Girl Genius
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Girl Genius

The Skull-Queen of Skral , one of Agatha's innumerable ancestors, is mentioned by Castle Heterodyne as it attempts to point out to Agatha that Gil's dispatching Vole to retrieve her doesn't exactly disqualify him as a suitor. Quite the contrary, unless truly considerable advances have been made in the design and manufacture of constructs, Vole is pretty small potatoes compared to the "two hundred warrior homunculi" that the Skull-Queen sent to get the attention of Dagon Heterodyne. It apparently worked, as Her Cranial Majesty is reported as one of Agatha's ancestors. Other than this little vignette, we don't know much about her, including whether she married Dagon.

The fact that her figure and costume weren't sufficient to interest Dagon on their own indicates some of the issues the family has.

There are no indications whatsoever as to where (or what) Skral was, except it was likely absorbed into House property.

Tarvek also mentions the Queen of Skral in irony, and a Parisian attends Grandmother's costume party dressed as Her Majesty

Print Novel[]

The novel Agatha H. and the Voice of the Castle offers a couple more details on Her Majesty: The Castle says that she and Dagon were "very happy" together, while Moloch is unpleasantly surprised to learn that the individual used by his grandmother as a childhood boogieman... er... woman... actually existed. One of the atrocities which the Queen is credited with committing was something called The Souring of the Mountains.

Possibly Relevant Outside Information[]

  • The Skral Festival was a summertime rock music event in Norway. It ran for six years, the final time in 2008, in Grimstad. However, it has been resurrected and again took place in 2015 and 2016 in Grimstad.
  • The River Skral is a body of water on Qo'noS. It was the site of a battle between Kahless and Molor.
  • Skrål is a Danish reality-TV show from 2003 involving music.
  • Kaos & skrål 85-87 was the name of an album by punk band Strebers (1985-1992) from Strängnäs, Sweden.
  • "skral" (with a regular "a", not an "å") seems to mean "poor, meagre, scant" in Swedish, or "garbage, trash, refuse, rubbish" in Danish, but "peal" (as a bell ringing) in Norwegian
  • Fighting homunculi play a role in Tim Powers' steampunk classic The Anubis Gates.

See Also[]

House Heterodyne

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