So what do you think Lucrezia's deal is, anyway?

So with everything that has been revealed w/r/t Lucrezia in the comic lately (or not so lately), I was wondering, what's everyone's latest theory regarding whatever the hell Lucrezia's been up to in the last several thousand years of the comic?

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As for me, my current theory would be that :

Lucrezia Mongfish was born in 18XX (or 16XX if you think the war began in 1672 I guess), no foul play here. At some point between her birth and the beginning of the war (aka the attack on Mechanicsburg, aka the death of Agatha's older brother) she associated with Klaus and the Heterodyne boys, eventually sending Klaus away as seen in Klaus' flashback then married Bill. When she learned that she was pregnant with a girl, she staged her own abduction, killed her son, destroyed most of the Castle, and started the war.

At some point during the same window of time, she learned about the mirror/portals, and specifically about the one that lead to some subterranean place where a race of pale-skinned, spider-riding women worshipped her, who reffered to Europa as "the shadow world". She also learned about that "goddess" side of hers that had been guiding the Geisterdamen from time to time. It's also at this point she would learn (either directly from her "goddess"-self, or through observations of prototypes) about the wasps (which have been described as reminiscent of her style but much more advanced than anything she had made before) and possibly the beacon engine (just keep that one in mind for now).

I'd say this discovery happened before the Klaus flashback, because the way Klaus was disappeared makes me think she used a portal to do it. She then married Bill heterodyne so that he would father a daughter for her, which she could later transfer herself into using the beacon engine or something similar (we know she was super into mind transferrance during her time in Mechanicsburg). Bill might have been so her daughter (aka future body) would rule over mechnicsburg, or to use in the kights of jove's harebrained schemes, since she was most likely already busy taking them over. In any case, either she despised her son as a proof of her early failure at producing a suitable heir or thought he would pose a threat to her future body's inheritance, because she sure didn't let him live.

After giving birth, she runs to the Geisterdamen to have them hold on the baby until it's a suitable replacement for her own body, as seen in Vrin's flashback. Maybe because a continental war is no place to raise a child, or maybe because she feared she would get attached to her daughter if she grew up with her and wouldn't have the resolve to erase her mind afterward.

At the climax of the war, she is confronted by Bill (and possibly Barry). There's really no reason for it to be them except that it's more dramatic and that Bill has to have disappeared somehow. She tries to use her/a portal, perhaps to lead Bill into the Geister's hands, but he makes it malfunction somehow (a good energy blast ought to do it). We've seen that malfunctionning portals can lead to time travel, and that's exactly what happens here, with Lucrezia ending up several thousand years in the past, during the time of the queens.

She then lays low while she studies the power that be in this new world, prolonging her own life by gradually replacing the ailing parts of her body with machines. Eventually, having devised a way to hack the portals, she decides to get rid of the queens, as seen in Albia's flashback. Most likely simply because she saw them as a threat because of their god-like powers. She gets most of them but eventually the portals get shut down, and she stops looking for survivors.

Unable to reproduce what brought her to the past, she instead settles down in the past and prepares to take the long way home, simply waiting until the present. She starts engineering the Gesteirdamen in some subterranean world, linked to Europa through one of the few still-functionning portals.

In time, she realizes that waiting that long is not actually on the table on account of time taking its toll on her sanity and whittling her mind away, even though her robotic body can by then stand the test of time. She then creates/recreate the beacon engine, and creates a system to produce new heirs regularly (maybe cloning, maybe careful genetic selection, maybe just old fashionned intercourse, provided she's still human enough for that). Every now and then, her grand priestess transfers the saved state of her mind from the beacon engine to this new body, she then makes an appearance before her poeple, makes sure everything is running smoothly, updates the beacon engine and then we wait for the next heir to do another checkup.

Once she gets back to the time of her birth, she informs her younger self of her "divinity" with or without letting her on the secret, and gives her the knowledge of the wasps and portals + possibly beacon engines. The plan is then to transfer the beacon engine Lucrezia into Agatha once she grows up, but obviously that didn't work because Agatha was rescued by Barry.

But what's up with Increasingly-Robotic-Lucrezia? Honestly, I'm not sure. Either she does in fact go insane waiting for that long, and even though she eventually figures out how to travel to time, her interests don't align with OG Lucrezia's anymore so they don't work together to make the plan work. OR she eventually ascends, queen style, and that lets her travel through time but she can't bring other people so beacon engine Lucrezia still has to play to waiting game? Dunno, maybe both, most likely some third option instead. In any case, she eventually becomes the being known to Van Rijn as the muse of time shows up at the temple after Agatha's abduction, and then sends the Geisters into the shadow world to look for her, where they become the widely feared creatures that we all know and love.

There are quite a few issues with this theory (such as what's the deal with Machine Lucrezia/the Muse of time, or why didn't pretend-goddess help do anything during the war, or who the hell invented the wasps if Lucrezia copied them from her future self), but so far I think that's the best I can put together.

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Well, props to anyone who bothered to read my rantings in full, and I look forward to reading everyone's unhinged theory just like you've read mine =D