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Girl Genius

JenkaOutOfUniform

Jenka cleaned up.

Jenka is the leader of a squad consisting of herself and three other wild Jägers, responsible for searching for a Heterodyne heir.

She has long white hair, skin of a warm grey shade, and changeable eyes. She wears a cavalry-inspired dark purple outfit with a cloak and a breastplate; a pistol of some sort is holstered on her left hip, although she seems to prefer fighting with a broadsword; and seems to be right-handed. She also keeps her lower face wrapped, giving her an air of mystery beyond that of "What, a female Jäger?!".

Jenka first appears, riding her huge bear, Füst, when attempting to rescue her squad from the town of Zumzum's gallows. Due to small town paranoia, she is attacked and defends herself capably until she attacks Agatha, who had shot at her with a death ray. Or perhaps it's more accurate to say she's about to inflict a very painful lesson, when she and Füst are attacked in turn by Othar Tryggvassen and Krosp. This gives Agatha time to free the other three Jägers who then "chase" her out of town.

After she is briefed by the "three eediots", she goes off for "more instructions" while leaving her boys to keep Agatha in one piece. She catches them up at Mechanicsburg, which Jägers are currently forbidden to enter, and tells them she had been traveling, delivering messages and "causink trouble".

She helps get Gilgamesh Wulfenbach off the field of battle after he defeats the Knights of Jove outside of the walls of Mechanicsburg, and helps take him to Mamma Gkika's for treatment.

She is present in the refugee caves after Agatha escapes Martellus von Blitzengaard after the Time-Skip. As she gives a report of activity in the pass, she is surprised to see her lady Agatha has returned. Jenka is still wearing the same hat and cape, but doesn't have on her breast plate, scabbard, or holster, which isn't surprising, since she is not out in the field. Her lower face is covered by her scarf, as usual, and she doesn't interact further with Agatha.

She reappears later in (or, more accurately, beneath) Paris serving as "The head of the Mechanicsburg diplomatic corps", and looking and sounding very different; just check out that second picture. In way of explanation, she makes a passing comment about her duties requiring many faces; as the only known[1] Jäger lacking fangs, she can speak without a lisp and thus easily disguise herself as a baseline human. She also contributes to distracting the rampaging undead Andronicus Valois; she's especially good at this, as it's quickly made clear the two of them have a personal history, even beyond the fact she was evidently some sort of personal assistant and/or bodyguard for Andronicus's betrothed Euphrosynia Heterodyne. Among other things, Andronicus was responsible for the removal of Jenka's fangs.

The Many Faces of Jenka[]

It isn't clear exactly what Jenka means when she says she requires many faces[2]. She could be referring to ordinary disguise techniques and good acting ability, but she is a Jäger and may have special abilities. Mamma Gkika can change her skin color at will; perhaps Jenka can change her facial appearance. The appearance of her eyes is different when she shows up in the story at different times. Perhaps this is due to her special Jäger abilities, or it could also be the case that part of the seeming change in the appearance of Jenka's eyes stems from artistic conventions or limitations,[3] Phil's individual drawing style, or even from the fact that the authors or colorists[4] forgot what color Jenka's eyes were last time she appeared, since there are long periods in the story in which she doesn't appear at all.

When she first appears, her eyes are completely blank and white, but soon she has visible, dark irises, in the shape of ovals that are so elongated that they appear almost diamond shaped (or triangular, if we limit the description to the part of the iris we can see.) A few pages later, in a night scene, her irises appear black and quite pointed, giving her the appearance of having slit pupils like a cat.

On her next appearance, a closeup shows her with yellow irises, lacking pupils, that actually do come to a point. Even later, in a continuation of the same scene, she has grayish-green irises with pupils.

In another scene, she is clearly shown with round, violet irises (with pupils) that nearly match her clothing, the same color as her eyes appear to be beneath Paris.

In a brief appearance in Volume 13, her eyes appear grayish.

And then there's her teeth. When we finally see them in Paris, rather than being typical Jäger fangs, they look.. pretty human. It is then strongly implied that she's ashamed by this fact, and this is the reason for the aforementioned scarf. It is eventually revealed that Andronicus is somehow personally responsible for this unfortunate condition...

Fan Theories[]

Fans love to speculate about the mysterious Jenka. (Hey, she's awesome and we've never even seen her face...or we hadn't till December 9th 2015, and didn't know for sure it was her until December 11th, 2015) Discussion about Jenka can be found on the Fan Theories forum.

References

  1. Not counting the spymaster, Jägergeneral "Higgs".
  2. "Hee! I serve the House of Heterodyne in many ways, My Lady! Naturally, I require many faces!"
  3. Jenka's irises often appear dark in when she is shown from a distance, but this may be due to the difficulty of drawing and coloring a human (or Jäger) eye in a small space.
  4. There have been three colorists for the main story of Girl Genius over time, but only one of them did the coloring at any one time.


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