02.04
but a miserable pile of secrets?
Rose of Versailles was always that show I heard referenced to for years, but never got around to watching it. For years, I’ve watched more of that musical theatre version of the story than the manga or the anime. Embarrassing, I know. How dare I write reviews of anime when I haven’t watched all of the greats yet? But that was then, and now I’m cured, delivered, and I’ve seen the light that is a 70s/80s anime from Tokyo Movie Shinsha. Alleluia. But looking at this show with modern eyes, it’s provocative how much of this story resonates now. Strangely appealing in these current times due to having a female lead who abandons gender norms whilst facing an increasingly divided social and economic hierarchy. Women throughout the series are forced to choose their roles in life at the cost of those they love. Society is on the brink of bloody change. If someone had the nerve to adapt the manga now, they would probably be celebrated as topical and hardhitting by short-minded anime critics who don’t realize it first came out in 1972.
I’m sure someone out there can make a good argument that our lead Oscar’s life is meant to be a prototypical transgender narrative. And I would agree with that point, since the manga author is well-used to writing about transgender themes like in her 1978 publication Claudine. Throughout the story, Oscar is in conflict with her gender identity, wanting to be a warrior and doing well in her job. Yet her urges to be with Fersen and her relationship with Andre plays a great deal in her personal affairs, along with a one-sided crush from Rosalie’s perspective. But she doesn’t choose to be masculine, it’s forced upon her by her well-meaning but controlling father. To me, it’s less of her fight between genders, and more of her battle between becoming a warrior like her father intended or being a lover to Andre, Fersen, or even Rosalie. That’s what makes Oscar stand out and lead this anime by herself, because her personality allows for all of these interpretations on her inner struggles. She’s probably one of the best female characters the anime/manga medium has to offer thanks to that.
I’m especially impressed by how this show can handle characterization given its stylistic choices. Because no matter how broadminded you can be, this is a show that came out in 1979, and it shows quite painfully in some places. Occasionally when we get a dramatic scene, organ music straight out of a 60s soap opera plays. And when a romantic scene occurs, you get what I assume to be a synth version of a harp playing. I’m not sure how to properly describe it beyond that, but the music overall feels very out of place for a show set in the midst of the French Revolution. It’s especially glaring thanks to the animation that’s aged well for the most part, even if the directorial change from Tadao Nagahama to Osamu Dezaki is noticeable. When Dezaki takes the helm, many of the “Oh, look how pretty French royalty is!” moments go away, and he introduces this bard under a bridge whose songs foreshadow the end of the aristocracy. Nagahama already depicted the lords and ladies of France as coldhearted, but he did pull his punches whenever Marie Antoinette shows up. After he dies, that’s put in doubt.
One of those show’s biggest questions lies in whether or not Marie Antoinette is at fault for the common Frenchman’s plight. In contrast to the “let them eat cake” portrayal, Rose of Versailles treats her as someone very out of control of her situation. Many challenges to nobility are done without her knowledge, and her name is often used in aristocrats’ schemes without her consent. But she never seeks a way to undo these wrongs, instead holding out in her palaces while people like her mother beg her to fulfill her duty as a queen. Sure, she does try to take the moral stance in situations right in front of her, but Marie never seeks out these problems firsthand. She’s not pro-active, letting those around her grow decadent and abuse the common folk while she realizes too late that they’re going to look at her as the cause for all their suffering. But she can’t join the working class and sympathize with their plight because that means losing good favor with the noblemen she’s known all her life, making her too afraid to join the righteous path if it means abandoning familiar surroundings. She’s not the cause for all this suffering, just an unwitting scapegoat and symptom of how bluebloods or those who at least claim to bluebloods can abuse their power.
Throughout Antoinette’s reign, we see all of these horrible, despicable people find riches and fame in Versailles, like Guement, DuBarry, and Jeanne. What’s interesting about the latter two is that neither are born noble. DuBarry started out as a bloodthirsty prostitute who got lucky enough to be a king’s mistress, and Jeanne just cheated and killed her way to grandeur. We get few and far moments that these two women are anything but abominable, and it’s through Jeanne’s self-centered actions that shake up the foundation of French society. Nobody’s in agreement, everybody’s scheming to take each others’ positions, and none of the peasants can do anything about it for the majority of the show. They have to stand around while their own kind are either shot or run over by carriages, unable to do anything because a noble’s blood running down the streets would bring forth armies while a commoner’s blood would not. No matter how many cry about needing bread to feed their families, all it takes is a handful of nobles, blind to the public’s opinion, to decide who lives and who dies.
But the show’s indecisive on the “nobles = bad, commoners = good” argument. Chalk that up to shades of gray. Look at Rosalie for instance, the good sister compared to Jeanne. She’s revealed to have noble blood on her birth mother’s side all along. Even then, she’s in conflict with that ancestry, doing much to renounce that connection in favor of how her adoptive mother raised her. It’s another example of women in this series trying to fight back against the role their parents have given them, to varying results. Her character arc never rises to a satisfying conclusion, with her just leaving and becoming Bernard’s husband. I heard from questionable sources that was because her character was unpopular when the manga was ongoing, and the author just decided to shuffle her away as a response. Something I wish didn’t happen, because Rosalie had some potential for the later parts of the series. That’s one issue with the series, it doesn’t fully involve itself in some characters with parts to play, like Fersen, Marie Antoinette’s lover. He leaves to fight in America for seven years. Then when he comes back, he finds his beloved France torn by class warfare and hatred from both nobles and peasants. The 97% lower-class versus the 3% nobles. But his story arc and eventual conclusion (one with historical basis at that) just gets told secondhand by the narrator. The show tries to fit so many years of French history into forty episodes that important events are sped through instead of indulged upon. Somewhat of a necessity to make sure the plot doesn’t lag, but lamentable nonetheless.
But we do get some cool moments for other characters, such as how tensions between classes lead to vigilantes like the Black Knight. I thought that was a fun addition. I initially believed it to be out of place, but then just reminded myself of Zorro or Fantomas. Or Princess Knight, something of a precursor to Rose of Versailles’ characterization. I guess if you’re going to do something important and nerve-wrecking to one of your characters, having a masked crusader show up and attack him is one way to handle it. I know to others this arc will come off as dumb for what’s meant to be a sign of political outcry, but I still like this idea. When tensions rise, people are going to go for fantastical, out there, and silly ideas to solve problems. If you added more pulp in history, people are more likely to devour it.
An interesting thing to note is how Robespierre, one of the most important figures in the Reign of Terror, only makes brief appearances and cameos for the first 30 episodes. Learning about the French Revolution back in school, he was always written in my history books like he was omnipresent. The face of a looming force about to break out into France. I recall my history teacher bringing up Robespierre just as much as she brought up Bonaparte, making him sound like the ultimate example of all the good and evils that come from a revolution. While the show makes sure to remind us that he’s the spearhead for something greater, it’s not as strongly pronounced as I expected, focusing more on the French Revolution on a step-by-step basis with Robespierre as simply one of these steps. It takes until episode 34 for his speeches to occur, when he speaks at the Etats-Generaux. Even when rioters start attacking people who aren’t even nobles, Robespierre doesn’t show up at the beginning. The anime doesn’t even do much to portray him as corrupt, using Saint-Just as the questionable revolutionary instead.
I guess the easy answer for why Robespierre only shows up sparingly is because this is adapted from a shojo manga, and that demographic is unlikely to sympathize with a lawyer in his thirties. While someone like Oscar is far more of an energizing character who can lead her own plot and flatter the audience with ease. She’s the one who encapsulates all of this chaos. All of that conflict, all of those desires for a better world while wondering if that means straying from your loved ones, in one package. Everybody’s had that moment of realization, where they see the world around them is about to change into something unrecognizable. Maybe something wonderful, but never through peaceful means. They witness as their life is transformed through fire and blood. And in those times, the diplomats, the royals, the peasants, they can’t just simply resist. They all have to become warriors to survive the change.