Silas Merlot

From Girl Genius

Dr. Silas Merlot
Compassion in action
Name	Silas Merlot
Age
Occupation	Administrator of Beetleburg and TPU; Castle Heterodyne prisoner.
Residence	Beetleburg
First Appearance	“I don’t know why you encourage her, Glassvitch.”
Death	apparently squashed by Castle Heterodyne
Parents
Relatives
Children
Marital Status	Oh, please. Think about it.

“Oh, yes—But now I understand why the great Dr. Beetle couldn’t be bothered to work on this oh–so–important assignment. Unlike we mere mortals, he had real work to do.”^[1]

Doctor Silas Merlot was second in command to Doctor Tarsus Beetle at Transylvania Polygnostic University. He was not a Spark, a fact that clearly frustrated him immensely. If he had been a spark, his project to turn chalk into cheese^[2] might have actually had a chance of succeeding.

Contents 1 History 2 Questions we hope will have answers soon 3 Archived questions 4 See also 5 References

[edit] History

Merlot studied at the College of Alchemical Inquiry at Wittenburg, where he was the first in his class (outdoing even a few minor Sparks), before coming to work at TPU where he hoped to rise to a position of power.

He was short–tempered, detail–minded and efficient; he managed to become as disliked by staff and students as much as Doctor Beetle is loved. Some have noticed that by letting Merlot play the antagonist, Beetle avoids the stain of unpleasant tasks and therefore gets to maintain his image.

Not one to make friends, Merlot is nonetheless on a friendlier basis with Doctor Hugo Glassvitch than with anyone else at the University.

When faced with the reality of a huge important project–that–wasn’t (the Dihoxulator), he snapped and betrayed Beetle’s secret discovery to the visiting Baron Wulfenbach; as a result, he found himself with a dead boss and an angry Baron putting him in charge of "everything" — with a promise to imprison him in Castle Heterodyne if he did it less than perfectly.^[3]

Much later, this promise was found to have been carried out when he ran into an old, er, acquaintance.^[4]

Vowing to kill Agatha, he ran off into the Castle labyrinth ^[5], only to reappear the next day with a Heterodyne–badged one–man battle stomper and more than happy to not only kill the person who "ruined his life", but the son of the man who sent him to prison as well^[6]. When Agatha threatened to put a hole in him “the size of the Castle,”^[7] said Castle defended itself from the need for such a hole.

Being someone who could easily be characterized as bitter, impatient and persnickety, he rather despised Beetle’s lab assistant, the locket–inhibited Agatha Clay; his first act as administrator was to throw her off campus^[8]. It has been said that Agatha reminded him of his own failures at achieving the pinnacle only Sparks seem able to reach.

[edit] Questions we hope will have answers soon

• Did he even manage to complete the first task given to him by Klaus, to make Dr. Beetle’s corpse presentable for a hero’s funeral, before he cracked?
• What else did Merlot find in Beetle’s decrypted notes?
• Did the Castle flatten or simply contain him?

[edit] Archived questions

• Is he really trying to kill Agatha?
  Answered: YES. Very yes.
• What did Dr. Merlot do, or fail to do, to get sent to Castle Heterodyne?
  Answered: He "lost" the Heterodyne heir (kept that from the Baron too), burned all of Beetle’s effects, the Beetleburg Hall of Records and murdered an elite cryptography team.
• How in the heck did Merlot learn that Miss Clay was really Agatha Heterodyne?
  Answered: He knew from Beetle’s decrypted notes.
  • Was this something in Prof Beetle’s notes?
    Answered: Yes.
• Is Dr. Merlot breaking through? The main evidence for this is the font used for his speech bubbles, which, however, has been reported to simply indicate madness, not necessarily mad science.^{[citation needed]} In any case, unless he somehow survived or was merely captured, this seems moot.

[edit] See also

Secret Blueprints: Dr. Silas Merlot & Dr. Hugo Glassvitch

References

1. ↑ A bit perturbed
2. ↑ "Haw! No— really?"
3. ↑ "...the city, the college, the lands — everything."
4. ↑ He was escorting Zola "Heterodyne" somewhere at the time, further cementing his Designated Antagonist role.
5. ↑ "She is the Heterodyne girl! And I’m going to kill her for what she did to me!"
6. ↑ "Is killing his only son and heir a fitting revenge upon the man who sent me here?"
7. ↑ ...if you don’t stop this stupidity right now
8. ↑ "You’re banned from this university forever!"