#if you enjoyed this i wrote another essay about flora entitled 'the girl in the tower' these essays are thematic sisters
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alto-tenure · 2 years ago
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Once upon a time, in a curious little village: An analysis of Curious Village and its usage of fairytale/mythological motifs
There are two major folklore-like parts of Curious Village -- the first being the idea of the Golden Apple, the ultimate treasure of Baron Reinhold. The second is the idea of a girl trapped at the top of a tower. This will explore both, some possible connections, and a couple extra things along the way.
Let's go!
We'll actually start with the idea of a "golden apple", first -- there are a couple connected myths with this one.
1) The apple that caused the Trojan War
Summary: Eris (goddess of discord [as in disagreement and infighting]), as revenge for not being invited to a really important wedding, gives a golden apple with the text "for the fairest" inscribed on it. This causes a conflict between Hera, Aphrodite, and Athena, for which when they ask a mediator (Paris of Troy) to bestow the apple upon someone picks Aphrodite, who offered him love (in the form of Helen...who was already married). The fact that Helen was already married was the reason the Trojan War started, since her ex wasn't super happy about that.
2) Atalanta
Summary: Atalanta is discovered by her biological family after having been raised in the wilderness and gaining acclaim for being a huntress. She says that she'll only marry the person that can beat her in a footrace. The person who beats her in a footrace does so by appealing to Aphrodite beforehand, who provides him with three irresistible golden apples, which he uses to distract her.
Note that both of these golden apples connect to love in some way, specifically romantic love because that's considered Aphrodite's general domain -- she's especially associated with them.
This sets up an association. The golden apple is a motif that represents romance. Perhaps it's because Flora is the product of the love between Baron Reinhold and Lady Violet?
Or, perhaps, as we'll see later, there's a lot of set-up for romance that is subverted.
Again, these are just two stories that include golden apples -- while these are two prominent reasons that the symbolism continued, it's only the ones that I'm most familiar with and are also most relevant to the point. Wikipedia has a whole page about how the golden apple is used as a symbol, if you're interested in further reading.
The other notable symbol is the idea of a girl at the top of a tower that is difficult to get into. In western stories, this is generally an allusion to Rapunzel.
The story of Rapunzel goes something like this, depending on who's telling it: a girl is locked in a tower by the woman who adopted her with no way to escape. A prince comes along who asks her to let down her hair, and given that she doesn't really have any other contact with the world besides this, she does so. Eventually, she and the prince fall in love -- and eventually, her guardian finds out. Her guardian cuts off Rapunzel's hair, and lures the prince in to threaten him away from Rapunzel, after which he leaves the tower and finds her.
The parallels are simple enough to draw: Flora's parents died, leaving her in the care of Lady Dahlia, who...is more complicated than she seems, but the idea is still the same: Flora goes on without a mother and lives in the tower. There's no record of any other visitors to St. Mystere before Layton and Luke and Don Paolo, but the search for the Golden Apple included all of the Reinhold family, robots as they are. The village of St. Mystere is not exactly the friendliest to outsiders, which is probably multiple parts programming and not very much experience themselves. It's been two months since the death of Baron Reinhold was publicly announced and the family gave up on the search themselves by the time we've arrived, but that doesn't discount the possibility of other explorers or other members of the family acting -- people like Pavel that hear about the myth later, or some other Reinhold sending a letter only for that person to fail the puzzles.
Flora chooses Layton and Luke at the very end, to leave them. There's an argument to be made that she chose earlier, when she dropped the amusement park ticket, but that's more ambiguous and I'm not sure I'm entirely on-board with that argument, given what comes next.
Remember the romanticism of the Golden Apple and how Rapunzel was saved by the man she eventually married? Yeah? This is subverted due to the relationship between Layton and Flora being familial instead of romantic.
However, in the Japanese text of the game Flora still expected a romance rather than a family from the person that saves her.¹ Her expectations join the narrative setup of golden apples and Rapunzel, and are thoroughly subverted because the relationship between Layton and Flora has absolutely no romantic tension whatever.
It's an interesting twist on the fairytale -- the idea that the person that rescues you isn't the person you're going to marry, but instead someone you can come to see as a parental figure. I appreciate the subversion of the traditional fairytale. It's not your typical fairytale -- it's a story about familial love specifically. Romance need not apply.
¹ I can't find the line where Flora calls herself a bride candidate specifically, but during Baron Reinhold's pre-recorded speech, he says the following: "何年がすぎているのかはわからぬが、私の死は、娘が成長し、婚姻が交わせる歳になったとき、公表するようにと、マシューに頼んでおいたはず。" This translates to (approximately; I'm not a Japanese speaker, this is retooled machine translation): I don't know how many years have passed, but I asked Matthew to make my death public when my daughter was old enough to marry. The intent is more defined either way; the person who retrieved Flora from St. Mystere was intended to be her spouse. Flora says the following as well: "そして、ここにたどり着き、私を迎えにきた方こそが、私の人生を捧げるにふさわしい人物なのだと。" Translation: "And the person who arrived here and came to pick me up was the one worthy of dedicating my life to." Compare this with the English version of the line -- "Papa said that whoever came for me would be someone I could trust with my life." The implications of these two lines are vastly different, and the connotation of "one worthy of dedicating my life to" is almost certainly marriage.
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