Reviews - The Rose of Versailles Volume 3

43 reviews for:

The Rose of Versailles Volume 3

Riyoko Ikeda

4.29 AVERAGE

franz_willem94's review against another edition

4.25

adventurous emotional reflective medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

merleita's review against another edition

4.0

The series was a bit all over the place in this omnibus. In some ways, that really works as it reflects Oscar's own struggles with her identity and what she wants in life. She moves from her comfortable place of privilege in the royal guard to a position in the regular military because she does not want to only protect the nobility and thus encounters new challenges due to her gender and class. She struggles with various men falling for her and family members trying to push her to suddenly conform to gender norms now that signs of upcoming social upheaval are becoming too dramatic to ignore. And she struggles with her own personal desires -- is devoting herself to the military enough, or does she need love too? Would love prevent her from living the life she needs to lead? So Oscar's character flip-flopping between different goals and desires kinda works.

Other characters don't work nearly as well. Andre especially pivots very dramatically between being sympathetic and very much not. I liked him for a long time, but I'm having a really hard time getting past a bizarre attempted murder-suicide for "love" that makes it a lot harder to view him as a legitimate love interest later. And he's not the only guy in this volume who really needs to work on consent...

Meanwhile, we don't see nearly as much of Marie Antoinette and friends (due to Oscar spending less time in the palace) but we do see enough to recognize her character growth and how it's too little too late to prevent the impending disaster. It really is quite fascinating to see a good deal of accurate history presented in the most dramatic shojo manga fashion and that is easily my favorite part of this series!