Welcome home, Lady Heterodyne.Everyone is waiting… Herr Baron.One day I am going to write up a giant meta post about these kids and leadership and legitimacy and also lightning sticks, because the parallelism in this comic is ridiculous. But that is not this day.
I was going to talk about recognition and titles, but apparently that’s not this day either, because about as coherent as I can get is augh, the differences between these two scenes that are framed so similarly are actually really painful wow. Both of them are prepared to take the authority they need to, but Gil? He doesn’t want to be recognized, doesn’t want his title — and doesn’t keep it, since it’s all a trap. His reaction to the title, to the greeting and the deference, is to reject it entirely, to resist it. It’s also much different to come at this page for a second time, knowing what we do now: even though I wasn’t convinced for a moment that Klaus was dead, seeing Gil given that title and then rejecting it is really powerful and really telling about him.
And Agatha, for the first time in her life? She’s home. She’s fought and she’s bled and she’s won, and she’s home. And Mechanicsburg is just as much an identity as it is a place. It’s a part of her she’s never known was missing, and she does absolutely everything in her power to defend it. Here, though, she’s just found it again, just achieved what she’s been trying to for so long. And she’s cryiing. She’s emotionally overwhelmed — and she’s allowed to be, and after this she picks herself right back up and defends the hell out of her town because there is nothing she cannot do now. And she knows that. And that is equally powerful, and equally telling, and equally heartwrenching — maybe even more so, but I’m probably biased.
The bow-and-title recognition is also quite similar to Otilia’s “Forgive me, sire” to Tarvek — which makes it even more interesting. Whereas Agatha and Gil are both being recognized by others as turning points in their positions and their arcs, Tarvek’s instigated his own recognition — to save someone else. (I do wonder whether he’ll get a scene like this when he’s finally recognized publicly as Storm King, though.)
*applauds*
Yeah, this is interesting.
If i’m looking at it from this angle I can see the three characters have paths that go in three different directions. Agatha is re-building something that’s been lost/broken for a long time. She’s re-building (sometimes literally XD) a community and in the process being acknowledged as a leader. (And more importantly being acknowledged for who she is *tears up a little*)
While for Gil his “inheritance” does have a trap in it. He’s got his father’s emipre (and he is like his father in some ways) which has brought a lot of stability and peace – but it is peace brought in part through force/coercion. And so he’s more wary. Instead of upward like Agatha – his path must wend sideways into something new. Avoiding the traps. And he’s not an intense political thinker but in some ways that might make him a good fit because who he is is more based on his feelings and his feelings are usually some kind of common decency.
But even though he’s isn’t going to be a repeat of his father, even though the system isn’t his – the people on Castle Wulfenbach are still his people.
Which is why it’s kind of cool and interesting that when Tarvek is acknowledged, it’s by one of the Muses. Because in a lot of ways, the Muses *are* his people. When you first meet him he is caring for Tinka, the Muse of dance. They are who he cares about. And I think it is because he does see them *as people* when most people just see them as constructs and don’t really understand that they have deep feelings and thoughts of their own. (And the other person he shows that level of overwhelming caring about is brainwashed!psychiatrically-abused!Gil who everyone else was just annoyed with him.) So in a lot of ways his path is Down. Away from what he was given. Away form power and towards what he cares about.
I think if he is recognized more publicly it will have to be when the whole world is in the process of changing.
Oh hey, new comments on old meta! There’s… definitely been more Stuff Going Down with Gil’s rulership since then — the way that he steadfastly refuses the title of ‘Baron’ at first but after the timeskip just seems to have given into it says quite a lot.
With the Muses, I definitely agree — I think Tarvek has a much stronger connection to the Muses than most people (which given the sort of people he grew up around isn’t that surprising). You could definitely either argue that he cares for them so deeply since they’re his responsibility in a way that’s less threatening than ruling or pulling strings to try to keep his horrible abusive family in check, or that it’s less the responsibility that comes with them than it is an intellectual and emotional connection — personally I kind of favor both, but there’s a lot to explore and I really hope we get more of it.
(And hey, moxana, someone for you to yell at about Tarvek and the Muses!)
With Tarvek – what makes me wonder is the nature of the aknowledgement. We see Otilia recognizing him as the Strom King, but all parties involved, including Tarvek himself, know that she did it to find a loophole in her orders and to be able to go after Gil. We don’t know how it went down with other two Muses. I can presume that Moxana followed her sister’s word and possible proof in form of Tarvek’s family tree. Possibly the same for Tinka.
But what are actually requiremnents for being recognized as the Storm King? With Agatha the requirements for being oficially recognized as the Heterodyne were tightly defined – Castle Heterdoyne had to test her blood and the Doom Bell had to ring. Gil too was aknowledged on his father’s word, that should anything happen to him, his son is to be apointed the next Baron immediately. Is aknowledgement of a Muse worth anything in the official recognition process (if there is even one) or does it have only a symbolic value (even if a huge one for Tarvek himself)? Would Muse recognize anyone with the right bloodline?
Cheloneuniverse 