The Well Conceived Misconceived Start of White Knight
As a romance founded from the start on misconceptions between two surprisingly similar characters with similar motivations, it is a bit interesting that there are even misconceptions lasting to this day within the fandom regarding White Knight. White Knight, after all, took center place as part of the romantic comedy of the initial seasons of RWBY, which was over 10 years ago for the first viewers. Of those misconceptions, one of the most common I have come to hear is that White Knight is basic, simple or even just bland.
Some claim that it is just a simple boy meets girl situation or a straightforward enemies-to-lovers dynamic or even just a classic Hallmark romance. And to some extent, these classifications do fit White Knight, but each one is lacking in some way, even the idea of it being a kind of Hallmark romance, which Miles himself (the VA for Jaune) once referred to it as. Because Miles was strictly referring to just the Beacon era of things and White Knight has already progressed far beyond that point.
Truthfully, however, I find that this classification doesn’t truly capture the complexity of the dynamics in even early Beacon White Knight, which I hope to capture in this post to an extent.
To show this, let me start by going off on the wrong foot just like Weiss and Jaune began on the wrong foot. In an actual boy meets girl moment, Jaune’s first true dialogue of the series is him assisting Ruby out of the crater she found herself in as a result of her interaction with Weiss.
Naturally something like this is the perfect setup for a boy meets girl romance, with many fans of Lancaster correctly identifying this as a significant moment for what appears to be the main female protagonist and male protagonist of the series. If Weiss and Jaune had been introduced like this, for instance, I might have felt it fine to describe White Knight as a boy meets girl romance.
But RWBY was not and will never be that simple and Jaune and Ruby do not end up being the only protagonists of the series by far, even if Ruby herself is the titular protagonist featured in the show’s name. Indeed, during the Beacon era, Ruby and any sort of romantic entanglement with Jaune is as far away from her mind as the idea of selling off Crescent Rose is. Instead, following this typical boy meets girl scene with Ruby and Jaune, we immediately have the mold being broken by having Jaune’s two actual love interests of the Beacon era being introduced to him: Pyrrha and Weiss.
What’s interesting especially with Weiss and Jaune’s initial interaction here is how strange and even contradictory it is compared to Ruby’s own simple introduction to him (again, boy meets girl).
Jaune is off in the crowd, minding his own business, when Weiss is actually the one to point him out from a sea of students, sarcastically referring to him as “tall, blonde and scraggly” while also identifying him as a cute boy.
This is what initially catches Jaune’s interest in her and it is important not just because it is the start of everything between the two of them, but because Weiss here can be interpreted in many different ways. On the surface, as Jaune sees it, Weiss has just called him a cute boy – and since he thinks she is a pretty girl, he is naturally interested back! But Weiss clearly meant that in backhand to Ruby since she was mocking her for trying to play nice with Weiss per Yang’s advice.
However, if you think about it, why and how did Weiss know to pick out Jaune from the crowd specifically? Note that during the scene, she isn’t even looking at him when she snarks at Ruby (this being the case in pretty much every side material depiction of this moment as well like Ice Queendom), but somehow she knows exactly what he looks like? This implies that Weiss DID in fact take notice of Jaune beforehand, enough to recall him for her barb against Ruby. And if she is noticing him like that out of the blue, I feel like there is a potential that maybe her thoughts of him as a “cute boy” run deeper than people may think from V1.
It’s this sort of starting depth and complexity in interactions that already has me shaking my head when I look at people who say Weiss and Jaune are “simplistic” together. Already, we’re dealing with a massive misconception between the two and nothing says that better than Jaune’s technical first line to Weiss.
And unfortunately for Jaune, his next attempt is no better for his chances with her. But in terms of depth of what is happening and the complexity of the interactions at play? It’s actually incredibly interesting to look back on in perspective. Let’s break it down from the start.
Jaune’s locker room interaction with Weiss – and his introduction to Pyrrha, his other romantic partner/pursuit in Beacon – starts off with Jaune immediately cutting into her conversation with Pyrrha, a move that gets on Weiss’s nerves for several obvious reasons. What’s immediately interesting about this scene is how flamboyant and bombastic Jaune is here compared to practically any other time in RWBY.
In comparison, even just a scene later in V1, Jaune is lethargic, stressed, even cowardly at times. What this is supposed to show us is that Jaune is putting on a serious (and ultimately fake) face here for the first and only time to not just continue catching the attention of a girl he thinks is already interested in him (from no fault of his own), but also to find himself a suitable strong and talented partner to help him through initiation.
Ironically this is exactly the same reason Weiss was approaching Pyrrha, but she is blind to this. What she isn’t blind to, however, is how obviously fake Jaune is being, which is very important when you consider Weiss’s actual history with boys. What’s also interesting in the case of the way this is animated however, especially for Jaune, is how his movements and Weiss’s responses reflect these inner feelings and reality.
For instance, Jaune starts off by joining his hands together nervously – indicating his nervous interest in a partnership between him and Weiss – while Weiss looks away with contempt, uninterested and crossing her arms to showcase that, almost as if barricading herself off from Jaune.
To try to combat this, Jaune resorts to a very failed attempt at machismo, which has Weiss scratching her head wondering how anyone could be this bad at acting in jest. And indeed Weiss, as we later learn in the series, is constantly subject to people acting in bad faith for her attention or her love or her hand in marriage, even claiming this is the sole reason boys approached her previously in Volume 2. We even get an example of somehow doing just this in Volume 4 when she is finally off alone in Atlas again.
But the truth of the matter is that while Jaune is indeed failing at acting, the “fake” persona here is not for the sole purpose of claiming Weiss’s name (which she thinks it is), but instead convincing her to be his partner and help him through Beacon. Romance is on his mind as well (since he is a teenage boy), but it is far less about Weiss being a Schnee than she thinks or even about her being an extremely pretty girl.
Upon seeing how badly he is hitting it off with her, Jaune opens his hands to try to reconcile with her, but of course, Weiss is still the same. Solidly blocking him off and letting him know it with her arms as the key.
After failing to make his way through her cold reception, Jaune finally cedes…and he does so by copying her arm bar gesture, seeming to block off himself from her as well. While this is probably just another tactic he is attempting to relate to her and get her to join up with him, what is very interesting about this is the idea of Jaune copying from and learning from Weiss as shown here.
This indicates that Jaune isn’t just seeing Weiss as a prospective teammate, but also a role model for himself – because at this point, Jaune is a fraud faking his way to Beacon and Weiss appears to be a competent, strong huntress-in-training, the exact type of person Jaune wants to become. So Jaune, while he may be flirting with Weiss and looking for someone to support him, is also implicitly looking for someone to teach him here.
And of course, what better opportunity than right now to introduce the character to Jaune who will actually be that kind of teacher for him?
Upon Pyrrha’s re-entry into the conversation, it is very telling how easily Jaune accepts moving to talk specifically about Pyrrha and how she can join “his team” as well, showing that Jaune is 100% not hung up on Weiss as the only option here. This is proof it was never specifically about Weiss herself, he was really just looking for that competent huntress who could help him out of his bind and he relishes in the opportunity, even flirting with Pyrrha too as well.
While Jaune may have started off with Weiss due to her previously signaled “interest” in the auditorium when she implied he was cute, Pyrrha was also a perfectly acceptable option for him to improve his chances of reaching his dream and his goal.
But while it was never specifically about either Pyrrha or Weiss, the way Jaune treats them here is proof that he is already looking up to both Weiss and Pyrrha as a standard of excellence in a sense whether he realized it or not. This doesn’t mean Jaune wanted to “earn them,” but rather that Jaune wanted to be like them!
Of course, for Jaune, it all comes crumbling down as soon as Weiss has had enough and tells Pyrrha to get him away from them. But ironically again in the end he achieved his goal by earning Pyrrha’s attention and eventually her partnership.
These sort of similarities and character convergences and people seeing through others motivations but at the same time not accurately doing so either make for a deep seated basis for a relationship. And I think Pyrrha, Weiss and Jaune here really exemplify that with how this occurred.
By this point, however, it is pretty clear that the initial impressions for the trio of each other have been set in stone. Weiss, through seeing Jaune’s false bravado and attempts at flirting with her, now has the misconception that what Jaune wants from her is solely her as his prize, which is far from what Jaune actually wanted. But Jaune, at the same time, is also guilty of putting up that now misinterpreted false bravado and giving off the wrong impression, leading to this opinion from Weiss. And then Pyrrha steps in, cleanly taking the place Jaune had imagined Weiss having next to him. And I think this is especially interesting considering what happens next.
When Jaune is speared by Pyrrha to a tree (securing their partnership, in a sense), the first person he ends up locking eyes with in the forest is not Pyrrha – it is Weiss. Notice how the animators even went out of their way for Weiss to not hear Jaune until she could look up into his eyes directly.
This makes Jaune the only character in Beacon’s initiation to lock eyes first with someone who isn’t their partner. This seems to extremely match up with what I said above, that Pyrrha and Weiss are meant to be compared, to be interchangeable to some extent in the evolving dynamic between them. The fact that Pyrrha and Weiss are also extremely similar characters – both coming from money and fame, both seeking to escape elements of it in their own way, both desperate for real connections to real people – drives this home.
Jaune and Pyrrha being the only exception between partners also is potentially a reference to Pyrrha’s eventual fate in V3 as well, but that morbid point is invariably connected to the idea of post-Arkos White Knight anyways.
But of course the big actual “romantic scene” and fake out for White Knight happens a little later during the course of the dash for relics in the forest.
Jaune, stranded in a tree and despite knowing that the act will put him in further danger, chooses to save a falling Weiss by catching her midair, which is accompanied by an angelic chorus which is probably in reference to Jaune’s allusion (and I will address that in a separate post as a whole). But of course then both look down and fall, with Jaune humorously ending up with Weiss on his back, Weiss sarcastically referring to him as “my hero”.
Potentially romantic moments like these which were upended and played for humor are a part of the foundation for why some people mistakenly may think White Knight only has humor going for it in terms of complexity. But aside from what I have already noted above, there are even parts to this scene played for humor you can dissect which show it is more than it seems.
For instance, Weiss upon being caught by Jaune, looks shocked at first and then for a small moment looks down with a rather shy smile on her face (pictured above), perhaps both reconsidering him and understanding the romantic pose she has adopted with him catching her.
Little animation details like these speak volumes as to how Weiss actually may be more interested – or perhaps more willing to reciprocate with Jaune – early on than most people think. Just like the implications of her implying he was cute earlier.
Of course, his final execution of this save ultimately fails to convince Weiss of his intentions for her being good (and indeed, failing like he did may make Weiss see his save as yet another of his attempts at being someone he isn’t), but it is important to note small details like this for what could have happened or how characters actually felt at each moment.
Past this point, for both initiation and even for V1, we end up seeing mostly sparse interactions between Jaune and Weiss, just a small conversation right in front of the relics as well as small things like Jaune and Weiss reacting to each other in some cases. While this is a bit disappointing, V1 is still just V1 and its unsurprising they can’t fit more in than what they already did. But aside from the limited air time constraints for V1, I think this gap actually does a good job of showcasing precisely what I had stressed before about Jaune’s initial interactions with Weiss.
While he mistakenly had thought her romantically interested at first, he has already cleared that misconception by the end of initiation and from then on Jaune is solely taking Weiss now as an example to live by, a mentor figure to look up to in a sense even if Pyrrha is the one training him post-Jaunedice. For instance, while team RBY calmly watches Weiss struggle with the Boarbatusk fight in Port’s classroom, look at how Jaune reacts in this scene to her fighting.
Jaune even is the one to specifically make a comment on her in the post fight after, trying to reflect on what happened to her mindset. Jaune is interested as Weiss as a person primarily not just because he is becoming friends with her and his team, but because his initial conception of her was as the exact type of person he wants to be and nothing has really happened to diminish that.
To Jaune, the perfectionist, workaholic shining heiress Weiss is the example of the type of huntsman-in-training he needs to become in order to live up to his own legacy. And isn’t that just startlingly similar to Weiss, who herself is using her grandfather as a figure to live up to?
Getting to the conclusion here, I would like to connect this point with something that happened between Jaune and Weiss in V2. Namely, Jaune’s crush on Weiss.
Note again that this is something entirely separate from him flirting with her in V1 based on what is shown in V1, which extends out months past initiation. I’d like to explain this point in further detail in another post, so I will hold off on why exactly the idea of the crush and his initial flirting with her are two entirely separate things, but let me just say this.
Jaune’s crush on Weiss in V2 is entirely based on Jaune being interested in Weiss as a person from the start here and therefore spending timing casually being with her and watching her throughout the first semester of Beacon.
It’s not just that he finds her pretty (the entirety of team RWBY and Pyrrha herself are plenty pretty), but that the initial respect he had for her as his “goal” to achieve as a person had evolved into a genuine and heartfelt appreciation for who she was as a person and what she had achieved. Just look at what he says when he describes his feelings to Ren below.
Very little of Jaune’s description of Weiss has anything to do with her physical beauty (and Weiss is absolutely beautiful) but instead focused on how Jaune has, through his time being around her, seen through her coldness, seen her best traits and her achievements and realized that not only does he look up to her as a model, he sees her as someone irreplaceable to him and thus his crush on her forms.
So even in this aspect, RWBY adds complexity to Jaune and Weiss’s interactions, making a crush many may have thought had shallow or insincere foundations into an actually important character moment for both Jaune and Weiss. And it shows that being dismissive of these feelings he developed for her is in actuality being quite rude to Jaune AND Weiss.
What is further interesting about Jaune crushing on Weiss because she was essentially his role model and his inspiration is the place of Pyrrha in this as well…because Pyrrha also occupies a very similar ground for Jaune.
This makes the romantic entanglement between Jaune, Weiss and Pyrrha through the rest of V2 and V3 just that more complex and interesting. This is personally why one of my favorite interpretations of their love triangle in Beacon is that Jaune always had feelings for both of them, but just didn’t understand it at the time.
Regardless, I think I have made a decent point of showing here that even as of V1 and the very start of V2, White Knight (and Arkos too) were far from simple or bland or straightforward and that the way the romance of each is founded on misconceptions between the people involved does a good job of making it this way.
And even when the misconceptions end for Jaune and Weiss and Pyrrha in Volume 2, well, that's where it gets even more interesting for them. But I'll leave that to another post.
