This article is about a member of House Mongfish. For others in the lineage or other uses, see Mongfish (disambiguation).
- "No, Klaus, this isn't a game. I am determined to change. I do love him. It should be enough."
- "Besides, they always win. There must be something to their philosophy."
- Lucrezia during That Naughty Flashback Scene[1]
Lucrezia Mongfish is the daughter of Lucifer Mongfish (one of the longtime adversaries of the Heterodyne boys) and is a full-fledged Spark in her own right. No mention has been made so far of who her mother might have been. After a period of creatively opposing the Heterodyne boys (and a romantic relationship with Klaus), she officially renounced her father's ways and married Bill Heterodyne.
Whether she truly intended to join the forces of Good is an open question, however, as she is also (in some form) the terrible Other who caused a great deal of destruction amongst Europa's sparks. She has attempted to justify her slavery and killing to Klaus as the only likely way to possibly attain their shared goal of true peace.[2]
Further discussion of Lucrezia's motivations and goals is quickly complicated by lack of information. In fact, there is a lot we still don't know about this very important woman. Expect further revelations as the story unfolds, and expect them to have a major impact. The mysteries surrounding Lucrezia are some of the most central of Girl Genius.
Backstory
Lucrezia as the Geisterdamen Goddess
Lucrezia'a backstory is complicated by being partly legendary, and partly revealed by (possibly) unreliable narrators, namely Klaus and Lady Vrin. Like everything else regarding Lucrezia, bear in mind the unresolved questions.
After Bill proposed to her and she accepted, Lucrezia drugged Klaus (whom she was still seeing) and shipped him off to parts unknown.[3] She then went on to marry Bill and live with him in Castle Heterodyne. She and Bill had a son, Klaus Barry Heterodyne, and Lucrezia was apparently pregnant with Agatha when the Castle was attacked. The attack was presumed to have been carried out by the Other, who kidnapped Lucrezia.
However, according to the Geisterdamen, who worship her as a goddess, she came to them at around the time the Castle was attacked in "high distress," and very pregnant. As far as we know, she gave birth to Agatha while with the Geisterdamen, as she entrusted the infant to them before once more disappearing from them as well. She reappeared to them sometime later, apparently in the form of a clank,[4] and sent them into the "shadow world" (Europa) to search for Agatha (who had been taken from the Geisters by person or persons unknown.)
Lucrezia Today
The next time Lucrezia is heard from, and the moment she first appears in the story proper, is when she (or a copy of her mind) is downloaded into Agatha's brain in Sturmhalten, where she plots to take over the Baron's empire by infecting him with a special slaver wasp. With help from Tarvek, she is duplicated into a clank brain as part of this plan. When the plan starts to fall apart (due to the unexpected arrival of Klaus and a great many troops, instead of a single Questor), she still manages to wasp the Baron before she is firmly repressed by Agatha's returned Locket.
This version briefly regains control of Agatha's body while in her secret lab beneath Castle Heterodyne. Scared that her daughter's mind is too strong for her to reliably control, and that Agatha seems to be learning some of her secrets through osmosis, she decides to kill Agatha once she can assure her memories can be successfully related to her other selves. To that end she attempts to transfer another copy of herself to "ride along" in the mind of her niece Zola Malfeazium. Too late, she learns the rebel Geister Milvistle anticipated this happening and constructed a neural trap in Zola's mind that (theoretically) completely controls the Lucrezia-personality and allows full access to its secrets. Zola escapes and Lucrezia is driven back into "hiding" by Von Pinn. Much later, while in the Corbettite Depot Fortress of St. Szpac, she briefly regains control of Agatha's body, where she offers cryptic comments to the effect that some process she initiated went very wrong, leaving her trapped or stranded somewhere for an extended period, awaiting rescue that evidently never came.
At other times this copy is able to influence Agatha's behavior without explicitly taking over, even with the locket in place, such as in Van Rijn's Hermitorium in the Immortal Library under Paris, where Agatha is prompted into freeing The Muse of Time from the sphere where the now long-dead Van Rijn imprisoned her. (The Muse's exact relationship to Lucrezia is another big mystery.)
Meanwhile, the clank version of Lucrezia turns up in Great Hospital at Mechanicsburg where she meets a post-Castle, badly-injured Zola, who at least claims to be solely Lucrezia, and reveals that Klaus has been wasped. Clank-Lucrezia then takes (partial) control of Klaus. Following the Hospital's destruction and Klaus's return to Castle Wulfenbach, there has been no further sign of the clank-copy. A post-Timeskip Dimo says that some copy of Lucrezia/The Other is loose on the land and being actively opposed by Gilgamesh Wulfenbach. It is possible this is The Queen of the Dawn, whom Tarvek, upon seeing Her Majesty in person in Paris, identifies as being Zola.
It is eventually revealed that at some point (a copy of) Lucrezia acquires the ability to travel in time. This Lucrezia, looking more like a machine than human ✣ , goes on a rampage wiping out the society of the Ancient God-Queens 5,000 years in the past.
Character Traits
A few things seem consistent between what Klaus remembers of her and what we saw in Sturmhalten. Lucrezia in all her appearances so far (minus "The Dragon from Mars" or other Heterodyne stories) has many of the qualities of a femme fatale. She's comfortable with her sexuality and uses it to her advantage. She's proud, smart, and capable of being devious, even with those closest to her. While she technically is a "Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter," she is by no means naïve or sheltered. Instead, both the Heterodyne shows and Klaus's recollections give us a picture of Lucrezia as a dangerous and crafty Spark in her own right, as at odds with the heroes as is her father, and often working independently of him. Klaus told Gil that she was "Ruthless, manipulative, and a consummate actress,"[5] which seem to be a reasonable assessment of the characteristics of both the Lucrezia that possessed Agatha and the Lucrezia he was romantically involved with twenty years ago. (There have been moments when Lucrezia's ability to act seems to have deserted her, however.[6])
Lucrezia's Secret Heterodyne Laboratory
Deep below the deep Great Movement Chamber, Lucrezia conducted her secret experiments. These experiments were extensive and included mind transfer and mind control. Her lab is equipped with a rather thorough brain washer and dryer, a captured muse, a BMFGun[7], a self destruct mechanism, and a tea cart.
Mind manipulations are Lucrezia's specialties. There is also a Beacon Engine in the lab, similar in appearance to the one once in Sturmhalten.
Thief of Souls
I'm back!
Lucrezia is a monster[8]. She is on a mission to "Show them all." What she wishes to show remains to be revealed. However, her personality from seventeen years ago is available for download to suitable hosts via "calling" through the summoning engine. Such a downloaded copy is referred to as a "calling". This allows any one calling to allow its host to die, knowing there is always the potential for another calling. The loss of the current memories and experiences in the current host seems not to faze her unless something important will be lost.
The Geisterdamen care for her slaver engines. Most of the Geisterdamen seem to be under Lucrezia's control. During the Other War the wasps turned their victims into revenants, shambling zombie-like servants of the Other. Over the last nineteen years improvements have been made, and the infected can seem to be fully functioning normals until given a order in a voice similar to Lucrezia's. The Baron has discovered many so infected. In Sturmhalten, the Baron himself was infected by a unique wasp that works on Sparks. It is the hope to transmit this knowledge to her other selves, plus the knowledge of the trick Zola pulled, that keeps Lucrezia from ending her existence in Agatha.
The lives of those infected are never theirs again. Once infected there is no known way to remove the effects, [9] though it has been reported second-hand that Gil has found an unspecified way to make at least the revenants on Castle Wulfenbach "stop doink vot [Lucrezia] sez".[10] Additionally, Klaus states he has effectively supplanted her wasp-based control of Gil using decision-and-behavior-modification-based mind control, though there remains severe doubts as to whether Gil's supposed wasping ever actually happened.
The Works
Lucrezia Mongfish is a sepia-toned card in The Works. She is depicted in a long-sleeved, high-collared garb with a Heterodyne trilobite at her neck, and holding a hypodermic syringe. The additional details are Villain, Legend, and Spark.
Possibly relevant outside information
"Lucretia McEvil" is a 1970 song by Blood, Sweat & Tears.
In early Roman history of the tale of Lucrezia and Tarquin, Lucrezia was attacked while her husband was away. The end result changed the course of Roman history with empire-wide repercussions.
There just might be a little nod to a certain Ms. Lucrezia Borgia (1480-1519) who is remembered by posterity as the quintessential femme fatale who'd do literally everything to advance her power and that of her Mafia-like family (like lots of illegitimate affairs, poisoning drinks with poison hidden in a ring, impersonating her father who happened to be the pope, you name it). Quite probably most of this is based on little more than rumours and fiction, but for some reason it stuck and immortalised her name. And she did have a tendency to choose influential husbands/lovers, who, in turn, had a suspicious tendency to die or vanish or be disposed of with surprising swiftness. And she had long blonde hair, and she was known to be highly intelligent, and she almost certainly enjoyed teasing everyone around her.
Open Questions
Of which there are a lot... feel free to speculate in the Fan Theories Forum!
- Was the electrical apparition in Beetleburg (shown here ✣ ) an image of Lucrezia?
- In what way, and with what motives, is Lucrezia the Other?
- Did she plan it all along?
- Tarvek says ✣ "My father... worked with Lucrezia before she became the Other." So there's one vote for there being a time before Otherhood.
- Did she become the victim of one of her experiments?
- Did she just get bored, like Klaus told her she would?
- Given the Other's body-snatching proclivities, is Lucrezia really the first Other?
- Or something weirder?
- Did she plan it all along?
- Where is she right now, and what's she up to?
- Possibly should be stated: "Where are shes?"
- How many of her are there, anyway?
- Who was her mother?
- Why did she start to murder God-Queens? Where did she get a weapon capable of doing so?
- When and how did she gain the ability to time-travel? What happened to her, body and mind, to make her so twisted?
References
- ↑ Lucrezia explains to Klaus. ✣
- ↑ 2015-04-24 (Friday) ✣
- ↑ Zeetha, at least, seems to think ✣ that it was to Skifander.
- ↑ See this page ✣ .
- ↑ Act 1, Vol 7, on page 058, panel 2. ✣
- ↑ Act 1, Vol 10, on page 080, panel 1. ✣
- ↑ Big Marshmallow Firing Gun
- ↑
Lucrezia's theme
- ↑ WoG
- ↑ Dimo reports here ✣ .