Could Klaus actually be a time-traveling assassin?

[bear]

On the second page of The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket, it says that Klaus was knowledgeable that "he knew who killed Julius Caesar." But I've done some research and it seems that nobody really knows who killed Julius Caesar. The closest we can narrow down is "Gaius Cassius Longinus, Marcus Junius Brutus, Decimus Junius Brutus Albinus and over thirty other Senators of the Roman Republic." But probably only one of them delivered the fatal stab, and there's no way we could know which one. So either Lemony Snicket (if that is his real name) is lying to us, and Klaus doesn't actually know who killed Julius Caesar, or (and maybe this is more likely?) Klaus himself was a Senator of the Roman Republic and participated in the assassination, either stabbed Caesar in the heart himself or saw who did, then got away by inventing time travel and hiding in the ASOUE universe, disguising himself as a 12 year old boy? JUst some thoughts

[tonyvfd]

Sounds legit

[Dante]

Have you considered the related permutation that, rather than Klaus being a Roman senator who invented time-travel to disguise himself in the present, he really is a modern-day twelve-year-old who invented time-travel to disguise himself in the past? For there is some precedent for this theory in the speculative literature. The author Charlie Van House, in his text The identity of Count Olaf, proposed that Count Olaf was actually a fifteen-year-old wizard from Hogwarts; HezaBeza proposes a similar doubling of identity in her Harry Potter and some Unfortunate Events. Why not, therefore, Klaus similarly appropriating time-travel to lead a double-life as a Roman senator, as part of his endless historical research?

[Optimism is my Phil-osophy]

Sept 22, 2019 17:01:42 GMT -5 bear said:

On the second page of The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket, it says that Klaus was knowledgeable that "he knew who killed Julius Caesar." But I've done some research and it seems that nobody really knows who killed Julius Caesar. The closest we can narrow down is "Gaius Cassius Longinus, Marcus Junius Brutus, Decimus Junius Brutus Albinus and over thirty other Senators of the Roman Republic." But probably only one of them delivered the fatal stab, and there's no way we could know which one. So either Lemony Snicket (if that is his real name) is lying to us, and Klaus doesn't actually know who killed Julius Caesar, or (and maybe this is more likely?) Klaus himself was a Senator of the Roman Republic and participated in the assassination, either stabbed Caesar in the heart himself or saw who did, then got away by inventing time travel and hiding in the ASOUE universe, disguising himself as a 12 year old boy? JUst some thoughts

Bear, As this idea comes from you, I will need to accept this as well-canonical.

[Uncle Algernon]

So not to spoil the fun, but the phrasing “he knew who killed Julius Caesar” does not preclude the answer being a large group of people rather than a singular person. And, as far as I know, it's perfectly possible that none of the specific stab wounds was the fatal one but that Caesar just bled out from the 33 stab wounds. So probably Klaus just compiled the name of all the senators and learned the list by heart.

Or, to be slightly more serious but remain in the scope of crazy fan theories, how about this for something more exciting and actually plausible: let's say we run with the assumption that "he knew who killed Julius Caesar" must refer to a single person, and that the name of this single person is unknown to most historians. Well, then, remember that this is mentioned in relation to how well-read Klaus is. So the inescapable implication is that he read this mysterious piece of information somewhere. Where? In the Baudelaire Library, of course. And how did that information come to be there? Well, it's a V.F.D. library, isn't it… and the Snicket Sleuth has speculated (rather convincingly) that V.F.D. dates back to Roman times. So I propose that the conjuration that killed Caesar was a V.F.D. affair all along. Perhaps there was a schism even back then, with Caesar as the leader of one side and Brutus of the other.

[453]

Klaus inventing a time machine in order to go back in time and murder Julius Caesar? Doesn't that sound a bit far-fetched? After all, Klaus is not an inventor. But, if someone close to him were an inventor, doesn't it seem exceedingly likely that they would have invented a time machine (using whatever materials that happened to be in the room), killed Julius Caesar, and confided this fact to Klaus?

[R.]

This has just given me a bizarre ASOUE/Umbrella Academy crossover idea in which Klaus is actually Five Hargreeves, and killed the real Klaus Baudelaire in order to take his place. He did this because after the Hotel Denouement fire, Carmelita died and Esmé Squalor escaped the timeline and became The Handler. She then sends Five to impersonate Klaus in order to ensure the deaths of the Baudelaires. Also, Lila Pitts is Carmelita Spats, and The Handler had Five kill her parents so she could adopt Carmelita earlier, change her name and therefore prevent her from dying. I know it sounds completely crazy but this is the kind of thing that pops into my head in a lockdown.

[Deleted]

The (Daniel) Handler

[R.]

Have you watched The Umbrella Academy?

[Deleted]

yes

[R.]

Awesome! I have just finished it and Oh. My. God. Do you think that The Handler killed Lila with the knowledge that she would be brought back to life, and with the knowledge that in a world so full of time travel death is never permanent and she could be brought back? And do you think that there is going to be a season three?

[Dante]

I think that you should start a thread for The Umbrella Academy in Our Wicked World.