Anevka.

The reason America is unreachable is there is a Spark version of Tesla and Edison's war going on
Spark Tesla is a pretty terrifying idea and would explain why no one has returned from the Americas. I mean the guy was pretty close to one in Real Life.
 * Due to the Rule of Cool, this theory is now part of this troper's head canon until Word of God says otherwise. They would also like to think that Tesla won.
 * Someone on the Girl Genius Yahoo group suggested that "maybe the fight between Tesla and Edison ended a while back, with Tesla victorious, and Tesla's benevolent takeover of the Americas (working with Thundering Engine Woman) left the place a utopia; the reason we never hear back from overseas is that no one ever wants to leave."
 * What, and Steinmetz wouldn't be the clear victor? Dude was a hunchbacked scientist who built a small city and then destroyed it with artificial lightning, lived with crocodiles, gila monsters and vultures, and was every bit the genius Tesla was. In real life. Adding the spark would largely be a formality.

The Mongfish family is full of Bene Gesserit.
An extensive (and effective) breeding program, and at least one known instance of a control voice. Think about it.
 * Which probably makes the Dyne the Spice good thing it's secret or whole continents could erupt in a war that spanned the globe. As opposed to the troubles Klaus settled, which were limited to less than 3 continents.

Anevka really was Anevka.
Even if her human body was long dead she had her memories stretching all that way back to her childhood, long before she was connected to Tinka's body, she seemed to have emotions, she had free will, basically she had everything that makes a person a person, and with those memories that person was Anevka. Tarvek just denied it to rationalize away killing (or at least essentially causing a coma for) his sister.
 * I think that she was like the muses that she was based on: a fully sentient construct. The difference is that she thought she was human.

Mamma Gkika is a Jaeger who used to be / is a Heterodyne.
Jaegers will only let Heterodynes work on them, but they let Mamma patch them up. QED...
 * there is not enough jagerdraught in the world to re-grow an amputated arm. Though minor injuries are obviously treated easily.

Wild Wild West (1999) takes place in the Girl Genius universe.
You've got giant mechanical spiders, crude cyborgs, what-have-you. Dr. Loveless is obviously a Spark, with his loyal minions and steam-powered wheelchair. Artemis Gordon is also a spark, albeit a low-key one. Professor Escobar and the other kidnapped scientists were also Sparks, complete with their own minions (Rita, for example). Those guys in foreign uniforms aren't all legitimate- some of them are warlords fleeing Wulfenbach. James West and Gordon are the start of the Secret Service, designed to police rogue Sparks.
 * Slight problem with this theory, the Americas are completely cut off in Girl Genius canon so anyone from Europe wouldn't be able to get there. On the other hand, we don't know what the year is in the comic so the events of Wild Wild West could have happened before America was isolated or after comtact was re-established.

Gil is not an only child.
We already know that Klaus likes to hide his children when they're young, and for good reason. He runs a tyrannical empire, and there are plenty of people who would love to get their hands on a juicy hostage. Any of the children on Castle Wulfenbach, even those with supposedly established backgrounds, could be a Wulfenbach. Might explain why Klaus was so broken up over Zulenna's 'death'.

At some point in the comic, Bang and Violetta are going to come to blows
Bang = Pirate. Violetta= Smoke Knight= Ninja (more or less). Both the Rule of Cool and the law of the internet demand that they fight.
 * Another possibility: Pirate versus Spy, as Wooster's first Crowning Moment of Awesome involved delivering an Offhand Backhand to Bangladesh. Of course, he's also managed to earn the muderous rage of ANOTHER of Klaus's minions, so Bang may have to take a number behind Dolokov...in any case, it's pretty clear all the Badass Normal characters will at some point have to have an internet cliche melee.

Agatha is going to become a Jaeger
She's dangerously close to death and is going to put herself even closer to try to help her two beaus. Luckily, she's right next to the source of that famous potion that created everyone's favorite near immortal killing machines.
 * Well, maybe not a Jager, since water from the Dyne is only an ingredient in Jagerdraught, and she doesn't know the recipe. But, given that Knife Heterodyne survived drinking the water, she has a very good shot.
 * It certainly makes SO MANY THINGS BECOME CLEAR!

Lucrezia is not the Other; a copy of her mind is the Other
We know she perfected mind transfer, so it is possible that the Other is not her, but instead one of her "copies". She might even be one of the good guys fighting against the Other, which could be a defective copy.
 * How about she isn't the Other, but she will become the Other. After all, time travel exists. Some sort of stable timeloop effect I'm thinking

Lucrezia, The Other and the entity that the Geisterdamen worship, are three different things
The Other is a malevolent super entity, demon, spirit, thing; created, or discovered, by Lucrezia. It is very intelligent, a chess master, and will use anything to achieve its goals. Thus, it can possess people to further its means. Lucrezia experimented with mental transfer, and either: A) formed The Other from scratch, and, like so many creations of sparks, it went rogue B) formed the other by splicing various minds together (possibly including her own) into a gestalt consciousness, which was unstable, or C) discovered a preexisting entity of pure mind (a spirit, ghosts, a god, or something) and then “downloaded” it. Whichever one of these it is, at some point it fused with Lucrezia, voluntarily or involuntarily, creating the maniac we now know and... don’t love today.

Originally, Lucrezia was exactly what she seemed to be, a fully human spark, who married Bill, joined the Heterodyne family doing a heel face turn, and is Agatha’s mother. Her experiments into the nature of the mind, and the control or transfer thereof, eventually produced/found The Other. They fused, and the Other orchestrated an attack on Castle Heterodyne, for some as-yet uncertain reason. It then left, met up with the Geisterdamen to pose as their goddess so it could take control, located the Knights of Jove, whipped them into shape, and then started bludgeoning Europe.

The Geisterdamen worship some mother/fertility goddess, much like the Skifanderans, and may even be an offshoot cult/culture. For some reason (which will make sense and be very interesting when we eventually learn it) they worship a maternal lineage which Lucrezia and Agatha belong to. After The Other possessed Lucrezia, it decided to use the fact that the Geisterdamen are fanatically loyal to their goddess, and just such an army is a very convenient thing to have around. Vrin stated that when she was a novice, they were visited by Lucrezia, and that this was accepted by everyone as the true incarnation. When she came back much later, Lucrezia was now fused with The Other. Note that senior, more experienced priestesses were not fooled, and although the body was the same, they could tell something was different.

Agatha attacked Castle Heterodyne 18 years ago.

 * Once she discovers who The Other really is, she decides to kill It by going back to the attack on Castle Heterodyne and using the attack as cover for a more covert assassination mission. Turns out she has to cause the attack first, though. She's already been shown travelling through time and being seen by Du Pree.

A Hetrodyne really did
Dance naked through the streets trying to shoot down the moon, turned all the tourists into monsters, and then built a very dangerous fountain out of sausages.

Von Pinn is the original personality of the Muse of protection, downloaded into a Jaegar-like Body
Today's comic seems to be saying this.
 * This was already guessed, about a third of the way from the bottom of the page. Look for "Von Pinn is a muse."

Klaus has a relationship with Bangladesh.
There arguments seem to be more of a Slap Slap Kiss then actual hatred, and look at this, their closeness doesn't seem very, ahem, professional. Also, as dedicated and strong willed as Klaus is, he's still human and she's an attractively tan chick, and why would Bangladesh do it? Well Klaus is pretty hot, and maybe Bangladesh likes old guys.
 * In that panel he's is physically restraining her so that he can use the weasel on her. (Wow, there's something I'd say again.) There's nothing sexual about it at all.

The Heterodynes are Jewish!
... In this recent storyline ("Maxim Buys a Hat"), there's an awful lot of Jewish overtones to the story that don't make sense otherwise: So either the Heterodynes are Jewish or the rest of Mechanicsburg is (and there's no reason for those two to be mutually exclusive, so it's probably both!)
 * The hebrew writing on the schlognwurst.
 * "Always you gotta find problems!"
 * "An dot's ven dey schtarted all dot krezy sekrifice schtuff during de High Holy Dayz..."
 * Oh, come on, now. Everyone is Jewish because Mechanicsburg has a proper Delicatessen? By that logic everyone in NY City must be Jewish too!
 * I'm going to go out on a limb here, and guess that Mechanicsburg is not predominantly Jewish, but has a large Jewish minority population. Jews have been persecuted throughout the history of Europe, and they might want to side with the dangerous psychopaths to be on the winning side for once. Or maybe Jews migrated to Mechanicsburg to be under the protection of said dangerous psychopaths. Or maybe the Heterodynes of old were equal opportunity employers.
 * Or maybe ALL THE SPARKS ARE JEWS! (Which certainly gives Othar's mission some Unfortunate Implications)
 * Never mind Othar--that's Unfortunate Implications for the whole damn comic. 99.9% of Sparks are evil geniuses who end up destroying everything around them in spectacular ways.

Dimo is an NCO of some sort

 * Oggie and Maxim seem to listen carefully to what he says. He is much less goofy than the other two. His gruff-but-caring attitude and low-key hardness fit the bill perfectly. He has been stated to be a fair bit older than the others. Even Maxim, who was apparently an officer, usually defers to Dimo's judgement. Everything about him practically screams Old Soldier and Sergeant Rock.

Klaus is NOT a revenant
We know that the slaver wasp he swallowed is specially engineered to work on sparks, but is it engineered to work on constructs? Klaus does obey the Other in the scene following his infection, but he is definitely intelligent and quick-thinking enough to let the Other think he is infected, and there is a clear advantage to that. Then again, the Other may have known Klaus was a construct, and taken steps accordingly.

Othar is a Time Lord

 * Because every WMG entry needs one. Besides, he has travelled in time, shows up in strange places he could never have gotten to by conventional means, and cannot die. He decided to sample Earth snack food after being given a Jelly Baby by the Doctor, and fell in love with popcorn.
 * His twitter confirms that he has other versions of himself... Those who are messing with the time-line.

The Dingbots are going to pull a Face Heel Turn
Not just that they are already exhibiting unstable characteristics, fighting amongst themselves. We've learned that Lucrezia worked out how to transfer consciousness between humans and machines. She's used the Muses in the past, but surely, a Dingbot, a clank with the Spark, would be even better? Look at the time window at the start of the story - notice the voice balloons. We've assumed they are just echos, but what if they signify a collective entity made up of many dingbot clanks, all speaking as one?

Maxim and Oggie are brothers
They've referred to the other as "Brodder" at least twice, and it stands to reason that if one of them goes on a suicide mission, the other goes too.

Zola is actually Klaus Barry
Well, it would explain so much. Overly pink. Heads all wrong. Lack of romantic entanglements. Always up for adventure.

If you think about it doesn't Klaus Barry stick out as a Checkovian child? Besides we are in Mechanicsburg. Just because something is impossible doesn't mean it is not true.
 * Jossed.

Girl Genius and Narbonic are in the same universe
The rules for sparks and mad scientists are practically identical, but a few hundred years later sparks are much less common (possibly due to Othar's quest) and thus normal people have forgotten/been mindwiped. Now the sparks that remain have much more advanced technology and research to draw from, and most people simply do not notice or rationalize away anything strange they encounter unless the veil is broken for them (again, possibly due to something Othar did).
 * The fanfic The Mad Scientist Wars is based on this.

The power source for the Dyne is Phazon
When we first see it, we see bizarre growths everywhere. We then find out in the next comic that it grants strength and has mutagenic properties. Not to mention seeing it create Elite Mooks. And then we're told it's fatal in high doses and can be used as a vast energy source. It even glows blue. And then the clincher. With a more controlled application of the Dyne's power, Agatha enters Hyper Mode. She even properly vents it before it overloads.

So, yeah, the Dyne is full of Phazon, and I think I'll go as far as saying that Mechanicsburg is sitting on top of a Phazon Seed, with the Heterodynes as its guardians. The only reason it doesn't spread is because the Castle uses up all the Phazon it produces.
 * Thanks for the idea, now my imagination can come up with all sorts of distracting stuff... Zero Suit Agatha?

Zeetha's going to get Killed Off for Real.
Though it really depends of how much drama the authors want to milk from it, and how unlikeable they're aiming to make  As it stands now, it looks pretty certain she will  If this DOES happen and stick, dammit, Foglios, that's a low blow.
 * If she does die, she'll get better. She appears in several short stories, all set long after the current events, including Personal Trainer, which appears to be canon, and, even though the radio plays are apocrypha (at best), the fact that she appears in those suggests that she is known as one of Agatha's companions in her days of knight-errantry, which she wouldn't be if she dies permanently before Agatha comes into her own.
 * I was under the impression that Personal Trainer took place at the circus.

If Zeetha dies (or dies and is 'zapped back'), Gil becomes heir to the throne of Skiffander.
Face it, we all get that Zeetha's Gil's sister. In this scenario, the Zulenna side story (with Klaus not caring about inheritance rules and her being brought back) isn't important itself but as foreshadowing--Zeetha is a princess, but if she dies and is either Killed Off for Real or brought back she loses her ability to inherit the throne, and has only one sibling we know of--Gil, son of Klaus/Chump. The Skiffandrans were angry with Klaus and potentially out to kill Gil because he's in line for the throne.
 * Big problem: that rule was made up by the 12 (?) royal families of Europa so Great great great grandpa wouldn't be on the throne forever and his desendants could actually inherit. It's not a universal thing.
 * Not a big problem. Just because that PARTICULAR law was made up by the European families doesn't mean Skifander doesn't have a similar rule. Without a law like that governing succession, there's nothing to prevent every country ending up with an Albia--once you have an undying ruler, it's hard to get rid of them. Not to mention, she might NOT be bring-back-able, or even WORSE, Gil is older and the legitimate heir either way.

The initial flashback about Airman Higgs is Unreliable.
There are too many contradictions between his character as established in the flashback, and as established in person. In particular, flashback-Higgs isn't nearly as Made of Iron. Compare: in the flashback, he gets his arm broken by a territorial goose. In a later appearance, he gets slammed into a wall by Otilia and doesn't even blink. Besides that, he breaks his Stoic facial expression twice just during the flashback, and only three times since then. So now we must ask ourselves: what did happen? We know that he was at least a little injured when he arrived. Doctor Sun mentioned that one injury - supposedly, a bite from Bang - was infected, which suggests that the Doctor looked him over. If Higgs actually got hurt...
 * At the barfight, it is implied that Higgs was healed in the same way that Gil was, and was healed with a Jäger potion. He may be showing some side effects from that.

Agatha will transcend after....
At some point, Agatha will use the waters from below Castle Heterodyne to brew coffee. I believe a vaguely accurate term for what happens next would be Limit Break, and manipulation of time and space would be the very least of her powers.

Someone will build an Ironman-ish suit
Most likely Gil.

Queen Albia is vital to England
To phrase it better: It seems that Albia is England. I believe that she was human at one point, (that would explain the heirs) but that some situation, a war possibly, forced her to fuse with England itself, allowing her to administer its systems (maybe the AI controlling them normally was destroyed in an attack). This rendered her immortal, but unable to exit the machine, as that would make the remains of the islands fall apart. Also, when Gil threatens Wooster, he says he will destroy her, not kill her. So she rules to this day as Her Undying Majesty, possibly with her original persona gone just as Anevka's, but no one dares to disobey her, as she can control every part of the country - denying her is "literally unthinkable", because she's everywhere.

M Bison is a Spark
Street Fighter takes place in a timeline where Othar managed to kill off most, if not all, of the Sparks (or else they wiped each other out somehow, or else they're just not relevant to the movie's plot and thus don't show up due to The Law of Conservation of Detail)

Moloch will be the first member of Agatha's group that Othar runs into.
And then his talent for surviving will be stretched to its limits as Othar does his best to kill him dead. Othar was right there when Moloch successfully tricked Klaus into thinking he was a Spark worth watching, and the art on the next page shows Othar taking note of him. Okay, he might be noticing that Moloch looks suspiciously relieved, but Othar being Othar it seems more likely that he's memorizing the face of a new target to take out when he has the time. And with Agatha proving so hard to find (possibly helped along with his big brother senses telling him that Moloch's having unpure thoughts about his baby sister) he might as well get some "good" done that day.

Of course he won't succeed since we've seen Moloch in the time portal, but he might take down Mittelmind and Mezzasalma in the process so Agatha won't be stuck in the position of either keeping two obviously evil sparks as allies once she's done needing every bit of help she can get to fix up the castle, leaving two obviously evil sparks to their own devices, or becoming the type of person who betrays her own allies when they haven't given her cause to (yet, being obviously evil sparks)

At Poetry slam night at Mamma Gikika's, They hit each other with bricks with poetry written on them.
Nuff said.


 * But without the poetry written on the bricks.

Du Pree is associated with the pirates that Zeetha killed; she knows where Skifander is, and this will cause drama.

 * No particular reason; but she is a 'pirate queen', and one of the pirates in that flashback sequence looks vaguely like her.
 * Since The Book of the Comic and the Secret Blueprints both mention that Bang's mother was a pirate queen whose fortress was destroyed and everyone killed, and Bang has yet to find whoever did it, this seems less like a WMG than a reasonable extrapolation.
 * More than likely, I'd say it's pretty near certain. Have you checked the device (symbol or seal) on the airships that attacked Zeetha's lately? Now look at Bang's forehead (extra-big view at the bottom). Look familiar?

Either Du Pree or the Heterodyne Castle is the reincarnation of Richard from Looking for Group.
More seriously, perhaps one was inspired by the other. (I'm not sure which came first.) Come on. Du Pree's Rebus Bubble incident that led to the "World's Best Boss" trophy? Or the castle's dislike of being called "good"? Then again, I suppose the character type is just so much fun that it doesn't really need inspiration...

Zola was created as a way to get revenge on Lucretia for abandoning her Father
Lucifer Mongfish, Seriously miffed by his favorite daughter's heel face turn decided to get back at her. When Lucretia announces her second pregnancy, Lucifer takes his dim-but-devoted daughter Demonica and gets her to become pregnant (Most likely Using Barry as the father, so the child will still register with the castle as an official Heterodyne heir) And then groomed this granddaughter to take over and destroy Castle Heterodyne when she was of age, effectively ruining Lucretia's new family. However, the Other attacked. Lucifer still used this to his advantage, by making Zola the "long-lost" Heterodyne Heir. He died before she became of age.

Agatha started the whole thing by Time Travel.
The first time window we see scares Agatha into Moloch and Omar von Zinzer, who take her locket, thereby giving us a plot. Taking into account the facts that, we know Agatha has made time windows herself (without the arcing metal), and that she (in the window) was saying "Like THIS??" we can conclude that she was a rival spark who heard that Agatha had time windows and sought to do it herself, but... badly. The arcing metal and speech distortion were from the bad quality of the time window.

So, Agatha would not have become a spark without the effects of her having become a spark... That way lieth the headache.

The spark is just a fantasy version of Autism
It seems to intensify one's mental abilities in a certain area, at the expense of your social awareness. With proper training it can be molded into a useful trait, but if not recognized early, the spark can be devastating.

Tarvek or Klaus (or both) will sacrifice themselves to stop the Other
Klaus would probably do it to get rid of the Other once and for all, but Tarvek may do it to protect Agatha.

Zola is Barry's offspring.
For some reason Zola thinks she has a right to claim the castle as the home of her father. Zola was willing to interupt Agatha to claim that she was entitled to call herself a Heterodyne. Somehow Zola is something special in physic, able to withstand a double dose of Movit#11 and the Princesses tweaking of Suns equipment. We also have the fact that while Bill usually got the girl, Barry got the high preistess. Would that apply to the relation between the Mongfish sisters?

There are a lot of ways that Zola's path paralells Agatha's. Originally with the locket on Agatha got no respect. Zola with a reputation as a Parisian tart, still gets no respect. Both are pursuasive actresses. Both have hidden compentence, Agatha as a spark, Zola as a smoke knight/adventuress. They have both been on adventures with Gil. They both have saved/rescued him as well. Finally, they can't stand each other. Working with family is so hard.


 * Since She's been proven a member of the mongfish family, this would make Zola and Agatha Double first cousins.

Slaver wasps are mini summoning/beacon engines
They download something into the brain itself (as opposed to a chemical agent or being a Puppeteer Parasite along for the ride) which is why revenants cannot be cured.

Zola will die to save Gil
After doing all they can to make her appear to be a horrible, unlikeable character she'll get a chance to take a bullet for Gil, proving that she really loved him all along. Alternatively...

Zola will prove herself to be just as evil as Lucrezia
And Gil will be forced to kill her to save Agatha's life.

Gil actually realized who he really was very early in his life
Specifically, just after he read the fake account stating that he was the son of a rural Spark. That's the reason he told Klaus about Tarvek's spying, once he realized that Tarvek was going to keep digging Gil knew that he had to do something to get Tarvek away from Klaus or Klaus would have killed Tarvek without hesitation.

Jenka is Lucrezia, but not The Other
We haven't seen any Jägers recognizably infected with The Other, and Jenka keeps that scarf over her face.

Lucrezia created The Other by duplicating herself, but then got caught by it, so she then had a copy of herself attempting to take over her mind and body, which the original wanted to stop. From her research she knew that death and revivification wouldn't save her, but that Jägers were immune (a flaw in her methods that she hadn't managed to fix before her creation turned on her). She went to Bill for help, and he agreed to put her through the process despite the chance she would die. Meanwhile, Barry set to work, studying Lucrezia's notes and equipment in order to see if there was something she missed, in case she was wrong and more had to be done.

As it turned out, Lucrezia was right and she was freed from The Other. However, by the time "Jenka" was finished, The Other had already secretly spread to members of the castle's staff, and it didn't like the idea of Barry -- or anyone else -- finding a way to stop it.

Castle Heterodyne was soon attacked from within by the infected staff, causing incredible damage to the castle itself, and forcing anyone who had avoided infection to flee. When Klaus returned, he had to fight off The Other and then regain order. Barry managed to get away and was working on a means to stop The Other, when Agatha (who was born before her mother became a Jäger, and was still a baby when the shit hit the fan), started to show early signs of The Spark. To hide her, he adopted a device he had been working on, which stupefied her just enough to do the trick, and made sure Punch & Judy understood that she had to keep it on (it would later kill Moloch's brother by accident, and prove useful for it's original purpose when Agatha became infected).

Jenka, although a Jäger, is also still a spark, and is avoiding detection by approaching them selectively (she ran into Da Boyz and gained their trust, but hasn't joined the Jäger forces and doesn't actually report to them -- although it's unclear, it wouldn't be surprising to find the Jäger Generals know of her, even if they aren't sure who she is). However, most of the Jägers have had to tolerate Lucrezia before the attack and would know her on sight, even after the transformation, so she wears the scarf over her face. She smells different, and as long as she continues to speak and dress like a Jäger that is all she needs.

Sanaa is doomed.
She's a classic Mauve Shirt type generally, and she and Othar have expressed the intention to start adventuring together once they're out of the castle, but in the radio dramas, presumably taking place after Agatha's in residence (and all the prisoners free), she's nowhere to be seen. Add in the fact that she's one of the legs of a Love Triangle - in general not a healthy position to be in - and this strip is going to become a Funny Aneurysm Moment before long, especially if Snaug is responsible (although probably not).
 * The radio dramas are a bit of half-canon, and there are other weird things about those, such as where Gil and Tarvek are (and why the hell they're adventuring with Othar). Maybe Sanaa becomes Gil's bodyguard.

Agatha wasn't always a girl genius.
Klaus Barry was a Red Herring - everyone was right to expect a boy. Barry and Bill, either to hide her or because they thought it fitting, or both, changed her sex very early in life. Note the obvious Gender Flip of title, and more importantly, the width of her shoulders - wider than many male characters, and nearly all the female characters but Judy.

Everything in the operas is truth.
It really was a world of Black and White Morality; there was simply the Heterodyne Boys against the forces of Evil, AKA The Other. After all of them disappeared, moral ambiguity crept in, and even those who were alive during that era became indistinguishable as good or evil. The re-appearance of The Other will force everyone she encounters to align absolutely again, and both sides will battle for dominance.

The "attack" on Castle Heterodyne eighteen years ago was actually Lucrezia defending herself from the castle, having already committed infanticide.
Not only did Lucrezia need to have a daughter to ensure her continued existence as the Other, she needed not to have a son - the Geisterdamen religion speaks of a Holy Child, not Holy Children, and the symbol of their goddess (at the top of the page here) appears to be a stylized depiction of Lucrezia holding a female infant. Lucrezia knew or suspected that Klaus Barry's existence would give the Geisterdamen reason to doubt her divinity, and, having pretty much given up on the whole "one of the good guys" thing, killed her son as soon as she had reason to believe that she was pregnant with a girl, perhaps meaning to pass the boy's death off as a tragic accident. What she didn't count on was the fact that the Castle is apparently tasked with doing whatever is necessary in preserving the line of succession, up to and including blatantly disregarding orders from the reigning Heterodyne. Lucrezia barely escaped with her life and was forced to cripple the Castle in order to a) get away and b) prevent it from telling Bill what really happened to his son.

Klaus' little story is actually about Agatha
It's already got a good king turned evil by a witch's power and more recently the story's got a child of the former good king being taken from their shattered home and raised by a supernatural servant until the child had matured enough to go out into the world. Is anyone else seeing parallels to Agatha's situation? Maybe Klaus just felt the need to just vent for once and did it in a way that wouldn't send everything into chaos.

Klaus' little story is actually about Himself
A simple swapping over of Heterodyne and Mongfish makes it work. Lucrezia takes over the Heterodyne reign, Wulfenbach brings about the collapse of the regime by suggesting that she turn on the Heterodynes, leaving Wulfenbach to take over. Maybe the Heterodyne brothers' rule wasn't as good as people remember it?

Klaus' little story is actually about Gilgamesh
Agatha as Other, the evil queen, takes over the Wulfenbach empire, turning him into a mad wolf. The prince, Gilgamesh, having learnt wisdom, returns and makes the Other slay his father, leaving himself to rule as a good king. Klaus knows he can't talk about the slaver wasp, so he's making a metaphorical allusion to his desires for his son.


 * Clemethious Heterodyne and his army of monsters is Lucifer Mongfish and his daughters, as well as the Other's creations.
 * The good and noble king who defeated the Heterodynes is Klaus himself, cleaning up after the Other and ending the Long War.
 * The eldest daughter of Clemethious is Lucifer's eldest daughter Lucrezia, who is also the Other.
 * The curse that turned the good king into a madwolf is Lucrezia infecting Klaus with a slaver wasp.
 * The king's son and his nurse are Gil and Von Pinn, respectively.
 * The witch's inability to remove the crown from the madwolf is representative of the fact that Lucrezia will only be able control the empire through Klaus.
 * "For neither the witch nor the wolf was ever seen again. The prince took the throne, and ruled the kingdom wisely and well, for the rest of his days." This is Klaus telling his son to just kill him and Lucrezia, and that he will make a good emperor.
 * If its true, it would also be his crowning moment of awesome - starting a plan to die with his enemy while already mind controlled. We'll have to wait and see.
 * With his enemy standing right next not him not even noticing.
 * And furthermore, note how the message will get to its intended recipient, by all-but-directing the storyteller to inquire about it to Gilgamesh! Brilliant scheming on the part of the Baron!

Gil had a fling with DuPree in Paris
Firstly, when Gil goes into Castle Heterodyne he says he was a pirate. Zola thinks this is obvious for three reasons. 1) He was always going on mysterious trips. 2) He always had money. 3) He did something with a Crazy Pirate Girl

Bangladesh checklist: Crazy? Check. Pirate? Check. Girl? Check.

That's not all. Check out panel 10 on this page. That girl smoking the bong looks familiar. Especially the skull on her forehead ...

Of note is that she's in panel five of the following page as well.


 * Not evidence but this at least suggests some intimacy between them.
 * Alternatively, she pretended to be his lover, either as a cover or just because it's fun to embarrass him.


 * The novels stated that Klaus sent Bang to Paris to work with Gil, mainly so that Gil would learn how to deal with and if necessary fight against crazy people (Not that he let Bang know the real reason). They also mention rumors that they became romantically involved, but the author doubted their veracity, as both of them were still alive.

Agatha will fall over dead any second now, courtesy of Zola.

 * Anyone remember "Auntie Mehitabel's Natural Causes"? I don't recall that she ever received an antidote.
 * Violetta gave her the antidote, check the couple of pages after she IDs the poison.
 * Headdesk. Don't know how I missed that.

Jenka and Da Boyz will become the new Jaeger Generals

 * think about it, there are three boys, always together, and a single girl (one of only two female jaegers) usually apart from them. they are smarter than most jaegers, due to their long time separated from the rest, making them good candidates.
 * Dimo made General, at least...

Agatha and Gil are already married under Mechanicsberg customs.
When the Doom Bell rang, every non-Heterodyne that hadn't heard it before was immediately floored. But Gil wasn't, despite not being old enough to be around when it was last rung. The only effect it had on him was his recognizing the implications of it being rung (Namely that Agatha had fixed the castle and was claiming her territory). Momma Glinka immediately referred to him as the Consort of Lady Heterodyne.

If the Jaegers are referring to Gil as Agatha's consort because he wasn't affected by the bell, then something he and Agatha did made him immune to the bell and is considered part of a traditional Heterodyne wedding. The most obvious candidate would be Agatha transferring energy she got from drinking Dyne water into Gil. If that is the source, then this would incidentally also make her married to Tarvek, but as he doesn't appear in any of the scenes when the Doom Bell is ringing, the possibility can't be eliminated.
 * Val Si Valeo (or whatever it's called) perhaps?


 * Why didn't the castle warn them about this? Because it wants Agatha to start churning out more Heterodynes.

The fight with the Other goes well into the future
The Heterodyne boys learned about the events of the present comic (and future ones) some time ago, at the very least at the time the Castle was attacked. Klaus briefly mentions that Barry told Dr. Beetle something that convinced him not to trust Klaus with the information about slaver wasps and Agatha, which would make sense if he learned that Klaus was going to become a revenant at some point. We've seen several points where Agatha (or possibly Lucrezia in her) used some form of time travel technology to view events in Moloch's past. In Othar's twitter account he mentions that Tarvek was able to use Lucrezia's technology to send him back in time to prevent a bad future. The Jagers are noted to really like to eat bugs and have a loathing of the Other. All of the Other's plans and the Heterodyne responses have been made by imperfect understanding of future events, trying to stack the deck in the favor (and probably manipulating the past to get the best tools).

There are some kind of naturally occuring superhuman humans
In this world, there are more possibilities than in ours. Remember, the setting is based on the premise of a heritable subtype of humanity, including the protagonist, with increased mental capabilities, hyperfocus as a superpower and a particular view on experimental ethics, so it might be possible for there to be some genotypes that leads to increased physical prowess (for example Ol' Man Death, maybe very common in the female population of Skifander)-especially considering that Sparks (especially Gil) have performed feats of extraordinary strenght and endurance.

Dupree is going to go Yandere for Tarvek
And Agatha will have to watch her back until she officially gets together with Gill.
 * Why would she care about Tarvek? She forgot about him the second Vole showed up and started ranting about oceans of blood and the empire going down in flames.

DuPree and Tarvek had a fling back in Paris.
Tarvek met DuPree during his academy days, not long after reuniting with Gil. DuPree, attracted to his relative innocence, developed a crush on him and, being DuPree, decided to act on it one night. At first Tarvek put up a fight on the basis of propriety, earning him the nickname "Prince How-Dare-You," but eventually relented. The "little scars" DuPree mentioned are her own handiwork. Tarvek was thoroughly embarassed after learning that DuPree was a pirate and faked his own death to get away from her. He wants Gil to shoot her to keep the details of the affair secret. DuPree, still delighted by how flustered Tarvek gets in her presence, continues to carry a torch. Or, at the very least, really enjoys teasing him about it.

DuPree is actually a former slave, a privateer, more or less the foster sister of Gil, and his personal future bodyguard.

 * 1) From Zeetha's experience we know there is a market for human trafficking. The mark on Bang's forehead isn't a mark of position or lineage. It's a mark of ownership, from possibly Petrus Teufel of the Black Mist Raiders. A mark showing something was handpicked by him perhaps, and Klaus rescued her from this fate. Saw she was highly motivated for revenge and he became a father like figure to her and earned her loyalty. She later received the best training possible and was unleashed on the world as a rogue agent for Klaus.
 * 2) She's a privateer since she isn't an outlaw in Wulfenbauch territory. Klaus destroys what he cannot control if it is in his territory. One pirate would not be a problem, so she is a privateer raiding OTHER pirates and territories and bringing Klaus the tech and sparks gained from the attacks with the added bonus of gaining the additional crew members when she breaks up slaving rings. When she went on her solitary excursion, her crew at her home base decided to mutiny and go pirate, leading Zeetha to do an unintentional favor by cleaning house. It's highly unlikely she would have had the most loyal crew when she earned her title as a pirate queen in territories besides Wulfenbauch's.
 * 3) Her relationship with Gil reminds me of my own with my older sister. in the "Bang Finds Her Favorite Toy" chapter she gets a Cry Cute and Gil hugs her. Her face is quite angry and had anyone besides Gil hugged her, she more than likely would have torn into them. She kept an eye on him when he was in Paris and kept Tarvek from digging too close, to protect him. And in the same chapter previously mentioned Gil brings up they have fought before and it is occasionally fun. Very similar to how my sister and i treat each other. The worst fights I've ever been in have been scraps with my own sister, but should you harm one of us in front of the other, not even God can help you. It's just a given, knowing her loyalty to Klaus, should you harm Gil, you're a dead man in her eyes. She will make sure of it. When he mentions he doesn't want her to get wasped, his face isn't one of worry about having to fight her. It's sly, like he made a joke, leading me to believe he cares about her more than he would a hired gun.
 * 4) Every important person has a bodyguard. Tarvek has The Smoke Knights (his cousin), Agatha has a RACE of bodyguards in the Jager, Gil HAD Wooster, Klaus' is DuPree atm, but the point is every major political figure has one. When it was revealed Klaus set it up so that Gil would be known as "your highness", DuPree was not surprised at the title. Just surprised he decided to pull his trick at that point in time, meaning she possibly knows much more than she's letting on about his familial situation and Klaus' future plans for the Wulfenbauch dynasty, concerning Gil.
 * The novels give Bang's backstory. She was the only daughter of the queen of a minor nation (Of pirates) who was overthrown. Her mother raised her with the intent of her being able to retake her kingdom. But just as she was starting to get a sizable fleet built up, some unidentified group destroyed her base and most of her forces. Part of her employment terms with Klaus is that he has agents trying to figure out who trashed her base.

Gil isn't infected and Klaus is.
All we have so far is Klaus' word that Gil's been infected and an easily faked test. Gil was around Klaus for a while after Agatha's escape, he could have easily been tested in a matter of moments and Klaus would have every reason to do so. So far nearly all of Gil's actions that we've seen (with the exception of saving Zola) don't seem to do much to help the Other and we have seen Klaus under Anevka's control. Once Gil takes a moment to actually think about it he'll realize how implausible Klaus' story is and break out.
 * We've already seen that Klaus got wasped. This happened on-panel, just before "SHOWTIME!"

Zola wasped Gil
One thing that I couldn't reconcile was why Gil saved Zola when Tarvek was killing her. He never explained why he needed her alive. One thing I noticed was that she asked for help, and Gil gave it, with a "Get off her, you—!" Rather over-the-top, and he seemed a little disoriented afterwards. Then we find out that Tarvek's notes stated that Gil was wasped back in Paris. Who did he spend a lot of time with (mostly "rescuing") in Paris? Zola. Who has shown that she's hiding a lot of things about herself? Zola. Who has a copy of Lucrezia firmly lodged in a corner of her mind? Zola. As much as I hate to think it, I think that Gil HAS been wasped, and he got wasped by Zola. ~RD

Bang is fine and Klaus knows it
Bang is the Baron's wild card in all of this and having every spy who hears about recent events believe that she is incapacitated only allows her to work with even more freedom. We've seen how loyal she is already.

Klaus' mother will make an appearance
It is strongly hinted that Klaus is Chump. Higgs' comment about Zeetha's old grandma could be foreshadowing if Klaus' mother is still around.
 * Unless Lucrezia also sent Klaus' mother to Skifander, which is unlikely, Zeetha was talking about her maternal grandmother.
 * But Higgs was talking about Zeetha's grandmothers in general.
 * ...I really don't think he was.

Agatha will marry Gill AND Tarvek
Because apparently the Heterodyne can do that. (Notice Violetta's objection to the idea wasn't on any sort of moral grounds at all.) Seriously though, it would unify the most powerful blocs east of the Rhine, and yes the arrangement is unusual, but a world which has had Sparks for a few thousand years isn't going to bat an eyelid at rulers with odd proclivities. Thankful it's something harmless, more likely.

Skifander is in America
No one's ever heard of it, outside of a select few, and what's the one place on GG's Earth we know for a fact Europeans have an inexplicably hard time getting to?

Also, theories on the wiki makes a pretty convincing case for it being in the San Fernando Valley.

The Slaver Wasp in Gil is different
It was put there by Zola. Zola already betrayed Lucrezia once, and Zola's family have been preparing for her return. We know Lucrezia's allies have been working on the wasps, after all, and that presumably includes Zola's family. Therefore, they may have developed a variation. Gil's wasp makes him do what Zola says, not what Lucrezia says.

There is NO Slaver Wasp in Gil
Remember what the Baron said: "No matter what happens, I will do EVERYTHING IN MY POWER to HELP you." It's likely that Anevka/ is ordering him to do this, so he's doing what he can to subvert her. Right now? He just gave Gil an excuse to help Agatha while still allowing him the potential to take over the Empire at a later date (when he is 'cured' of the Slaver Wasp). Remember earlier in a time window, Gil was dressed like a Geisterdamen? This is the setup for that. It's highly likely (to me) that Dupree is fine and is going to break him out later under Klaus's orders, both of them going to serve Agatha and help her stop Anevka/ and Zola.

Vole is the seventh General
Think about it. He is perfectly positioned to know about the Baron's movements. He's definitely intimidating enough, and recently he chose to join forces with Gil, who is recognized by Mamma Gkika and Mechanicsburg as Agatha's consort/boyfriend. That way, he indirectly serves House Heterodyne, while still remaining behind the scenes. He went into hiding to spy on the Baron because the Jagers couldn't trust anyone but one of their generals. (If Da Boyz are considered smarter than average, well...) Being kicked out of the Jagers is his cover story, but he is obviously experienced playing the character. He allows Gil to beat him up sometimes and pretends to be scared of him so no one thinks he actually is competent enough to be a general. Also, being near the Baron lets him keep track of what's going on with the wasp, but being near Agatha will let him keep track of the Other. Gil was the happy medium. He will resume his position as general later.