Rule of Rose Mysteries

In the “Bird of Happiness” chapter, when Jennifer has Brown follow the scent of the red feather, the path that Brown takes is marked, at first, by drawings of a red bird. These drawings have been made on corridor walls as if to represent the red bird flying down these corridors. It might be that there is the idea being conveyed that Jennifer is following the flying red bird.

Along the way, Jennifer can encounter Eleanor searching for the red bird. See my previous blog post: Eleanor in the Sector 9 Turbine Area During the “Bird of Happiness” .

Brown eventually comes to a halt shortly after entering the 3rd Passenger Corridor, where a trail of fallen, and falling, red feathers begins.

Is it a coincidence that the place in the corridor where Brown halts and barks is in the vicinity of the door to the Women’s Lavatory, and the end of the trail of feathers will also be a Women’s Lavatory?

The trail of feathers is made up of feathers too large to belong to the red bird, and there are far too many on the floor, and falling from above, to belong to any single bird.

What does it mean that the feathers are continuously falling from above? The impression I get is that it means that whatever happened to the red bird was very recent… the feathers haven’t even had sufficient time to have all hit the floor yet.

Jennifer can follow these feathers up the stairs, through the one-leaf clover door, into the 2nd passenger corridor, and to the door of a Women’s Lavatory.

Once inside the Women’s Lavatory the trail of feathers is much different. More realistic.

The feathers are now small enough to have come from the red bird. And there are only just a few feathers, not so many feathers that they couldn’t have come from a single bird. And there are some dark red drops along the path that look like blood that has dripped down to the floor.

I get the impression from this scene that the previous trail of over-sized and over-many feathers was a dream exaggeration of this trail that we see now, this trail of feathers being the truer and more realistic memory upon which the dream-exaggerated trail was built. (Yes, I know that we will learn in the “Once Upon A Time” chapter that the red bird was a doll and not a living bird… nonetheless, the impression given by this scene—in my opinion—is that we have transitioned from a fantasy exaggeration of a memory to a true—or truer—memory).
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Aaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!

What an unpleasant experience it was to try to switch web-hosts!

It seemed like a good idea at the time, and I thought it would only take a few hours.

But it was hell.

And the hell just went on, and on, and on, and on…

I finally gave up.

The drawbacks of my current web-host are just going to have to be accepted. I won’t EVER try to move again.

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It amazes me that I can, after so much time replaying Rule of Rose, still come across an experience that is new to me.

Just a few minutes ago I realized that I had, in the “Bird of Happiness” chapter, always just followed the drawings of the red bird on the walls and let them lead me straight through places like the Sector 9 Turbine Area without stopping to explore. Or had followed Brown straight through the area, after using the “find” function on the red feather, without bothering to explore.

So I decided to check out the Starboard Livestock Room (which connects to the Sector 9 Turbine Area).  And as I approached its door, Eleanor came out of it! 

I expect that this has already been experienced by some of you, but it was absolutely new to me!

Eleanor was holding her empty bird cage and looking around.

Pressing “x” while standing in front of her, she says (in text only):

No, it’s not here either… The red bird…

If you keep pressing “x” you can also get Eleanor to say (in text only):

Where did it go…? The red bird…

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My spam-catching software keeps track of how much spam it catches, and today it reached the 10,000 mark.

What a pain all this spam would be to deal with without helping software!

Occasionally a legitimate comment gets held up for a while, until I find it and give it my O.K. (I skim over everything for a look before I delete), and usually this false-catch occurs when the commenter has posted links (especially multiple links) in the comment. So if you post a comment with links and don’t see it appear, it doesn’t hurt for you to post another comment—without any links in it—saying that you posted one that didn’t appear: that way I know to look for the missing one in the spam-queue.

So… sorry for the inconvenience if you’ve ever had a comment get delayed in its posting because it got caught by my spam-filter. Think about the flood of spam that this site gets and try to be forgiving about having been inconvenienced.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem that I can permanently clear anybody that has been falsely caught and thereby prevent the software from ever false-catching their comments again if they once again post a comment with links.  But the software shouldn’t pick on them afterward either.  So don’t be afraid to post comments with links—just be aware that there may be a delay before such a comment appears.

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Go now to the door of the salon.  You will see that there is a sign next to the door that says “Aristocrat” (written in red) taped above the sign that says “Salon”.  Enter the salon.

I have mentioned before that the airship salon is a transformation of the orphanage reception room.  See my blog-post See-all Walkthrough, With Commentary: “The Little Princess” Chapter (Part 17): The Airship Salon is the Reception Room Transformed for an account of the correspondences that can be seen.

The salon has two tables that have been flipped onto their sides and moved away from the center of the room. There are small red objects scattered on the rug and the couch. Are these red feathers, or the petals of red roses? The flower vase that would normally hold red roses is lying on the rug, tipped on its side among the red objects. This seems to support the idea that the red objects are rose petals. However, Eleanor’s red bird is in the salon, which could support the idea that the red objects are red feathers.

It seems problematical to attribute the mess in the salon as being due to the affect of air turbulence on the airship. The china looks undisturbed on the narrow ledge of the china cabinet. Why did none fall and break? And why have none of the free standing picture frames, on the table to the right of the china cabinet, tipped over?

Go to Eleanor and press “x” several times while Jennifer stands next to her. You will get the following text:

The cold Princess said, “The thief will be punished.”

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RevenantChild asked, in the previous blog-post’s comment-thread:

At the pre-game opening, didn’t jennifer say to wendy that ” my name is joshua and i will serve you princess”-thingy? then why is joshua a bear? could he be a stand-in while the real “joshua” is somewhere?

The bear doll might well be a stand-in… but the issue is: for whom?

Wendy began her first letter to Jennifer by addressing it: “To Mr. Joshua, the bear in distress”.

At the end of “The Gingerbread House” chapter, Wendy chose to name the bear doll “Joshua”. Why?

Is the bear doll a stand-in for Jennifer?

Or does Wendy think of both Jennifer (whom she addressed as “my prince” in her letters) and the bear doll as a stand-in for the original Joshua, whom Wendy knew?

Might the original Joshua have been the Prince of the Aristocrat club? And was Joshua the Bear used as a stand-in Prince after the original Joshua died?  Did Wendy thereby keep Joshua’s death a secret from the Aristocrats, making up an excuse of some sort (such as feeling ill) for Joshua’s absence?

Did Wendy ever stand in for the original Prince Joshua (Gregory’s son) herself by pretending to be Prince Joshua? At the beginning of the “Unlucky Clover Field” chapter, Wendy-disguised-as-Joshua said “I am the Prince, and the Prince rules!” If the Prince was never anybody but Joshua the Bear, what is the meaning of that scene, and the scenes of Wendy-disguised as-Joshua sitting on the throne in the first chapter, and during the in-between-chapters times on the airship?  Did Wendy ever deceive the Aristocrats by disguising herself as Prince Joshua?

It seems to me that there are many possibilities to consider.

~

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Leaving the Sickroom, cross the hall and enter the door to the Library.

The Library is a shambles. Move Jennifer as far forward as she can go and then switch camera angles back and forth to survey the scene.

The bookcase to Jennifer’s right has tipped over and spilled its books onto the floor. A bookcase in front of Jennifer has also spilled its books onto the floor in a large pile. This seems to suggest that the airship has been making violent movements rather than flying smoothly. But to Jennifer’s right there is a wooden table that has been overturned in such a way that the length of the table extends upward, and I find it hard to imagine how the table could have gotten positioned like that accidentally. Near that wooden table there is a smaller table-stand (?) that has rope wrapped around it (the purpose of which is unclear to me). (See edit at the bottom of this post)

Turning Jennifer to her left, we can see Meg sitting at a table. In front of Meg is another bookcase that has tipped over. On the wall in front of Meg are two paintings. The painting to the left is the portrait of Hoffman that can be found in the foyer of the orphanage. The painting to the right (which isn’t hanging straight) is a painting of a airship, similar—but not identical to—the painting of an airship that can be found in the library of the orphanage. Perhaps the painted airship not hanging straight is a metaphor for the airship itself being askew.

The only click-able that I have found in the Library is Meg. One gets a different view of Meg depending on which side of the table Jennifer is located when clicking (pressing “x”) near Meg. Meg either sits facing forward, or sits sideways on her chair, but the the text reads the same in either case:

The wise-looking Princess said,
“The Princess was very fond of Sir Joshua the Bear, so her highness is rather displeased by this incident. The culprit who stole Sir Joshua will be severely punished.”

~

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First of all, I want to apologize to all of those new comment-makers on this site who haven’t yet gotten a comment of welcome from me. I’ve fallen behind in dealing with comments this month—and haven’t posted as many blog-posts as usual this month either—but I do intend to go back and give individual welcomes and try not to miss anybody. In the mean time, I offer a general welcome to you all.

New comment-makers offer us the wealth of fresh ideas. Veteran comment-makers offer us the wealth of familiarity with the clues found in the game and a familiarity with the reasoning about the game that we have produced to date. Both make this site richer.

And comment-makers generally stimulate me to write more blog-post than I would otherwise.

After twenty months of blogging about Rule of Rose, and time spent before that on Rule of Rose forums writing there, I can easily feel a bit burned out on the subject, even though it has been a great deal of fun for me.

I am, frankly, less inclined than I used to be to spend a lot of time thinking about Rule of Rose. I have other projects that compete for my attention now.

Comments from comment-makers have very often, in the past, served as either the direct, or the indirect, stimulation of my ideas for blog-posts, and I think that this will be an even more important factor in the future. So, find a clue and write about it. Think up new theories and debate them with others. Do that, and I’m sure that I won’t be able to resist jumping in myself to join in to the fun. Because it IS a lot of fun when we come up with interesting possible solutions to the mysteries of Rule of Rose.

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