The article says:

Gregory was seen as a very kind man, but after his son, Joshua, was kidnapped or mysteriously died, he fell into depression and went insane.

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Gregory was seen as a very kind man,

Jennifer wrote to Wendy: “He’s a nice person… but he won’t let me leave.” Is that sufficient to state that Gregory “was seen as a very kind man”? What other evidence for this statement is there? Did anyone else (in the game) see Gregory as a very kind man?

Jennifer presumably had not (and perhaps has never) faced up to, or fit together, the evidence she had found that Gregory had kidnapped and killed three local children. One might quibble that Gregory’s guilt is not technically a “fact”, but I don’t think there is a reasonable alternative explanation to all the evidence indicating his guilt, and when the GameSpot/GameFAQs Rule of Rose forum was in its heyday, the overwhelming consensus among posters there was that Gregory was clearly guilty.

I think one should only say, Jennifer called Gregory “a nice man”.

but after his son, Joshua, was kidnapped or mysteriously died, he fell into depression and went insane.

If one chooses to accept the idea that the Joshua of Gregory’s diary was Gregory’s true son Joshua, then Gregory was already kidnapping and killing children while Joshua was still alive. How does that fit in with the claim that Gregory only went insane AFTER Joshua’s death? I don’t think it does fit. If one assumes that the Joshua of Gregory’s diary was actually Wendy, and that Joshua was already dead, it might be that Joshua’s death precipitated Gregory’s madness, but there are other possibilities for the causes of Gregory’s madness. It might be that Joshua’s mother’s death (or abandonment of her family) precipitated Gregory’s madness. It might be that Gregory was mad simply because he had an an organic brain disorder. Or that Wendy, pretending to be the dead Joshua drove him mad. It might be that Gregory killed Joshua in a surge of pre-existing organically-derived madness and had been wracked with terrible guilt ever since, or that Joshua died because Gregory was too mad to take care of him properly. We don’t know.

I think that the idea that Joshua was kidnapped is extremely unlikely to be correct. Gregory is, as stated above, for the most part certain to have been the kidnapper of children mentioned in the newspaper article, not some unknown other person.

That wiki is kind enough to link to me, and I expect that there may be many fans of my site that contribute to the wiki. I certainly don’t like the idea of hurting the feelings of any of my fans. And I’m sure the contributors to the wiki mean well.

I will link to pretty much any Rule of Rose fan-site (with the one notable exception being any site of the person sometimes known as SyberiaWinx). But I really don’t like the idea of linking to any wiki that attempts to sum up the plot or characters of Rule of Rose, because I think that there is a grave danger of closing people’s minds to the mysteries of the game by the presentation of information as factual which actually is not. This is a big problem specific to Rule of Rose, because it has many mysteries, uncertainties, and misleading elements built into the game.

Going to the wiki yesterday, the first and only article I read was on Gregory Wilson, and I needed to go no further in order to be much dismayed. Some problems are rather minor and don’t matter much, but others are—in my opinion—quite serious.

Let me focus on the most serious problems. Quoting the wiki:

after an illness brought the death of his beloved and only son, Joshua, he fell into depression and went insane.

First of all, we don’t know that an illness brought about the death of Joshua. The idea that Joshua was ill at all came from Gregory’s journal, but we don’t know whether the “Joshua” mentioned there was actually his son or not. I personally favor the hypothesis that the “Joshua” written about by Gregory was actually Wendy and that the illness described by Gregory is Wendy’s illness (the illness of Wendy can be seen as a clue to support this hypothesis). If so, then Joshua might not have been sick, and might have died from other causes.

We don’t know that Gregory’s insanity came about because of Joshua’s death, it could have been the other way around, that Joshua’s death came about because of Gregory’s insanity. We don’t know. If Joshua wasn’t sick (see above), many possibilities open up.

But let’s assume for a moment that the “Joshua” written about by Gregory WAS his son. If so, the kidnappings mentioned in the news article occurred BEFORE Joshua’s death. If Gregory was responsible for those kidnappings and probable deaths of children (and I think it is very highly probable that he was responsible—the entire issue of the kidnappings was over-looked in the article, by the way), then wasn’t he arguably insane BEFORE Joshua’s death?

Any way you look at it, this wiki sentence is obscuring the mysteries of the game, not helping to make the mysteries clear.

Other, lesser problems are so numerous in the Gregory Wilson wiki article that it will take me two or more follow ups to deal with them all. If this article is typical (and it wouldn’t surprise me if it is, as I picked it randomly) I fear that the wiki unintentionally does more harm than good for the fans who visit it.

Sorry.

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Less than vibrantly red roses can be seen in the Filth Room, during “The Funeral” chapter (top pic). They look, to me, very similar to what we can see in a hallway of the Gingerbread House (bottom pic).

I wrote about the Gingerbread House roses in this blog-post: A Clue Pointing to Wendy Being On Friendly Terms With Gregory At An Early Date?

Are we supposed to draw a connection? And, if so, what? Does this reinforce the theory that Wendy had been to the Gingerbread House before Jennifer first arrived there?
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Thanks, Jay, for the high resolution screen-caps.

Watch this YouTube video by MrZenithL.
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“There used to be beautiful roses here, picked by Wendy from the rose garden. …But, as with all things, they wilted away with the passage of time.”

In this way, the game-makers want us to think of Wendy when we see a vase of roses. It seems likely to me that, when she wasn’t bedridden, it was Wendy’s assigned chore to collect roses for the vases of the orphanage. When Jennifer arrives at the orphanage during the first chapter of Rule of Rose, there are fresh roses in the vase of the Reception Room, which I think is Wendy’s welcome to Jennifer.

Wendy’s frequent trips to the rose garden brought her near to Gregory’s house, and gave her the opportunity to discover Gregory’s house.

The screencap enlargement seen above shows a vase with roses in it inside of Gregory’s house. I believe that this is a clue from the game-makers telling us that Wendy was on friendly terms with Gregory at an early date. This fits in with other associations with Wendy that we find in the house.

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In Gregory’s journal, we read:

Thursday, June 19

Clear skies. More weeding. I wanted to take Joshua out with me to the fields, but his coughs were getting worse, so I had him stay in bed.

Coughing, and being bedridden by illness, are also characteristic indicators of Wendy, pointing to Wendy being the “Joshua” of Gregory’s Journal.

I think that Jennifer’s arrival at Gregory’s in the game recapitulates Jennifer’s arrival at Gregory’s in her forgotten past. When else could she have watched, from outside of the cellar window, Gregory holding a gun to his head? Or examined the holes dug in the yard? Gregory left Jennifer in the rose garden and then she followed behind him as he went to his house. She looked around the house and yard for a while, then went down to the cellar, where she was greeted by Gregory and confined to the cellar.

I think that Jennifer sees that the last marked date on the calendar is June 27, and that the last entry in Gregory’s journal is June 27, because she arrived at Gregory’s house on that date, and saw those things before Gregory confined her to the cellar. She also saw the roses in the vase, indicating that Wendy had brought roses there, and was on a friendly basis with Gregory before Jennifer’s arrival (consistent with Wendy being the “Joshua” of Gregory’s journal entries).

Considering the extraordinarily messy and damaged appearance of Gregory’s house, it doesn’t seem to fit that the roses would be Gregory’s own doing. On the other hand, it does fit the sort of clue the game-makers would be expected to use to point our attention to Wendy’s presence in the house.

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Thanks, Jay, for the high-res screencaps which clearly show the roses.

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.

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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The complete letter reads:

10 November

To Mr. Joshua, the bear in distress,

My name is Wendy. I always watch you from the sky. Mr. Joshua, why are you trapped down there?

For Wendy to be able to say, in the letter in which she introduces herself to Jennifer for the first time, “I always watch you from the sky“, suggests to me that Wendy has been observing Jennifer for quite a while—secretly?—without making contact. Is this the same impression one would get from reading the Japanese text? I would very much like to know.

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“I am the Prince, and the Prince rules!” announces Wendy-as-Joshua in “The Unlucky Clover Field” chapter of the Rule of Rose game. We see Wendy-as-Joshua sitting on one of the throne-chairs during “The Little Princess” chapter and during each of the chapter-interludes that occur between the airship-chapters of the Rule of Rose game.

Wendy-as-Joshua wears a green neck-tie. This connects her, costume-wise, to the Joshua-the-bear doll which has a green ribbon tied around his neck. In the “shared diary of J and W” (see links below) we are told a “fairy tale” in which the Joshua-the-bear doll transforms into a human “Joshua”. I propose that we see the end result of a similar transformation “fairy tale” in “The Funeral” chapter of Rule of Rose where we see the “The Little Princess” doll replaced by Wendy dressed in clothing that resembles “The Little Princess” doll as she descends from her royal place upon the throne-chair. Wendy is the Princess at this time.

If I recall correctly, only once do we ever see the two dolls together on the throne-chairs. At that time we see the two dolls bound together with rope. I propose that this symbolizes that the Prince and the Princess are metaphorically “bound together” by Wendy, who is the single person who is both of them. This relates to the Gemini twins/duality theme associated with Wendy (see my previous bog-post Trying to Understand Wendy (Part 1): Gemini Symbolism?). See the YouTube video clip of the two dolls tied together on the throne-chairs here.

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See also:

Help Us Read This Shared Diary of J and W (Part 2)
Help Us Read This Shared Diary of J and W (Part 3)

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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In “The Funeral” chapter of Rule of Rose, we see Wendy making nice with Brown in the courtyard. Then, in the next scene in which we see Wendy and Brown, Brown is dead and Jennifer is beating up Wendy because of this.

Every person has both good and bad aspects, but is Wendy especially polarized into a good-Wendy and a bad-Wendy?

And what about Wendy-as-Joshua vs Wendy-as-Wendy? Is there some sort of split-personality thing going on with that?

In future parts of this series of blog-posts we will explore further the apparent dual nature of Wendy, as well as other questions about her personality and character.

(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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(1) “Joshua” is actually Wendy herself, as the alter-ego of her split-personality.
I find the idea very appealing and natural that a “split-personality” Wendy might use a “shared” diary for both sides of that split-personality. A diary is generally something used by just one person. The choice of a “diary” as the location of the communications between J and W might be a hint from the game-makers that the J and W of the diary are one and the same person.

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(2) “Joshua” is actually Jennifer.
We have to wonder why Jennifer and Wendy would communicate in writing via a shared diary, when all of their written communications, that we find in the game itself, are via letters. At the orphanage, both before May 1930, and after May 1930, they exchanged letters (see my Document-based Time-line: After Jennifer Arrived at the Orphanage). So, why would they also use a shared diary for communication?

One might propose that the shared diary was specially reserved for those communications between Wendy and Jennifer that involved Jennifer role-playing as Joshua (as we see Jennifer role-playing as Joshua—but not dressed as Joshua—in the E3 video, that is, the RoR pre-game video). But this role-playing could have as easily been done, it seems to me, via letters. Indeed, didn’t Wendy and Jennifer begin this role-playing during the exchange of letters between them before Jennifer ever came to the orphanage? See my Document-based Time-line: Before Jennifer Arrived at the Orphanage. Why switch to the use of a shared diary?

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(3) “Joshua” is the original and genuine Joshua Wilson.
This is the favored solution of many comment-makers.

[LATER EDITING: I should have re-read the shared diary before I wrote my first version of this section of the blog-post, because I forgot all about the transformation of Joshua-the-bear. That transformation invalidates what I wrote initially (which I have deleted).]

In this scenario, Joshua is role-playing that he is Joshua-the-bear transformed into a human Joshua, possibly Prince Joshua, in line with the fairy-tale theme of transformation. If this is the situation, then the month of May in the shared diary would be May 1929 at the latest (the original Joshua having undoubtedly died before May 1930). May 1929 would not make the diary the earliest dated document in the game. There is one earlier: a newspaper article in the game that is dated 25 April 1929.

Again we face the question of: Why use a shared diary instead of exchanging letters? It has the advantage of keeping these role-play writings bound together in one place, but it has the disadvantage of requiring more work to carry back and forth than letters would require.
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For the text of the shared diary, see:
Help Us Read This Shared Diary of J and W (Part 1)
Help Us Read This Shared Diary of J and W (Part 2)
Help Us Read This Shared Diary of J and W (Part 3)
Help Us Read This Shared Diary of J and W (Part 4)
Help Us Read This Shared Diary of J and W (Part 5)
Help Us Read This Shared Diary of J and W (Part 6)
Help Us Read This Shared Diary of J and W (Part 7)
Help Us Read This Shared Diary of J and W (Part 8 )
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