I’ve always loved The Rose of Versailles (Lady Oscar in the Italian version), I don’t know if anyone in the rest of the world knows her, but in Italy from the 1980s to the early 2000s they gave it on TV several times. I think it could win an award as the most depressing anime in history, since they all die (that’s not a spoiler, it’s history) and in a bad way. Guillotined, shot, suicides, crushed by tuberculosis. Not to miss a thing. Yet I liked it as a child, even knew the whole theme song by heart, not so much because it infused me with cheerfulness and joie de vivre, but because I wanted to be like Oscar. I must say that her charm had definitely made an impression on me. There was something special about this cartoon, starting with the theme song and the image of her wrapped in thorns, I couldn’t explain it, maybe the fascination for history, for this era of unbridled wealth before the revolution, or it was just her, such a majestic and indecipherable figure.
Female, but raised as a boy by the “good father who wanted a little boy” (so the song says) at 14 she became Marie Antoinette’s personal guard and remained so for the next 20 years, when the revolution broke out and she took the side of the people. She is the most skilled swordswoman in all of Versailles, always on her white horse and followed by the faithful André, who is secretly in love with her, she always takes the side of the weakest and wins any duel; everyone, both men and women are captivated by her charm. Last summer during a flu week I decided to give myself a shot of life by re-watching the whole series and many questions came up.
Is Oscar trans? If it weren’t for her father, would she still be this way? How does she experience her gender identity? And most importantly, why doesn’t she throw herself into André’s arms in the first episode instead of waiting for this poor fellow to end up blind and with a bullet in his chest in the last episode!?!! André certainly helped me set expectations too high. Good, kind, patient. Handsome, even. The perfect man indeed. He accepts his role as the heroine’s helper, not being frightened by her, on the contrary, always remaining first and foremost a faithful friend, even when he thinks he has no hope with her. How many men like that are around? I don’t know about you, but I’ve never met a single one. In fact, I don’t know how many times I’ve heard that if you are too smart, with too much character, too beautiful, just too much, you scare men away, you are destined to be alone because that would challenge their vulnerable masculinity. It certainly made me realize that André is pretty much one of the very few examples I’ve seen (in a book, movie, or cartoon) of a man choosing to be a woman’s sidekick. Not saying it has always to be this way, only noticing it’s not a well-represented reality.
But back to Oscar. Whether she is trans or not I honestly don’t know, because basically she lives as a man because her father decided so. But maybe, don’t we all live “as women” and “as men” because that’s how we were taught? Oscar questions gender roles, which are still firmly in place today, but were certainly even more pronounced during the Ancien Régime. In order to live “as a man,” Oscar does what every self-respecting man must do in our society: she represses her emotions. She even goes one step further, that is, she renounces love altogether because, being attracted to men, she cannot accept the subordinate role in the relationship that would be expected. This inner conflict is seen very well in episode 25, in which Oscar in spite of herself realizes that she’s in love with Count Fersen (Marie Antoinette’s lover) and this event undermines her security from the ground up, perhaps for the first time in her life she recognizes herself as a vulnerable human being because she realizes that another person can have power over her. Until the end of the anime, Oscar decides to give up love in order to be her own master, but then thankfully she reconsiders and gives herself permission to love and be loved.
Maybe without love we live with more control and less risk, but I don’t think we can feel truly alive. As Oscar admits at the end:
“André, when we are together, I feel alive.”
Watching Lady Oscar again may not have given me joy and lightheartedness, but it certainly made me reflect on many things, even thoughts and dynamics within myself.
