Girl Genius XIII: "Gott's Leedle Feesh in Trousers!"

[Aquillion]

It didn't help that the arc where we met him, Tavek seemed to switch between good guy and bad guy every few pages. Tarvek's destruction of Agatha's clanks might have been done for her own good, but at the time it seemed like a betrayal because he didn't even bother to explain why he had to do it. And he still helped Lucrezia with things he didn't have to, like giving her the Spark Wasp and putting the clank head onto Anveka's body. That arc could have done a better job if it wanted to show Tarvek as a viable love interest.

I'd almost managed to forgot that, yeah... but ultimately I still haven't totally gotten over it, because there's ultimately no avoiding the fact that many of Tarvek's actions there seem to have been based primarily around undermining Wulfenbach's empire without any regard for consequences.

But his destroying Agatha's clanks is the worst thing. The problem is this: Even if he did it to protect Agatha from Wulfenbach, she knew what she was getting into. She was choosing, deliberately, to sacrifice herself for the greater good -- and that choice was 100% valid and totally reasonable; if Tarvek hadn't stopped her, many people who are now dead would still be alive.

It's possible he did it out of love for her (though it's equally possible -- and I don't think the comic has ever made it clear -- that he did it out of personal ideological hatred for Wulfenbach's empire, which does include his own ambitions and pride.) But regardless of the reasons why he did it, he had absolutely no right to make that choice for her.

And nothing since then has ever presented it in a different light -- he didn't have some secret knowledge she didn't; both of them knew exactly what the implications were. She was making one of the most important decisions of her life, and he disagreed with her choice, so he bashed her upside the head and dragged her off to do things his way instead.

Unforgivable -- and I mean that quite literally -- it both breaks my suspension of disbelief and lowers my opinion of all the characters involved to see that Agatha has apparently either forgiven him (without ever talking to him about it! Without him even, you know, expressing contrition for it!) -- or just forgotten it because the writers changed their mind about what they wanted to do with his character -- or whatever.

But it just doesn't work. A lot of the rest of what he did I can understand, but deliberately taking away one of the most important decisions of Agatha's life? In a way that endangers the entire world? Disgusting.