*reading through some Klaus discussion things that have popped up again*
Y’know… Has anyone yet considered the notion of what would’ve been different if all three Wulfenbach brothers had lived?
Firstly on a level of Heterodyne Boys era… Would they all have gone on adventures together? Would there be one of more that’d be distrustful, even disapproving of Bill and Barry? Would Klaus have had a couple extra people that would’ve tried to talk some sense into him about his relationship with Lucrezia, or would it have gone down as it had canonically, leaving his siblings with the worry of what’d happened to him, to search until they’d started to wonder whether or not he was even still alive? Certainly there’d have been someone to stay back at their home town to try to defend it from the Other’s attacks, but two more people probably wouldn’t make much of a difference against the wasps. They might try to rebuild, but when the Heterodynes vanish and the whole rest of the world starts to fall apart, they decide they need a new strategy. Perhaps the beginnings of the empire are already in motion when Klaus comes staggering back from Skifander with a son in tow. Perhaps Europa is already won.
Comic era, they’d split their duties of running things. Don’t make any of us come over there. They are essentially a single, seamless unit of power, though Klaus is the best-regarded out of them. People gossip about how it wasn’t all his idea, he was just roped into it, and how he’s really secretly working to bring the Heterodynes back. Truthfully he’s every bit the same as he is in any universe, but people need to hope for something, and it may as well be the meta-Spark whose role isn’t quite so defined as say, the brother directly overseeing military operations.
There’s a lot less external pressure on Gil in this environment, but perhaps it goes too far the other way. Klaus is probably still a disaster of a father, and if anything the poor boy might get lost in the shuffle. After all, he’s not the sole heir of a single man anymore. Heck, he might even have cousins, and God only knows how they all get along (At the same time, this might gain him a bit more sympathy towards Tarvek. Just a bit, mind. It’s hard to get more messed up than the Sturmvorauses). He may have to fight a bit for his own relevancy, though falling head-over-heels for the Heterodyne-Mongfish girl probably does a very good job at that.
Naturally Agatha is the rift where this whole setup starts to fall apart. Everybody’s got a different opinion on what to do about her. Interesting plot conflict ensues.
Other less painful more silly rifts include: one uncle definitely ships Agiltha while the other wonders whatever happened with the Sturmvoraus boy. Klaus says shut up they’re both terrible and why are we still talking about thisOkay. So. First important question: if they do get along with the Heterodyne boys and go adventuring with them, would they help fight the wasps? Would they go to the final battle to save lucrezia? Would they know about Agatha?
Second important question: Is Klaus the oldest, the youngest, or the middle child? Because that’s going to have a bit of an impact on whether they decide to work with him, against him, or knock him upside the head.
Third important question: Would Gil be the gay cousin?
“Third important question: Would Gil be the gay cousin?“
*suddenly dies of laughter*
OKAY. That aside. If Klaus’s brothers went searching for him, what would happen if they found him? Like, Gil and Zeetha are a month old, Klaus is starting to panic about the twin thing, and then suddenly his brothers show up, possibly with their families.
Or, if they didn’t, would they have been able to do something that kept their parents alive? (Intentionally, or just accidentally went on vacation at the time Wulfenbach was attacked.) Because if so, then 1: Klaus would wander into Wulfenbach that, yes, got destroyed, but also there is at least some start to rebuilding, which could change the impact it has on him, and 2: either his parents would definitely be able to hit him over the head and tell him not to take over the continent, or if they were inclined toward peace via conquering, they could be the emperor and empress and Klaus would be the heir.
Assuming that there was an empire and Klaus was in charge of it… hm. It would depend on exactly what Klaus’s brothers were like, especially if they were or were not also very strong sparks. It seems fairly likely to me that like… they’d split up the work, but also Klaus would be in charge? His brothers would be his closest support, sort of like Van (should be) to Agatha, or like Boris but also able to order him to go to bed when he needs it or tell him he’s being too ruthless and to cut that out. Which, moral support and limits on Klaus has its own effects, but also: then he already has family as weak points that assassins are going after. He can’t just hide his brothers to keep them safe, and they wouldn’t let him anyway. So he has to find a way to keep them (and any family they have) safe that doesn’t involve pretending he has none, and once he can do that, why not also protect Gil the same way?
I think, especially if the brothers had children, it might change the KoJ plans too because once you have a whole family ruling that’s a dynasty, they’re not going away.
On the other hand if any of them had daughters that’s an alternative to a Heterodyne Girl that is more practical and less predicated on legend.
Actually Tarvek’s entire family would probably be trying to marry Gil’s entire family to get in on that.
…Can you just imagine if they did this by sending all the kids as hostages with instructions to find a Wulfenbach cousin and flirt. Like. Tarvek is seven and supposed to find a Wulfenbach and make her like him but the only Wulfenbach that’s remotely close to his age is Gil, so….
If I remember right, The Wulfenbach family was known for both being a spark run town, and surprisingly staying out of everyone else business and not acting like a normal spark run town.
So If any of them are alive I see that highly decreasing the chance of an Empire, or at least an Empire that big. Klaus only decided he needed to do the Empire thing after finding out his home and family was destroyed.
So maybe a smaller empire, actually built only of people who attached Wulfenbach at most?
That’s about what I remember hearing, yeah. I do think that no or very small empire is much more likely (which makes me wonder what the whole Storm King set would have been doing…), just that if Klaus managed to get from ‘stay out of things’ to ‘conquer the empire to make it safe,’ it’s not impossible that his family might too, or that he might be able to persuade them to back him up.
Klaus kind of went “Attack my home and I will CONQUER YOU so you can’t do it again”. No one listened.
I could see the Wulfenbachs doing something like that. On the other hand, if Wulfenbach was still standing, Klaus might feel less aggressive towards the idea of it being attacked and be content with defending it rather than retaliating.
I could also see them winding up with something more like Gil’s current Empire where people keep joining because they seriously need help from someone who still has resources, but it probably wouldn’t get anywhere near as big. For one thing, it couldn’t be patchwork the way Gil’s is without an airship to run it from.
*considers* The KoJ might do the same thing, actually. They still have resources – more of them – because Lucrezia was avoiding their holdings. So they might be the ones to wind up with people willingly joining an Empire rather than starve. Klaus would probably hate them less if they did something useful too.
Ooooor they might do what they usually do in an emergency and all fight one another for the right to get the credit for solving it, in the process making everything worse.
I do remember he at least started that way, but he seems to have eventually… I don’t know, picked up momentum? I think I remember a comment about Aaronev “rolled right over” when Klaus arrived, which doesn’t sound like he was attacking Klaus to begin with, and presumably Beetle wasn’t but Klaus was quite certain he’d taken over Beetleburg long ago too. So even if he started out limited to retaliation, he doesn’t seem to have stayed there very long. (Although, I could see the family all starting there, and when Klaus starts to go further a brother/parent hits him over the head and drags him home to be yelled at until he cuts it out.)
…All fighting each other sounds right to me. Which would change Tarvek’s childhood a lot, I’d think, if his family is all actually going to war with each other and not just sneaking around with politics and assassinations….
There are, iirc, two accounts of Klaus’s Empire building. One is that he took over everything that attacked Wulfenbach. The other is that he drew circles around Wulfenbach and conquered everything inside them in turn.
It’s entirely possible he started with the first and then moved onto the second, because if he’s going to have an Empire he’s going to commit dammit. (And, yeah, someone smacking him over the head at that point might have been good.)
Starting with retaliation and then later (although, more like a few years later) moving to the circles is more or less what I’ve settled on, yeah. (Honestly someone smacking Klaus over the head at key points would solve 95% of everything in that world, really.)
Haha. Although, honestly, I’m not entirely sure Klaus was wrong to create the Empire. Like, morally, I guess conquering people is wrong. Practically he probably saved a hell of a lot of lives.
It’s mentioned in the novelization that the Baron offered supplies during a particularly bad winter in exchange for Beetleburg folding into the empire.
I can’t recall where (or even whether it was the comic or the novelization) but I remember someone mentioning–either Klaus or Gil–that in the early days, people were perfectly happy to get absorbed into the empire. Everyone was so devastated by the Other War that they didn’t care who they were getting aid from, so long as they were getting it. It wasn’t until later, after the rebuilding had ended, that people started resenting the Baron and calling him an upstart.
Man, I wish I could remember where it was, that’s gonna bug me.
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