Wilhelm has the kind of backstory that starts with somebody wanting a better life and keeps getting worse every time magic offers him a way to fix it.

Wilhelm has the kind of backstory that starts with somebody wanting a better life and keeps getting worse every time magic offers him a way to fix it. He falls in love with Zahra and turns to Belinda for wishes. Wealth and power lead into trying to secure love itself. Then Zahra dies, and Wilhelm finds a way to bring her back using leaves he has seen restore a snake. Getting her back still doesn't give him the relationship he wanted. Her betrayal leaves him wounded and thrown overboard. The same means of healing him changes his body into the snake-like form we see. By that point, the wishes and attempts to reverse what happened have caused damage he can't simply undo. It's a pretty direct fit for the Grimm side of this universe. The supernatural consequences come out of decisions that are understandable without necessarily being right. Grief explains why he can't let go. It doesn't make trying to control someone else's love harmless. That also changes how his appearance reads. You can meet Wilhelm as this unusual member of a fantasy crew and then discover that there's a whole story behind him looking that way. His origin crosses between Sinbad's seventh issue and Grimm Fairy Tales' Three Snake Leaves story, which connects him to the larger world without needing to turn him into a completely different character. Once you know that history, he's carrying more onto the ship than a distinctive appearance. He's living with the result of choices he made when he thought there had to be another way to get what he'd lost.