Rule of Rose Mysteries

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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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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See this YouTube video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3znGlfjOzo.

This is basically a video remake of my blog-post: What is Hoffman Saying as He Paws Diana?.

There’s voting! Please go and place your vote!

Does Diana sometimes emulate Hoffman?

Comment-maker on this site, Mokgrok, explores this question in her video.

I think it is a very well-made video, and Mokgrok’s observation that Diana’s touching of Amanda resembles Hoffman’s touching of Diana is a new and original observation.

See the video on YouTube here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfeOy8veZm4

(LATER NOTE: Mokgrok shut down her YouTube channel for some undisclosed reason)

Hopefully we’ll see more good videos from Mokgrok analyzing Rule of Rose.
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I wrote, in my Twentythird Month-iversary blog-post, that I expected to make a blog-post this month about the snowman that can be found in the Goat Sisters chapter of Rule of Rose.

The snowman can be found in the Freezing Compartment of the airship, and I decided to make a quick revisit to the Freezing Compartment, before writing up my theory, to make sure that I would describe the details of the scene accurately.

Scanning the scene, I noticed something that I had never noticed before. And suddenly everything that I thought I knew about the snowman changed. How did I miss this before? It is right out in the open in plain sight, and yet I had missed it. Surely somebody else must have seen this before now, I thought to myself. But if so, why has nobody ever made a comment about it on my blog, or on any Rule of Rose forum that I have ever frequented?
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In the Women’s Lavatory of the orphanage there are five stalls.

Let’s consider the stalls from right to left, from nearer the entrance of the lavatory to furthest away from the entrance of the lavatory.

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Nearest to the entrance of the lavatory is (1) a stall without a door, piled high with sacks filled with who-knows-what, and which has boards nailed across its door frame to block access. I’m going to ignore the mystery presented by this blocked-off lavatory stall in this blog-post.

One stall further away from the entrance of the lavatory is (2) the stall in which we see Diana and Meg together in the E3/pregame video (this is the scene during which Diana deliberately presses Meg’s finger into the thorn of a rose that Meg is offering to Diana, after which Diana sucks on Meg’s wounded finger—provided we believe the illustration on the game box showing Diana sucking on a finger: from the just the E3/pregame video itself we cannot see exactly what Diana is doing… she could could just be kissing the wounded finger).

This (2) is also the same lavatory stall in which Diana and Meg are talking to each other—during the “Bird of Happiness” chapter—while Jennifer is listening from (3) the adjacent stall (one stall further from the entrance).

(3) The adjacent lavatory stall from which Jennifer is listening, during the “Bird of Happiness” chapter, is the stall with the drawing of the red bird.

One stall further from the entrance, is (4) the stall into which Gregory pulls Jennifer during the E3/pregame video.

And there is one more stall (5) that is the furthest from the entrance of the lavatory.

I propose a hypothesis that these lavatory stalls are assigned (by the Aristocrat Club) as follows:
(2) The stall of the Duchess, Diana
(3) The stall of the Countess, Eleanor
(4) The stall of the Baroness, Meg
(5) The stall for all of the other girls
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In the “Bird of Happiness” chapter, when Jennifer has Brown follow the scent of the red feather, the path that Brown takes is marked, at first, by drawings of a red bird. These drawings have been made on corridor walls as if to represent the red bird flying down these corridors. It might be that there is the idea being conveyed that Jennifer is following the flying red bird.

Along the way, Jennifer can encounter Eleanor searching for the red bird. See my previous blog post: Eleanor in the Sector 9 Turbine Area During the “Bird of Happiness” .

Brown eventually comes to a halt shortly after entering the 3rd Passenger Corridor, where a trail of fallen, and falling, red feathers begins.

Is it a coincidence that the place in the corridor where Brown halts and barks is in the vicinity of the door to the Women’s Lavatory, and the end of the trail of feathers will also be a Women’s Lavatory?

The trail of feathers is made up of feathers too large to belong to the red bird, and there are far too many on the floor, and falling from above, to belong to any single bird.

What does it mean that the feathers are continuously falling from above? The impression I get is that it means that whatever happened to the red bird was very recent… the feathers haven’t even had sufficient time to have all hit the floor yet.

Jennifer can follow these feathers up the stairs, through the one-leaf clover door, into the 2nd passenger corridor, and to the door of a Women’s Lavatory.

Once inside the Women’s Lavatory the trail of feathers is much different. More realistic.

The feathers are now small enough to have come from the red bird. And there are only just a few feathers, not so many feathers that they couldn’t have come from a single bird. And there are some dark red drops along the path that look like blood that has dripped down to the floor.

I get the impression from this scene that the previous trail of over-sized and over-many feathers was a dream exaggeration of this trail that we see now, this trail of feathers being the truer and more realistic memory upon which the dream-exaggerated trail was built. (Yes, I know that we will learn in the “Once Upon A Time” chapter that the red bird was a doll and not a living bird… nonetheless, the impression given by this scene—in my opinion—is that we have transitioned from a fantasy exaggeration of a memory to a true—or truer—memory).
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RevenantChild asked, in the previous blog-post’s comment-thread:

At the pre-game opening, didn’t jennifer say to wendy that ” my name is joshua and i will serve you princess”-thingy? then why is joshua a bear? could he be a stand-in while the real “joshua” is somewhere?

The bear doll might well be a stand-in… but the issue is: for whom?

Wendy began her first letter to Jennifer by addressing it: “To Mr. Joshua, the bear in distress”.

At the end of “The Gingerbread House” chapter, Wendy chose to name the bear doll “Joshua”. Why?

Is the bear doll a stand-in for Jennifer?

Or does Wendy think of both Jennifer (whom she addressed as “my prince” in her letters) and the bear doll as a stand-in for the original Joshua, whom Wendy knew?

Might the original Joshua have been the Prince of the Aristocrat club? And was Joshua the Bear used as a stand-in Prince after the original Joshua died?  Did Wendy thereby keep Joshua’s death a secret from the Aristocrats, making up an excuse of some sort (such as feeling ill) for Joshua’s absence?

Did Wendy ever stand in for the original Prince Joshua (Gregory’s son) herself by pretending to be Prince Joshua? At the beginning of the “Unlucky Clover Field” chapter, Wendy-disguised-as-Joshua said “I am the Prince, and the Prince rules!” If the Prince was never anybody but Joshua the Bear, what is the meaning of that scene, and the scenes of Wendy-disguised as-Joshua sitting on the throne in the first chapter, and during the in-between-chapters times on the airship?  Did Wendy ever deceive the Aristocrats by disguising herself as Prince Joshua?

It seems to me that there are many possibilities to consider.

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The kitchen knife (an equipable weapon) is found, during the “Sir Peter” chapter of Rule of Rose, on the table in the Crew’s Quarters were Diana can often be found sitting. This area of the airship, like the dormitory in the orphanage, can be thought of as Diana’s special area.

The kitchen knife doesn’t look bloody on the table before Jennifer picks it up, nor does it appear bloody as she holds it, but looking at the kitchen knife in the inventory one can see that it is unmistakably very bloody. The blood is thick on the handle and a small area of the blade near the handle. The tip of the blade, and the majority of the blade (except for near the handle), looks shiny and clean. I don’t know how to explain that pattern of blood on the knife. Do you have any suggestions?

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In the web-page entitled Diana & Actaeon from The Classics Pages, I found some parts of the mythology of Diana (aka Artemis) which seemed to have a resonance with the story of Rule of Rose. Perhaps it is just coincidence, but perhaps there was an influence on the author(s) of Rule of Rose?

Some excerpts:

Diana (aka Artemis) was… virgin goddess… protectress of girls evolving from virgin to mother – and killer of women in childbirth.

If Clara became pregnant by Hoffman, I wonder how Diana felt about it.

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At her temple at Brauron on the east coast of Attica (Vravrona) – and probably also at her sanctuary on the Acropolis in Athens – young pubescent girls from all over Attica took part in the strange ritual of “being a bear” – precise details are unclear, but there’s some evidence that they played at being men for part of the time

In Rule of Rose, we have, in respect to “Joshua”, both the idea of girl as “bear”, and the idea of girls playing at being male.

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