Girl Genius
Register
Advertisement
Girl Genius

Madame Olga was a fortune teller and grifter who traveled as part of Master Payne's Circus of Adventure. She was "Mistress of the Science of Telluricomnivisualization ," which apparently translates as "methods for separating townies from their currency while telling them what they want to hear." She was killed when a crab monster clank attacked the circus, and her burnt body was dressed in Agatha's things, tricking Bangladesh DuPree and Gilgamesh Wulfenbach, and thus Baron Klaus Wulfenbach, into thinking Agatha had died. Someone in the Circus expertly doctored the body (even making the skull look as if Olga had been wearing glasses ), completely fooling the Baron's corpse expert.

Agatha in turn disguises herself as Olga, to complete the deception, and learns a lot about Circus life from this episode. Countess Marie explains to Agatha that the grifting life was everything to Olga, who'd been with the Circus for five years when she met her fate. She loved perpetrating scams. To quote the characters:

CM: And now? Now she gets to fool not just some gullible townie -- but Baron Wulfenbach HIMSELF! If she weren't dead, she'd have killed herself to play this part.
AH: Show people are very strange.
CM: You'll get used to it.
AH: That's what worries me.

Agatha maintains the Olga disguise on a few other occasions. First, she staffs Olga's fortune-telling booth when the Circus plays in Zumzum, advising a potential Bishop for the Skifandrian temple of Ashtara in the process (to Zeetha's considerable amusement). She uses the alias again when she makes a command appearance in Sturmhalten for various members of House Sturmvoraus. Unfortunately, this act isn't quite as convincing as the earlier ones, but it's still nice to see that Olga lives on after death, in at least a theatric sense.

Although the brain was a lost cause, Klaus —believing it to be Agatha’s— rebuilt Olga's body, having “realized that even a substitute brain in a Heterodyne body would be of some use.” It's unknown whose brain Klaus may have intended to place in the new body or whether he ever completed the procedure. (We learn later that taking possession of Castle Heterodyne — whence one can be declared The Heterodyne — does indeed entail a blood test .)

Novelization[]

Madame Olga introduces herself to Agatha as Olga Žiga.[1] Additionally, after Olga dies, Zeetha comments that the two of them were particular friends, and that Olga was one of the few people who actually believed Zeetha's stories about being from Skifander.

References

Advertisement