Rule of Rose Mysteries

In Part 1 of this series of blog-posts, I wrote:

So imagine that you are the game-maker and have just completed the making of this intentionally mysterious game. Here is the problem: How do you advertise it?

The norm in advertising a game is to give a description of what the game is about. To give the concept of the game, the setting, the set up of the plot, etc. There is a whole industry of reviewers, and such, set up to disseminate such information about a new game.

Uh, oh…

That information is precisely what we want to keep a mysterious secret for the player to unravel for herself/himself!!!
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So we have the problem of advertising. How do you advertise such a game without major spoilers? How do you promote the game without explaining away the mysteries that you want to keep mysterious?

It is my hypothesis that the game-maker’s solution to this problem involved misrepresenting the game so as to avoid giving away spoilers.

In subsequent blog-posts of (or related to) this series, I want to examine some of the ways that I think that promotional misrepresentation of the game has created confusion for the interpretation of the game’s legitimate mysteries. In particular, I want to address the question: Is there bogus information from the advertising that is not really relevant to the mysteries of the genuine game-plot?

In that light, let’s consider this paragraph from the “Story” section of Atlus’s official Rule of Rose website:

Jennifer pretends to abide by the “Rule of Rose,” a class system established by the children, but meanwhile, she’s desperately searching for a way out of this world.

Does this paragraph misrepresent the game? I think so.
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In my previous blog-post, Some Thoughts About Aristocratic Rank in Rule of Rose (Part 1), I wrote that Wendy’s position as the Princess seemed to stand apart from the other rankings with respect to the “expected” values of children dominating each other by way of age, or height, or strength. Diana is older, taller, and stronger than Wendy. Diana seems to have a more dominating personality. How did Diana ever allow/accept Wendy outranking her?

I don’t think that there are many clues to find in the Rule of Rose game that address this question. But I think there are at least SOME clues for us to consider.

Clue #1:

Eleanor : Greetings, Princess Jennifer. From now on, you’ll be our new Princess.

Meg : Now, Princess… Please think up a new game.

Eleanor : Please lead us.

Diana : We are yours to command, Princess.

Amanda kneels on the ground.

Amanda : Princess, go ahead! Guide us! We need you! We don’t know what to do!

What is NOT made absolutely clear, in this scene, is exactly what the old game was (or what the old games were, if multiple), why the old game no longer serves, and exactly why it is important that there be someone to lead in “a new game”. If we knew more about the function(s) of the game(s), we would know more about the functions of the Princess. And that would help us to understand why Wendy was the Princess.
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Aynelle asked:

I mean to say that, is the hierarchy ranks important? o_O;;
like, how is it important for that person to have that rank— what does it do, and how it benefits her?

There isn’t much evidence, that I can think of, upon which to base speculation about this.

If we consider the hierarchy that we see in the game before we discover that Wendy must be placed into it, the ranking seems quite understandable. Diana (Duchess) outranks Eleanor (Countess). Both outrank Meg (Baroness). Diana is the tallest, and seems to be the oldest (she is the only one of the three girls with obvious post-puberty physical features). And Eleanor is taller than Meg. Age and height are rather common factors of dominance among children, I think, so this “pecking order” isn’t surprising. The older and taller girls will generally tend to dominate the shorter and younger girls, all other factors being equal.

Amanda, although heavy and broad of girth, appears to be shorter than Meg (see the scene by the coffin in “The Little Princess” chapter), although Amanda’s hunched-over posture is a factor that lowers her height below what it would be if she stood up straight. And whatever Amanda’s age actually may be, she acts far more immaturely than Diana, Eleanor, or Meg. Also, it may be that her awkwardness and lack of beauty may be important factors working against Amanda with regard to gaining respect from other girls. Perhaps some of my female readers will have more insight than I to share about how social dominance arises among young girls.

If the Prince and Princess were only figureheads, only dolls (Joshua-the-bear and the Little Princess doll), then it would be Diana who was truly at the top of the hierarchy. And this seems to be the position that one would expect of Diana.

So far, I am suggesting that the Aristocrat Club hierarchy just seems to reflect the natural factors of social dominance among girls.

The effect of this ranking upon the day-to-day lives of the girls, upon their duties and privileges, is not something, however, that I’ve found the game to show us. [edit: I now think that there is something about this that is shown to us in the game, and will address this in Part 2 of this series of blog-posts]

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When we factor in Wendy as Princess, the hierarchical order is harder to understand.
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Here’s a link to Poor Translation? (Part 1).

Another text for which, it seems to me, that verification of the accuracy of the translation might be extremely important is the line that Wendy writes in her first letter to Jennifer: “I always watch you from the sky.” It is the word “always” that that particularly interests me.
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Some more examples:

In the game-time story, Hoffman paws Diana while Jennifer openly stands nearby in the same room watching. Is it believable that Hoffman would act in such a way right in front of Jennifer? I have proposed that Jennifer did indeed have repressed memories of having witnessed the scene, but she wasn’t where Mr. Hoffman would have seen her as she watched. See my blog-post: As Hoffman Pawed Diana, Where Was Jennifer Really? Did Jennifer actually see worse happen at that time in her forgotten past, but cleaned up and falsified her memory of it somewhat (which is the version we see in the game-time story)? It seems very possible that Jennifer did, considering that she apparently walked in on Mr. Hoffman and Clara having a sexual encounter in the Sickroom, but seems to have cleaned up and falsified that memory (and thereby the game-time story as well). See My Video: A Sex Scene in “The Funeral” Chapter of Rule of Rose?.
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Let me begin by clarifying what I mean by the game-time story. I mean the story that we see as we progress from time zero on the game-clock to the time just before the ending credits. I have at times, on this blog-site, referred to this as Jennifer’s dream, but there is, perhaps, a need for a term that can be used without the insertion of any assumptions. “Game-time story” seems to me to be a very assumption-neutral term.

My use of this term however does not mean that I am rejecting the idea that the game-time story is a dream that is being dreamed by Jennifer. It seems to me that the Freudian idea, that dreams are built up from repressed memories and desires surfacing in a disguised form, makes for a very good model by which to ascribe meaning to the observation that the game-time story is a distorted reflection of Jennifer’s repressed memories.

Let’s look at some specific examples of how the game-time story may relate, in a distorted manner, to Jennifer’s forgotten past:
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What do law school exams have to do with solving the mysteries of Rule of Rose? I’ll tell you.

A friend of mine who is in the process of taking law school exams was telling me that every detail within the set-up of an exam question must be regarded as significant. Nothing should be dismissed as random or irrelevant. Of course this is different from real life. In a real life law case, there are many totally unimportant details to be sifted through. But not so with exam questions. Unlike with real legal problems, every detail of a law school exam question is there by some exam writer’s deliberate design, and one disregards this fact at extreme peril to one’s grade.

I think that the mysteries of Rule of Rose are best regarded as being more like law school exam problems rather than real-life legal case problems. One needs to regard the various details found within the Rule of Rose game as being non-random and non-coincidental. The details of the game should be evaluated as being present by the deliberate design of the game-makers. Ask yourself: Why might the game-makers have chosen to put this particular detail in this particular setting? Think like a writer. Ask yourself how, if you were writing the story, you could use this detail as a plot element. Asking questions like these is, in my opinion, one of the main ways by which I have generated so many plot-theories for this Rule of Rose Mysteries blog. It is a very productive mental exercise. I invite you to try it too.

I also use this approach in evaluating competing theories.
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Throughout the entire Rule of Rose game, Wendy is the only human that we ever see sitting upon the dual throne-chairs of the Red Crayon Aristocracy. Other than Wendy, we only see two dolls sitting on these throne-chairs: the Joshua-the-bear doll and “The Little Princess” doll. In the First Class Guest Sector of the airship, there is a chart depicting “The Red Crayon Royalty” with these two dolls drawn at the top and labeled respectively as “The Bear Prince” and “The Red Rose Princess”. I propose that both of these dolls represent Wendy in her respective roles as the Prince and the Princess.

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Lussh, a comment maker on this blog-site, and the maker of some Rule of Rose maps (see Lussh’s Excellent Rule of Rose Maps) that show—among other things—item locations in the game, made the interesting observation that some of the astrological signs, that are used as the names of the phonograph records, seem to have some sort of correspondence to the places in which the records are found:

Libra is found in the Library, Aquarius in the sewage treatment, Pisces in the aquarium room, Capricorn in the goat room, gemini in the sick room . . .

“Gemini in the sickroom” seemed especially interesting to me. The sickroom is a place strongly associated with Wendy. Could it be that “Gemini” is meant, by the Rule of Rose game-makers, to symbolically tell us something about Wendy?

Gemini is said (at Wikipedia and other online locations) to be Latin for “twins”. The astrological sign in the night sky is associated with the stars Castor and Pollux, famous twins of Roman mythology. But when I plugged “gemini” into an online Latin-to-English translator I got the result “to double” rather than “twins”.

According to http://ezinearticles.com/?Horoscopes—Gemini&id=239044:

The twins. Split personalities would be a more accurate description. A Gemini is that. One minute he can be laughing up a storm and the next he can be ready to take a hammer to your head [PN: "Or a hammer to your dog?"]. It is not hard to feel that the Gemini is unstable to say the least.

Does this sound like anybody we know?
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See the YouTube video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmGMKnWUtBo

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Unlike other transformations of areas of the orphanage into areas of the airship, the women’s lavatory that we see in this video does not become more attractive or more luxurious (with the possible exception of the addition of an extra toilet stall). The lavatory in the airship is every bit as squalid and run-down as the lavatory in the orphanage. The only concession to the airship fantasy seems to be the removal of the window. Thus we see the shared identity of the two lavatories very clearly. In the examples of transformation coming up in future videos, the shared identity will be better disguised.
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