Rule of Rose Mysteries

I don’t recall who it was who first asked about, or remarked on, the fact that we don’t see any boys at the meeting where Jennifer learns that she is the new Princess (in the “Stray Dog and the Lying Princess” chapter of Rule of Rose).

Some comment-makers (again I forgot who it was) had made the claim that some boys’ clothing can be seen strewn outside, in front of the orphanage, after the massacre, so it seemed to me that the boys must have been around somewhere, even though we didn’t see them in this chapter. But I hadn’t actually checked for myself to verify the report of there being clothing from the boys to be seen. I had only placed that task on my “get around to doing this eventually” list.

Recently, I realized that the boys are also nowhere to be seen during the cut-scene where Jennifer slaps Wendy at the end of “The Funeral” chapter. I don’t recall anybody, previously, pointing out that the boys are missing in that scene; if someone did point it out I guess I didn’t think it significant at the time. But it does now seem to me to possibly be significant. The absence of the boys there means that we don’t actually ever see the boys again in the game after the daytime portion of “The Funeral” chapter (at which time we can still see Hoffman, Martha, and Clara).

The cover of the storybook, “The Funeral” only shows girls at the funeral, and the massacre scene in the “Stray Dog and the Lying Princess” storybook only shows girls being massacred. Is this significant? It is hard to to say, as, in fact, we never ever see any of the orphan boys of the orphanage represented in the storybooks, the only orphans ever depicted in the storybooks are the girls.

Perhaps Jennifer isn’t really interested in the boys, and so mentally removes them from some of her memories?

Perhaps.

But perhaps it is worth investigating the possibility that it IS significant that the boys seem to have disappeared from the game when we are dealing with the time near the massacre, the time after Clara, Hoffman, and Martha disappeared from the orphanage.

There are actually a few puzzling clues in the game that might become interpretable by the hypothesis that something bad happened to the boys before the massacre.
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