Tarvek Sturmvoraus

Tarvek Sturmvoraus is the Sparky son of Prince Aaronev VI of Sturmhalten and, on his mother's side, a descendant of the Storm King, whose legacy he is attempting to claim. His only sibling is his sister Anevka. His particular Spark genius concerns clanks; he has had a lifelong obsession with the Muses created by Van Rijn, and one of his aspirations for the future is to collect and repair all of them.

When he was young, Tarvek was schooled on Castle Wulfenbach along with the children of other nobles, where he became friends with. But he was after being caught while investigating Gil's then-secret genealogy. As a result, instead of the Baron's curriculum of enlightened statesmanship, Tarvek was schooled in his family's tradition of self-serving and convoluted plotting and manipulation of others. Tarvek does not have his father's special devotion to Lucrezia Mongfish / the Other, but when we first meet him at Sturmhalten, he does attempt to ally with her.

The Storm King Conspiracy
Tarvek's family is part of the Storm King conspiracy, an attempt to seize control of Europa from Baron Wulfenbach by taking advantage of widespread belief in a prediction that peace will come only when a Storm King marries a Heterodyne. Tarvek considers himself to be the Storm King by right, although his cousin Tweedle also claims the title.

Other participants in the conspiracy have been grooming Zola Malfeazium as a false Heterodyne to fulfill the other role in the prophecy, but this part of the plan becomes obsolete as a true Heterodyne heir comes to light. It is never made entirely clear if the plotters originally intended to use Tarvek as their Storm King, but he  ever having been party to the Zola aspect of the plan.

Backstory
Nothing is known about his mother other than the fact that she is a descendant of Valois; she is only mentioned once in-comic. (Though the print-novel Agatha H. and the Clockwork Princess implies that Anevka murdered her at some point.) According to Zola, Tarvek's birth was carefully planned and assisted by the Mongfish family,  that there would be a worthy heir to the Storm King's throne. Considering the Mongfish family's skills with biology and genetics, what exactly they did to "ensure" this is a most interesting question. (Though again, in Agatha H. and the Voice of the Castle, Zola states it was mostly a case of staving off excessive in-breeding.) He was apparently raised by nannies until he was sent away to Castle Wulfenbach for schooling. There, he became friends with Gil. However, the two later developed an intense and mutual dislike following Tarvek's expulsion from the Castle, something Tarvek still, when we first meet him,. Their rivalry apparently continued when they both attended the University of Paris. At this time, evidently, he also got to know the Master of Paris's daughter Colette.

He has had the same Smoke Knight training as his cousin Violetta and is proficient in their. She served as his hereditary bodyguard until he to have her shipped off to Mechanicsburg in order to save her life.

Before Tarvek appeared in the story, he spent years maneuvering amidst his father’s obsession with finding the Holy Child and restoring The Other. However, his personal focus seems to have been his aforementioned obsession with the Muses, partly in order to adapt their technology to help the disabled Anevka. Tarvek expresses considerable and hard to discount enthusiasm for this laudable project.

His Father
Tarvek's relationship with his father is difficult to read. Once the initial, brief shock wears off, he expresses no overt sadness or grief in the aftermath of his father's death (by his sister's hand, no less). When Tarvek first appears, he is attempting to manage Aaronev's obsession rather than take power himself. However, that may only have been due to his need to focus on the rapid series of climactic events taking place at the time.

Aaronev, for his part, appeared to have cared more about Lucrezia than about his own son's ascendancy or his daughter's life. It's implied that Aaronev sacrificed many girls to the Holy Machine to bring Lucrezia back, including Anevka. It was Tarvek who built the injured Anevka a clank body (based on the van Rijn muse Tinka that had been appropriated from Master Payne's Circus of Adventure). Working on a Muse seems to have been the chance of a lifetime for the young spark.

== Tarvek, Agatha, and Lucrezia at Castle Sturmhalten, or Two's Company, Three's a Crowd == Tarvek is a conflicted young man. His long-term goals are good: Bring peace to Europa, tame or destroy the evil Fifty Families, and repair the muses. Like many other fundamentally well-intentioned sparks (including the Baron, Othar, Gil, Tweedle, and arguably even Agatha), he thinks that only he can achieve peace, and so his self-interest is consistent with his lofty goals; he is doing well by doing good. His conflict is about tactics; although he hates the manipulativeness of his family, it's the only way he knows to pursue his goals. At Sturmhalten we see him alternating good deeds with appalling betrayals. Though Agatha’s command voice registers as a match on Aaronev’s instruments and the drugged Agatha confirms her mother's identity, Tarvek resists and delays subjecting Agatha to the Holy Machine. First, he works to replicate her command voice with Anevka's clank voicebox. Once his father's ally Lady Vrin is imprisoned, Tarvek attempts to release Agatha back to the circus, with a request that she return and help him with the Muses at some point in the future. (In evaluating his later actions, it's noteworthy that before Lucrezia complicates the situation, Tarvek doesn't try to involve Agatha in his machinations. He's already falling in love with her.)

He does not anticipate Dingbot Prime releasing the Geisterdamen. When Lady Vrin and resurrects Lucrezia into her daughter's body, Tarvek's entire game board is upended. Faced with an ascendant Lucrezia, he her, believing that Agatha is gone for good, while simultaneously inquiring into the secrets of the Holy Machine. Lady Vrin appears to remain skeptical of her rival, Tarvek.

Meanwhile, the Baron discovers that Agatha is still alive, and when he learns that Aaronev has died, he assumes (wrongly) that Agatha killed him, and concludes (rightly) that she must be at Sturmhalten. He orders an attack in force. But Gil sends Wooster in his personal flying machine to rescue Agatha.

Lucrezia falls asleep, and Agatha wakes up. (This change of personality will happen repeatedly, back and forth, much to Tarvek's confusion.) Agatha Tarvek, asking for his help, but isn't sure she really can trust him. She puts a dingbot to work making more dingbots that can produce the Heterodyne music. Then she falls asleep and Lucrezia puts Tarvek to work. Hours later, an exhausted Tarvek asks Moxana for advice, with cryptic results.

Using the dingbots' music to break free of Lucrezia's control, Agatha builds a holoprojector the Baron that the Other is in her head. But Tarvek doesn't want Agatha to give herself up to the Baron. (His reaction, "," sheds some light on his otherwise inexplicable later sabotage of Agatha's singing dingbots and of the holoprojector. He doesn't see himself as betraying Agatha; he sees himself as knowing better than she does what's in her own interest.  But, besides being arrogant and maybe sexist, his view is clouded by self-interest.)  He Agatha about his plan to ally with her and use the Other's technology to reestablish the rule of the Storm King without Lucrezia. Alas, in mid-rant, Agatha falls asleep and it's Lucrezia who hears his plan. To recover from this mistake, Tarvek cuts some sort of deal with Lucrezia, but the details are not revealed to us.

Agatha records her message to Klaus, with Tarvek's help, and then sends him out of the room while she tells the the dingbots to try to get out of Sturmhalten and deliver her message as her backup plan. Alas, most of them are destroyed in the air.

When Wooster is spotted in Gil's flying machine, Tarvek wants to keep him and Agatha apart, and so he the musical dingbots, restoring Lucrezia. But we see in his face that he isn't happy about it. Tarvek also reveals the spark-infecting slaver wasp to the Geisterdamen, apparently to gain their trust and respect.

Meanwhile, Anevka and Lord Selnikov organize the people of Sturmhalten to storm the castle, taking advantage of the command voice that Tarvek has given her voice box. Tarvek, their ally inside the castle, arranges to lower the moat. But Tarvek betrays the plan to Lucrezia, and she and Tarvek to replace her head with one containing another copy of Lucrezia. (Preparing the Holy Machine to copy her personality into that clank head must have been the work that got Tarvek so tired earlier, and is perhaps an outcome of his deal with her.)

The Wulfenbach assault arrives. Agatha's projector (activated by Dingbot Prime) turns out to have been so that the recorded Agatha seems to be saying that Klaus is the Other. Although Tarvek disclaims having edited the message, the fact that Lucrezia of the machine's purpose makes his assertion somewhat suspect. The recording does include the Heterodyne music, so it puts Agatha for a while. leading Vrin to slash Tarvek half to death before Agatha can stop her (and try to give him a few whacks herself). When Bang destroys the projector, Lucrezia regains control and Unknown to Lucrezia, the stolen Wulfenbach handgun that she uses to shoot Tarvek

When Klaus lands, Lucrezia wasps him but puts on the Heterodyne Sigil that Klaus has given her, thereby giving control to Agatha. Klaus, thinking he's still dealing with Lucrezia, tries to kill her, but Lars throws himself between them and is killed. This is when the Battle of Sturmhalten begins: Agatha is furious about Lars's death and unleashes the weaponry in the circus wagons. After a great many explosions, the circus troupe rescues Agatha. Tarvek, critically wounded by Vrin, takes no part in the battle.

Wulfenbach troops transport the wounded Tarvek to Great Hospital in Mechanicsburg. Meanwhile, a performs the role of Andronicus Valois in The Storm King in Vienna.

In Mechanicsburg
Violetta springs Tarvek from Wulfenbach custody at the Hospital by dosing him with Moveit. With the town in general chaos and the pair being chased by Wulfenbach forces, they duck into Castle Heterodyne for (which is rather like jumping into a bonfire to dry your clothes).

After Agatha rescues him from a devil dog, Tarvek attempts to give her political advice, but Agatha and would prefer if he and Gil both left her castle. However, Tarvek's wounds overcome him, and he begins changing color, taking the situation beyond Agatha's medical skills and forcing her to seek out Gil for assistance. Upon Agatha's and Gil's return, we find that, despite Gil's earlier prediction of Chromatic Death, the disease is actually Hogfarb's Resplendent Immolation and that Tarvek is, in fact, The plan to save him from it is problematic, however, as it would involve killing him first, and therefore  according to the rules of succession. The Castle gives two theories as to how he got infected: the Ghostmaker mice and Vipsania Heterodyne's Cabinet Of Contagion. (Tarvek himself later that his own family infected him deliberately, and in Voice of the Castle, Violetta says Tarvek was hit with a Smoke Knight dart while still in the hospital.)

Knowing that he is about to die (whether permanently or temporarily), he releases Violetta from her duties toward the Smoke Knights, and transfers her allegiance to Agatha. He does this, apparently, just for Violetta's sake, with no ulterior motive.

The plan to cure Tarvek has a moment of disaster when and  herself. At this point, Tarvek that, if push comes to shove and they're unable to save all three, Gil will let Tarvek die and just cure Agatha. It's also noteworthy that Gil is persuaded only reluctantly; he mistrusts Tarvek but doesn't want him to die, and not only for tactical reasons.

Despite an ongoing series of complications and distractions, Agatha is eventually able to cure Tarvek (and, by that point, Gil and herself as well), using energy from drinking the water of the Dyne. He commits himself to helping her repair the Castle and with Zola Malfeazium ( and  and ) and the re-possession of Agatha by Lucrezia Mongfish, helps Agatha, and argues with Gil ( and  and , including during their joint fight with Captain Vole).

Tarvek's Epiphany
It is in the course of the arguments with Gil that Tarvek finally confronts his own opportunism and commits himself fully to the new impromptu Shining Coalition against the Other, with founding members Agatha and Gil (and later allies such as Colette). The crucial moment comes when, during an argument about Tarvek's motives, Gil concedes that Tarvek wouldn't want Agatha controlled by the Other, and "No, of course not!  It shouldn't happen to... Well, to anybody" with a face expressing surprise at hearing his own words. Although he is still a master of complex plotting, after this point he never betrays his allies.

On Castle Wulfenbach
In a case of mistaken identity, Tarvek gets by Sanaa and Othar Tryggvassen and taken to Castle Wulfenbach. On board the Baron-free Castle, his intellect is quickly recognized, and when Gil returns as well, he finds Tarvek, albeit at gunpoint. When the supposedly dead (and presumably Other-controlled) Klaus reappears, Gil covertly dispatches Tarvek, Othar and Vole back to the surface, where is it revealed that Tarvek has convinced the Vespiary Squad to defect to him; the arguments he uses to achieve this are never explicitly revealed, but presumably involve the Baron's unusual post-Wasping actions. The fleeing Squad's airship is shot down by the Baron's forces, leading Tarvek to risk his life in an increasingly-desperate to save what remnants of their resources he can. At least he gets a chance to kiss Agatha when it's all over, and he sends parts of the squad to at least three destinations outside of the Baron's territory.

He then goes on to do what he can to get the Castle fully functional and help Agatha break the Siege of Mechanicsburg. Following said breaking, he is hit with a thrown by Martellus von Blitzengaard during the latter's kidnapping of Agatha from the Red Cathedral. At nearly the same moment, Klaus deploys his Take-Five bomb, leaving Tarvek also trapped in a time-frozen Mechanicsburg.

Post-Timeskip
Two and a half years pass before now-Baron Gil is able to tunnel (both physically and temporally) into Tarvek's location, him from the time-field and cure him of the poisoning. He remains awake just long enough to express his surprise that the Vespiary Squad members he sent abroad haven't sent some wasp eaters to Gil, but not long enough to make that happen.

Almost immediately afterwards, a sleeping Tarvek is snatched away by a raiding party from the Immortal Library, led by the the Lord High Conservator himself. Their escape-airship is by a team of Smoke Knights (including Mister Obsidian) in the employ of Tarvek's Grandmother, leading to the deaths of all the Library personnel and Tarvek being dragged, very unwillingly, to Paris.

Once there, he has a (perhaps surprisingly) civil with Grandmother, and is sent off to attend Tweedle's upcoming masquerade ball incognito. He identifies the party-crashing Queen of the Dawn as Zola, maintains his cover even after Agatha arrives on the scene, and is a witness when the revived Andronicus Valois also emerges from beneath the city and is confronted for the last time by his former ally Simon Voltaire.Tarvek's unsurprising reaction to this last event is to discreetly Valois's tag-along, the Muse Prende, from the immediate battle-zone. He then helps Colette survive her ascension to Sparkhood and, following her father's death, becoming the new super-powered Master of Paris.

During the (final and complete) death of Valois and the defeat of the various Paris-based minions of the Other, Agatha becomes aware that Tarvek is on the scene. Before the two of them can actually meet, however, Mr. Obsidian ominously behind Tarvek, and the latter man then drops completely out of sight; even Colette cannot track him down. It turns out that rather than Grandmother, it is his cousin Seffie who has spirited him away; she plans to send him to England along with Agatha, in the hope that the two of them formally hook up, leaving her free to pursue her lifelong crush on Gil.

Tarvek is covertly put on a small airship heading to England. Sadly, the attempt at stealth fails, and his journey is first by a party of Smoke Knights under the employ of Grandmother, who wants him dragged back to the mainland and kept under her control, and  by a pack of the Knights of the Hunt, accompanied by the assassin Jaron, all working for Tweedle, who just wants him dead. In a rare display of sparky madness, he a chemical weapon to kill the Knights, but is only able to, not defeat, Jaron. Luckily, Gil and Bang in one of Her Majesty's Subhunter Serpents just in the nick of time to save him. (This is the first time that Tarvek has been pleased to see Bang, whom he welcomes as "a terrible, terrible angel.")

The initial kidnapping by the Library was in and his rescue from the pirate ship isn't until, so throughout almost two volumes' worth of comics, Tarvek was not in control of his own movement and actions; he has, at best, reacted usefully to events (as in Paris), but has not been able to advance his own plans.

Analysis
An analysis of Tarvek's actions indicates several things:

1. He's consistent. He knows who he is, what he wants to do, and doesn't let circumstances rule him.

2. A determination to free Europe from both Lucrezia's and Wulfenbach's control.

3. A determination to set himself up as a benevolent Storm King, with the apparent motive to bring stability, justice, and common weal to Europa. Everything he does shows this motive in one way or another.

4. A less than subtle hate for everything Lucrezia, including his own father's execrable actions in Lucrezia's service.

5. A less than subtle hate for his family's Machiavellian ways. He hates using people, even as he uses them to bring about his goals.

6. A strong belief in right and wrong. However, because of the intrigues he was born into, while it is manifested in consistently doing what he believes is the right thing, his methods are often less than honorable.

7. He genuinely cares about people and their welfare. If he becomes the new Storm King, one gets the impression that his first actions will be to consolidate control, then to do a thorough housecleaning of Europa, starting with his own evil family and going through the noble houses, placing persons of good character into positions of power.

8. He's a genius at using the existing political systems to bring about his goals.

9. He goes into the madness place, instead remaining calm while displaying his genius at clank design, political intrigue, and military tactics.

Tarvek and Gil
Tarvek and Gil became close friends during their on Castle Wulfenbach. The friendship is interrupted by after learning that he is the son of the Baron. Tarvek is left with a lasting anger against Gil. (Gil is also angry at Tarvek, angry enough to betray him, but the reason is less clear; it's just because the Baron warned Gil about his family's reputation for double-dealing.)

Although they describe their mutual anger as hatred, we know better. Tarvek in Gil's life in Paris, at risk to himself. Gil to be infected with Tarvek's dangerous illness in order to save him. Tarvek Gil's empire for him. Gil Tarvek from time-frozen Mechanicsburg and from Tweedle's poison.

Once Tarvek why Gil feels so bitter toward him, and extends a still-tentative hand of friendship, their mutual mistrust slowly dissolves, and their mutual insults become less fraught and more.

When Gil isn't around, Tarvek is able to express his love for Gil plainly, as when he that Agatha  at Gil and chased him away from Mechanicsburg.

It's a great irony, although not uncommon in literature, that these two loving friends find themselves rivals for Agatha's affection. Even while supporting each other and protecting each other when it comes to their common enemies, they are happy to watch behaving  around Agatha.

Tarvek and Agatha
In spite of his less-than-stellar record of plotting and scheming, Agatha still considers him to be a friend and a "". Just how far her feelings go is unclear, though Gil seems to think her worries about hurting Tarvek have made her "". Her reaction to being called on this is also telling. For his part, Tarvek considers her to be

Most people (in our world as well as theirs) consider Tarvek the underdog, although the inhabitants of Mechanicsburg think he after the Vespiary Squad rescue.

Tarvek's Spark
Tarvek is perhaps the most gifted builder of anthropoid clanks alive today. That he was able to largely reverse engineer Tinka, a Van Rijn Muse, while only moderately damaging her is a testament to his skills -- historically, even the finest sparks have only succeeded in destroying van Rijn's Muses when they've tried to study them. We have not seen him use other spark disciplines, unless a genius for political and military plotting counts.

Creations

 * Anevka's clank body, based on a Van Rijn muse.
 * A voice mechanism that can produce a good counterfeit of the command voice.
 * A clank head for the Other's consciousness (which identifies itself as Lucrezia Mongfish).
 * Assists with the construction of (and sabotages) Agatha's holographic recorder/projector.
 * A device which simultaneously disabled all the Dingbots that Prime had constructed in Sturmhalten.
 * Assisted in the repair of Castle Heterodyne.

Physical Abilities
He is a bit heavier then he should be but in shape. As stated before he has had training similar to that of Violetta, a Smoke Knight, and is proficient enough in their martial arts to spar with. (At first he keeps this secret, making a show of having paid no attention to the training.) He actually appears  than Violetta. He can even handle a few Wulfenbach stealth troops without major.

Questions and theories

 * Can Tarvek produce the heterodyne humming? Clearly, he that is drawn in a similar style. See Tarvek's humming.
 * Is the watch more then a watch or is it only a standard watch? (There's a page about this.)
 * How seriously are we supposed to take the repeated jokes about Tarvek's concern with fashion? (There's already a page about this.)

Outside World
According to Professoressa Foglio during the 30 May, 2013, Reddit Ask-Me-Anything session, Tarvek's name was created by her and therefore has no specific linguistic sourcing.