Rule of Rose Mysteries

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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Here’s a link to Poor Translation? (Part 1).

Another text for which, it seems to me, that verification of the accuracy of the translation might be extremely important is the line that Wendy writes in her first letter to Jennifer: “I always watch you from the sky.” It is the word “always” that that particularly interests me.
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Throughout the entire Rule of Rose game, Wendy is the only human that we ever see sitting upon the dual throne-chairs of the Red Crayon Aristocracy. Other than Wendy, we only see two dolls sitting on these throne-chairs: the Joshua-the-bear doll and “The Little Princess” doll. In the First Class Guest Sector of the airship, there is a chart depicting “The Red Crayon Royalty” with these two dolls drawn at the top and labeled respectively as “The Bear Prince” and “The Red Rose Princess”. I propose that both of these dolls represent Wendy in her respective roles as the Prince and the Princess.

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Lussh, a comment maker on this blog-site, and the maker of some Rule of Rose maps (see Lussh’s Excellent Rule of Rose Maps) that show—among other things—item locations in the game, made the interesting observation that some of the astrological signs, that are used as the names of the phonograph records, seem to have some sort of correspondence to the places in which the records are found:

Libra is found in the Library, Aquarius in the sewage treatment, Pisces in the aquarium room, Capricorn in the goat room, gemini in the sick room . . .

“Gemini in the sickroom” seemed especially interesting to me. The sickroom is a place strongly associated with Wendy. Could it be that “Gemini” is meant, by the Rule of Rose game-makers, to symbolically tell us something about Wendy?

Gemini is said (at Wikipedia and other online locations) to be Latin for “twins”. The astrological sign in the night sky is associated with the stars Castor and Pollux, famous twins of Roman mythology. But when I plugged “gemini” into an online Latin-to-English translator I got the result “to double” rather than “twins”.

According to http://ezinearticles.com/?Horoscopes—Gemini&id=239044:

The twins. Split personalities would be a more accurate description. A Gemini is that. One minute he can be laughing up a storm and the next he can be ready to take a hammer to your head [PN: "Or a hammer to your dog?"]. It is not hard to feel that the Gemini is unstable to say the least.

Does this sound like anybody we know?
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I see three possibilities for the identity of the “Joshua” of the shared diary of J and W:

(1) “Joshua” is actually Wendy herself, as the alter-ego of her split-personality.
(2) “Joshua” is actually Jennifer.
(3) “Joshua” is the original and genuine Joshua Wilson.

Lets look at each of these possibilities as they relate to the question:

Why a shared diary?
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The similarity of the pictures above, of Wendy and “Joshua” together, should be obvious to everybody.

The top picture shows a drawing that can only be found in the sickroom of the airship during the “Rag Princess Sews” chapter of Rule of Rose.

The picture below that is from the shared diary of J and W, provided to us by comment-maker Pennywise who obtained it from the game-disc using Codebreaker. This shared diary is not seen during game-play.

In my previous blog-post, Wendy’s Drawings (Part 3): Wendy and Joshua, which was written before the shared diary was known to me, I proposed three possibilities:

(1) The “Joshua” drawn by Wendy is actually Jennifer.
(2) The “Joshua” drawn by Wendy is actually Wendy herself, as the alter-ego of her split-personality.
(3) The “Joshua” drawn by Wendy is the original and genuine Joshua Wilson.

In upcoming blog-posts, I will argue the best case that I can for each of these possibilities (as relates to the drawings above).
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What do you think the text of this May 8 page of the diary says?

Offer your suggestions in the comments.

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The text of the May 8 entry is very difficult to read. So I thought it might be a good idea to temporarily skip over it and go directly to the May 9 entry of the shared diary in hope that an understanding of the May 9 entry might help us to read the May 8 entry when we come back to it.

As I think that the drawing found on the page of the May 8 entry might relate to the text of the May 9 entry, I have included that drawing above.

I propose that the text of the May 9 entry reads:

May 9

Please, Oh please,
may they guide us true!

W

I think that sense may be made of this reading of the text by referring to the May 8 drawing. In that drawing we see some sort of trail of black dots extending from the rose garden to some labeled thing(s) that is(are) red colored. Can you read (or make a guess at the reading of) the label?

At any rate, I think that it might be whatever-it-is-that-the-black-dots-represent that W hopes will guide them (W and J) true so that they will successfully reach (or find) the labeled thing(s). Or perhaps help them (W and J) to go successfully from the labeled thing(s) to the garden at night?
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I propose that the text of this page reads:

May 7

Our own secret flower garden, hidden behind the gingerbread house.

W

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I propose that the text of this page reads:

May 6

After everyone’s asleep,
walk out into the moonlight
and meet me behind the gingerbread house.

J