Some of the evidence that supports the idea that the historical R101 airship crash was the inspiration for the airship crash plot element in Rule of Rose:

The historical R101 was completed in 1929, the same year that the completion was announced of the airship Jennifer and her family flew on (in-game newspaper article dated 25 April 1929).

Both airships crashed during their first international flight.

Both airships were attempting to fly from Cardington to India.

Both were passenger airships that crashed with great loss of life and very few survivors.

The R101 was an airship that was uniquely like the Rule of Rose airship in terms of being a lavish floating hotel.

The R100 and the R101 ships were the first airships to adopt the style of using the interior of the ship for the passenger accommodation. And according to Wikipedia, “The demise of R101 effectively ended British employment of rigid airships.” Thus, it is easy to see that there were never ever any British airships that used the interior of the ship for the passenger accommodation, as did the airship of Rule of Rose, except these two airships, the R100 and the R101. They were the first and the last British airships like that. And of these two, the R100 and the R101, only the R101 matches the flight plan and luxury appointments of the Rule of Rose airship.

The above photos of a framed picture found in Hoffman’s closet show us that the game-makers left a specific naming of the R100 and R101 within the game itself. Thanks to BrYaN55 (comment-maker here) for discovering the clue and providing the pics.

I will be making a video for my RuleOfRoseMysteries YouTube channel, soon, that features new video footage supplied to me by Daniel (comment-maker here) that has an amazing discovery linking the R101 to a specific location in Cardington that appears to have inspired the setting of the orphanage grounds. I’ll announce it on my blog when it gets posted. Don’t miss it!

Subscribe to my RuleOfRoseMysteries YouTube channel here:
http://www.youtube.com/user/RuleOfRoseMysteries

Could it possibly be…?

You’ll find a brand new article, by one of the authors of Rule of Rose, in which official explanations are given to mysteries not explained in the “Once Upon A Time” chapter!

I’m happy to learn that I had figured out some of them. But other explanations come as a big shock to me!

I need a little time to digest it all. Then I’ll give my reactions in some blog-posts as soon as possible.

—This was an April Fool’s Day post—

Like Rule of Rose, “Another” combines horror with lots of mystery as to what is actually going on. I was rather reserved as to my opinion about this anime at first, but now that more explanations have been given in recent episodes I must say that I am finding the plot more and more intriguing, and I’m starting to re-watch the series from the beginning to re-examine earlier “clues” in light of later revelations.

There isn’t too much that I can say about the plot without giving spoilers.

I CAN say that it has some creepy dolls. Not necessarily supernatural dolls (will they become so?), but creepy none-the-less. And well-suited to an anime with some strange dolls, the opening song for “Another” is performed by ALI PROJECT, who did opening songs for the various Rozen Maiden anime series.

If you have a craving for more mystery horror, you might want to take a look at “Another”.

This writing is located on Gregory’s desktop.

I think it says “Emma Wilson” at the top of the page. Does anyone else think so? It is easier to make out the “W” of Wilson if you realize that the “W” is written with the middle lines not coming to a point at the top but rather crossing each other.

Can anyone make out any of the rest of what is written? It would be great if this provided a clue as to why Gregory’s wife is not around.

Can anyone with an emulator manage to get a clearer photo of this?

~~~
UPDATE!

Comment-maker Zen Maiton found a clearer (and shorter, and reversed) version of this writing on one of the desks of Hoffman (found in the Headmaster’s Quarters), the desk which has a phonograph and the P. A. equipment on it. The first letter of the last name can be clearly seen to be an “M”, and not a “W” as I previously thought, so the name cannot be Emma Wilson.

It is probably about a woman named Emma, not married to Gregory, who was two-timing Gregory for Mr. Hoffman!

I’m just kidding with the two-timing statement above.

It seems likely to me now that it is just a meaningless generic example of writing repeated several times in the game to minimize labor and expense for the game-makers (something seen before with wall cracks, etc.)

Thanks, Zen Maiton! Good job!!!

It really is amazing that I’ve kept at this for so long. It really is a tribute to all you excellent comment-makers who keep me interested and entertained with the things you have to say. Thank you all!!!

The article says:

Gregory was seen as a very kind man, but after his son, Joshua, was kidnapped or mysteriously died, he fell into depression and went insane.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Gregory was seen as a very kind man,

Jennifer wrote to Wendy: “He’s a nice person… but he won’t let me leave.” Is that sufficient to state that Gregory “was seen as a very kind man”? What other evidence for this statement is there? Did anyone else (in the game) see Gregory as a very kind man?

Jennifer presumably had not (and perhaps has never) faced up to, or fit together, the evidence she had found that Gregory had kidnapped and killed three local children. One might quibble that Gregory’s guilt is not technically a “fact”, but I don’t think there is a reasonable alternative explanation to all the evidence indicating his guilt, and when the GameSpot/GameFAQs Rule of Rose forum was in its heyday, the overwhelming consensus among posters there was that Gregory was clearly guilty.

I think one should only say, Jennifer called Gregory “a nice man”.

but after his son, Joshua, was kidnapped or mysteriously died, he fell into depression and went insane.

If one chooses to accept the idea that the Joshua of Gregory’s diary was Gregory’s true son Joshua, then Gregory was already kidnapping and killing children while Joshua was still alive. How does that fit in with the claim that Gregory only went insane AFTER Joshua’s death? I don’t think it does fit. If one assumes that the Joshua of Gregory’s diary was actually Wendy, and that Joshua was already dead, it might be that Joshua’s death precipitated Gregory’s madness, but there are other possibilities for the causes of Gregory’s madness. It might be that Joshua’s mother’s death (or abandonment of her family) precipitated Gregory’s madness. It might be that Gregory was mad simply because he had an an organic brain disorder. Or that Wendy, pretending to be the dead Joshua drove him mad. It might be that Gregory killed Joshua in a surge of pre-existing organically-derived madness and had been wracked with terrible guilt ever since, or that Joshua died because Gregory was too mad to take care of him properly. We don’t know.

I think that the idea that Joshua was kidnapped is extremely unlikely to be correct. Gregory is, as stated above, for the most part certain to have been the kidnapper of children mentioned in the newspaper article, not some unknown other person.

That wiki is kind enough to link to me, and I expect that there may be many fans of my site that contribute to the wiki. I certainly don’t like the idea of hurting the feelings of any of my fans. And I’m sure the contributors to the wiki mean well.

I will link to pretty much any Rule of Rose fan-site (with the one notable exception being any site of the person sometimes known as SyberiaWinx). But I really don’t like the idea of linking to any wiki that attempts to sum up the plot or characters of Rule of Rose, because I think that there is a grave danger of closing people’s minds to the mysteries of the game by the presentation of information as factual which actually is not. This is a big problem specific to Rule of Rose, because it has many mysteries, uncertainties, and misleading elements built into the game.

Going to the wiki yesterday, the first and only article I read was on Gregory Wilson, and I needed to go no further in order to be much dismayed. Some problems are rather minor and don’t matter much, but others are—in my opinion—quite serious.

Let me focus on the most serious problems. Quoting the wiki:

after an illness brought the death of his beloved and only son, Joshua, he fell into depression and went insane.

First of all, we don’t know that an illness brought about the death of Joshua. The idea that Joshua was ill at all came from Gregory’s journal, but we don’t know whether the “Joshua” mentioned there was actually his son or not. I personally favor the hypothesis that the “Joshua” written about by Gregory was actually Wendy and that the illness described by Gregory is Wendy’s illness (the illness of Wendy can be seen as a clue to support this hypothesis). If so, then Joshua might not have been sick, and might have died from other causes.

We don’t know that Gregory’s insanity came about because of Joshua’s death, it could have been the other way around, that Joshua’s death came about because of Gregory’s insanity. We don’t know. If Joshua wasn’t sick (see above), many possibilities open up.

But let’s assume for a moment that the “Joshua” written about by Gregory WAS his son. If so, the kidnappings mentioned in the news article occurred BEFORE Joshua’s death. If Gregory was responsible for those kidnappings and probable deaths of children (and I think it is very highly probable that he was responsible—the entire issue of the kidnappings was over-looked in the article, by the way), then wasn’t he arguably insane BEFORE Joshua’s death?

Any way you look at it, this wiki sentence is obscuring the mysteries of the game, not helping to make the mysteries clear.

Other, lesser problems are so numerous in the Gregory Wilson wiki article that it will take me two or more follow ups to deal with them all. If this article is typical (and it wouldn’t surprise me if it is, as I picked it randomly) I fear that the wiki unintentionally does more harm than good for the fans who visit it.

Sorry.