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Introduction
A beautiful baby girl is born on the stormy Christmas Eve of 1755 in the private Jarjeyes Mansion, not so far from the Palace of Versailles. She is the sixth daughter of the Jarjeyes family, thus her father, General Jarjeyes, Head Commander of the Palace Guards, desperate for an heir, makes his decision. He is going to raise his daughter as a boy and name her Oscar. In the time of great turmoil of the approaching French Revolution, blooms a beautiful rose... The Rose of Versailles.



Oscar François de Jarjeyes is a character created by Riyoko Ikeda, a Japanese shoujo manga artist, in her best-selling manga series, The Rose of Versailles. It was first published in 1972 in Margaret, a shoujo manga magazine. Then it was
collected into a set of five hardcovers, gaining its place in the bookshelves as a classic. It became so popular that a theater version, dramatized by the all-female Japanese theatrical group Takarazuka, a 40-episode-long anime series that has been broadcasted internationally and a live action movie directed by Jacques Demy was made.

RoV is basically an overview of the 34 years before the French Revolution by showing extracts from the royal people that lived during that time. Contrary to common belief, Oscar isn't the main character of this extraordinary story. There are four main characters, two being historical: Marie Antoinette, the last queen of France, known for her extravagance, Fersen, a Swedish count, also the the queen's lover, Oscar, the queen's protector and André, Oscar's fellow servant and hopeless lover.

The story of RoV is so down-to-earth and true to the history that the two fictional characters, blend in it. When I was reading The Biography of Marie Antoinette by Stefan Zweig, which is one of the books Riyoko Ikeda used while creating the story, I noticed that everything was going exactly as in RoV but only Oscar and André are missing. They are, in my opinion, two of the greatest fictional characters ever created.

Oscar, however, is always personally more special to me. In the following sections I will explain what makes her so unique and precious. If you're new to RoV you might get a bit lost while reading because I sometimes don't provide background info on characters or events so this isn't the perfect place to learn about it. Also, my site is full of spoilers about the series. This site is, however, very informative about RoV and if you want the watch the anime episodes (which I highly recommend) go to the Miscellaneous section.