Rosencraft vs. Rosenkreuz
What is in a name? Names are easily changed (relatively speaking anyway). They are important enough, but hold little intrinsic substance or value. Their value is entirely what is place on them, but oneself and by others. Spelling, pronunciation, meaning... these are all part of a name, and therefore they must be considered when engaging in the act of assigning a name.
At the start of the Book of the Shadows I wasn't entirely certain what name to use for the family. The initial impulse was to retain complete synchronicity with the source material. So, for example, Tea Hawkins in my story would be Tea Gardner or Anzu Masaki.
The problem with that is a number of my characters lack any family name. Yami is Yami/Atem. The Dark Magician Girl is Mana. They don't have a family name to call them by. That would make things difficult within my story to presuppose, based on the format of my story, that there is no family name to attest to them.
So I needed one. At first I was planning to go with the name Rosenkreuz. It's a name that carries with it certain allusions in the real world, but my choice was only loosely based on that. There was a PS2 game around 2003. It was part of the Yu-Gi-Oh franchise and was called Duelist of the Roses.It was one of the more interesting takes on the card game, re-imagining the War of the Roses in British history and the card game as one played out on a chessboard, and essentially is what the duel in Chapter 6 of my book is based on.
In any event, the alternate history version of Kaiba had the family name of Rosenkruez. I thought, at the time, that I would focus more attention in my story on a familial connection between Yami and Seto. But as I was developing the story, I didn't much see myself playing that up too much. Furthermore, I originally intended to follow the uncommon affiliations within that game. If memory serves, that would mean Yami's mother would have been Mai.
What's more, using a single video game iteration as the basis for that justification didn't seem to me to be highly logical. So, I needed a new name. At that time I began fidgeting with my concept of the All-Language, which is essentially a fictional language that represents the origin of all language. Through this concept of a language, certain words have a meaning that is parallel to their otherwise commonly known meaning. This may even mean combining words from different languages, retaining their meaning from that other language.
I'll save explaining the details of the language for another time.
But from that I came up with the name Rosencraft. It means, "magic in the roses". It is meant to be an allusion to the chosen motif of the family; the symbolism of roses in relation to the family and their preeminence in magic.
I didn't completely abandon the name Rosenkruez. As I continued, I recast the name. I use it, albeit with a slightly different spelling, as an alias and as a name for their alternate selves of an alternate universe. The relative similarity, but fundamental difference between these two names, is important in that it represents the same things about those who hold the names of Rosencraft and Rosenkruez - similar but fundamentally different.That story will come with Book III.
At the start of the Book of the Shadows I wasn't entirely certain what name to use for the family. The initial impulse was to retain complete synchronicity with the source material. So, for example, Tea Hawkins in my story would be Tea Gardner or Anzu Masaki.
The problem with that is a number of my characters lack any family name. Yami is Yami/Atem. The Dark Magician Girl is Mana. They don't have a family name to call them by. That would make things difficult within my story to presuppose, based on the format of my story, that there is no family name to attest to them.
So I needed one. At first I was planning to go with the name Rosenkreuz. It's a name that carries with it certain allusions in the real world, but my choice was only loosely based on that. There was a PS2 game around 2003. It was part of the Yu-Gi-Oh franchise and was called Duelist of the Roses.It was one of the more interesting takes on the card game, re-imagining the War of the Roses in British history and the card game as one played out on a chessboard, and essentially is what the duel in Chapter 6 of my book is based on.
In any event, the alternate history version of Kaiba had the family name of Rosenkruez. I thought, at the time, that I would focus more attention in my story on a familial connection between Yami and Seto. But as I was developing the story, I didn't much see myself playing that up too much. Furthermore, I originally intended to follow the uncommon affiliations within that game. If memory serves, that would mean Yami's mother would have been Mai.
What's more, using a single video game iteration as the basis for that justification didn't seem to me to be highly logical. So, I needed a new name. At that time I began fidgeting with my concept of the All-Language, which is essentially a fictional language that represents the origin of all language. Through this concept of a language, certain words have a meaning that is parallel to their otherwise commonly known meaning. This may even mean combining words from different languages, retaining their meaning from that other language.
I'll save explaining the details of the language for another time.
But from that I came up with the name Rosencraft. It means, "magic in the roses". It is meant to be an allusion to the chosen motif of the family; the symbolism of roses in relation to the family and their preeminence in magic.
I didn't completely abandon the name Rosenkruez. As I continued, I recast the name. I use it, albeit with a slightly different spelling, as an alias and as a name for their alternate selves of an alternate universe. The relative similarity, but fundamental difference between these two names, is important in that it represents the same things about those who hold the names of Rosencraft and Rosenkruez - similar but fundamentally different.That story will come with Book III.
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