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Girl Genius

Princess Anevka Sturmvoraus is in fact two closely related entities. She was born human, the daughter of Prince Aaronev Wilhelm Sturmvoraus, ruler of the town of Sturmhalten, and was sister to Tarvek Sturmvoraus. At the time of our story, however, she is a clank built by Tarvek. Everyone understands that the clank body is a puppet controlled by the incapacitated human Anevka, as was true initially. Only he knows that the clank's personality grew to replace Anevka's entirely and his biological sister has died unnoticed. Consequently, almost all uses of "Anevka" refer to the clank body and the personality occupying it at the time Agatha meets her.

History[]

Some time before the start of the comic, Anevka (the human) was placed in the Geisterdamen's Summoning Engine by her father, in hopes that she would be the vessel to bring The Other/Lucrezia Mongfish back to Europa.

Unlike most of the girls subjected to the machine, she was not killed immediately, but began dying by inches. Her brother, a brilliant Spark himself, created a clank body for his sister after reverse-engineering Tinka, a van Rijn Muse kidnapped from Master Payne's Circus of Adventure while they were playing in Sturmhalten. The clank body maneuvered with limited freedom at the end of a set of tether cables, which connected it to the physically-enfeebled Anevka encased safely in a large jar-like support container. While this lectica had steampipes and therefore some internal power source, it was not capable of traveling on its own and required a set of human bearers. Through the cables (possibly partial pneumatic engineering), the princess was able to use her avatar to perceive, interact and even communicate with the world almost normally.

Slowly, the clank Anevka became more and more self-aware as the organic Anevka weakened further and finally died inside her support container. By then, the organic princess's influence had become so feeble, her doppleganger never noticed, or realized that she was not actually Anevka.

In the Comic[]

Anevka first appears in the comic when Agatha, in the guise of Heterodyne-show actress "Madam Olga" is summoned to dinner at the Sturmvoraus castle. The real reason for this summons is soon revealed, as Wilhelm announces his plan to place Agatha in the same machine that he previously used on Anevka. When he refuses to be even momentarily swayed from this course of action, Anevka fatally electrocutes him, setting off a long chain of power-plays and double-crossings between her, Tarvek, the Castle's resident Geisterdamen led by Vrin, and the copy of Lucrezia who is eventually successfully installed into Agatha's brain. Anevka's first course of action after killing her father is to provoke enough verbal outbursts from a restrained Agatha to copy the latter woman's voiceprint into her system, giving her a usable though imperfect version of The Other's Command voice. After Lucrezia appears on the scene (at least mentally), Anevka makes a (somewhat) staged escape from the Castle through the sewers (where she encounters Agatha's would-be rescuers from the Circus), and connects with local noble Lord Selnikov. The two of them use her control-voice to subjugate the majority of the revenant-townsfolk, and to storm the castle with inside assistance from Tarvek and his agent Veilchen.

In a final convoluted confrontation in the depth of the castle between the various major players, Anevka again uses the voice and her electrocution powers to incapacitate the Geisters and the Lucrezia-copy. She is about kill Lucrezia/Agatha, when supposed-prisoner Tarvek freezes her, revealing that he installed an override function on her clank-body (though he may have used this ability before in a subtle way). He further reveals the truth about her now fully non-organic nature, before sadly bidding her goodbye, deactivating her and removing her head. He installs a new head occupied by another copy of Lucrezia, which disappears with the revived Geisterdamen into the maze of tunnels under the town.

Currently, Anevka's head and presumably her consciousness lie dormant on a shelf somewhere in the bowels of the castle in Sturmhalten - unless it was destroyed along with Tarvek's lab when Dingbot Prime activated Agatha's message device , or in the battle that swept the town following the arrival of Baron Wulfenbach on the scene.

In the Novel[]

Anevka's depiction in the print novel Agatha H. and the Clockwork Princess mostly follows what was shown in the comic, but there are some additions. For one, an offhand comment that Anevka makes while talking to Tarvek strongly implies that at some unspecified point she also murdered their mother.[1] Additionally, while the comic implies that (the remains of) Anevka's entire body was placed inside the "jar", the novel explicitly notes that only her extracted brain was thus installed.[2]

Unanswered Questions[]

The transferal of consciousness raises questions about how clank brains are constructed, and how the van Rijn Muses gained their own powerful personalities. Also, would the organic Anevka have become as power-hungry as the clank Anevka in the sequence of events leading up to the Wulfenbach Slaver-quarantine raid on Sturmhalten? (Knowing exactly when and why Anevka killed her mother would provide a strong hint..) Or was this a form of moral corruption from lack of organic chemical influences (i.e., any possible feelings of compassion or mercy), possibly the phenomenon known as "Post-vital personality drift" ?

References

  1. Page 384:
    Anevka folded her arms. “Is maudlin sentimentality supposed to make me feel guilty about killing you? Because if it didn’t work for Mummy—”
  2. Page 255:
    Tarvek shrugged. “An—” he hesitated. “Experiment of my father’s went wrong. As a result, my sister was dying. Her body itself was failing. I won’t bore you with the details as they were quite horrifying, but the only thing that could save her was to remove her. Easy enough, of course, but the associated psychological trauma of no longer having no actual body was almost as deadly.”


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