In Part 2, Disk 2 of Rose of Versailles, the story takes a massive turn. The story had been very strongly focused on Marie Antoinette and the effect her choices have made in the life of Oscar Francois de Jarjeyes.

In this disk, Oscar comes to two extremely important decisions about herself. First, she sees Fersen and immediately realizes than her love for him has not subsided and is, if anything, stronger than before. She and Fersen have a painful reunion and parting, made unintentionally far more painful by Andre’s confession that he has loved her all along. When Andre compounds Oscar’s emotional wounds by forcing himself on her, Oscar decides that she’s making a break with her former life and her former self. She leaves the Royal Guards, and is assigned to the commoner brigade, the French Guards, where she and Andre, who has followed her against her wishes, find themselves unwelcome. In a final insult, just as she decides to live as a man, Oscar’s father suddenly regrets raising her as one and wants to marry her off. This news does not go over well.

Until this point, Oscar’s sex hasn’t really been a big deal in the series. Her cross-dressing and living as a man has been mostly accepted and little commented on by the nobles. Like a court dwarf or rare animal, she has been mostly accepted for her proximity to the Queen… and her own abilities when they chips are down, with a side of “entertaining gossip.”

But, now, Oscar has left those rarefied circles and instantly is made very aware that men do not consider women their equals even when they are visibly capable. She defeats the men of the French Guard in combat, but they basically don’t care. She’s a woman and they will not be led by one. And it takes a brush with death for her father to realize that he have made an even worse mistake by insisting Oscar embrace a life as a woman this far into things.

I am, once again, left breathless at the timelessness of the narrative I’m watching. All week, I have been fielding questions on the Internet that blame feminism for everything under the sun and equate masculinity with having a penis and then I watch this disk and I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.  Once again, I want very much for this story to get a modern reboot, in which Oscar gets to be the soldier and leader she was and get the guy or the girl or both or something else, and be happy. Poor Andre. Poor Fersen. Poor Oscar.

I am impressed how deeply the thorns of Rose of Versailles still pierce.

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 9
Characters 9
Yuri – 0
Service – 1

Overall – 8

Here’s the fun part. I have two Box sets to give away, courtesy of RightStuf, and today they will be given:

Grisznak and kc – you are our contest winners!

Please contact me at yuricon at gmail with your mailing addresses and they will go in the mail as soon as I can get them there. Congrats to both of you!

Part 2, Disk 1 of Rose of Versailles begins with an extremely low point, from which everything will flow downhill until the very end. We are launched into the Affair of the Diamond Necklace which contributed strongly to the already bad feelings both the people and the nobility had for the Royal Family.

Jean Valois, her husband Nicholas de la Motte and Cardinal Rohan are all real people involved in the affair, as were the  prostitute Nicole Lequay d’Oliva and forger Rétaux de Villette. Jean did have a sister, but her name was not Rosalie. And, while rumors were supposedly to have been circulated of lesbianism between the Queen and her favorites, those were later, some even after the revolution began. She was accused of the double crime of lesbianism, in fact, with a notorious British lesbian – as if the French ones might not have been good enough. But, then, she was also accused of sleeping with every man in France, including her own sons. Marie Antoinette was not well liked. But this anime works very hard to make sure we find her sympathetic, Rohan is a letch, Jean and Nichiolas are sociopaths, Marie just wants time with her family, she’s not a bad person, just tone-deaf to…well, everything.

In the context of the anime, it is of course, sensible that Oscar be painted with this same broad brush of accusation and, of course, for her to be unmoved by it.

The pit of effluvia that is the Affair of the Necklace does not come to a neat end, it comes to a worn, frayed, painful end, at last. Rosalie leaves for the worst reason ever and we are catapulted back to time spent with Oscar and Andre, after wallowing in Jean Valois’ admirably sociopathic schemes.

Fersen returns and Oscar admits she could love him…we all squirm with discomfort in a way that is remarkable when you think how stoically we viewed the idea that she slept with the Queen. But the look on her face when she sees Fersen hurts, somehow.

The trajectory is inevitable…we are on the downwards curve of the parabola and we know what waits at the end. As not-cheerful as this all is, I have never been more interested in French history as I am while watching this series, so that has to count for something! ^_^;

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 9
Characters 9
Yuri – 1
Service – 1

Overall – 8

I have 2 Rose of Versailles Part 2 Box Sets to give away, courtesy of RightStuf! Tell me in the comments your favorite moment in French History and your age and country. I will announce winners when I review the next Disk.

Today’s review was brought to you by Brigid Alverson’s article on Robot 6, A writer writes! But it’s not that easy… because although I was feeling all lazy today, I really should have been writing this. ^_^

The final disk of part 1 of  Rose of Versailles is SO. FULL. OF. MELODRAMA.

The thing about Rose of Versailles is – we know going into it, there really can’t be too many happy endings. If we know anything about the French Revolution, we know that most of the people we are following on the screen will be dead or exiled by the end of the story. But knowing that there will be one happy ending and one alone does not make it any nicer as we watch the universe kick Rosalie around a bit for no reason. Even obnoxious little spoiled Charlotte goes from oppressor to oppressed.

Honestly, I would wonder how the leaders of the country could have been so blind, but then articles like this one pop across my desk and I shake my head and stop wondering.

The art remains as hyperbolic as the plot, but every time I think it’s all just too much to handle, I check Wikipedia, to find that that bit was actually more true than not.

Oscar faces her own conflicting desires and puts them aside for duty…again. And we watch, wishing we had an Oscar we could call on to explain their duty to our nobles. She’s too wonderful. Far too wonderful to be real.

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 9
Characters 9
Yuri – 1
Service – 3 (Oscar in formal whites!)

Overall – 8

Next up, Part 2 and the Affair of the Necklace. I don’t know if I can do it….

The third disk of part 1 of Ryoko Ikeda’s Rose of Versailles=AAARRRRGHHH.

If you had asked me what my impression of the Rose of Versailles anime was before the new release, I would have said that it was “good, but hard to watch.” Disk 3 is a perfect embodiment of why.

“The nobles make up only 4% of France. Their lifestyle is supported by the other 96%.”

“The majority of that 96% are poor and starving, unable to see a doctor when they are sick!”

Doesn’t that sound too painfully contemporary to be comfortable? It’s *way* too close to truth to be comfortable for me.

I squirm in discomfort at Marie Antoinette and the nobles, I am pained for Oscar, I’m homicidal on behalf of Rosalie and I’m more sympathetic than I could ever have imagined to Robespierre’s cause. And I’m frustrated beyond my ability to express that our 4% is doing the same exact things that the French nobility did. I find comfort only in the fact that while rampant greed and hatred by government still exists, and life is still cheaper than it ought to be in the world I imagined I would be living in now, at least statistically speaking, the world is less violent than it ever has been. Cold comfort.

Oscar fights a duel and I can’t even enjoy how cool she is.

Art – 8
Story – 9
Characters 9
Yuri – 0
Service – 2 (Oscar’s new uniform isn’t as cool as the all-white one.)

Overall – 8

The only redeeming moment, is Oscar saving Rosalie. This will bear fruit later, but otherwise this disk is tsk, dammit and AAARRRRGHHH.