Girl Genius
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Girl Genius

"...I'm Spark enough to return the crown and repair its guardians."

- Trelawney Thorpe, speaking to the "ghost" of King Arthur

A famous Spark and adventurer from England, who has many books written about her. Not unlike those of the Heterodyne Boys, they are apparently heavily embellished, but "these publishers are British"[1], implying that (in Ardsley Wooster's opinion) this makes them more truthful than the (continental) publishers of the Heterodyne stories. Both fictionally and in actuality, she works for Queen Albia and wears the same service Badge as her colleague Wooster does (post time-freeze).

Her Associates[]

She has an Official Sidekick named Jolly Jack Tarr, though it's been indicated it's more a position to be filled as needed rather than one guy all along. Meanwhile, she and Ardsley are, unsurprisingly, personally acquainted and are, at the very least, friendly with each other. (See below for more details).

Trelawneyportrait

Trelawny, as drawn by Cheyenne Wright.

She also speaks well of Hadrian Rakethorn (at least in professional terms), supposedly "knew" the Iron Sheik and had some sort of noteworthy adventure with a glass dirigible.

She has an enemy in the villainous Professor LeMort (think lots and lots of zombie mooks) who features in Trelawney Thorpe, Spark of the Realm in: The Crown of the Sleeping King, the adventure of hers that is part of the collected works of GG and can be found in full in the back of Agatha Heterodyne and the Airship City and online at Cheyenne Wright's Arcane Times section of the Comic Genesis website.

She and the pirate(ish) Captain Hawkins of the airship Mopey Tortoise have some sort of relationship, though exactly how intimate is not entirely clear.

She has rescued the English Princess Urania from at least two kidnapping attempts.

Trelawney Today[]

Agatha first hears about Ms. Thorpe while on Castle Wulfenbach where Gil is a fan of her printed adventures, but the British agent enters the main Girl Genius story in person when she meets Agatha, Ardsley and Co. just as the latter individuals arrive in Londinium from Paris via airship. She accompanies them as they all set out to intercept Madwa Korel and Dio Zardeliv as they arrive by submarine, reporting en route that she has an unnamed contact in Paris who has (correctly) informed her of Tarvek's also being sent to England.

When the submarine in question comes crashing into its assigned airlock in a very unauthorized fashion, she assists in slowing it down, blows open its sealed hatch with a shaped charge she just happened to be carrying, and discovers that everyone on board is dead via poison gas.

Later, she pulls new arrival Gil away from his Mechanicsburg time-bubble research to have some fun out on the town, whereupon they end up visiting the Royal Collection of Inconvenient Oddities. (The museum includes artifacts from the aforementioned Crown of the Sleeping King story, making it canonical.) After various hijinks at the Collection lead to Gil and Trelawney making the papers , she takes him far to the north of Londinium, where she reveals that she is a keeper of some Albia's more spectacular secrets. The two them talk to a representation of Albia's earliest memories, where it is discovered/remembered that Lucrezia somehow obtained/will obtain the power to be present during the era ruled by the Ancient God-Queens, and killed most of them. This leads to Albia's formulation of an urgent plan to remove the Lucrezia-copy from Agatha's mind.

The mind-altering aspects of this expedition eventually provoke the re-surfacing of the Klaus mental-overlay in Gil; Klaus has a conversation with Ms. Thorpe wherein it is revealed that Albia hopes to pair her up with Gil, both to cut him off from potential "Garden" inhabitant Agatha and to foster better relations between the two empires. The Klaus-implant is all in favor of this idea, and Trelawney indicates that she's at least willing to entertain the possibility.

The duo travel back to Londinium, and more specifically the undersea dome of the Queen's Society, where they arrive just in time to interrupt Tarvek's attempted deletion of Lucrezia from Agatha's mind. They promote the idea of extracting and containing the Lu-copy, and the rest of Our Heroes go along with this, but as usual there are (further) delays and complications, including the erasure of the Klaus-copy, Lu taking over Agatha's body even with her locket in place, and an invasion of the dome by ninja-ish British soliders who have been wasped and are seeking Lucrezia (and are led by the Lu-copy currently operating the clank-body originally built for Anevka Sturmvoraus ). This last event prompts Trelawney to reveal another ability: she is able to call upon Albia, and (at the cost of great physical strain) have Her Majesty directly possess her body. Albia is in turn able to temporarily free the soldiers, but she is soon forced to withdraw. Trelawney continues to assist the protagonists as they deal with clank-Lu and attempt to wrestle the now en-Queened Agatha-Lu into the machine; they are finally successful, at the cost of Ardsley being disintegrated by Lucrezia. After the survivors flee the now self-destructing dome, and have a moment to take stock, Trelawney breaks down weeping in Agatha's arms.

Of course, there's no rest for the virtuous, as everybody soon gets swallowed by a Great Cetacean and Trelawney has to pitch in and help assemble a mermaid costume for Agatha to wear as she officially meets with the Cetacean's spokesguy. This goes off without disaster, though Trelawney being forced to remove the flamethrowers she included is a blow.

Upon returning to more civilized parts, everyone is summoned to an elaborate party hosted by Albia, whereupon Trelawney and Rakethorn immediately resume their Albia-assigned attempts at romantically splitting Agatha and Gil. When Gil is later sent back to The Continent by Albia to deal with a Polar Ice Lord invasion, Trelawney accompanies him.

The Works[]

Trelawny

Trelawney Thorpe, as she appears in the card game The Works.

Long before appearing in the comic, Trelawney Thorpe was included in the card game The Works where she is dressed in a sturdy green catsuit (matching the outfit in Cheyenne's comic) and clutches a seemingly sparky-built pot of tea. (Cf. Spark Roast.) Her epithets in the game are Hero, Legend, and Spark.

She appears very similar in the game and the comic; it even turns out that she can very quickly discard the restrictive purple dress in which she first appears, leaving her wearing the aforementioned and rather more practical green outfit. No sign yet of the teapot.

References

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