Abstract
This article examines the friendship between Oscar François de Jarjayes and Queen Marie Antoinette in the anime version of Riyoko Ikeda’s the Rose of Versailles. Oscar is born female but is raised male and becomes Commander of the Queen’s Royal Guards. The intended shōjo (young girl) audience identifies with both characters. Current scholarship mainly focuses on Oscar’s character, but this study places equal emphasis on Marie Antoinette, since the anime humanizes her character and demonstrates how the Queen’s interactions with Oscar bring out the noble elements of her disposition. The characters grow together and then apart against the backdrop of the French Revolution, with the Revolution standing as a metaphor for the internal struggle Oscar faces when grappling with her gender identity. Marie Antoinette supports and validates Oscar, but the friendship ends when Oscar identifies with the Revolution and the Queen refuses any compromise to the power of the Crown. Oscar’s ultimate rejection of her class and her alliance with the Revolution corresponds directly to the questioning of her gender identity and her ultimate self-acceptance. By contrast, Marie Antoinette’s final self-affirmation comes not through rebellion but through staunch confirmation of royal authority. The process of self-definition is what leads to the downfall of both Oscar and Marie Antoinette, with the former meeting a noble death in the taking of the Bastille, and the latter dying at the guillotine in tragedy and disgrace but redeemed slightly by her friendship with, and memories of, Oscar.
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Notes
My thanks go to Kelsi Vanada for her assistance with this essay.
With respect to secondary readings, it should be noted that the while critics cited below are referencing the manga, their remarks apply to the anime with equal validity. Unless otherwise noted, I rely on Misato Raillard’s French translation of the manga from the Japanese (Raillard 2016).
In addition to the love story between Oscar and André, other Takarazuka adaptations of the Rose of Versailles have centered on the attraction between Marie-Antoinette and Hans Axel von Fersen, as well as the amorous interests of secondary characters such as Rosalie Lamorlière and Bernard Châtelet.
See, for example, Duggan’s (2013) study that parallels French and Chinese female warrior narratives, where the gender of the protagonists is hidden. Conversely, with respect to the The Rose of Versailles, Duggan states, “At home as well as at court, members of the French aristocracy are aware that Oscar is a woman in men’s clothing; they appear to accept to some degree her gender ambiguity, which the narrator attributes to French mores of the period” (p. 40). The situation Duggan describes is considerably different in the anime, as the court not only accepts Oscar’s gender fluidity “to some degree” (p. 40) most women at Versailles seem to openly support it. Within the European tradition, Duggan does not mention Conrad Ferdinand Meyer’s story of master-servant loyalty during the Thirty Years War, Gustavus Adolphs Page (1882). Nevertheless, Meyer’s narrative warrants attention since it represents an example where the true identity of a faithful female warrior remains a secret until her death (Browning and Kerth 1998).
To this point, in Schodt’s (1981) translation, Marie Antoinette states, “I can’t recognize her! …This has nothing to do with what the King’s daughters tell me…It has to do with my own beliefs!!” (p. 84). To date, Schodt’s is the sole English translation of Ikeda’s text.
In her article and monograph, Shamoon (2007, 2012) calls the pairing of Oscar as André as “homogender” (p. 12, p. 119, respectively), while Anan (2014) states, that, “the relationship…looks like male homosexuality” (p. 48). Such descriptions are justified because André’s features at times deviate from common masculine norms, and his appearance becomes progressively androgynous over the course of the narrative. The romance between the two is reminiscent of the “Boys Love” or “BL” manga, a genre aimed at young girls displacing their nascent sexual desire onto adolescent male couples. For more on the BL genre, see Mclelland’s (2000) article (pp. 19–22). Conversely, the Demy film portrays André as classically masculine with no androgynous overtones.
The title of the episode could also refer to Ikeda’s own farewell to her treasured character.
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Ganim, R. Fleur rebelle, fleur royale: the friendship of Lady Oscar and Marie Antoinette in The Rose of Versailles. Neohelicon 46, 767–782 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11059-019-00477-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11059-019-00477-2