Discussion thread for Agatha H. and the Clockwork Princess. Beware, Here There be SPOILERS

[hippogrif]

Welcome.

This is a thread for discussing the Girl Genius novelization Agatha H. and the Clockwork Princess, as well as all Girl Genius in general. The subject matter is the property of Phil and Kaja Foglio.

No spoilers are required in this thread. The assumption is you've read the material already. That is why this thread exists--to provide a place for people to talk without having to try to avoid giving away secrets.

I own this account. If you're rude or a jackass, I will delete your post. If you're debating in good faith and not annoying the natives, I won't. If people really can't behave, I'll delete the whole fershlugginer thread.

Have fun. Talk at will. If you don't want spoilers, run away now.

Hippogrif.

Comments

[bunnyjadwiga]

I keep having this belief that Tarvek may have been manuevering to wasp sparks (like Othar) and troublesome/evil rulers (like the Knights of Jove, his family, etc.) in order to stop them from being evil/oppressing others. It's a common enough variety of magical thinking, even in ethics.

Tarvek is still portrayed as caring about people, in general. It's also been clearly laid out in the novelization that as long as rulers under the Pax Transylvania don't cause trouble beyond their borders, Klaus doesn't care if they oppress their own people. Is this what Tarvek wants to correct?

Or am I reading too much into it?

[hippogrif]

Klaus has limits. Frex, no explicit slavery, though he's turning a blind eye to a lot of less explicit slavery. Regarding Tarvek's plan: I think it's pretty definite that the first aspect was to beat his father and the Knights of Jove to the punch on existing wasped non-sparks...but most particularly the Geisters. There are several points in the novel when that's clarified enough to make it a safe bet. The fact that Tarvek grew up in the middle of an arms race aimed directly at the existing wasped folks makes that a reasonable goal.

That he also has the goal of undoing wasping is also clarified within reasonable limits...so he's got at least some palliative ambitions all along, not just after Castle Heterodyne. The ends don't always justify the means. However, I do think he may well have felt the only means he had were less than ideal...and that the ends were too vital to be finicky in the short-term.

His ultimate falling in love with Agatha is because she's willing to commit suicide to save Europa. (Gloat-gloat, I DID predict this one! Gleee!!!!) That further pushes me into the belief that he's been an idealist on the subject of trying to do good all along...just in a situation where what he sees as possible is very limited...and colored by his sense that Klaus isn't a much better answer than his father or Lu. He SEEMS to be trying to think outside the existing box. We just don't know quite how, yet.

It's possible he wanted to wasp "bad" Sparks. It's too early to know, dang it. My own sense, though, is that he planned to use existing wasping to get some control over the Geisters, learn enough of the tech to UNDO the existing wasping, and proceed from there. The risk of Klaus actually being wasped by Lucrezia would have seemed vanishingly small at the time he put it forward.

But the thing is, we don't know. Even after the novel, while we can now be more sure he's "good" for at least one plausible value of goodness, we don't now what tools he intended to use, or how he intended to use them, or for how long, or how utterly naive he was being in his planning. Without those all we can do is suspect he meant well for the most part.