The slender acacia would not shake
One long milk-bloom on the tree;
The white lake-blossom fell into the lake,
As the pimpernel dozed on the lea;
But the rose was awake all night for your sake,
Knowing your promise to me;
The lilies and roses were all awake.
They sigh'd for the dawn and thee.
Queen rose of the rosebud garden of girls,
Come hither, the dances are done,
In gloss of satin and glimmer of pearls,
Queen lily and rose in one;
Shine out, little head, sunning over with curls,
To the flowers, and be their sun.
There has fallen a splendid tear
From the passion-flower at the gate.
She is coming, my dove, my dear;
She is coming, my life, my fate;
The red rose cries, *She is near, she is near;'
And the white rose weeps, 'She is late;'
The larkspur listens, 'I hear, I hear;'
And the lily whispers, 'I wait.'
She is coming, my own, my sweet;
Were it ever so airy a tread.
My heart would hear her and beat,
Were it earth in an earthy bed;
My dust would hear her and beat,
Had I lain for a century dead;
Would start and tremble under her feet,
And blossom in purple and red.
[excerpt from Lord Tennyson‘s Maud I, XXII.]
So i was briefly exposed to this poem in an art history seminar on the Victorian Era a few months ago, and because I am totally normal, all I could think about was how well it fit Aki on at least two layers. One: the entire linking of Maud with flowers, especially the rose, for obvious reasons works so so well. Especially the title „Queen Rose of the Rosebud Garde of Girls“ makes so much sense. And the second layer is a little deeper but also totally supported by my own confirmation bias. Maud is described to be deceptively beautiful but incredibly cold looking, with a stern expression and a complexion that makes her appear almost dead. I haven‘t read the entire poem down to detail but from what I could gather, the lyrical protagonist falls in love with her (and grows increasingly obsessed) after a disagreement between their fathers lead to his father‘s death, so at the beginning he tries to get back at Maud‘s father through her, but ends up being bewitched by her in the process, eventually dueling and killing her brother etc. etc. it‘s all very Victorian. Maud is mostly passive in this, never actively described to do anything and yet she is said to be both the best thing in the lyrical protagonist‘s life while at the same time being his demise.
Retrospectively one could assume that both of these things are not inherent to her character and just qualities assigned to her by the men in her life. In the Victorian era there was almost a popular belief that there were two opposing kinds of women: femmes fragiles and femme fatales, the first kind being dependent and almost sickly but on the other hand sweet and kind and docile, while the femme fatale as in popular media today is independent yet violent and oftentimes promiscuous.
It‘s an interesting duality that I see in Aki in a way (helped by the image of roses, y‘know, they‘re beautiful flowers with delicate blossoms but also piercing thorns which the show uses actively to characterize this duality in Aki) , but in a way where it has always been decided for her instead of by her. She‘s violent at the start because that is the side of hers that is fostered by Divine and towards the end of the show her caring nature shines through instead. Interestingly enough though, she is less independent when in her „femme fatale“ stage, which is really just her anger and pain towards abandonment as a young teen not being dealt with properly. She was never a true femme fatale to begin with and neither has she ever been and will ever be a femme fragile. She‘s just Aki, with both all the hurt she‘s had to experience but just as much all the times she got to experience genuine happiness, a lot of which comes from being taking care of by and caring for her friends.
There are a lot more thoughts in my brain about how women were characterized in literature throughout the decades, using the image of the rose — a sort of de-humanization of the woman and at the same time a personification of nature as woman. We talked about this extensively in another seminar on nature songs but that would exceed ALL limits on this post.
So instead just take this little drawing I made of my Queen Rose. She enables me to do things in my art I never knew I could do.
