To be perfectly honest I think a lot of Klaus’ motivation in wanting to get Gil married at the beginning of the comics is less to do with politics and more to do with suppressed terror at who exactly Gil would find of his own volition.
Does Klaus actually care about something like a marital alliance with the nobility all that much? No, his main attitude most of the time is ‘fuck those guys’. Is he trying to do damage control on the ticking time bomb of Gil’s up until now suspiciously harmless dating life? Possibly.
Because he remembers his mother joking in her letters asking him when he’s going to bring someone home from college and him using the standing invitation to turn up at the gates with two Heterodynes and a shit-eating grin.
He remembers spending half of college and all of his twenties in weirdly charged sword fights over gaping chasms, making out with about half the more deranged sparks they came across, blatantly flirting with the Lord Heterodyne whenever he got a bit tipsy etc.
The first time he met his wife it ended with her sword on his throat. He’d fallen in love with her fairly quickly after that.
The less said about Lucrezia the better.
Usually when he got worried that Gil might turn out too like him he found reassurance in the fact that he could reasonably take after his mother. Except Zantabraxus married him so clearly her genetics are no help in this regard.
The moment he learns who exactly Gil has been mooning over the past week he realises that he was both entirely justified and too late so this is going to be his life now (somewhere beyond the veil the late Baron and Baronin are cackling).
Then he finds out that Gil is also dating a fucking politician and he gives up. Clearly he’s been cursed with Klaus’ taste in women but his taste in men is somehow worse.
He gets over it eventually (and by eventually I mean it takes several quite literally explosive attempts before you could bet that a family dinner wouldn’t cause both a diplomatic and military disaster).
I hope we get more details about the intensely dramatic love life Klaus seems to have had. A solid streak of murder attempts on his record... I wonder what Albia's looked like.
I imagine Klaus' initial reaction to Agatha Clay being something like "oh Gil DOES have a type, and that type is harmless lab assistants. Phew." and then backpedaling rapidly a few days later. I guess marrying a noble lady rather than Ms Clay would be a bit less like throwing some poor soul into the shark tank that is Europan politics. The only issue is that Agatha and Tarvek are the sharks (who only want the best for Gil, they assure you).
I want to see the eventual family dinner post-canon so bad. I have to wait, but still.
leletha-jann: #girl genius#worldbuilding#character analysis#yes excellent#say more#klaus wulfenbach#histories we desperately need#so annoying when klaus is right#but in this case he was right about what gil would do if left unsupervised#he has no idea and i cannot WAIT for him to find out#bring popcorn
Imagine if the first time Gilvek is explicitly acknowledged is because Klaus looks around, assumes they're already together, and then complains about that assumed reality to their faces.
(Yeah, they're basically already together, but I'm sure the boys haven't actually talked about the Thing between them specifically.)
Imagine the reaction panels from that.
Especially because you just know that the first thing out of Gil's mouth is going to be defensive, and that it's going to be said before his brain starts processing the implications of what Klaus said.
Gil: *snapped remark that's defensive of his ability to make his own choices and/or protective of Tarvek*
Gil: *processes that his father just claimed that he and Tarvek, specifically, are together*
Gil: *processes the fact that his response essentially confirmed that in a room full of witnesses*
Gil: *bluescreens*
I feel like Agatha's reaction is just "Oh. Okay then," if she hasn't realized the exact flavor of tension between her boys. Otherwise she's just immediately jumping in to defend them.
Meanwhile Tarvek, who was at first silent from the initial shock, is still not saying anything. Because there's now a wave of people defending this supposed relationship? One of them is Gil?
So now he's just that meme of the lady doing math, trying to figure out if he somehow missed him and Gil Officially Becoming A Thing at some point.
Tarvek: Are we actually together now? Could i just...walk up and kiss him if I wanted? At what point in all this did I start being allowed to do that? WAIT. Oh God, I unknowingly crossed into an alternate universe at some point didn't I? Okay, when would that have happened?
(While the boys are still embodying living Error Messages, several other people present have picked up arguing with Klaus. One of them is Bang, who had to watch these two dance around each other for practically the entire time she was in Paris, and is threatening serious bodily harm to everyone present if Klaus manages to fuck this up now.)
I feel like Agatha at least suspects and is waiting for them to do something about it. Because if she says she wants to keep both of them, which she does, they'll say yes just because it's her saying so. They gotta figure it out themselves, it's gotta be their idea, and she's not going to help them.
Unless they're being really stupid about it, maybe.