I’m anticipating that Albia is not going to be understanding of the OT3′s mind-control issues.
Like- Lucrezia was super stoked to go see her.
and Lucrezia said she was gonna try and be good.
and Lucrezia was attempting to control Europa, which is creepy, but technically a valid way to make them stop fighting.
and treason against Albia is ‘literally unthinkable.’
makes me nervous.
Oh….. oh dear……..
I think the best we can hope for is that she’ll be neutral. On the plus side, she doesn’t like the Other. On the minus…Gil way back when had to make a VERY firm threat against Agatha being “enslaved for the good of the Empire”, and now he…is not in a position to back that up. In fact, he’s being brought to England bound and unconscious. Agatha and Tarvek are a little better off, but neither has much back-up. This could go Badly.
…Well now I kind of want to see the three of them (or… possibly Agatha, Tarvek and Klaus, if that hasn’t been taken care of yet) having to team up to escape Albia, because can you imagine.
Albia is probably going to be an issue in similar ways that Voltaire was an issue or the library guys are an issue. She has her own interests, and whether that happens to meet with the OT3′s interests is, well, up for debate. She might also be misinformed about Agatha’s, Gil’s, or even Tarvek’s allegiances (if the library thought Gil was wasped, other people might have this opinion). But the Other is their common enemy, at the moment there are no reasons to doubt that.
For what it’s worth, Wooster thought Albia probably would have less issues with Gil as head of the Empire than she had with Klaus (specifically because Gil’s ego isn’t quite as huge as Klaus’ ^^).
Gil was worried about Agatha being controlled and used by Albia in the same ways he was worried about her being controlled and used by any other strong political player who happened to get their hands on her. At the time, Agatha was a strong chess piece on the board and Albia was a player. That’s why Gil initially wanted to marry Agatha, to stake a claim before anybody else could (and also to annoy his father, but that’s beside the point ^^).
I don’t think that means that Albia is using mind control, more that she’s an authoritarian ruler with a strong ego.
I think that the “Albia uses mind control” thing doesn’t come from her (theorized) interactions with Agatha so much as from a comment that disobeying her or acting against her empire is “literally unthinkable.” I can’t remember where exactly that quote comes from (comic/novels/an interview? Does anyone have it?) but that’s the basis for the mind control thing, more than Gil’s belief that she’d want to control Agatha.
Of course, “literally unthinkable” could refer just to really effective propaganda or some other not-technically-mind-control system, but that seems… inefficient if you’re not concerned about the ethical implications of mind control, and sparks are not famous for their moral restraint. (Unless you count the Heterodyne Boys, but honestly that just proves my point.)
Of course we also don’t know if Albia is a spark, or even a human; maybe she’s some sort of hivemind of past rulers, or a lost muse, or something like Castle Heterodyne, or who knows what. So it’s also possible that “literally unthinkable” could mean “sure you can technically think it, but she’ll know instantly and the police will be at your door arresting you in 1.4 minutes.” Or maybe Albia is actually a geisterdame and Lucrezia was eager to get there because the whole country’s wasped and we’ll finally figure out if Agatha can control people with her voice while the locket’s on or not.
Anyway, back to Agatha and Albia, I don’t think there’s a specific guess that Albia will want to (or would have wanted to) mind control Agatha in particular so much as that she would, as you said, want to control Agatha (and Gil, and to a lesser extent Tarvek… and still reasonably should, for that matter) and we suspect that mind control is one of her ways of controlling people in general.
Personally I have no idea what’s going on with Albia; I notice Wooster didn’t seem to have any mind-control-hinting issues with his response to Gil’s “go save Agatha OR ELSE” threat. But maybe he’s a spy and therefore exempt from mind control; if all of England’s spies could never do anything that would go against England even slightly, that’d be a little bit obvious. Or maybe he’s not exempt, because Gil did very specifically use a threat that made it better for England in the long run if Agatha is free than if she’s working for the good of England. I have no idea; it would be frustrating but this is Girl Genius so I’m so used to it I’m not bothered anymore.
The only thing I can add to this is in a footnote in one of the novels it was mentioned that Albia helped Klaus against the Other and the Revenents when he first got started and things only got colder as Klaus’ Empire got bigger and more powerful (and more conquereie) so she’s probably not with the Other, but who knows.
Ooh right! I think I’ve heard that before but I completely forgot. So Albia probably isn’t Lucrezia or a geisterdame (unless one of the rebel ones…) but other than that, still just a big mess of possibilities.
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