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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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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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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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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If Eleanor had ever truly found the Bird of Happiness, might it have looked like this?

See this YouTube video.

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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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Go now to the door of the salon.  You will see that there is a sign next to the door that says “Aristocrat” (written in red) taped above the sign that says “Salon”.  Enter the salon.

I have mentioned before that the airship salon is a transformation of the orphanage reception room.  See my blog-post See-all Walkthrough, With Commentary: “The Little Princess” Chapter (Part 17): The Airship Salon is the Reception Room Transformed for an account of the correspondences that can be seen.

The salon has two tables that have been flipped onto their sides and moved away from the center of the room. There are small red objects scattered on the rug and the couch. Are these red feathers, or the petals of red roses? The flower vase that would normally hold red roses is lying on the rug, tipped on its side among the red objects. This seems to support the idea that the red objects are rose petals. However, Eleanor’s red bird is in the salon, which could support the idea that the red objects are red feathers.

It seems problematical to attribute the mess in the salon as being due to the affect of air turbulence on the airship. The china looks undisturbed on the narrow ledge of the china cabinet. Why did none fall and break? And why have none of the free standing picture frames, on the table to the right of the china cabinet, tipped over?

Go to Eleanor and press “x” several times while Jennifer stands next to her. You will get the following text:

The cold Princess said, “The thief will be punished.”

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I recall reading a discussion on the Gamespot/GameFAQs Rule of Rose forum long long ago (these comments are long gone now) that there is an inconsistency, somewhere in the game, relating to the aristocratic rankings of Eleanor and Meg.

So I did some checking on this.

In the airship, after one enters the First Class Guest Sector from the Sector 8 Stairway (during the “Unlucky Clover Field” chapter), one can see a chart with the heading “Social Rank” on the wall to the left. On this chart Eleanor is ranked as Countess and Meg is ranked as Baroness, and Eleanor’s name is placed higher on the list than Meg’s name.

On the other side of the door, on a chart with the heading “The Red Crayon Royalty”, the rank Countess is again placed higher on the chart than is Baroness, although the names “Meg” and “Eleanor” are not on the chart, just the ranks.

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I constructed a theory, to explain the dolls on the table in the Cell of Bliss, in my blog-posts:

The Cell of Bliss Mystery (part 1)
The Cell of Bliss Mystery (part 2)

By this theory, the dolls on the left side of the table represent Jennifer, Diana, Eleanor, Meg, and Amanda during the event shown to us at the end of “The Little Princess” chapter of Rule of Rose wherein Jennifer has water poured on her and goes into a coffin.

I think that the dolls on the table, because we see them depicted in the “Once Upon A Time” chapter when Jennifer’s memory has returned to her in a clear manner, should be something that actually existed during Jennifer’s forgotten past. Which means that, in my opinion, the water pouring incident in which Jennifer went into a coffin should be more than just a dream-event, it should also be something that occurred in some fashion during her forgotten past. My explanation for the context of this occurrence during Jennifer’s forgotten past is found in my blog-post:

The Mystery of Jennifer in the Coffin

By my theory, the dolls on the right side of the table represent a threat to Jennifer that she will be hanged if she doesn’t do something that is demanded of her by the Aristocrats.

During “The Funeral” chapter, we see a “gift of the month” warrant for Jennifer which shows her being hanged by the neck. The dolls on the right side of the table, showing a figure hanged by the neck, surrounded by “spooky things”, is—according to my theory—a depiction of the threat of that.

But could it be that, like the dolls on the left side of the table, the dolls on the right side of the table depict an event that actually occurred during Jennifer’s forgotten past?

Obviously, Jennifer herself was not hanged by the neck during her forgotten past, so, if it is not Jennifer that is shown hanging, who could it be?

We have recently been discussing the matter of whether or not Hoffman was hanged. See my blog-posts:

Was Mr. Hoffman Hanged? (Part 1)
Was Mr. Hoffman Hanged? (Part 2)

But let’s open up the discussion to include Martha and Clara as well. Could all of them have hanged?

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