Gilgamesh Wulfenbach
From Girl Genius
This article is about the heir to House Wulfenbach. For other uses, see Wulfenbach (disambiguation).
| Gilgamesh Wulfenbach | |
 | |
| Name | Gilgamesh "Gil" Wulfenbach |
| Age | early twenties |
| Occupation | despot-in-training |
| Residence | Castle Wulfenbach |
| First Appearance | The visit to Beetleburg. |
| Death | |
| Parents | Baron Klaus Wulfenbach, mother unknown |
| Relatives | |
| Children | |
| Marital Status | single, knows exactly who he wants |
- "What do I have to do! I just took down an entire army of war clanks! And I still get treated like a halfwit child!"[1]
Gilgamesh Wulfenbach is heir to an empire that spans most of Europa and is a powerful Spark. Neither factor has made anything easy for him.
Contents |
[edit] Story
[edit] Backstory
When Klaus Wulfenbach returned from parts unknown nearly two decades ago, he carried a young Gil on his back.[2] Gil has never mentioned his mother and may not know who she is.
Gil was raised not as befits a Spark and the heir to an empire. When he broke through at age 8, Klaus found a way to hide Gil’s spark. Gil spent at least part of his childhood at the bottom of the social and technological pecking order in the school aboard Castle Wulfenbach. There, he became fast friends with Theopholous DuMedd and Sleipnir O'Hara.
Gil blossomed while attending university in Paris, where he apparently operated under the false name of Holzfäller. He wrote music. He made friends.[3] He made enemies.[4] He did a little shopping. He even acquired a reputation as a ladies-man, though he never found a girl he could really talk to.[5]
With his education 'over', Gil was announced to the world as the Baron's son and heir. For Gil this began a new series of tests that his father contrived to test his sparkiness and leadership capabilities.
[edit] The Beetleburg Incident
At Transylvania Polygnostic University in Beetleburg, Gil passes Klaus's test du jour by seeing through his father's ruse. Unfortunately, Professor Tarsus Beetle attacks when his possession of a hive engine is revealed and Gil kills him with one of Beetle's own bombs. A less auspicious introduction to the girl of his dreams is hard to imagine than killing her mentor.
Though Klaus believes Moloch von Zinzer to be the author of the Search Engine clank, Gil suspects that it is Agatha Clay. All are taken to Castle Wulfenbach, where Gil investigates his theory by falling for Agatha, dancing with her, showing her his mood lighting, and, most winningly, by playing 'house'—or rather 'laboratory'—with her.
With help from Agatha's Electric Foils and Dingbots, Gil and Agatha destroy a hive engine together. The thrill of victory inspires a kiss and one of the worst marriage proposals of all time. Agatha has fled the Castle by the time Gil recovers from getting his bell rung. Gil and Bangladesh DuPree try to bring her back, but are tricked into believing that she had already been killed by a rogue clank in the Wastelands.
[edit] Death Cannot Stop True Love
Having known the dead girl less than two weeks, Gil does what any reasonable young man would do: he throws himself night and day into killing every rogue clank he can find and resurrecting his late love's adoptive parents, the constructs Punch and Judy. It is this later project that prevents Gil from going to Agatha the moment he learns that she's alive[6].
Klaus's warning that that Agatha is really Lucrezia Mongfish and the Other does little to temper Gil's passion. Gil sends Captain Vole to retrieve Agatha from Mechanicsburg, but this backfires, sort of,[7] when Vole tries to kill her.
Outside Mechanicsburg, Gil manages to get within sight of Agatha, but he is wounded while calling down lightning from the heavens to defend his father's empire from the war clanks of the Knights of Jove.[8] Gil responds surprisingly well to Jäger medicine and is soon on his way into Castle Heterodyne to help Agatha.[9]
While recovering from his wounds at Mamma Gkika's, Gil confesses his love for Agatha to Zeetha and acquires a Magnificent Hat. Contrary to Klaus's suspicion that the green-haired girl has come to Europa to kill Gil, Gil and Zeetha become fast friends almost immediately. Gil and Zeetha's budding friendship thrives on a diet of situations that could easily have fostered mistrust. Neither mistrust nor romance blooms between them, however. Perhaps this is merely because they both care for Agatha or perhaps not.
[edit] Inside Castle Heterodyne
As of the start of Volume IX, Gil's party inside the Castle consists of himself, Zeetha, Krosp, Theopholous DuMedd, Sleipnir O'Hara, and The Unstoppable Higgs.
Shortly after entering, he was greeted by name by Zola "Heterodyne", who appears to have known him from his time in Paris, though not as the Wulfenbach heir.
Judging from her greeting, Gil may have been something of a rebellious youth; Zola felt he was heading for a bad end and is not surprised, though upset, to find him in Castle Heterodyne.
Shortly thereafter, Gil sent the rest of his group all away to find Agatha, unaware that Agatha was already roaming the castle looking for Gil himself. Agatha found Gil before the rest of the group found Agatha (which they have yet to do as of late May 2009.) Agatha's method of greeting Gil was to pin him under the paw of a mechanical tiger-dog, unable to move or speak. When she eventually let him get up, a potential tender moment was interrupted by an enraged Silas Merlot in a battle clank. Gil attempted to take out Merlot and got shot in the left shoulder for his trouble. After Merlot spent some more time monologuing and terrorizing Agatha and others in the room, Gil rebounded and proceeded to pick up Merlot, battle clank and all, and toss him across the room in a startling display of enraged strength.
[edit] What Kind of Madboy
[edit] Personality
For a tyrant-to-be, Gil is notably untyrannical most of the time. His breakthrough device is unusually non-destructive. At the time he first meets Agatha, he has invented no weapons, but he has found time to build an entire Mechanical Orchestra. His personal library reflects a certain je ne sais quoi. In the heat of battle, he saves a fish (twice), which he later adopts. The amount of effort he puts into resurrecting the adoptive parents of a dead girl who only kissed him once proves that he is more than a little bit of a romantic. He would apparently make a pretty benevolent evil overlord.
That said, young Master Gilgamesh is unquestionably ruthless. He is emotionally unaffected by killing Tarsus Beetle. He does not hesitate to fry a few dozen people outside Mechanicsburg. He motivates a friend to help him by promising to boil his homeland if he does not. He's exactly the sort of fellow who could "burn down people — women and children" if it became necessary. All in all, Gil may be a pretty accurate portrait of a young Klaus. He is also amazingly merciful; even when confronted with a foolish(yet otherwise harmless) pawn who has plans of killing him, returning the favor is the last thing on his mind.
[edit] Gil's Spark
Gil is quite a strong spark. He had an early breakthrough, the second earliest known. When introduced, his creations are ambitious in concept, but almost all have been deployed while still in the prototype stage. Only his music box functioned without fault. Once inspired, however, his talent proved truly outstanding; he single-handedly destroyed an entire army of giant war clanks. Like his father, his Spark is seemingly all-encompassing; though his breakthrough creation was a construct, he is a talented electrical and mechanical engineer, and when we first meet him he is fondly working on the only heavier-than-air flying machine seen in the series.[10] Repeating elements in his sparky style include lightning[11][12] and insects[13][14] [15].
[edit] Creations
- Zoing, a buglike construct; "Hemeka teee."
- a fixed-wing aircraft that falls really well
- a prototype lightning generator with a glacial recharge rate
- a mechanical orchestra
- a fencing clank that learns from past encounters, but "suffers" spontaneous restarts
- repairs to Punch and Judy, including giving the mute Punch a voice
- Atmospheric Ionization engine that generate massive directed lightning strikes but melt when used
- a "lightning stick"
[edit] The Works
The Gilgamesh Wulfenbach card in The Works lists the epithets Hero, Villain, and Spark. It depicts a large insect (perhaps a relative of Zoing?) on the back of his hand apparently speaking to him.
[edit] Questions and Theories
- Will Gil become a benevolent ally or a despotic tyrant?
- Who is Gil's mother?
- Why would someone with green hair who speaks Skiff want to kill Gil?
- What is Gil's relationship with Zeetha?
- What emotional crisis was Zoing, Gil's breakthrough creation, intended to solve?
- Perhaps childhood loneliness?
- Why does Gil respond so well to Jäger medicine? What does Klaus know about Jäger medicine and what has he done with that knowledge? What was ripped off Gil's leg by Mamma Gkika, and why was it there?
- Since Gil's amazing display of unnatural strength, almost everybody's asking: Is Gil a construct?
- Is that really Gil in Bangladesh's phenomena log?
[edit] Trivia
- Tarvek calls him Gilgamesh "Holzfäller," a German word meaning "lumberjack."
References
- ↑ Gil is a tad upset with Vole
- ↑ "I was away for a few years..."
- ↑ Ardsley Wooster
- ↑ Othar Tryggvassen, Gentleman Adventurer
- ↑ "Do you know how boring..."
- ↑ "...duped by a pack of carnies"
- ↑ Madly, sending an emissary to kill one's intended is a time-honored Heterodyne courting ritual.
- ↑ "Shoot him! Quickly!"
- ↑ "Zeetha's hand gestures"
- ↑ A fixed-wing flyer seen early on in Agatha's room lacks a propeller and appears to be a lighter-than-air design.
- ↑ prototype lightning generator
- ↑ lightning stick
- ↑ Zoing
- ↑ The Works depicts him with an insect
- ↑ accessorizing "for extra pathos"
