Rule of Rose Mysteries

Happy New Year, everybody!

Well, I usually make predictions in my month-iversary blog-posts, about what I will write about in the upcoming month. Bearing in mind that my predictions are not always fulfilled, here they are:

I expect to do a part 2 on Was Brown Only a Doll in Jennifer’s Forgotten Past? I am NOT presenting that theory as the Truth about “Rule of Rose” according to PokerNemesis, but I do feel that the role of devil’s advocate for the theory has sort of fallen to me by default, and so I will try to present the strongest case for it that I can imagine, and see how well it holds up to criticism. In part two I will try to address some of the best arguments against that theory that have been put forward in the comments given for part 1.

Before I get to the topic above, however, I’ll need to post and analysis of the “Once Upon A Time” chapter that I have been pondering over. That analysis will also, I expect, serve as a jumping off point for a part 2 on Why is January 1930 the Month Assigned to the “Once Upon A Time” Chapter?. My theory about the month ascribed to the “Once Upon A Time” chapter is very speculative—there isn’t strong evidence to support it—but it DOES have the virtue of accounting for both the month AND the year 1930, rather than ignoring the year or dismissing the year as an error.

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Comments on this topic may may overwhelm the comments-thread of the “Mysterious Eating Utensils” blog-post unless I quickly put this blog-post in place for the comments.

See the comments numbered #4–#9,#11, and #13–#15 in Mysterious Eating Utensils for an introduction to the topic.

Thanks go to comment-maker bad game for noticing the writing on the wallpapers and bringing it to our attention.

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In a comment (#40) to my blog-post 8 Mysterious Objects (and 3 Balcony Ropes), Jay provided some good images of the “8 mysterious objects”. The image provided with this blog-post is an enlargement of a small section of one of Jay’s images.

The two silvery objects look to me like eating utensils that have been stuck into the ground. The silvery object on the left seems to me like it might be a fork. The silvery object on the right seems to me like it might be a spoon.

What do the silvery objects look like to you?

I want the silvery object on the right to look like a knife (perhaps a butter-knife of some sort, to explain the odd shape) so that I can relate it to the mysterious wall art in the girl’s lavatory of the orphanage: a red bird holding a fork and knife. But it looks to me to be more rounded than the red bird’s knife. Could it be that the apparent roundedness of the silvery object on the right is just an artifact of the poor resolution?

Could the eating utensils (if they are that) in the yard be legitimately linked to the wall art of the red bird, in the girl’s lavatory, even if the eating utensils in the yard are judged to be a fork and spoon rather than a fork and knife (as held by the red bird)?

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I currently have the “Contents” page about halfway to being up-to-date, and intend to get that page and the “Walkthrough” page fully up-to-date within the next couple of weeks.

I recently added a “Tactics” page which gets this blog into issues of game-play for the first time.

I also plan to have a “Storybooks” page created which will house all of the links to my blog-posts about the chapter-related Rule of Rose storybooks.

If you have some favorites among the blog-posts that you have read on this site, please feel welcome to tell us about these in the “Favorites” blog-post linked to on the “Favorites” page.  And (who knows?) you may find it interesting to see which blog-posts were the favorites of other readers.

Links to the above specialized pages can be found in the header of the blog.

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“Mystery” topics that I intend to address during this coming month will be:

• Some implications of assuming that game references to Sir Peter may be metaphors that tell us about Mr. Hoffman and his fate.
• The “See-all Walkthrough, With Commentary” series (for “The Little Princess” chapter) will finally reach the lavatories!  (No shit!)

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The comments-threads for Month-iversary posts have become the place for comments that are off-the-topic of Rule of Rose (personal communications, etc.):  feel free to continue that precedent and place those sorts of comments here.

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I have previously written blog-posts about the hypothesis that the story of Sir Peter in the “Sir Peter” storybook is really a story of metaphors about Mr. Hoffman, his sexual dirtiness (from a child’s perspective), and his murder at the orphanage. See my previous blog-posts:

“Sir Peter” Storybook: The Story of Hoffman? (Part 1)
Clara and Hoffman: Mermaid and Hare?

Sir Peter is depicted in the “Sir Peter” storybook as standing upright (also walking and running) on two legs, holding an umbrella, and dressed like a man in a suit-coat and hat.

The hat may be an important clue that supports the above mentioned hypothesis that the “Sir Peter” storybook tells Hoffman’s story.

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In my previous blog-post “Sir Peter” Storybook: The Story of Hoffman? (Part 1), I discussed the idea that the story of Sir Peter, in the “Sir Peter” storybook, is really a story of metaphors about Hoffman, his sexual dirtiness (from a child’s perspective), and his murder at the orphanage.

The original insight, leading to that blog-post, came from a comment-maker going by the name of RozenMaiden. In that same comment, she also came up with the insight leading to this blog-post you are reading now.

Quoting RozenMaiden:

Of Clara the mermaid, what it possibly symbolizes and related musings:

First of all, I think the mermaid may be an important euphemism here concerning Clara.

The dubious relationship between Hoffman and Clara, and the mermaid element, reminded me about Mary, queen of Scots, and how she was known as the “Mermaid Queen” after her affair with Lord Bothwell (he raped her, but she consented -or was pressured by him- to marry him). Anyway, back in Mary’s time, a mermaid was a euphemism for a prostitute, whore, slut …etc. Is this how Clara feels about herself? Like a filthy whore?

The following is a quote from http://www.marileecody.com/maryqosimages.html:

‘The Mermaid and the Hare’: Placard denouncing the adultery between Mary and Bothwell. This anonymous placard was one of many plastered throughout Edinburgh during the fateful spring of 1567. Rumors of adultery with Lord Bothwell were only encouraged when Mary wed him just three months after Darnley’s very suspicious death. In popular culture, the mermaid symbolized a prostitute; the hare was Bothwell’s insignia. The initials ‘I H’ refer to his full name, James Hepburn. ‘M R’, of course, stands for Maria Regina. Mary was devastated by this sort of anonymous slander. Her reputation in Scotland never recovered.

Think about what else a mermaid symbolizes, luring and tempting men to their doom (which ties in with Hoffman’s lust for Clara and Diana - who is the other main focus in the mermaid theme.)

As a side note, I think it is also an interesting coincidence (I’m not saying it’s intentional, but still interesting :p) that Lord Bothwell’s insignia is a hare and Hoffman is represented as Sir Peter-Rabbit…

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I suspect that it is NOT a co-incidence that Bothwell’s insignia is a hare. I think that the game-makers are deliberately drawing from the story of the Earl of Bothwell and Mary Queen of Scots. And, I propose, it is not at all unreasonable that Jennifer would know of the story of Bothwell and Queen Mary. She is, after all, an English school girl and would, as such, be expected to study the history of the royals.  And we KNOW that the girls of the orphanage were obsessed with ideas of royalty and aristocracy.

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In the “Rag Princess” storybook, we are told that the fairy godmother cast a spell on “the girl”:

One day.
a fairy godmother came,
cast a spell on the girl, and said,
“Sew yourself an ash-grey dress.
Then you can go to the ball like your stepsisters!”

What puzzles me about this is the role of the spell. Why doesn’t the above passage just read:

One day.
a fairy godmother came and said,
“Sew yourself an ash-grey dress.
Then you can go to the ball like your stepsisters!”

In the Cinderella story, the fairy godmother casts spells, but are any of these spells actually cast ON Cinderella herself?

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We don’t have any evidence that the grey dress worn by “older” Jennifer throughout the game relates in any way to Jennifer’s “real” life as an adult outside of her dream. In fact, the red broach that Jennifer wears from the dream’s beginning signals us that “older” Jennifer is probably NOT dressed as she dresses outside of her dream: Jennifer threw that red brooch away as a child (”The Funeral” chapter). It doesn’t really make a lot of sense that she would somehow be wearing the red brooch (and not knowing its significance) years later.

“Younger” Jennifer, appears to wear a dress of the same style as worn by “older” Jennifer (grey, long sleeves, and a white collar) under a white apron, in “The Funeral” chapter and in the pre-game (E3) video.

So presumably the dress worn by “older Jennifer” reflects a dress worn by Jennifer during her forgotten past.

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What about the Jennifer dolls?  We see them dressed in raggedy, irregularly sewn grey dresses that resemble Jennifer’s grey dress.

The large body size of the Jennifer-doll that we find tied to a pillar in the Filth Room (”The Little Princess” chapter) seems to mark that doll as being, at least in part, a dream reflection of “older” and “larger” Jennifer.  Older Jennifer will get tied to a post in the Filth Room of the airship (”The Unlucky Clover Field” chapter) and in the Filth Room of the orphanage (”The Funeral” chapter), and the Jennifer-doll tied the pillar foreshadows this.  But Jennifer tells us (the “Once Upon A Time” chapter) that she was tied to the pillar during her—previously—forgotten past, so the doll tied to the pillar can be said to, indirectly, reflect that as well.  But the large body size of that doll tells us that it has dream-spawned characteristics; it is a dream-reflection of “older” Jennifer.  Does this mean that no Jennifer doll actually existed in Jennifer’s forgotten past?

I don’t think so.

I’m going to propose here a hypothesis that there actually was a Jennifer-doll, and that we see that doll being bludgeoned by Amanda with a big stick during “The Rag Princess Sews” chapter.

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In the Rule of Rose game plot, the appearance of the Jennifer doll provides a creepy happening (the game even explicitly tells us that the doll is “creepy”) that foreshadows events that will occur to Jennifer later in the game.  Jennifer will find herself tied to a Filth Room pillar—like the doll is here in “The Little Princess” chapter—twice as the game proceeds:  at the beginning of the “Unlucky Clover Field” chapter and at the beginning of “The Funeral” chapter.

Considering the appearance of this Jennifer doll as a re-emergence of memory from Jennifer’s forgotten past, it could be regarded as a distorted memory of Jennifer having been herself tied to this pillar during her forgotten past. In the “Once Upon A Time” chapter, her memories returning, Jennifer tells us (at the central pillar of the Filth Room):

“Tied to this pillar, unable to move, I was all alone. It took a while, but I finally freed myself. I was always the slow poke… But, that won’t happen again. I’ll never let myself be tied up again.”

The idea that Jennifer might take a memory of something that happened to her, and re-live it as something happening to a doll, seems to me as if it might be comparable with what we will see in “The Funeral” chapter when Jennifer’s memories relating to the death of Brown bring forth visions of broken Brown-dolls.

If so, does this mean that Jennifer’s vision (in the “Rag Princess Sews” chapter) of Amanda beating a Jennifer doll with a big stick is actually a distorted memory of an incident during which Amanda actually beat Jennifer with a stick during Jennifer’s forgotten past?

It seems to fit the pattern, but I am reluctant to believe that it could be so, unless we force in the idea that Jennifer’s dreaming mind has greatly exaggerated the size of the stick and the magnitude of the force of Amanda’s blows.  “Younger” Jennifer would be killed, or at the very least gravely injured, otherwise.  And we have no evidence to support the idea that Jennifer was ever physically damaged during her time living at the orphanage.

Here is a YouTube video of the scene where Amanda beats the Jennifer doll: Amanda beating a Jennifer doll. Watch the scene from 8:45 to the end of the video.

Is there possibly another, totally different explanation for the existence of the scene in which we see Amanda beating a Jennifer doll?

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Facing so many blog-posts, I expect that it might be very daunting for any person new to this blog to try to figure out where to begin reading.

Maybe you readers who have been reading the blog-posts here for a while can help.

Please tell us all, by your comments, which of the blog-posts at “Rule of Rose Mysteries” you liked best.  Did one answer a question that had really bothered you?  Or did one fascinate you by proposing an idea or theory that you really liked?

Comments by you, about your favorite blog-posts, might help other readers to find blog-posts that they also will like a lot.

And it may give some useful feedback to me, as a blogger, as well.

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