Gunnerkrigg Court/Recap/Volume 03/Chapter 025: Sky Watcher and the Angel

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Gunnerkrigg Court
volume 3, chapter 25,
Sky Watcher and the Angel
Cover page #632
Length 29 pages
See also Wikia article
Author's retrospective video
Preceded by Residential
Followed by The Old Dog's Tricks

WARNING! The contents of this recap page may include unmarked spoilers for this chapter and previous chapters. As mystery is a major element of this work, spoilers should not be taken lightly.


This is the author's favourite chapter, and, like all the chapters, deserves to be read in full before one might read a synopsis such as the following.

Chapter 25 opens with Robot S13, wearing a jumper and trousers, climbing the spire of a very tall building that looks like a Gothic cathedral, atop which perches a mantis-like robot whom he addresses as "Sky Watcher".[1] S13 asks Sky Watcher whether he has "seen any angels in the sky"; Sky Watcher, whose job is to monitor the weather and radiation levels, thinks the question is ridiculous until S13 says "Jeanne", triggering from Sky Watcher the programmed response "She died and we did nothing."

S13 leads the presumably intrigued Sky Watcher to Katerina Donlan's workshop, along the way rejecting Shadow's qualms with his calling Kat an "angel". Kat inspects the robots briefly, then S13 leads Sky Watcher to the shrine to Jeanne, and stands outside while Sky Watcher enters the shrine. Sky Watcher stares at the portrait of Jeanne, then flies away, while Antimony Carver arrives at Kat's workshop, apparently from mediumship class. Antimony, clearly upset, tells Kat that "Andrew and Parley have become unbearable [...] ever since she teleported us to her bedroom by accident" and that they "act like enemies" and "can't even look at each other now" even though "It's so painfully obvious they like each other". Kat supposes that "love can make you act in strange ways".

Sky Watcher returns with the king of the robots and his entourage, and the robot king visits the shrine. When the king emerges, he has drawn tears onto his metal face with a marker; Kat finds this amusing, while the robots of the king's entourage hold their heads in grief and exclaim, "Oh no! A sad face! The saddest face!"

The robot king begs "sweet angel" Kat to help the robot society with a source of confusion that has kept them long in turmoil. Kat agrees, and everyone proceeds through the Court to the robots' facilities, where the king leads Kat and Antimony to a door, marked with a bismuth symbol and what looks like Diego's "D" symbol and incongruously made of wood and framed in stone amid the futuristic metal-and-circuitry design of the robots' facilities. Through the door is what the king describes as a "collection of Diego's original work", including a small, elegant, matador-themed robot that the king says "is the last remaining original model with a memory intact". The king asks the old robot to show its story, and it begins playing back its memories, projecting them onto a wall.

In the old matador-robot's memory, Diego grins and laughs and declares that "she" will love the robot. Diego takes the robot to Jeanne, who is sitting in a window and staring sadly out of it; Jeanne politely but listlessly accepts the gift, which is shown to be the latest of many toy robots Diego has given her. Diego asks about Jeanne's sorrow, and she laments for the trees of the forest, which she says the Court has been purging from their side of the Annan Waters since Coyote divided the forest. Diego insists that their life will be better without nature, and dismisses the trees and animals of the forest as unnecessary, while Jeanne posits that the Court will be a "prison of stone and glass". Diego offers to replace the trees and animals with "as many mechanical companions" as Jeanne wishes; she sadly says "That's enough", but he insists that he has "instructed them all to love" her as he does, and thus Jeanne "need never think about him"— at this, Jeanne becomes enraged, demands that Diego not speak of "him", and tells him to leave. When Diego continues to profess his love for Jeanne, she smashes all the robots he had given her over his plea that she spare them, finishing by throwing the matador-toy hard against a far wall while shouting that she hates Diego. Diego collects the pieces of the still-conscious matador-toy, sniffling over Jeanne's destruction of his creations and wondering to himself, "So she still loves that traitor, does she? Instead of me?" The matador-toy's memory goes dark.

In the next scene the matador-toy shows, it's looking out from a pocket of Diego's suit jacket[2] while Diego carries a long box made of varnished wood into a hall in which Sir Young and other members of the Court are assembled. Sir Young welcomes him as "the architect of our scheme"; Diego says that "the device is ready" and opens the box to reveal a strange metal arrow with a mysterious object mounted next to its forked head and a sinister green glow, which arrow Steadman lifts and inspects:

Steadman: Hmm. It has an odd weight to it. Fitting, I think, for the weighty task at hand. I will make it fly true.

The assembly's attention is drawn now to the Artilleryman[3], who leaves the room, calling what the others are planning "abhorrent" and refusing to participate. His departure prompts disquieted murmurings from the assembly, but Sir Young quiets them:

Sir Young: Gentlemen. This is not a time for weakness. We must take these steps to fortify the Annan Waters and protect the Court.

One member of the assembly seems troubled over "the one you have chosen as the... sacrifice...", but Diego insists that "It must be Jeanne. The plan will work with no one else. It must be her."

The matador-toy's memory cuts to Jeanne begging Diego to intercede on her behalf before the Court sends her down to the Annan Waters, a prospect that clearly frightens her; Diego says it's out of his hands. Diego, facing away from Jeanne, smiles at her distress, then adds that "It didn't have to be this way...". Jeanne looks alarmed, and fearfully asks Diego "what part did you play in all this?" As far as we see, he doesn't answer.

The matador-toy's memory cuts to a pocket watch in the hand of an otherwise unseen person who says that "the appropriate amount of time", three hours, has passed since "Jeanne was lowered to the edge of the Annan Waters" and tells Steadman to "Ready the device". Under a full moon, Steadman, holding a bow and the weird, glowing arrow and clothed darkly with a cape billowing behind him, walks to the edge of the Court-side clifftop overlooking the Annan Waters, then shoots the arrow down into the ravine. Sir Young gets Steadman's confirmation that the arrow hit "the target". A troubled look passes briefly over Young's face as he proclaims—

Sir Young: Then it is done. Jeanne, the plan, everything, will be stricken from all records. We will bury what was done here this night.

The matador-toy's memory cuts to a much older Diego, with white hair and a long white beard, lying in his deathbed, with a screwdriver, a pocket watch, and some diagrams lying on a table at his side. He insists, seemingly to himself, that he "had no choice"; that "it wasn't [his] fault"; that "that monster", Sir Young, "forced [him] to devise the plan". Removing his spectacles and laying them on the bedside table, he laments—

Diego: Jeanne... She was.. all alone. Waiting... when she died. And I did nothing.

Diego says "My children... my children..."; a robot lays its hand over his and answers, "We are here, Father. Father?" Diego never responds. The matador-toy ceases playing back its memory.

Kat and Antimony stare horror-stricken, as the robot king asks Kat to help the robots understand why their "wonderful creator, Diego, loved Jeanne, but condemned her to death". Kat begins to cry, and the king draws tears onto his face as he and his entourage exclaim, "Oh no! A sad face! The saddest face!"

We see S13, with Sky Watcher on his shoulder, assembled with robots of many other kinds outside the door; S13 looking out from a rooftop; a robot holding Diego's portrait; and Sky Watcher back at his post atop the spire, with a foggy view of skyscrapers behind him, as Sky Watcher narrates—

Sky Watcher: Tears, real ones, spilled from her eyes. The angel turned to her friend for comfort, and it was a long time before she spoke. When she did speak, she told us our esteemed creator, Diego, was not a nice man. She also said, "Love makes you act in strange ways." We have our finest minds analysing her words. As mere machines we can but hope to understand. In the meantime, there has been a change in us. A new light, shed by the strange, clothed robot [i.e. S13]. We feel as if we are closer to understanding why we were put here. On this Earth. I continue to turn my face upwards, measuring the same temperature, the same humidity, radiation, and thousands of other variables. But now a new metric has been added. The number of angels I have seen is "one". And I will keep watch for more.


Tropes used in Gunnerkrigg Court/Recap/Volume 03/Chapter 025: Sky Watcher and the Angel include:

Antimony: They can't even look at each other now. [...] It's so painfully obvious they like each other. But now they act like enemies!

  • Berserk Button: In the old robot's memory, Jeanne quietly disagrees with Diego's support for the Court's push to purge nature from their side of the Annan Waters and quietly tells him "That's enough" when he offers to "make as many mechanical companions" as she wishes to replace the trees she mourns, but then becomes enraged when he says that she "need never think about" the unidentified man she loves, to whom Diego subsequently refers as a "traitor".
  • Book Ends: At the beginning of the chapter, Sky Watcher, on his perch, rejects as "ridiculous" the notion that he could have any angels in his records in addition to things like temperature, humidity, and radiation. At the end, Sky Watcher returns to his perch, narrating:

Sky Watcher: I continue to turn my face upwards, measuring the same temperature, the same humidity, radiation, and thousands of other variables. But now a new metric has been added. The number of angels I have seen is "one". And I will keep watch for more.

Diego: [on his deathbed] I had no choice... it wasn't my fault. Young... that monster! He forced me to devise the plan... Jeanne... She was... all alone. Waiting... when she died. And I did nothing.

Antimony: I thought love was supposed to be a good thing.
Kat: Oh it totally is! But uh... I dunno. Better to have loved and lost than to be... dead or something.
Antimony: I don't think that's how the saying goes.

Sir Young: Jeanne, the plan, everything, will be stricken from all records. We will bury what was done here this night.

  • You Know the One: In the old robot's memory, the founders of the Court refer to "the device", "the plan", and "the target" without being shown discussing the specifics of these things, leaving it ambiguous for now what "the device" did, what "the plan" was, and whether "the target" shot with the device was Jeanne.
  1. ↑ Sky Watcher is one of Diego's original robots, but has lost his original memory.
  2. ↑ See this forum post by the author.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Word of God confirms that it's him. (Note that the "Comic #656" to which the linked question refers is page #654 in the current (July 2018) numbering scheme.)
  4. ↑ Some on the forums speculated that this might be a Last-Second Word Swap on Kat's part, in case the full quotation, "'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all", might offend Antimony, who, so far as is shown, never has loved in the romantic sense.
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