Unrest is starting to build among commoners as royal spending, bankrupts the country. while Oscar is struggling to balance unrest at home, in Paris and at Versailles. Rosalie is being pressured by her birth mother to come live with her, and her sister, the grifter Jeanne Valois, is at the center of one of the greatest scandals of the Queen’s life.

This volume is full of so many tears, it almost becomes comic….almost. It never is, because the cost of human suffering is as immeasurable in the 18th century as it is now, only we’re far more likely to have a bigger-picture understanding of it.

Nonetheless, Ikeda-sensei’s work makes understanding suffering almost unavoidable in fact, as she pinpoints individual stories in the middle of the greater situation. We’re more aware of the plight of Parisians in general because we spend time with Rosalie and Bernard.  We’re meant to understand them in a way we and Oscar will never understand the lack of empathy of the noble class.

Volume 2 of The Rose of Versailles is also one of the “Yuriest” volumes of this classic series in one sense and in another, not really. Jeanne implicates the Queen in the infamous Affair of the Diamond Necklace and, while testifying before the court, insists that she and the Queen were lesbian lovers. In addition, she accuses Oscar of being Marie Antoinette’s lover, as well. Oscar is not amused.

Her sentiment, a sneered “I Lord Oscar, lesbian? I’m breaking out in hives! To hell with you! What a joke!” is hard for us in 2020 to take at face value, when mere pages separate that and her repeated vow that had she been a man, she would have married Rosalie herself.

Volume 2 is about structural change. When the foundations of a building begin to crack, the people on the highest floors can feel the instability, even if they are initially insulated from the immediate damage. Once again, I’m reading this volume thinking it is just a little too on the money, as our society is shaking the foundations once again for all the very same reasons.

I want to shout out here to Jeannie Lee, whose lettering is so exceptional and to both Mari Morimoto and Jocelyne Allen for doing painstaking work on the translation. I’m still blown away by this gorgeous edition of a long-awaited classic manga. It was a privilege to have worked on it with them.

Ratings:

Art – 8 As Oscar matures, so does the art
Story – 8 Dense and melodramatic
Characters – 9 Everyone is flawed and human
Service – 5 Oscar in a uniform and in a dress.
Yuri – 1 No, but…kinda?

Overall – 8