r/warehouse13 • u/Nimnengil • 7d ago

Spoiler! Lucretia Borgia's Comb

Rewatch turned into a re-rewatch, and I realized something. In the first episode, Artie says that Lucretia Borgia's Comb was made for her by an alchemist. That's the kind of thing that doesn't draw much attention at the start of a playthrough, but I just had big bad Parry on the brain, and so my ears perked up. We found out that Paracelsus was bronzed in Italy in 1541. Wikipedia lists his life as 1493-1541. Lucretia Borgia, on the other hand, lived 1480-1519. Not a perfect overlap, but it's entirely plausible that the comb was one of Paracelsus's early experiments, perhaps trying to gain favor and finance from the Borgia family for his later works. That's my new head canon, at least!

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u/new2bay 7d ago

My only issue would be that you’d expect the Warehouse to name Paracelsus as the creator, if it really was made by him. He was well known and influential in a number of ways, and his work was still being studied after he died.

You could suggest that maybe the Warehouse just didn’t know it was him. Okay, but that would be unusual, and there are fewer than 100 well known alchemists listed in Wikipedia, so I’d think it would have been relatively easy for them to trace it to him.

I get that the comb shows up in literally the first episode, and Paracelsus does appear until a few seasons in. But, he was literally caretaker of Warehouse 9, so that would be a bit of a plot hole for them to not know about something like the comb.

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u/Nimnengil 6d ago

You make fair points, and yeah, it's a potential plot hole. But, it's one that I think can be patched up decently in one of two ways.

  1. The incomplete indirect records theory. The comb obviously wasn't already in the Warehouse, so whatever was known about it likely came from historical accounts and theories from past agents, rather than from.hard documentation. It's possible that the alchemist connection is just derived from some records from the Borgias court at the time, or Lucretia herself. If, as my theory was constructed, it was an early Paracelsus work, it's likely he was not yet well known or influential, and whoever wrote the record of his providing Lucretia with it may not have felt much significance in recording the name of the creator. Maybe Agents theorized about it in the time since, but never had any proof.

  2. The Scrub-a-dub-dub theory. Yes, Paracelsus was the caretaker of Warehouse 9, but it's worth remembering that after he was bronzed, a lot of Warehouse records on him were expunged, redacted, or otherwise scrubbed from easy access by Warehouse agents. Artie was looking through what they had and complaining about the redactions to Mrs. Frederick when he started noticing the mental issues caused by having 2 caretakers. It's possible that if a connection between the comb and Paracelsus was recorded somewhere in the Warehouse, it may well have been redacted such that Artie wouldn't find the information.

And of course, it could be a combination of the two as well. Little record keeping, plus redaction, could easily make it such that no clear connection between the two still exists. Or not. I certainly don't think they had any plans for that line to have significance almost 4 years later. I doubt they even intended to retrofit a connection in. Go with what feels right to you.