YMMV / The Rose of Versailles

• Alas, Poor Scrappy: Charlotte. Wince at her bratty and spoiled behavior. Weep at her suicide.
• Awesome Art: Take a book on comics, any book, and it's a given that this comic will be named as an example for outstanding page layout.
• Awesome Music: The opening and the ending songs. The OST of the entire series as a whole also count.
• Cult Classic: In the Anglophone retro anime fandom. Emphasis on classic.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
  • Very popular in Italy and France (the latter's really obvious thanks to its setting being the French Revolution, aka the French historical event). Ikeda even got the Legion d'Honneur for her work, the highest possible honor a foreigner could receive in France and other honors from Italian otaku fans and Italy's government.
  • In Italy, the series is practically in the same league with Lupin III, Sailor Moon, Dragon Ball, Saint Seiya, and Fist of the North Star in fame and its popularity is such that it still receives re-runs on local channels in the country (something that the above aforementioned anime did not receive for a while until recent remakes and sequel OVAs and series with the exception of Lupin III and Hokuto No Ken). It is also the most published shojo manga there.
  • It's a Cult Classic in Latin America.
• Genre Turning Point: The manga single-handedly proved that shoujo manga with complex plots and deep characterization could be successful; beforehand, most shoujo manga were simple stories for elementary school girls, but Berubara's appeal to teenage girls and grown women brought it a great deal of critical and commercial success.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The manga's version of Louis Antoine de Saint-Just is so feminine in appearance that Oscar, upon seeing him in uniform, assumes he's a Sweet Polly Oliver. Ikeda's later manga Dear Brother featured a Bifauxnen nicknamed "Hana no Saint-Just".
  • This becomes one for fanfiction, as the popular English fic Memories involves Oscar's reincarnation, Françoise, to have dreams of her and the events of the original series, as well as being haunted by Oscar in her waking hours during the second half. Françoise even refers to Oscar as her doppelgänger. Several years after the fic was completed, a story about Oscar meeting her ghostly double, for completely different reasons, gets published.
• Jerkass Woobie: Charlotte de Polignac is shown as a total Spoiled Brat in her first scenes. The Break the Cutie process that follows and finishes with her suicide is legendary.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Jeanne having Nicolas whip Rosalie to force her out of the noble mansion she was living in... then manipulating him into killing the kind woman who took her in AND burning down her house so she could become the heir.
  • Anime!Saint-Just the Nobility Serial Killer planned to kill a Duke and his wife and child brutally, just to send a message.
  • Henri de Guemene killing a street urchin merely for robbing him. Specially despite Rosalie's desperate tries to get him to spare the victim.
  • Polignac (in the anime), when she subjects the mentally fragile Rosalie to psychological abuse, deception and eventually blackmail in order to force her to leave Oscar and join her family. Made doubly worse by the later revelation that she intends to marry her off to a very creepy man whose attentions caused her other daughter to commit suicide. Also, she gloats sadistically once Rosalie is broken and caves in to her demands:
    Polignac: Now, Rosalie, call me "Mother"! *Evil Laugh*
  • Hebért crosses it when he accuses Marie Antoinette of molesting her son Louis-Charles. Even Saint-Just and Robespierre were disgusted.
• Narm Charm: Oh boy, is the anime full of it. From the frequent use of the Pastel-Chalked Freeze Frame to the melodramatic Call My Name, this show was the trope setter for a lot of the devices you find in "girls" anime today. The fact that it's a late '70s show speaks for itself. Still, it manages to be quite moving.
• Nausea Fuel:
  • Louis XV has such a severe case of smallpox that before he dies, parts of his skull get exposed.
  • Diane de Soissons' decomposing body in the manga. The anime version is a good deal tamer.
• Nightmare Fuel: Now with its own page.
• One-Scene Wonder: Napoléon Bonaparte has only one speaking appearance and a non-speaking one. He still leaves one hell of an impression, managing to unsettle Oscar just by being in the same room as her.
• The Scrappy: Rosalie was considered this by Japanese fans when the manga was first serialized; she was meant to be a Naïve Everygirl that the target demographic could relate to, but she proved to be unpopular with readers (especially compared to Oscar). As a result, she was gradually written out of the plot, having very few appearances after the Black Knight arc until near the end of the story.
• Tear Jerker: My God, this series is INFAMOUS for the heart-wretching moments. See the series' Tear-Jerker page for details.
• Trans Audience Interpretation: Due to being raised as a boy and having very few problems with taking on a masculine role despite being female (and later having conflicted feelings about being made to "go back" to being a woman when her father attempts to set up an Arranged Marriage for her), there are some fans who like to interpret Oscar as transmasculine or non-binary.
• The Woobie: Some of the characters, like Oscar and Andre have their moments. Rosalie takes the cake, though: her foster mother dies, her sister turns out to be a huge Spoiled Brat who later went mad and died in the worst way possible, not to mention her sister's terrible death started the chain of the whole events and so on... God, the girl seriously needs a hug.

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