>>35600053Shauntal or some other NPC hinted they are related or even relatives. I would not be surprised, plus both happen to be E4 members, just two different natures and they clearly have at best 5 years of difference in age.
Agatha is the smug and almost tsun for Oak, Bertha is more chill, both into competitive battling. I doubt they English localisation team made their names so that they end in -tha as a result of pure coincidence.
>>35600418Karen has many similarities with Agatha, free spirit, unconventional thinking, also uses witch, hex and phobia themed team like Agatha.
Agatha's team was the typical commonplace of scary tales and stories abot witchcraft mixed perhaps with a Poison type twist (I swear Agatha wasn't just a pun about "ghost" but also a Christie reference and its fixation with poisons).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agatha_Christie"Agatha was raised in a household with various esoteric beliefs and, like her siblings, believed that her mother Clara was a psychic with the ability of second sight. Agatha's sister Margaret had been sent to Roedean in Sussex for her education, but their mother insisted that Agatha receive a home education, and so her parents were responsible for teaching her to read and write and to be able to perform basic arithmetic, a subject that she particularly enjoyed."
"During the Second World War, Christie worked in the pharmacy at University College Hospital, London, where she acquired a knowledge of poisons that she put to good use in her post-war crime novels."
I believe Game Freak perhaps kept the Agatha theme as a reference for eventual resemblance with Bertha and even Karen being basically her substitute in Johto/Kanto third E4. Karen clearly continues the femme fatale, freespirit, hex and witchcraft theme with the black cat, hell hound, mandragora plant, crow etc.
Pokemon Special for example has made it more explicit with Karen being trained and tutored by Agatha.
