Genre: Historical / Drama
General Audience
Credits: 1972. Ikeda Riyoko (story and art)

Skysenshi’s Description:
Riyoko Ikeda’s classic tale of romance and tragedy, Berusayo no Bara / Rose of Versailles is set right before the French Revolution and is centered on the life of a young general’s daughter known as Oscar Francois de Jarjeyes.

Oscar is a beautiful woman, but was raised to act, live and fight like a man due to her father’s frustration that she was born female. Many believe that Rose of Versailles was Riyoko Ikeda’s way of uplifting the role-playing mentality of Japanese women in the early 1970’s. Perhaps it can even be said that RoV was a direct challenge to the male gender.

NOTE: There is a follow-up fiction on the 10th volume that seems to be based on the misadventures of notorious Elizabeth Bathory, the vampiric 14th century Hungarian noblewoman.

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NOTE: This description was written sometime in 2001 and was recorded in the classic Otaku Fridge as ??.??.2001. Unfortunately the database would not accept non-numerical values, so this review is now dated January 01, 2001 by default.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 1st, 2001 at 10:59 am and is filed under Rose of Versailles, Manga. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.