The Tragic Rose: Difference between revisions

 

----

{{examples}}

* In ''[[Fullmetal Alchemist (manga)|Fullmetal Alchemist]]'', Rose Thomas becomes a pawn in her first appearance, she was an orphan, and her boyfriend died.

** In ''addition'' to this, in the [[Fullmetal Alchemist (anime)|2003 anime version]], Rose was raped off screen by soldiers occupying her town, became a mute and carried the resulting baby to term. She ''then'' {{spoiler|had to lead her town to exile and merger with the nation due to another invasion of soldiers, was kidnapped by the [[Big Bad]], and was spared by moments from a final [[Grand Theft Me]] that might have used her baby as ''fuel''. The guy she finally professes her love to then gets trapped in another dimension.}}

* ''[[Rose of Versailles]]'' has it even in the title.

 

* In ''[[Titanic]]'' Rose was on the Titanic, her old boyfriend is a [[Domestic Abuser]] [[Yandere]] and her new boyfriend freezes to death. {{spoiler|She lived for almost 90 years afterwards, becoming pretty much a living legend; after telling the people digging in the sea for the Titanic what she witnessed there (which, yanno, ''makes the plot of the movie'', Rose dies at the very end.}}

 

* In ''[[Doctor Who]]'', Rose Tyler is the companion of the last surviving Time Lord, and became trapped on a parallel earth. With no means to get back to him.

* Averted on [[Golden Girls]]. Rose is a [[Cloudcuckoolander]] who seemed to enjoy her idyllic (if very, very weird) life in St. Olaf.

* On the ''[[Cold Case]]'' episode "Best Friends", a girl named Rose pledged a lover's suicide [[Star-Crossed Lovers|with her girlfriend, Billie.]] (It was the 20's.) The suicide didn't go over as planned and she spent the rest of her life writing sorrowful poems about her lost love. When she finally confesses what happened, Billie's spirit comes for her, all being forgiven.

 

* Rose Lalonde fits this in ''[[Homestuck]]'', although actual rose motifs only extend as far as her using a pair of weapons called the Thorns of Oglogoth.

 

* ''[[American Dragon: Jake Long]]'': Rose is the love interest of the main character. She was stolen from her family as a baby, is brainwashed, and nearly erased from existence.

* ''[[Sleeping Beauty (Disney film)|Sleeping Beauty]]'', whose real name is Aurora, but the fairies named her Briar Rose. She got a raw deal with the whole finger-pricking, fall-asleep-until-your-true-love-kisses-you curse-thing put on her at birth by a witch who was pissed about not being invited to her christening by her parents. {{spoiler|She gets the [[True Love's Kiss]] from her sort-of [[Perfectly Arranged Marriage|groom]], and then gets better.}}

* ''[[Balto]]'': A girl named Rosy spends the entire movie slowly dying of a disease. {{spoiler|Not only does she survive, but she's the [[Narrator All Along]].}}

 

* In ''[[Fable|Fable 2]]'' your older sister Rose is shot in the face in the first half hour.

* Raiden's girlfriend Rosemary in ''[[Metal Gear Solid]]''. Apart from the fact that her lover's pretty [[Dark and Troubled Past|broken]], she {{spoiler|was supposed to seduce him as part of a [[Honey Trap]], but fell for him for real. Then in the fourth game (after dealing with the fallout from revealing she was [[The Mole]]) she pretty had to [[Shoo the Dog]] for the entire game to keep their child safe. They reunite at the end though.}}

* Rose from ''[[Legend of Dragoon]]'' ends up being the sole survivor of a brutal war, losing her fiance and best friends in the process, and is forced to [[Who Wants to Live Forever?|accept immortality]] in order to save the world from complete destruction every 108 years. The [[Shoot the Dog|necessary evils]] needed in order to accomplish said world-saving has resulted in [[0% Approval Rating|the entire world hating her]] as a mythical demon of evil and destruction. By the time the game's storyline rolls around, she can't even remember the last time she ''smiled''.

 

* ''[[Saint Seiya]]'' has Aphrodite, the saint of Pisces: a [[Dude Looks Like a Lady|beautiful]] but [[Poisonous Person]]. Guess which flowers he uses [[Improbable Weapon User|as a weapon]]?

* In ''[[Cowboy Bebop]]'', the episode endings feature a rose in a window, then later in the same window, [[Star-Crossed Lovers|Julia]] is sitting in front of the window where the rose was (Julia = the rose), then later the rose being dropped to the street. [[Foreshadowing|That means something, too.]]

* One of the opening scenes of ''[[Umineko no Naku Koro ni]]'' takes place in Kinzo's rose garden, with particular emphasis on a rose that his granddaughter Maria claims as hers. Maria is eventually revealed to suffer from an [[Abusive Parent]] (in a scene involving the rose). Oh, and [[Kill'Em All|everybody dies]]. [[Groundhog Day Loop|Over and over.]] Beatrice herself wears a [[Flower in Her Hair|rose in her hair]]. {{spoiler|She's [[The Ophelia]]}}.

 

* In ''[[Sleeping Beauty]]'', the roses were the source of the tragedy—ninety-nine princes killed themselves on their thorns, trying to get in.

 

* In ''Les Miserables'', Eponine is described/alluded to as being a "rose in misery". This girl (at least during her teenage years) doesn't get a break: her family is impoverished and linked to an infamous gang of robbers, she's often starving, is implied to be not right in the head, and has the misfortune to fall in unrequited love with her neighbor.

 

* Used in a fairly effective subversion of the romantic meaning in [[Buffy the Vampire Slayer|Buffy]], when Giles comes home to a beautiful romantic set-up, complete with roses and champagne... And goes upstairs to find {{spoiler|his girlfriend, Jenny's murdered corpse; the whole setup was Angelus' way of [[Complete Monster|torturing Giles that little bit more]].}}

 

* ''[[The Phantom of the Opera]]'': The phantom gives Christine a rose with a black ribbon around it.

** Only in the film. In the stage show, the rose only shows up in the logo and probably represents Christine herself (the other graphic part of the logo is a mask, representing the Phantom.)

 

* Miranda from ''[[Legend of Dragoon]]'' hates roses because they're linked with her abusive mother, saying that her mother kept them around because they were beautiful but the bouquet was always in sight whenever she was beaten.

** Oh, also she doesn't get along with the character Rose mentioned above.

* In ''[[Ib]]'', the gallery Ib starts out in has a sculpture of a red rose with vicious-looking thorns titled "Embodiment of Spirit" and is described as "beautiful at first glance, but if you get too close, it will induce pain." When Ib is transported to the painting world, she gets a red rose that's described as "almost too beautiful to be real" and [[Life Meter|gradually wilts away to nothing as she takes damage]], and she finds out later on that playing [[Loves Me Not|Loves Me, Loves Me Not]] with another person's rose is a very, ''very'' bad thing to do.

 

* In ''[[No Rest for The Wicked (webcomic)|No Rest for The Wicked]]'', [http://www.forthewicked.net/archive/02-26.html Red is drawn to the blood-red roses.]

 

* ''[[Beauty and the Beast]]'', which already plays on the duality of beauty and tragedy, uses the wilting rose literally as a time limiting plot device.

 

* [[Yoshiki Hayashi]] loves roses and rose motifs, and his life has been an ongoing parade of tragedies.

 

[[Category:The Tragic Rose]]

[[Category:Floral Tropes]]