Lucrezia as the Muse of Time
Assuming the Muse of Time is Lucrezia, a timeline:
Lucrezia is born somewhere between 1830 and 1850.
The Geisterdamen find her. I think I remember something about them turning up near her familyās summer home in Novaya Zemlya, but I canāt source it. Novaya Zemlya is confirmed to be the location of her familyās citadel in Airship City.
She appears to act as their goddess without time shennanigans for a while. She appears to them always in the same aspect, throughout the same period of time. She probably gains access to āpropheciesā left by herself, which may have influenced her decisions.
This young Lucrezia is certainly not innocent. She appears to be the one who made the wasps, rather than inheriting them from an earlier/later self, since she was able to accept a bargain to make Sparks immune. She certainly plotted with Aaronev and appears to have left him anti-aircraft monster shooting guns (Klaus recognises them as the Otherās work ā and, yes, they really do shoot the slime monsters at the aircraft.)
She sends Klaus to Skifander and marries Bill. Either Skifander is almost impossible to travel to or from without portals or she had some reason to think Klaus would be imprisoned there.
Lucrezia was attacked. By a later self? By someone else? Her plans were left in disarray, Castle Heterodyne was damaged, and she fled to the Geisterdamen in āhigh distressā.
She appears to have done nothing until Agatha was born. There is a six month lull before the Other starts attacking in earnest. Itās unclear whether the purpose of Agatha was always for Lucrezia to replace her mind ā the engines that would accomplish it donāt seem to be built yet.
Lucrezia leaves Agatha with the Geisterdamen and goes somewhere else. Where? Is this the start of her timeloop to the past? Since Bill and Barry both fight the Geisterdamen (they talk of those, plural, who came) with no mention of her, it seems likely.
Lucrezia travels throughout time. Or possibly leaves the time stream completely? Itās hard to say what her first, from her personal perspective, entry point back into time is.
During her travels, Lucrezia transforms herself, which may be a sign she is still aging in her own timeline. She goes gradually from human to the Lady of Sharp Crystal (the anomaly) who is mostly machine.
One place she regularly goes is to the Silver City where the Geisterdamen consider her changes to be different aspects and find the Lady of Sharp Crystal the most terrifying to deal with.
Another place is the library, where Roburās machine seems to give her an easy entrance point to the time stream and she entertains herself visiting Van Rijn. She does this in many different forms, so it seems to remain entertaining to her for quite a while in her subjective time.
At one of these times he traps her. This does not stop her from continuing to visit him when sheās freed (he sees her as the Lady of Sharp Crystal), but 200 subjective years in a bottle may explain why the LoSC is so angry. (It was a really stupid plan. Unless he really thought he could hold her until the end of time, it was only ever going to annoy her.)
Does she realise the one who freed her was her daughter? ETA: This is the only Lu aside from LoSC who goes further forward than the original Lu, and she seems to return to the past before she learns anything.
Also, at some point, Euphrosynia. What happened between them, why Euphrosynia vanished, whether Lucrezia intended to take her or whether she just got too close to a time anomaly, is all a mystery.
It seems likely Lucrezia creates the Geisterdamen. This may be why they āreadā as revenants, they simply bear the mark of their creator. Vrin claims that they were created for the battle where they fought to keep Agatha. āBut still we had hope. For we had been given a task. Our only task, the reason we had been created. We were to protect the Holy Child. Protect her from those whom we knew would try to steal her away from us.ā
Lucrezia seems to travel most widely as LoSC, perhaps because sheās truly got the hang of her time travelling powers by then. Itās LoSC who is seen in Ancient Greece, who Robur sees, and who is finally the one to travel past the End of the Prophecies and enter what would have been Lucreziaās future if she hadnāt begun time travelling.
The Prophecies contained what Lucrezia knew when she went back ā that Agatha would be born, that the Heterodyne Boys would come for her ā but nothing further. The Geisterdamen did not know they would lose the battle and Lucrezia does not seem to find out until she returns as LoSC. At which point she is angry.
LoSC āpurgesā all the clans to the point the Geisterdamen are seriously afraid that she will kill them all. Then she forces them to embark on a āgreat buildingā during which almost two hundred more of them die. Then she sends three thousand of them to the āShadow Worldā to find Agatha.
The āgreat buildingā seems likely to be connected to the Beacon Engine? This may also be the point at which heresy starts among the Geisterdamen. These people, in this era, have only been used to the āJoyful Aspectā, a young Lucrezia who enjoyed their adoration and helped grow strong crops and healthy babies. Sheās suddenly returned as a monster. Do they doubt the divinity of all Lucrezias, or only LoSC?
At first I assumed Lucrezia only remained as the beacon engine. Why else doesnāt her main self interfere with the plot? But there seems no reason for LoSC to vanish after accomplishing all this. Perhaps she still rules in the Silver City. Are new Lucrezias copied directly from her or from a copy of her? Would a new Lucrezia summoned now have three more years worth of knowledge of what is happening in the Silver City, or not?
It seems as if LoSC doesnāt go back though. There is a clear watershed of knowledge. No Lucrezia before Agatha was taken by the Heterodyne Boys knew for sure that Agatha would be taken, despite otherwise sharing knowledge across time.
Eventually, when Agatha reaches the Silver City, she will probably confront LoSC, who will, for some reason, respond by opening a window to point contemptuously at Agathaās younger self.
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