The Duelist of York

As the Rose Duelist, Harriet collects an item from her canon called the Rose Cards. They are a crucial part of the story and have numerous special powers, which I shall now describe here for the benefit of all!

The Rose Cards' main role in the story is the MacGuffin used by Simon McMooran that summoned the Rose Duelist from their time. According to Rosenkreuz, combining the transport powers of the White Rose Cards with the time powers of the Red Rose Cards is what allows the summoning to work; this spell is called the "Rose Summoning." Simon also warned us about how the cards can be used to perform the "Spell of Doom."

And of course, after all of this wonderful setup, that is never expanded on again. Thanks a lot you shitty game. But that's what we're here for!

( All you ever need to know about Rose Cards beneath the cut. )

Day 1
demon tape
it's more of a hallway really
actually your dark side
you just don't want it cause it's meat

Day 2
theories
ballistics are the fingerprints of a gun
that doesn't look good to a jury
maybe she's just been befriending too many murderers lately
why would he focus his efforts on the person with the clearest alibi?
home...
you're demanding my entire life

Day 3/4
pokemon are really cute (and that's weird)
weird tv

Day 5
theories
don't steal my ideas!
we shouldn't blame dead people
could you offer any perspective on her character?
dating equals death
nothing personal
what's a kouhai?
Malik's baby brother aura
please tell her there was only one drowning incident
eats them up inside
avoids doing his own dirty work
stupid to blame you
GET IN MY DECK
Julius' death is the only thing that matters
owes some apologies
teaches Kaoru to make coffee

Day 6
Unofficial Duel Monsters
trying on kimonos
the place I've been living is very... unpredictable

Day 7
Risk
that explains the air of self-importance
people are going to think she killed you

Day 8
something like hypnosis?
pokemon pets
it could represent someone who had no choice
how much control does that someone have over you?
it's a bit melodramatic to call the two of us a 'voting block'
stop making her appreciate your 'you know what'
silly of me
fairies are simply the best
klavier is a rock type
become a mighty infernape ritsu
Ivy?
the bad things here are only possessing the best among us
the case is shaped around the blame of the truly guilty
wisecracks are the best way of dealing with intense discomfort
i'm sick of feeling like I'm waiting to die

Day 9
lol nothing

Day 10
we allowed someone to lose faith in their innocence
SOUL SHIT

Day 11
Harriet ignores the entire case except for judging the Sohma clan
motorcycle date...!
allegedly sparring with Kouha

Day 12
whoops nothin

Day 13
maybe if we started cutting people open

Day 14
touchy cat
which of the girls is the virgin
throw in her feelings somehow
I'm sure your sense of humor is much better
narrowing down Takashis
what, like a confessional?
to have your 'self' twisted into darkness
channeling to kick some ass
don't you have better things to do?

Day 15
water wings

Day 16

it's only a little help to fill the hole in his heart without you
an easy project
did you want a turn?

Day 17
theory
he always tried really hard
murdersafes for all!
just because the motive was the same
a person who enjoys violence more than anything else
weren't most people in this case sort of terrible?
enabling witchcraft addiction
Malik's not my boyfriend!
devious little thing
you're mistaken
she was our roommate as well
Unlock: Harriet's Cabinet!? Her bad taste in friends.
the cards are a medium
mum's always changing her hair color
as much an illusion as a witch's cookie cottage

Day 18
as fast as a roller-coaster
they didn't have any coasters in the 1480s

Day 19
and me without my cat's pajamas
don't go away

Day 20
wasn't in her right mind
theory
sleeping through his own parent's murder
the abusers deserved it
we can be sure now that neither of us are possessed
it takes a different kind of strength to endure hardships

Day 21
you have way too much time on your hands, mate

Day 22
you absolute pillock!

Day 23
theory
superhero crap
who knows with superpowers
a perfectly respectable colour
didn't like depending on her
we still have two more cabinets to go through
that's a pretty positive light you're painting her in
she could stop time...
complete with a destructive split personality
when it comes to judging you, I have way more experience!
but Johnny is still to blame
I used to be a regular person
that cabinet belongs to me
Harriet's Cabinet: The Duel at Rennes
you're more than your hatred now
immobilize him with his own despair
frequently confused by you lot
we don't surrender in this game
you want blood on your hands that bad?
what's wrong? aren't I good enough?
you took his hope
what can she even say?
come up with a reason why they're worth saving

Day 24
maybe there's a way to get him more power?
who would seriously vote for you?

Day ????
I love you
what was any of this for?
you've become responsible for my life
my art skills are passable
was she going to get rescued by a whale?
drowned rats no more
i hope that you go out with your head high
i'd have never been guilty at all

[Ever since the last execution, Harriet's been struggling more and more with the tricks the nightmares are playing on her mind, and trying so hard not to react that her expression has lapsed into a permanent poker face. Probably concerning all things considered. Especially when one of those things is some kind of eldritch horror stealing away into the walls. The timing of its appearance was impeccable to set wild Harriet's paranoia. It is rot. It is guilt with teeth. It has possessed him... or has it her? She was there... one was free... and now...

Now Dupree's body is juxtaposed with that giant inflatable black cat, and just like it used to back in the cat's game, another world blossoms around the corpse. White rooms - no, a sinking island? - and perhaps this isn't Dupree at all.

It looks like her friend. The one she might have been tempted to kill for to protect. She reminded Harriet so much of him, for so many reasons, but all of them completely superficial projection in the end.

Emma will find her kneeling by the bisected corpse, getting her argyle leggings all bloody. There's so much of it, you almost couldn't blame her for mistaking it for water.]

Don't you dare... give up again! I already lost you once, I won't...

[Now she's grabbing its shirt like she's arguing with it.]

Do you think I did this to you? No, no. Sure, the last bit of rot was never found. But by now it must have gone to him. So don't despair anymore. You and I will escape, I promise-

Player Info
Name: Des
18 or Older?: Yes
Contact: Plurk: deathdesu AIM: Macrocosmsays Discord: deathdesu#4323 Skype/Email: Destinicat@hotmail.com
Player Type: New
Invited By: N/A (but lbr, it was Val)

Character Info
Name: Harriet Vaughn - or as she's known in canon, The Rose Duelist.
Canon: Yu-Gi-Oh! The Duelists of the Roses (OC)
Canon Point: The ending of the White Rose Chapter.
Age: 20
History: Let's get our links squared away: Yu-Gi-Oh! on YGO wiki, Duelists of the Roses on YGO Wiki and TV Tropes, but these are pretty incomplete, so I'll just go ahead and give you my transcripts for the game: Red Rose Chapter, White Rose Chapter. They're a short read, this wasn't a very deep game. I'll be beefing all of this up with my analysis. Meanwhile, feel free to stop reading the red rose chapter once you've gotten to the divergence where the Rose Duelist chooses their side.

Duelists of the Roses was known in Japan as True Duel Monsters 2, Succeeded Memories. It is the sequel to Yu-Gi-Oh! Forbidden Memories, where you play as Yami Yugi in both ancient Egypt and modern day Japan, but with a name of your choosing inserted as the Egyptian prince's true name. None of that directly relates to DotR, which takes place in an entirely different time period, that is of course England in 1485. However, the Rose Duelist is said to be called from the future, the modern time. For the sake of world building, that is being assumed as the Forbidden Memories world, close to the same point in time. Unlike the forbidden memories Yu-Gi-Oh cast, though, Harriet was pulled from her home in South London. As you may expect, then, she would have nothing to do with any of that, but she was a duelist - given the prophecies surrounding the Rose Duelist being the only one good enough to defeat Rosenkreuz, it can be assumed she was at least the best duelist in the UK (possibly also France, where many of the Lancastrians were holed up for their part in the card game war.) Outside the Duelist Life, day by day proceeds as usual and magic is not a thing that people know about. Harriet was a very typical young woman attending a university, though I wouldn't put it past the universe to still have stupidly intense games for no reason. She may have had some run-ins with roving gangs of evil croquet players which she overcame with guile and/or trust in her mates. Overall though, she had a life where she and her gaming were simple and pure, befitting white rose symbolism.

On the other hand, dueling in medieval England is based much more directly on the duels from ancient times. Like shadow games, they are tools for battle. In fact, each duel map in game is surrounded on the outside by shadowy dark nothingness and gold rings resembling magic circles inlet with disturbingly human eyeballs. It appears that, not unlike the situation with the Millennium Items, the Rose Cards have the power to bring these duels to life in a way that they are harnessing for their power struggles - several enemy lines in the white rose side in particular are worded in a way that could easily be interpreted as intent to kill the rose duelist.

This is where the White Rose Duelist comes from when the Lancastrians summon her to champion a cause for them and capture Rose Cards. ....It's a concept that she immediately loathes. She feels no connection to this war, or this life threatening dueling, and they just assume she will do this without question, because it's "honorable" - but really it's just infuriating, she's not a soldier and more importantly, she is nobody's genie. Still, she grins and goes along with it, because what choice does she have if she wants to go home? Then Rosenkreuz appears, and he gives her a choice. Seizing the chance, Harriet goes against history (she'd know that the Tudors won the war) to help the side she prefers - the side with power, who is pledging to send her home, who did not imprison her in their shitty time period in the first place.

Rosenkreuz will equip her with everything she needs to defend herself and travel alone in this time period, and teach her how to fight - it turns out there are plenty of non-card game militia in this war as well, and she'll have to get through them on the way to the various cities the enemy is hiding. After that, she faces a gauntlet of duels, with only her monsters for company. The entire Lancastrian side treats her like a total villain. She keeps a brave face and embraces the role. Fear turns her ruthless. Her aim is always to end battles as quickly as she can, so she tailors her strategies around powering up to absurd numbers and cornering the opponent's deck leaders with direct damage. Because of Soul Resonance(tm), this is basically the same as attacking the duelist themselves.

Still, the Lancastrian duelists give her a run for her money - Margaret nearly crushes her when she's still getting good, Morton attacks her psyche, and Jack Cade traps her powerful monsters with swathes of virus infected landscape to employ his own, more sneaky direct damage strategy. In a final climactic battle with Henry Tudor, he makes another attempt to reach out to the rose duelist. It doesn't win him the rose card, but his anger and loss only fuels his resolve. Harriet already knows how his mission will go. What's important is she's finished her end of the deal.

Rosenkreuz calls her back to Stonehenge, likely with the white rose card's teleportation magic. Harriet has all of the red rose cards. Rather than immediately sending her home, though, he invokes a ritual to take over the world. Instead of obeying him though, the demon he summoned just tells him off for sealing away his brother (Nitemare from Forbidden Memories) and he will feed on every wretched human on the planet as revenge. To which Rosenkreuz is just like, "Whoops. Well Rose Duelist, you're the only one who can defeat this guy, have at it." This is a malevolent evil deity, but by this point, Harriet is bitter enough to pull herself through literally anything. As you might expect, Manawyddan Fab Llyr is ridiculously overpowered and a huge cheater, but being ridiculously overpowered is her 'strategy' too, so she does ok. The Guardian is defeated. Now Harriet demands answers, and that's how you get Rosenkreuz pouring out his whole backstory and apologizing with a pendant that she can show to his descendants. Though technically anticlimactic, both of them have a whole entire feel, and it's amazing. At least with this, she finally gets to go home. And since Forbidden Memories Kaiba is a weirdo with the Millennium Rod, she might not even be kicked out of his office...

Until she ends up in Ahalpuh, anyway. Try to keep her away from anything flammable.

Personality:

Harriet represents the duelist from the White Rose side of the game. Though the Rose Duelist is canonically a silent protagonist, a lot can be gleaned from this rather huge choice. She's a person with self centered motives that doesn't trust people blindly (yes, she knows the Lancastrians are actually the ones who win the rose war, but who's to say they would really send her home, if her dueling is that valuable to them?) Instead she would ally to whoever had the most power or aligned more closely to her own goals. While dueling the gauntlet of Henry "Yugi" Tudor's friends and allies, they all speak of the Rose Duelist as a treacherous betrayer, a villain. While the reality is not quite so black and white, it is at least true that she's willing to deceive people to meet an end.

Of course in her mind, she is completely in the right. If anything, she's just too stubborn in her pure realism to see "chance for heroism and justice" instead of "kidnapped to fight in a stupid power struggle." She would never hold back despite being demonized for it. In that sense, she's a strong person, one who follows her path no matter what anyone says. She follows her own standard of measurement for how she and others should act.

That being said, she still came from the modern age, where she used to be a regular duelist. So coming from such origins, she's actually pretty average. On the surface she seems upbeat and friendly enough, and it's mostly not an act. She originally came from a peaceful time, where she had friends and dreams. She really can be a good person, and she even resonates best with cherubic fairy type cards, so her inevitable shrewdness was a huge surprise to the Lancastrians. This suggests that she can bury her true feelings pretty well to act normal, and in the beginning, when helping them appeared to be her only option, she would have certainly had to do this. When she needs to shelve her emotions, her usual tactic is to cover them up with humor or sarcasm. She does the same thing if she's in trouble or suffering, not liking to show weakness to anyone.

As her actions show, her chief motivator is getting herself home. Being stuck in the 1400s is obviously a huge culture shock, and would be enough on its own to make anyone freak out. Being away from her world makes her increasingly weary and anxious. Trapped in time, and then subsequently trapped in another world - She'll always get very frustrated about the time passing and worry about whether, by the time she's made it back, she'll have changed so much she won't even fit into her own life anymore. She wants to survive, but she doesn't want the things precious to her to slip away.

For the rest of her personality, I turn to symbolism. As the white rose duelist, Harriet holds some values that are attributed to white roses - the concept of innocence, in particular, is one she holds dear. Mostly this manifests when she feels internal conflict or guilt because of her own loss of innocence, the bitterness that grew out of everything that happened in the rose war. Her opinions and reactions to others can also be changed one way or another based on whether or not she perceives someone as an innocent. It's not an extreme bias as she's willing to associate with some very shady types, but she'd want to protect an innocent if she could.

White roses are associated with loyalty and trust - which will seem a bit strange to point out since the first thing she did in the game was betray someone, but she was never loyal to them in the first place. Instead, she was steadfastly loyal to the home she was trying to return to, and gained the loyalty of Rosenkreuz in return. She can actually be fiercely loyal to the right person or people - which makes her similar to many other characters represented on the white rose side. She may not trust blindly, but when it's been earned, it's there to stay. White roses are also associated with secrecy, as in medieval times, speaking amid white roses was supposed to indicate a confidential conversation. This ties back in to her habit to conceal not feel, but it goes a little further than that. She's willing to look the other way when her trusted allies are doing something heinous, such as Rosenkreuz saying "yeah hey, I'm not gonna stop pissing off world threatening card deities in my quest to get one of them to contract with me, I'm just gonna keep doing that after I send you home." Like technically she'd know that the world would be fine because she came from its future, but it's still kind of a thing?

Sample: With Alphys on the TDM
Monster Choices: Chimera, Carbuncle, Vampire, Dragon, Nymph, Fae

[ For what was now the fourth time, Harriet found herself in an unusual new place. The dizzying, falling sensation that had brought her there was not unlike being summoned to Stonehenge, nor was it unlike tumbling down the rabbit hole to Wonderland. But never before had she seen a place like this: a veritable sea of colorful lights and buildings, with heart decorations wherever you turned. In stark contrast to the Campus, it was teeming with people, and not just that... were those robots?

Finding it difficult to take it all in at once, she spun around to find some kind of direction... and in doing so, spotted something that was familiar in the futuristic world. A person... he wasn't someone she'd ever run up to excitedly before, despite how far they'd come in their relationship. But that was exactly what she was doing right now.]

Bakura!

[He wouldn't know any more than she did, she was sure. But it was better than figuring things out alone...]

[Sometime during the day, Harriet and Malik approach Kouha with a thinly veiled excuse to check out the infirmary together. As Harriet chats on the way over, Malik is being eerily quiet. He can probably guess they have something on their mind, which is confirmed when Harriet locks the door.]

So anyway. We noticed you were really laying into Austria at the trial. Do you think she's the one who's possessed?