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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(WARNING! The following was an April Fool’s Day prank and is not to be taken seriously!)

Sony has teamed up with Punch-line and Shirogumi once again, and are working on “Rule of Rose 2: The Wise Princess“! This will not be a sequel, nor a prequel, but rather a re-telling of the Rule of Rose story from the point-of-view of Meg.

“Playing as Meg, you will search out clues relating to the Legend of Stray Dog, construct and use bizarre inventions, and compile ‘Findings on the Land of Imps’. In the process, many questions raised by the first game of the Rule of Rose trilogy will be answered, but there will be new questions raised too,” said Sony spokesman Yui Takahama.

“Game-play will be much improved over that in the first Rule of Rose installment. We admit there were some short-comings with the first game, but we have listened to fan criticism, and we think they will be very pleased with the game-play in the next two installments of the series.”

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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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Leaving the Sickroom, cross the hall and enter the door to the Library.

The Library is a shambles. Move Jennifer as far forward as she can go and then switch camera angles back and forth to survey the scene.

The bookcase to Jennifer’s right has tipped over and spilled its books onto the floor. A bookcase in front of Jennifer has also spilled its books onto the floor in a large pile. This seems to suggest that the airship has been making violent movements rather than flying smoothly. But to Jennifer’s right there is a wooden table that has been overturned in such a way that the length of the table extends upward, and I find it hard to imagine how the table could have gotten positioned like that accidentally. Near that wooden table there is a smaller table-stand (?) that has rope wrapped around it (the purpose of which is unclear to me). (See edit at the bottom of this post)

Turning Jennifer to her left, we can see Meg sitting at a table. In front of Meg is another bookcase that has tipped over. On the wall in front of Meg are two paintings. The painting to the left is the portrait of Hoffman that can be found in the foyer of the orphanage. The painting to the right (which isn’t hanging straight) is a painting of a airship, similar—but not identical to—the painting of an airship that can be found in the library of the orphanage. Perhaps the painted airship not hanging straight is a metaphor for the airship itself being askew.

The only click-able that I have found in the Library is Meg. One gets a different view of Meg depending on which side of the table Jennifer is located when clicking (pressing “x”) near Meg. Meg either sits facing forward, or sits sideways on her chair, but the the text reads the same in either case:

The wise-looking Princess said,
“The Princess was very fond of Sir Joshua the Bear, so her highness is rather displeased by this incident. The culprit who stole Sir Joshua will be severely punished.”

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If, at the beginning of the “Sir Peter” chapter, Jennifer goes straight to Wendy’s bed in the Sickroom, she will find Wendy in her bed.

Pressing “x”, by her bed we get the text:

The Lonely Princess spoke nervously while suppressing her cough.

And then we hear, vocalized by Wendy:

“Mr. Bunny is gone.”

Pressing “x” more, Wendy says (in the text only):

“Mr. Bunny was taken by the Aristocrats… Please save him.”

In that scene, Wendy seems to be describing herself as if she is separate from the Aristocrats—not one of them. Certainly she doesn’t seem to be able to control the Aristocrats, as one would expect if Wendy was the Princess of the Rose.

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“The Goat Sisters” chapter (“September”) of Rule of Rose begins in Meg’s workshop on the airship. As with many other airship areas, it seems to be a fantasy-transformation of an area in the orphanage… in this case, the Cell of Remorse in the orphanage basement.

Inside of the Cell of Remorse one can find a workbench, which fits in with the idea of being a workshop, and one can find many objects in the Cell of Remorse that match objects that can also be found in the airship workshop.

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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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