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

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—

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.

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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.

Let me know in the comments-thread if you have any ideas about what is going on in this corner of the Play Area of the orphanage. This is during the night-time of “The Funeral” chapter.
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Thanks, Jay, for the high-resolution screen-caps taken via emulator.

Notice (lower left) what appears to be a tipped-over empty wine bottle on the floor near the trash basket.

The Sick Bay seems to me to be an improper room in which to find a wine bottle. And, it also seems to me that, whoever is responsible for the tipped-over bottle being located where it is, they missed the intended “target” of the trash basket and didn’t bother to correct that miss.

The trash basket is adjacent to Mr. Hoffman’s desk.

Does this scene indicate that Mr. Hoffman had a drinking problem? And, if so, does it connect this drinking problem with his sexual activities with Clara?

In the “Once Upon a Time” chapter, Jennifer tells us, of her early days at the orphanage: “Back then, Mr. Hoffman was a kind and admirable teacher.” Jennifer also tells us: “He had tried too hard to be someone he wasn’t. The expectations were too much for him… and he wanted to escape those restrictions.” Could these statements tie in with the idea that Mr. Hoffman developed a drinking problem that changed his behavior?
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Thanks, Jay, for the screen-cap!
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Here’s an edited version of one of Jay’s high-resolution screen-captures (taken via emulator) showing the red crayon scribblings on the left side of Jennifer’s dress (in “The Funeral” chapter).

What can you make out? Let us know in the comments thread.

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Less than vibrantly red roses can be seen in the Filth Room, during “The Funeral” chapter (top pic). They look, to me, very similar to what we can see in a hallway of the Gingerbread House (bottom pic).

I wrote about the Gingerbread House roses in this blog-post: A Clue Pointing to Wendy Being On Friendly Terms With Gregory At An Early Date?

Are we supposed to draw a connection? And, if so, what? Does this reinforce the theory that Wendy had been to the Gingerbread House before Jennifer first arrived there?
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Thanks, Jay, for the high resolution screen-caps.

But who does the snowman represent?
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Is the scene a foreshadowing of the hanging threat directed at Jennifer, related to becoming the “gift of the month”? Or does it depict the hanging of Mr. Hoffman as Sir Peter? Or the hanging of another “disappeared” person?

The structure of the gallows as two vertical posts, connected by a crossbar at the top, resembles the gallows that we are shown during the animation of the hanging of Sir Peter, but could that gallows have been used (or threatened to be used) on more than one occasion?

Does the location of the gallows in the freezing room of the airship indicate that the actual place of this gallows in Jennifer’s forgotten past was outside of the orphanage during a time of snow? We know that Jennifer experienced snow during her time at the orphanage because she tells us, in the “Once Upon A Time” chapter, in the foyer, at the umbrella stand:

“We never used umbrellas. On snowy days, we’d go out for snowball fights. On rainy days, we’d go out and play in the rain, and get soaking wet. Every time, Xavier would trip and get himself all muddy and we’d laugh. It was so much fun.”

The freezing compartment has a foyer, and the comment above about snow is made in the foyer of the orphanage mansion… is this a coincidence or is it a clue?

It is perhaps worth noting that the steps under the gallows noose do not lead to a door. Using a map to be sure that I was at the right location, I checked the other side of that freezing compartment wall (there is a corridor on the other side) and there is definitely no door at that location.
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Thanks, Jay, for providing the high-resolution screen-captures (via emulator).