Tarvek Sturmvoraus

Machiavelli would be proud
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. He is up to his hips in the Storm King conspiracy and is a Byzantine schemer, with a track record of complicated double and triple crosses. Tarvek has a gift for constructing anthropoid clanks, is ostentatiously charming, and appreciates attractive young women.

Tarvek considers himself to be the Storm King by right. For the time being, his ancestry is known only to his fellow conspirators. Tarvek thinks of Klaus Wulfenbach to be nothing more than a dangerous usurper to be overcome, a view which seems to be shared by most nobles. Tarvek does not have his father's special devotion to Lucrezia Mongfish / the Other, but he does attempt to ally with her, just as he capitalizes on interactions with his father, his sister, Agatha, and everyone else.

Backstory
Nothing is known about his mother other than the fact that she is a descendant of Valois. She was only mentioned once. 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. He was apparently raised by nannies until he was sent away for schooling.

When he was young, Tarvek was schooled on Castle Wulfenbach along with the children of other nobles, where he became friends with. However, the two later developed an intense and mutual dislike following Tarvek's expulsion from the Castle,. Their rivalry apparently continued when they both attended the University of Paris.

He has had the same Smoke Knight training as Violetta and is proficient in their.

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 obsession with finding and restoring the Storm King's Muses, partly in order to adapt their technology to help his disabled sister 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 (which would have involved patricide, defeating a spark, and inevitable imperial entanglements). 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, Tarvek's sister. 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.

Battle of Sturmhalten
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). Whether he is simply doing the right thing, aiding the Heterodyne Girl for his own purposes, or perhaps conveniently doing both at once, is unclear.

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 ladyship," claiming to believe 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.

Tarvek, of course, prefers to play his cards close to his chest. Agatha in Tarvek, asking for his help. Using the dingbots' music to break her free of Lucrezia's control, Agatha builds a holoprojector the Baron that the Other is in her head. However, this doesn't fit with Tarvek's plans and he betrays her at the last minute. He disables Agatha's Dingbots and is at the very least aware of the sabotage of Agatha's projector. Although he disclaims editing the message so that it sounds like Agatha is instead accusing the Baron of being the Other, the fact that Lucrezia of the machine's purpose makes his assertion somewhat suspect.

Tarvek also to the Other that he wants to reestablish the rule of the Storm King without her involvement. Evidently Tarvek cuts some sort of deal with Lucrezia at this point, but the details remain unknown.

Anevka and Lord Selnikov organize the people of Sturmhalten to storm the castle, but Lucrezia and Tarvek Tarvek reveals the spark–infecting slaver wasp to the Geisterdamen, apparently to gain their trust and respect. The Wulfenbach assault arrives. Agatha's projector (activated by Dingbot Prime) puts Agatha for a while, leading Vrin to beat Tarvek half to death before Agatha can stop her (and try to give him a few whacks herself). Eventually Lucrezia regains control and

Unknown to Lucrezia, the stolen Wulfenbach handgun that she uses to shoot Tarvek Wulfenbach troops transport the wounded Tarvek to Great Hospital in Mechanicsburg. Meanwhile, a performs the role of Andronicus Valois in the The Storm King (Opera) in Vienna.

In Mechanicsburg
Violetta springs Tarvek from Wulfenbach custody at the Hospital by dosing him with Moveit. When Agatha's Torchmen chase off their escape craft, the pair ducks 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 manipulation advice, but Agatha and would prefer if he and Gil both left her castle. However, Tarvek's wounds overcome him and Agatha sets out to find Gil when her medical skills prove inadequate to the task.

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.

Personality
An unrepetent schemer but he gave his own explenation for his when agatha was taken over by her mother.

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 She is the Heterodyne Girl, after all.

Tarvek's Spark
Tarvek is perhaps the most gifted builder of anthropoid clanks alive today. That he was able to largely reverse engineer Tinka 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, though he does know his stimulants.

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 the similer training as Violetta, a Smoke Knight and is proficient enough in their martial arts to spar with. He actually actually appears {{GG_link|20110425|faster} then violetta. He can even handle a few Wulfenbach stealth troops without major.

Questions and theories

 * What happened in Paris that made Tarvek and Gil hate each other so much?
 * Answered: It happened Paris on Castle Wulfenbach.


 * If Tarvek is in on the plot to install Zola "Heterodyne" in Mechanicsburg, and he has now decided that Agatha is his "intended bride", what does this mean for Zola?
 * 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?
 * Why was it so urgent for Tarvek to get to Castle Heterodyne? How did he get in?
 * Answered: As of, we found out that the Prince fled into Castle Heterodyne to flee Wulfenbach troops. According to , he slipped in through the Phosphorous Gate by using a.

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.