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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Clue #2
During the above scene, we can see this written on the blackboard: “STRAY DOG LEGEND / THAT IS JUST WENDY’S LIE” (see the beginning of my You Tube video “Legend of Stray Dog” Drawings in Rule of Rose for a closeup of the blackboard). Is the implication that Wendy was deposed because the other orphans came to believe that Wendy lied about Stray Dog? I think so. For more on this see my blog-post Why Was Wendy Deposed As Princess?
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Clue #3
To what extent might tales and activities related to Stray Dog have defined Wendy’s role as Princess, or even have been responsible for Wendy’s ascendancy to the rank of Princess? The Stray Dog and the Lying Princess storybook (see my blog-post The “Stray Dog and the Lying Princess” Storybook Mystery (Part 1)) tells us, about Wendy:

Once upon a time, there was a little girl who told lies.

She liked to scare the other girls by screaming, “Stray Dog is coming, Stray Dog is coming!”

But soon, everyone stopped being scared. They hated the way that she lied.

Could it be that Wendy became the Princess because she scared the other orphans with tales of Stray Dog? Could it be that Meg investigated the “evidence” of Stray Dog (see my blog-post Documents of “The Goat Sisters” chapter) because she thought that Diana—whom Meg loved—should rightfully be the leader of the orphans, rather than Wendy, but that Wendy held on to the position of Princess because of the Stray Dog Legend?

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Clue #4:
Wendy was deposed shortly after Jennifer rebelled and said:

Jennifer to Wendy : Liar! Go away! Just go away! I’ll never forgive you! Not ever!

Jennifer to the other girls : And as for the rest of you, how could you believe all those lies? “Aristocrats”? You’re just the opposite! I hate you! And I hate you! And you! And I hate myself the very most, for playing YOUR stupid games and not having the strength to stand up to you! It’s all just hideous!

Did Jennifer undermine the others’ satisfaction with Wendy’s games, and therefore their satisfaction with Wendy as Princess, by calling those games “stupid”?

Did Jennifer, by openly accusing Wendy of being a liar, open the door for Meg to finish off Wendy as the Princess with the “results” of her investigation into the Stray Dog Legend?

At any rate, we again seem to have “lies” and “games” connect with the function of the Princess.

In future blog-posts, I’ll discuss possible functions of the games, and of the Legend of Stray Dog, within the Red Crayon Aristocracy. And then I’ll attempt to tie these discussions (in Part 2 of this series of blog-posts) back to the question of: Why was Wendy the Princess?

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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Wendy is not as tall as Diana, nor as old. Wendy is sickly, and so probably not very physically strong. I find it hard to imagine why Diana would allow Wendy to be Princess and out rank her. Because of this, I have wondered if the apparent absence of Wendy from the hierarchy throughout most of the story of Rule of Rose was perhaps not—contrary to what most people seem to believe—really just a trick of Jennifer repressing her memories of Wendy’s royal rank. Might it be that Diana, as Duchess, actually ruled throughout most of Jennifer’s time at the orphanage?

Whether or not Wendy ruled all along, or only at the end, there still remains the question of how she managed to get herself ranked above Diana.

I’ll give some of my ideas about this in my upcoming blog-post: “Why was Wendy the Princess?”

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By the way, the Game Script of TheSinnerChrono (see my page labelled “Important Resources”) has the order wrong when it designates Eleanor as the Baroness and Meg as the Countess.

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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In the game-time story, the goats Mary and Sally, and Eleanor’s pet bird, are seen as living (and sometimes dying, and then back alive again) creatures during the time that Jennifer is in the airship. But during Jennifer’s forgotten past, in the orphanage, they were only dolls, not creatures that were ever alive. In the “Once Upon A Time” chapter, Jennifer tells us:

“It’s a stuffed goat… The white goat Mary. The black goat Sally.

and

“The red bird in the cage… The doll Eleanor treasured.”

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I think that almost everything that we see in the “Stray Dog and the Lying Princess” chapter relating to the orphanage massacre is a huge distortion of Jennifer’s actual experience of the orphanage massacre. See my blog-posts:

The Stray Dog Boss-battle Mystery (Part 1)
The Stray Dog Boss-battle Mystery (Part 2)
Bad Ending vs. Good Ending
The Stray Dog Boss-battle Mystery (Part 3)
The Stray Dog Boss-battle Mystery (Part 4)
The “Stray Dog and the Lying Princess” Storybook Mystery (Part 1)
The Stray Dog Boss-battle Mystery (Part 5)
Did Jennifer Hide in the Grandfather Clock During the Massacre?

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?

What was the snowman theory that I was forced to abandon?

I thought that the snowman symbolized Diana.

Mainly, I thought this because we get Meg’s love letter when Brown knocks the snowman over, the snowman breaks open, and the letter apparently comes out from inside of the snowman. In comparison, in the Goat Sisters storybook, Meg’s love letter comes out of the Diana-goat’s stomach when the Meg-goat cuts it out of her.

Also, I thought the goat imp that spawns in the Freezing Compartment arguably marked the place as associated with either Diana or Meg. Elsewhere, in the Goat Sisters chapter, we can find infinite goat imps spawning in the Library (see my blog-post Infinite Goat-Imps in the Airship Library) , which is Meg’s special place. So, it made sense to me that the goat imp spawning in the Freezing Compartment might link the Freezing Compartment to Diana, the other goat sister (although the special place of Diana in the airship is arguably the Crew Cabin, which is a transformation of Dormitory of the orphanage).

I thought that Diana, symbolically depicted as a snowman, might represent Diana’s coldness to Meg over the matter of the love letter. I didn’t really like this symbolism, as Eleanor is supposed to be the cold princess. It seemed like poor writing, on the game author’s part, to use a symbol of coldness to depict Diana when that was Eleanor’s defining trait. But, it did seem, I had to admit, that Diana could truly be said to have treated Meg coldly at times.

The rope binding the snowman could also have a symbolic interpretation. In the “Once Upon A Time” chapter, Jennifer tells us, of Diana, “she was trapped by her own ideals.” The rope binding the snowman could symbolize this. Or could symbolize that Diana was in some way bound by some other element of her personality.

The blindfold on the snowman could symbolize Diana’s inability to see her need for Meg’s love, or something like that.

I wasn’t too thrilled with this theory. I would prefer that story elements relate to solving the mysteries of what happened to Martha, Hoffman, or Clara, rather than just being some symbolic commentary on a character’s personality. And I didn’t like that Diana would be depicted as a snowman when Eleanor is the cold princess. But outside of the coldness of the snowman and the Freezing Compartment, there didn’t seem to be anything to else to point to Eleanor here.

I put off writing up this theory for a long time, not being too fond of it. So I’m far from heartbroken to have to abandon it now.

In tomorrow’s blog-post, I’ll tell you what I had never noticed, prior to just a few hours ago, about the contents of the Freezing Compartment.

Can you guess what it was before then?

See this YouTube video.

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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.

54321

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

In the gamescript of TheSinnerChrono (see the link in “Important Resources“), we are told that lavatory stall (2) is “their secret place” (that is, the secret place of Diana and Meg). This is just an interpretation given by TheSinnerChrono, the game itself never tells us this explicitly. And as I thought more about this interpretation, I began to wonder if it was wrong in two respects: wrong in saying that the place was secret, and wrong in saying it was “their” (in the plural sense) place.

At first I accepted that the stall was “their” place, but questioned whether it was actually a secret place.

That particular stall is certainly a place for Diana and Meg to tell secrets and do secret things, but having a lavatory stall as a secret place invites unintentional interferences by others wanting to use the stall. Unless—I thought—it is a actually a private place rather than a secret place… a lavatory stall well-known by all the girls to be the exclusive “private property” of Diana and Meg. That made more sense to me.

And notice that in the E3/pregame video, while Diana and Meg are together in the lavatory stall, Eleanor is standing in the middle of the main space of the lavatory room, facing toward the open entrance of the lavatory (connecting to the hallway), as if standing guard over the privacy of Meg and Diana (Jennifer sees the scene only because she is looking through the open lavatory door from the hallway outside of the lavatory). The stall is certainly not a secret from Eleanor. Nor would the fact that something was going on in the stall be a secret if somebody was turned away from using the lavatory by Eleanor. Privacy seems to be the issue here, not secrecy.

In the “Bird of Happiness” chapter, it may be that Meg and Diana are wanting to talk about Eleanor behind her back. At any rate, Eleanor is not around to stand guard over their privacy, which could be enough in itself to explain the “shhhhh”s and admonitions to be “quiet” before Meg and Diana enter the stall. Even in their private place, they don’t want “eavesdroppers”, so it is better if they go to their private stall secretly on this occasion.

The idea that this stall (2) was the private property of Meg and Diana opened up the possibility that the adjacent stall (3) was the private property of Eleanor, which might shed light on the presence of the red bird drawing in that stall. I liked this idea, but as I thought more about it, I began to think that the idea that Meg and Diana shared a stall, while Eleanor had one to herself, was an odd arrangement.

It then occurred to me that it seemed far more appropriate that each of the three aristocrats would have had their own private lavatory stalls, and that these stalls would be arranged according to rank.

TheSinnerChrono identifies Diana as being the one who says “Over here!” to Meg, before they enter the stall (2) in the “Bird of Happiness” chapter. I agree. And we see that it is Diana that leads the way to the stall. If the stall was Diana’s private place, it would be expected that Meg would only enter by Diana’s invitation.

Both times that we see Meg and Diana together in that stall, we see Diana as the one who sits on the toilet, which is sometimes humorously called “the throne” in English. Diana on the throne, while Meg stands or kneels, is what we would expect anyway from Diana’s superior rank and relational dominance, but it is also consistent with the idea that Diana is the master of that particular place.

And if my hypothesis about private stalls, and their assignment, is correct, then the lavatory stall with the red bird drawing is indeed Eleanor’s private lavatory stall. Perhaps we can use this as a clue to help us come to an understanding of the meaning of the red bird drawing in that stall.

What do you think of the hypothesis of assigned lavatory stalls?

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).

The impression that we have undergone a transition from a fantasy world to a true, or truer, memory is not just a matter of the transformation of the exaggerated feather trail into a more realistic form, but also a matter of our seeming to have undergone a nearly full transition back to the orphanage itself.

The Women’s Lavatory in which Jennifer now stands is nearly identical to the Women’s Lavatory that we can find near the Reception Room of the orphanage. The only difference between the two lavatories that I can see is that there is no window in this lavatory (unlike that of the one in the orphanage).

When Jennifer opens the stall door that the feather, and blood, trail leads to, she sees what looks like a splatter of blood on the wall. This splatter of blood has some feathers stuck to it. Blood has dripped down from the splatter mark. Below the blood splatter is another drawing of the red bird (which resembles, in style of drawing, the drawings that were seen along the corridors before Jennifer and Brown encountered the exaggerated feather trail).

The red bird drawing has outstretched wings, one wing seems to be holding a fork and the other wing seems to be holding a knife. The beak of the red bird is turned upward and is wide open. The dripped blood from the blood splatter has dripped down the wall as if into the open beak of the bird. Combined with the effect given by the knife and fork, it seems as if the bird wants to eat whatever it was that splattered on the wall. But this is especially odd if it is the red bird itself that is supposed to have been splattered on the wall (as the feathers stuck to the blood splatter seem to indicate).

This drawing is also found in the Women’s Lavatory of the orphanage (near the Reception Room). But in the orphanage, the blood splatter does not look real as it does in the “Bird of Happiness” chapter. It seems to be just a rather unrealistic drawing of a blood splatter, not the real thing. And the blood does not drip down to the open beak of the red bird drawing.

When Jennifer opens the stall door in the Women’s Lavatory of the airship, she says: “Is that blood on it…?”

Then Diana and Meg arrive.

(To be continued in “Part 2″)

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.”

Eleanor just stands near the grandfather clock and the hat/coat rack, facing the area between them, holding an empty bird cage with her right hand.

If Jennifer moves to the clock, Eleanor’s red bird will fly to the rack. If Jennifer moves to the rack, Eleanor’s red bird will fly to the clock.

Alternatively, instead of running to the rack from the grandfather clock, Jennifer can run away in the opposite direction from the rack. Now, If Jennifer moves to the clock, Eleanor’s red bird will fly to the rack. If Jennifer moves away from the clock (in the opposite direction from the rack), Eleanor’s red bird will fly to the clock.

But you can mess with these patterns because Jennifer can move faster than the bird can respond. By outrunning the bird’s flight pattern I’ve achieved making the bird seem to chase Jennifer: First Jennifer moves to the clock, then the bird flies to the clock; next, Jennifer moves to the rack, and then the bird flies to the rack.

What does it mean that Eleanor’s red bird is alive in the “Rag Princess Sews” (October 1930) chapter, when it apparently died in the “Bird of Happiness” (July 1930) chapter? As you ponder that question, don’t forget that, in the “Once Upon A Time” chapter, Jennifer speaks of: “The red bird in the cage… The doll Eleanor treasured.” So Eleanor’s red bird was never actually alive in reality.

Before leaving the salon, have Jennifer stand near the free-standing lamp by the door. Pressing “x” will cause the lampshade to move.

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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In “The Little Princess” storybook we have the following passage:

The girl obeyed the Rule of Rose, but the Countess refused to like her.
The girl obeyed the Rule of Rose, but the Baroness punished her still.

The illustration shows Eleanor (identifiable by her birdcage) with her back turned to Jennifer, and shows a Meg (identifiable by her glasses) punishing Jennifer by (it seems to me) striking her with some sort of rod.

In these sources there is consistency in Eleanor having the rank of Countess and Meg having the rank of Baroness.

In the Game Script by TheSinnerChrono, however, he writes:

#$#$#$#$#$#$#$#
$# Eleanor #$
#$#$#$#$#$#$#$#

The cold Princess, ranked Baroness. She carries around an often-empty birdcage.

#$#$#$#$#$#$#$#$#$#$#$
$# Meg (Margaret) #$
#$#$#$#$#$#$#$#$#$#$#$

The wise-looking Princess, ranked Countess. In September, she wrote a love
letter to Diana, which went ill-received.

This reverses the ranking of Eleanor and Meg.

Did TheSinnerChrono get this rank reversal from somewhere in the game?

If so, where?

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?

This YouTube video shows us dead Martha.  If you watch at time 15-18 seconds, you will see that Martha’s neck appears to be broken.  The sight of dead Martha at 35-40 seconds seems to show that her legs must be broken at the hip (or something like that) for her to be folded up as she is.  How did Martha go from being alive and bagged (as we see her in Clara’s cabin of the airship during the “Bird of Happiness” chapter) to having a broken neck and legs?  Could she have dropped from a height?

Could Martha have dropped from a height after being hanged?  I see no rope marks on her neck, but might it be that there would not be rope marks if she was still bagged when she was hanged by the neck? Could the flimsy scaffold at the top of the stairs (see my blog-post The Gallows at the Top of the Stairs) have given way, dropping Martha hard to the floor, but still breaking her neck (as well as her legs)?

We see Clara, as the Mermaid/Clara-boss, hung, but not by the neck. She hangs upside down. But she still hangs.

Sir Peter is shown hanging from a gallows in the animation which opens the “Sir Peter” chapter. To read about the possibility that Sir Peter represents Hoffman (at least at times) see my blog-posts:

“Sir Peter” Storybook: The Story of Hoffman? (Part 1)
Clara and Hoffman: Mermaid and Hare?
“Sir Peter” Storybook: The Story of Hoffman? (Part 2)

In the “Once Upon A Time” chapter, we can get our best look at the doll hanged-by-the-neck in the Cell of Bliss. Unfortunately this chapter is not in color.

The hanged doll appears to have squiggles on its torso. I favor an interpretation of these squiggles as red crayon markings. This is consistent with an identification of the doll as Jennifer, for we have seen Jennifer marked with red crayon in “The Funeral” chapter. But it could also be consistent with an identification of the doll as Martha, who was marked with red crayon while bagged. At the end of the “Sir Peter” storybook, we are told that he was “bagged”. If this refers to Mr. Hoffman, might not he also have been scribbled on in red while bagged?

It is hard to make out what, if anything, is on top of the head of the hanged doll. Can anybody make it out? It could help with an identification of the identity of the doll.

Does the hanged doll wear glasses (or have glasses drawn on it)? I’m not sure. What do you think? This could also help to identify the doll.

Initially I identified the hanged doll as representing Jennifer because of (a) the squiggles (red crayon scribbles) and (b) I had accepted TheSinnerChrono’s ( see: Rule of Rose Game Script, by TheSinnerChrono) identification of the scene as “Horrible Imp dolls surrounding teddy bear”. A teddy bear would be Joshua-the-bear, and I interpreted this as representing Jennifer. I am far from confident now, however, that the hanged doll is a teddy bear. What do you think?