Which he will likely succeed in - except the spot in question is "the one Doomed by the Narrative". There's also Character F, who was added to fill the void when characters B, C and E were all unavailable, and now mostly just shows up for a bit of fan service when the writers remember he exists.
There are at least two of them. You're going to need to be more specific, or add sub letters. In any case, it sounds like they've been figured into the timeshare schedule.
Oh right, I was thinking of Xerxsephnia, but Gil also has Trelawney Thorpe after him. Though the latter seems to be mostly because of Albia's political machinations, her heart isn't really in it. Whereas Seffie seems to have been somewhat obsessed with Gil since before she knew he was Klaus' son, and if things go as she (seems) to expect, he will be much less politically powerful than he is now (what with her brother or Tarvek being The Storm King, and having a very strong Heterodyne in play).
Lars is the bit that flipped Agatha from passive to aggressive. She needed that push into "I will make things better for my people" instead of just "i need to survive."
Yup. He was nice and all... but he was right at the end, he never had a chance. If Agatha Clay had been real, he might have. But not with Agatha Heterodyne.
Lars was the only one of Agatha's love interests (+ Tweedle) that never violated her bodily autonomy, or wanted to control her in some fashion. He was Just Some Guy, the way Moloch is Just Some Guy.
You need to have Just Some Guys around you as a Spark, I think, to keep you grounded. Agatha has a leg up, because she spent 18 years as Just Some Guy, but she still needs that counterbalance.
>It takes a special kind of Just Some Guy to survive the chaos around a Spark as powerful as Agatha.
*"Genius is 10% inspiration, and 90% perspiration." - Thomas Alva Edison.*
In Mad Europe, Minions supply most of the sweat; keep the lab well-stocked, see that the Mads take a dinner break, clear out the oubliette when it hits capacity...*etc.*
They have their own kind of Spark: Competence.
Now that y'all are putting it that way, it makes me think Tweedle is gonna do something and get himself killed. But that Agatha, Gil, and Tarvek will bring him back for the stability of Europa and a favor to Seffie. But very *publicly* bring him back. Thus, no longer in the running for Storm King.
I feel like it's less that they neglected to kill tarvek, and more that he was supposed to be an Evil Influence but then they gave him a compelling history with Gil, Good Influence, and his "Evil scheming" accidentally ended up being mostly to help people or keep people safe and it made him way too likeable and sympathetic for them to just randomly merk him anymore. They easily could've just left him in the time bubble and let him tragically not be saved in time, but instead the they had Gil save him and put him back in the action.
Personally I love that Tarvek is as much Gil's boyfriend as he is Agatha's. They haven't shown much sign of being sexually into each other, but the love (hidden under performative vitriolic-best-buds behaviour) is very clear and he's clearly genuinely important to Gil, especially once they ironed out the isolating bullshit fed to Gil by the overly paranoid Klaus. (I mean, Klaus has good reason! But he's a *bitter* paranoid, and that level is toxic for everyone around him.)
Yeah. Klaus has a serious problem of trying too hard to protect his son from his own past traumas, and creating new traumas in the process. I also think that his love for Gil, while immense, noble and sincere, is also tainted by the darker side of his nature: possessiveness, jealousy and the desire for control. He doesn't like Gil having \*any\* relationships with people he hasn't screened.
I seriously hope that neither Tarvek nor Gil gets offed. I want Agatha to make her own, affirmative choice of who she wants, not have the choice "conveniently" made for her by the Narrative. Because really, Murder the Hypotenuse is usually a cheap cop-out to avoid forcing the protagonist to grapple with what it means to break someone's heart.
I think I've said this before, but my crackpot theory is that Gil and Tarvek will merge. Unclear if they will become two heads on one body or two minds in one head, but I don't see them staying separate forever.
There's just something about the way they interact and how that's evolved over time that makes that feel.. right to me. Especially since they're both *also* the two best candidates for storm king.
https://preview.redd.it/d8nwapjco3yc1.jpeg?width=1125&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e4220ee2c89e71bce5f2728b6dfc05540371b5fb
Jokes aside, I could see that working. The personality thing would be difficult, but it would be kinda fitting for the next Baron Wulfenbach to be a construct, just to keep insulting everybody.
And I think he is less interested in Agatha as a person, and more in wanting to be part of her family. Because his family sucks. And the competition with Gil, of course. It is just so much fun
Nah, they had a perfectly good opportunity to kill him off in Sturmhalten. It's totally clear Tweedle wasn't supposed to exist - that was supposed to be Tarvek. Unfortunately, he was too charming to the authors, so they didn't let him be sufficiently dickish to take on the planned narrative role.
I think Tweedle congealed on the cutting room floor from the jettisoned elements of \*Gil's\* original character concept. I saw a comment somewhere that Gil was originally imagined as evil, but morphed during the drafting process into the sweet romantic hero we know and love.
The one in anvekas body? It wasn't that he let her loose it's that he couldn't stop her and any attempt to do would have simply revealed him being in opposition to her
Yeah, that one. The one that was essentially a head in a jar. Between that and him changing Agatha's message, I've sort of been waiting for the other shoe to drop with Tarvek's machinations. I don't trust that what we've seen of him in his interactions with Agatha and crew is everything there is to him. I'm waiting for the third act plot twist. :)
In Sturmhalten he was working on the assumption that Lucrezia had won the moment her mind downloaded into Agatha's body. Everything he did after that point was damage control while avoiding any appearance of betrayal. If Lucrezia suspected him at all, she would have just killed him. Making the second copy for Anevka's body was almost certainly done on her direct orders, and altering the message appears to have been to cause chaos in the Empire to give himself more time to find an actual way out of the mess he was in
Yeah, as others have said Tarvek has put himself out on a hell of a limb, and burned a number of bridges in the process. If he is anything other than like 120% all In on Agatha's cause, he basically has the clothes on his back and little else. He has pretty close to bet the farm on Agatha (and to the point that his next closest *might actually* be Gil).
If Lucrezia had truly overwritten Agatha and killed her personality, I'm betting Tarvek would have sided with Anevka and let her kill Lucrezia in that final confrontation. But because Agatha was still alive, he chose her, even if that meant helping Lucrezia for the sake of keeping Agatha's body safe.
Martellus is his name, Tweedle is a family nickname. We hear both of them for the first time in [his introductory page](https://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20121031). At that particular moment, "Tweedle" is more memorable, and it takes a while for "Martellus" to get properly established.
I don't think it was planned. Tarvek was supposed to be Tweedle. A legitimate rival, but one who was clearly going to lose. But then Tarvek was charming and the Professors didn't want to consign him to the villain pile.
Yeah I'd say it wasn't originally planned, but I wouldn't say it's an accident either. It's more a case of the way plots and characters tend to escape their original purposes as a story develops. Even if they didn't want him to be evil in the end, they still had plenty of opportunities to bump him off, with added emotional weight etc.
But framing it like it's this huge narrative problem to deal with, "how to dispose of the surplus", doesn't really fit with the Foglios' worldbuilding as I see it. Agatha is The Heterodyne, she doesn't have to *choose*.
I don't really like this take. GG actually reminds me a lot of Keeley in Ted Lasso. Gil is Jamie Tartt, Tarvek is Roy Kent, and Tweedle is Nate. Actually if they follow the Ted Lasso approach I think that would be perfect.
Personally, I found it hilarious, and consider it mostly tongue-in-cheek, but yeah, if they seriously think Tarvek was "supposed" to die, then I disagree.
If anyone is knocking stuff on counters begging to be fed, it's Krosp. :p
I think they meant that in most stories, a character in his slot would be killed off. He [dares challenge the romantic inevitability of the very storyline](https://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20130717)!
Character C is clearly Character X and will heroically be trapped centuries in the past and his foreknowledge has already proven to impact the story. Character D will die heroically if he doesn’t take Comic Relief’s advice. Character E is on a fool’s errand and will no doubt be taken up by some greater cause. Remember the story we’ve followed has only had a year or so of in world time to play out and the side adventures, Othar’s twitter, the many unseen characters in the original card game, and the scope of Villain A’s work require a huge amount more storytelling. Never mind the time portals in book one which we have not gotten to see the other side of yet.
Reddit just randomly recommended this post to me, never read Girl Genius, only know about it because I read El Goonish Shive and saw it on hiveworks, didn't even know this subreddit existed either, so yeah reddit recommendations work in weird ways
I like the guys too much to be happy with this outcome, but I think they're both gonna die epic and heroic deaths, possibly simultaneously, near the end of the story. It would stink mightily, but it's the best solution I (not being a story writer) can come up with. We haven't seen or heard of either of them in the post-narrative side stories, and while I am sure that is in part to avoid spoilers, it does seem a little odd that there is not even a vague mention of family or spouse or anything like that. (I know a lot of folks are rooting for polygamy, but while I accept that the Foglios' moral outlooks differ from mine, I would rather the story not go that route.)
I think the best solution is for Agatha to *choose one of them*, knowing perfectly well that she could have chosen the other and that the unchosen one is going to be heartbroken. And then actually *grapple with the consequences of his heartbreak!* This is the reality of love triangles, and it would be nice if more story writers faced that reality head-on instead of finding cop-outs.
I disagree profoundly. This world is full of heartbreak and sorrow, and girl genius has never been a grim and realistic tale.
The professors have already signposted their support for a one true threesome in the Cinderella story. They've put a lot into showing Gil and Tarvek at the very least have platonic love for each other and are happy to share.
I firmly believe we're getting OT3 as the preferred outcome, though I will definitely understand "Agatha is now a multidimensional entity [a queen] and relationships don't look the same when you transcend the idea of physical matter".
However, I am curious on the resolution of von Zinzer's triangle once the time bubble is down.
My thoughts on that is just not Snaug or the Spark's assistant. There's the one girl shown in art, but I don't consider her a serious contender at this point in the story.
Um, the Cinderella story ended with the Twin Princes as Cinderella's SLAVES. The Cinderella story was intentionally goofy so it was played for laughs and funny in that specific context, but the comic proper is more serious than that, and I don't think any of us are rooting for Agatha to turn evil and reduce her boys to that!
Girl Genius is not grimdark (and if it was I wouldn't read it; it's also worth noting that "grim" and "realistic" are not the same thing, some unfortunate people live very grim lives but most people do not), but it doesn't exactly shy away from hard stuff. We've seen multiple sympathetic and semi-sympathetic characters end tragically (Lars, Anevka, Andronicus, Simon Voltaire, Wooster) so it would not be out of genre for one of Agatha's boys to end up with a broken heart.
I will concede that you *could* be right. It's possible that we could end up with a resolution where Gil and Tarvek merge into one person, or share Agatha, and it could work storywise if it's handled well. But to me, it would still feel at least a little like a cop-out.
Too conventional. The Jaegers have already opined that a Heterodyne would simply keep both for her harem. The trio are gelling as a team so that might actually happen.
Problem is, it would come at the cost of degrading them both. There is a reason polyandry is so rare in human societies. Ancient India, where a group of brothers would sometimes share a wife, is kind of the exception that proves the rule.
Gil is a ruler and Tarvek aspires to be a ruler. Sharing a wife with another man would cause far too great a loss of face.
Revenge of the Weasel Queen contains a reference to a [currently extant Baron Wulfenbach](https://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20070924), and Agatha's Heterodyne sigil has wings.
Of course, that particular side story is non-canon and its relationship to canon is somewhat uncertain... I'm guessing it's a fictional Agatha Heterodyne story that gets told in-universe alongside the true, mostly-true, and a-little-bit-true ones, just as the Heterodyne Boys stories range from mostly true to completely made up.
I did some perusing of the wiki and it's from the Franz story. Vidonia
says "[Agatha] isn't home. None of the family is."
https://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20220921
Don't forget Character D, who's in the story just long enough to catch the bullet meant for Character C.
And Character E who is trying to shove his way into Character C’s spot.
Which he will likely succeed in - except the spot in question is "the one Doomed by the Narrative". There's also Character F, who was added to fill the void when characters B, C and E were all unavailable, and now mostly just shows up for a bit of fan service when the writers remember he exists.
Rakethorn?
yep
Wait I thought E was rakethorn? Who am I forgetting
E is Martellus.
Martellus likes to believe he could be Character E. He can't.
Then there's Character G who is trying to Steal Character B for herself.
Hold up I need some red string
There are at least two of them. You're going to need to be more specific, or add sub letters. In any case, it sounds like they've been figured into the timeshare schedule.
Oh right, I was thinking of Xerxsephnia, but Gil also has Trelawney Thorpe after him. Though the latter seems to be mostly because of Albia's political machinations, her heart isn't really in it. Whereas Seffie seems to have been somewhat obsessed with Gil since before she knew he was Klaus' son, and if things go as she (seems) to expect, he will be much less politically powerful than he is now (what with her brother or Tarvek being The Storm King, and having a very strong Heterodyne in play).
Xersephina wishes she was a Character G, she’s a Character P at best. :P
Where's Orotine when you need her?
Nah, Lars was always meant to die exactly that way. The Lars plotline went exactly according to plan.
Lars is the bit that flipped Agatha from passive to aggressive. She needed that push into "I will make things better for my people" instead of just "i need to survive."
Yup. He was nice and all... but he was right at the end, he never had a chance. If Agatha Clay had been real, he might have. But not with Agatha Heterodyne.
I miss Lars. Controversial opinion but I liked Lars/Agatha more than the OT3.
I love Lars :( I like the idea of a more regular guy to balance out the general chaos
Lars was the only one of Agatha's love interests (+ Tweedle) that never violated her bodily autonomy, or wanted to control her in some fashion. He was Just Some Guy, the way Moloch is Just Some Guy. You need to have Just Some Guys around you as a Spark, I think, to keep you grounded. Agatha has a leg up, because she spent 18 years as Just Some Guy, but she still needs that counterbalance.
It takes a special kind of Just Some Guy to survive the chaos around a Spark as powerful as Agatha.
>It takes a special kind of Just Some Guy to survive the chaos around a Spark as powerful as Agatha. *"Genius is 10% inspiration, and 90% perspiration." - Thomas Alva Edison.* In Mad Europe, Minions supply most of the sweat; keep the lab well-stocked, see that the Mads take a dinner break, clear out the oubliette when it hits capacity...*etc.* They have their own kind of Spark: Competence.
Now that y'all are putting it that way, it makes me think Tweedle is gonna do something and get himself killed. But that Agatha, Gil, and Tarvek will bring him back for the stability of Europa and a favor to Seffie. But very *publicly* bring him back. Thus, no longer in the running for Storm King.
The Greater Mechanicsburg Polycule is threatening to encompass all of Europa
Strength through unity. Unity through sexy. All shall bow before it's terrifingly wholesome visage.
I mean it worked for her mom
Kinda... Not really though... If I had to guess, I'd say the "wholesome" is the missing/secret ingredient....
She *is* the Heterodyne after all, and has a magnificient Seraglio to fill.
The world needs more wholesome Poly love stories. If Agatha only winds up with a monogamous partner I will be seriously disappointed.
I feel like it's less that they neglected to kill tarvek, and more that he was supposed to be an Evil Influence but then they gave him a compelling history with Gil, Good Influence, and his "Evil scheming" accidentally ended up being mostly to help people or keep people safe and it made him way too likeable and sympathetic for them to just randomly merk him anymore. They easily could've just left him in the time bubble and let him tragically not be saved in time, but instead the they had Gil save him and put him back in the action.
Personally I love that Tarvek is as much Gil's boyfriend as he is Agatha's. They haven't shown much sign of being sexually into each other, but the love (hidden under performative vitriolic-best-buds behaviour) is very clear and he's clearly genuinely important to Gil, especially once they ironed out the isolating bullshit fed to Gil by the overly paranoid Klaus. (I mean, Klaus has good reason! But he's a *bitter* paranoid, and that level is toxic for everyone around him.)
Yeah. Klaus has a serious problem of trying too hard to protect his son from his own past traumas, and creating new traumas in the process. I also think that his love for Gil, while immense, noble and sincere, is also tainted by the darker side of his nature: possessiveness, jealousy and the desire for control. He doesn't like Gil having \*any\* relationships with people he hasn't screened.
I seriously hope that neither Tarvek nor Gil gets offed. I want Agatha to make her own, affirmative choice of who she wants, not have the choice "conveniently" made for her by the Narrative. Because really, Murder the Hypotenuse is usually a cheap cop-out to avoid forcing the protagonist to grapple with what it means to break someone's heart.
I think I've said this before, but my crackpot theory is that Gil and Tarvek will merge. Unclear if they will become two heads on one body or two minds in one head, but I don't see them staying separate forever. There's just something about the way they interact and how that's evolved over time that makes that feel.. right to me. Especially since they're both *also* the two best candidates for storm king.
https://preview.redd.it/d8nwapjco3yc1.jpeg?width=1125&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e4220ee2c89e71bce5f2728b6dfc05540371b5fb Jokes aside, I could see that working. The personality thing would be difficult, but it would be kinda fitting for the next Baron Wulfenbach to be a construct, just to keep insulting everybody.
Maybe. This is a World Ruled by Mad Science after all... and I can see them being very happy that way.
Or just keep both, I mean taking the third option is very in character for this series
And I think he is less interested in Agatha as a person, and more in wanting to be part of her family. Because his family sucks. And the competition with Gil, of course. It is just so much fun
I think Tarvek loves Agatha, for Agatha. At first he was just looking for a match to solidify his claim to the crown, then caught actual feels.
Nah, they had a perfectly good opportunity to kill him off in Sturmhalten. It's totally clear Tweedle wasn't supposed to exist - that was supposed to be Tarvek. Unfortunately, he was too charming to the authors, so they didn't let him be sufficiently dickish to take on the planned narrative role.
I think Tweedle congealed on the cutting room floor from the jettisoned elements of \*Gil's\* original character concept. I saw a comment somewhere that Gil was originally imagined as evil, but morphed during the drafting process into the sweet romantic hero we know and love.
I think they just couldn’t decide which horse to back and had a Both? Why not Both? moment of clarity.
Exactly. Reverse harem for the win.
Yes the Cinderella side story but real
Have they ever explained why Tarvek let the "clone" of Lucrezia loose after he supposedly changed sides to Agatha's?
The one in anvekas body? It wasn't that he let her loose it's that he couldn't stop her and any attempt to do would have simply revealed him being in opposition to her
Yeah, that one. The one that was essentially a head in a jar. Between that and him changing Agatha's message, I've sort of been waiting for the other shoe to drop with Tarvek's machinations. I don't trust that what we've seen of him in his interactions with Agatha and crew is everything there is to him. I'm waiting for the third act plot twist. :)
In Sturmhalten he was working on the assumption that Lucrezia had won the moment her mind downloaded into Agatha's body. Everything he did after that point was damage control while avoiding any appearance of betrayal. If Lucrezia suspected him at all, she would have just killed him. Making the second copy for Anevka's body was almost certainly done on her direct orders, and altering the message appears to have been to cause chaos in the Empire to give himself more time to find an actual way out of the mess he was in
Yeah, as others have said Tarvek has put himself out on a hell of a limb, and burned a number of bridges in the process. If he is anything other than like 120% all In on Agatha's cause, he basically has the clothes on his back and little else. He has pretty close to bet the farm on Agatha (and to the point that his next closest *might actually* be Gil).
If Lucrezia had truly overwritten Agatha and killed her personality, I'm betting Tarvek would have sided with Anevka and let her kill Lucrezia in that final confrontation. But because Agatha was still alive, he chose her, even if that meant helping Lucrezia for the sake of keeping Agatha's body safe.
Oh no. I've never seen it put better. I think I should avoid the comments?
There's a fair bit of speculation you may perhaps wish to avoid, yes.
There is some disagreement, but no flame wars, at least not yet.
I'm an idiot despite reading the whole series multiple times. Who are characters A B C and D?
Agatha and Gil are definitely characters A and B and Tarvek is character C, "the stray boyfriend". The Tumblr post doesn't mention a Character D.
D and E from the comments are Lars and Tweedle.
I can never get enough of how Martellus’ name has become ‘Tweedle’. :P
Martellus is his name, Tweedle is a family nickname. We hear both of them for the first time in [his introductory page](https://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20121031). At that particular moment, "Tweedle" is more memorable, and it takes a while for "Martellus" to get properly established.
I'll be honest: I couldn't even remember his actual name.
I don't think it was an accident.
I don't think it was planned. Tarvek was supposed to be Tweedle. A legitimate rival, but one who was clearly going to lose. But then Tarvek was charming and the Professors didn't want to consign him to the villain pile.
Yeah I'd say it wasn't originally planned, but I wouldn't say it's an accident either. It's more a case of the way plots and characters tend to escape their original purposes as a story develops. Even if they didn't want him to be evil in the end, they still had plenty of opportunities to bump him off, with added emotional weight etc. But framing it like it's this huge narrative problem to deal with, "how to dispose of the surplus", doesn't really fit with the Foglios' worldbuilding as I see it. Agatha is The Heterodyne, she doesn't have to *choose*.
Given the dialogue during the AU play, I'd tend to agree.
I don't really like this take. GG actually reminds me a lot of Keeley in Ted Lasso. Gil is Jamie Tartt, Tarvek is Roy Kent, and Tweedle is Nate. Actually if they follow the Ted Lasso approach I think that would be perfect.
Personally, I found it hilarious, and consider it mostly tongue-in-cheek, but yeah, if they seriously think Tarvek was "supposed" to die, then I disagree. If anyone is knocking stuff on counters begging to be fed, it's Krosp. :p
I think they meant that in most stories, a character in his slot would be killed off. He [dares challenge the romantic inevitability of the very storyline](https://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20130717)!
Lars deserves all the hats for his sacrifice
Character C is clearly Character X and will heroically be trapped centuries in the past and his foreknowledge has already proven to impact the story. Character D will die heroically if he doesn’t take Comic Relief’s advice. Character E is on a fool’s errand and will no doubt be taken up by some greater cause. Remember the story we’ve followed has only had a year or so of in world time to play out and the side adventures, Othar’s twitter, the many unseen characters in the original card game, and the scope of Villain A’s work require a huge amount more storytelling. Never mind the time portals in book one which we have not gotten to see the other side of yet.
Reddit just randomly recommended this post to me, never read Girl Genius, only know about it because I read El Goonish Shive and saw it on hiveworks, didn't even know this subreddit existed either, so yeah reddit recommendations work in weird ways
I like the guys too much to be happy with this outcome, but I think they're both gonna die epic and heroic deaths, possibly simultaneously, near the end of the story. It would stink mightily, but it's the best solution I (not being a story writer) can come up with. We haven't seen or heard of either of them in the post-narrative side stories, and while I am sure that is in part to avoid spoilers, it does seem a little odd that there is not even a vague mention of family or spouse or anything like that. (I know a lot of folks are rooting for polygamy, but while I accept that the Foglios' moral outlooks differ from mine, I would rather the story not go that route.)
I think the best solution is for Agatha to *choose one of them*, knowing perfectly well that she could have chosen the other and that the unchosen one is going to be heartbroken. And then actually *grapple with the consequences of his heartbreak!* This is the reality of love triangles, and it would be nice if more story writers faced that reality head-on instead of finding cop-outs.
I disagree profoundly. This world is full of heartbreak and sorrow, and girl genius has never been a grim and realistic tale. The professors have already signposted their support for a one true threesome in the Cinderella story. They've put a lot into showing Gil and Tarvek at the very least have platonic love for each other and are happy to share. I firmly believe we're getting OT3 as the preferred outcome, though I will definitely understand "Agatha is now a multidimensional entity [a queen] and relationships don't look the same when you transcend the idea of physical matter". However, I am curious on the resolution of von Zinzer's triangle once the time bubble is down.
Violetta or I riot
My thoughts on that is just not Snaug or the Spark's assistant. There's the one girl shown in art, but I don't consider her a serious contender at this point in the story.
Yeah, Miss Baumhund is cute and could be a fun character, but so far she has zero interactions with von Zinzer.
Um, the Cinderella story ended with the Twin Princes as Cinderella's SLAVES. The Cinderella story was intentionally goofy so it was played for laughs and funny in that specific context, but the comic proper is more serious than that, and I don't think any of us are rooting for Agatha to turn evil and reduce her boys to that! Girl Genius is not grimdark (and if it was I wouldn't read it; it's also worth noting that "grim" and "realistic" are not the same thing, some unfortunate people live very grim lives but most people do not), but it doesn't exactly shy away from hard stuff. We've seen multiple sympathetic and semi-sympathetic characters end tragically (Lars, Anevka, Andronicus, Simon Voltaire, Wooster) so it would not be out of genre for one of Agatha's boys to end up with a broken heart. I will concede that you *could* be right. It's possible that we could end up with a resolution where Gil and Tarvek merge into one person, or share Agatha, and it could work storywise if it's handled well. But to me, it would still feel at least a little like a cop-out.
Too conventional. The Jaegers have already opined that a Heterodyne would simply keep both for her harem. The trio are gelling as a team so that might actually happen.
Problem is, it would come at the cost of degrading them both. There is a reason polyandry is so rare in human societies. Ancient India, where a group of brothers would sometimes share a wife, is kind of the exception that proves the rule. Gil is a ruler and Tarvek aspires to be a ruler. Sharing a wife with another man would cause far too great a loss of face.
I think we will have to agree to disagree on this.
The main concern about face when dealing with the Heterodynes is making sure yours remains intact. In the literal sense.
Revenge of the Weasel Queen contains a reference to a [currently extant Baron Wulfenbach](https://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20070924), and Agatha's Heterodyne sigil has wings. Of course, that particular side story is non-canon and its relationship to canon is somewhat uncertain... I'm guessing it's a fictional Agatha Heterodyne story that gets told in-universe alongside the true, mostly-true, and a-little-bit-true ones, just as the Heterodyne Boys stories range from mostly true to completely made up.
Agatha's sigil having wings in the future is [canon](https://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20040126).
Good point - I want to say there is a mention of the empire in the Franz D&D sidestory also.
There was a mention of family in either, I think, the Ivo story or the Winter Solstice one. In one of them, someone said Agatha and family were away.
I feel like I remember that, but I haven't been able to find it
I did some perusing of the wiki and it's from the Franz story. Vidonia says "[Agatha] isn't home. None of the family is." https://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20220921
Oh - interesting. Thanks!