#it's so tragic. it's so sad. unwound future gets a wonky you tried star because it's actually *her* most of the time

[alto-tenure]

the girl in the tower

Flora Reinhold never left the tower. The writers wouldn’t let her.

I’m not writing this essay to say Flora does not have agency. In fact, she actually has a lot of it. Layton offers her the choice to come with him; it is up to her whether to lay St. Mystere to rest; and she is never forced to come along on the adventures, it is always her decision. Even before she’s left St. Mystere and left behind being the Golden Apple, she’s around haunting the narrative -- it’s not as though she had no choice while being trapped in the tower.

The Rapunzel archetype tends to be imprisoned. Flora was not being forced to stay in the village. She could have physically left. It was emotional attachment and a sense of obligation that imprisons her, which can be just as much a force as a person. And, of course, Flora had to be there, for the sake of the plot. They frame Flora leaving the village as Layton giving her freedom, but she’s not free.

The tower was destroyed. She was supposed to no longer be the girl in the tower; there wasn’t even a tower for her to return to.

The thing about girls in towers is that their agency is constantly called into question by the people that built the towers and the others around them. Still, it was Rapunzel’s choice to let her hair down for the prince, and it was Flora’s choice to leave with Layton and Luke.

So who built the tower?

Bruno may have built St. Mystere’s tower, but the writers are the reason Flora was even in the tower in the first place. And even though they destroyed it, they never really let her leave.

Despite all the examples at the beginning of this that demonstrate Flora’s agency, Flora’s ability to fend for herself is constantly questioned by Layton and Luke -- the narrator and the protagonist.

This isn’t the main problem, however. It’s that the narrative proves them right for questioning it by kidnapping Flora. Not once, but twice. The writers acknowledge that Flora is abandoned, that it is wrong for them to abandon her just because they think she’s less capable.

But they won’t let her leave the tower they’ve built. Diabolical Box treats Flora’s rescue as a secondhand thought rather than a mission objective, but Unwound Future actively makes rescuing Flora the priority. She is stuck in the tower again, and so she must be saved.

You can take the girl from the tower, but you cannot take the tower from the girl. Flora is constrained by her role in the narratives the writers constructed. The adventures were designed for Layton and Luke, after all. They let her break free for a bit where it fits -- they need her on the train, they need her in Future London, they need her to foreshadow her own presence in the tower. They need her to have some freedom, but only as far as it goes to serve the plot. They need someone in the party for Don Paolo to imitate so he can get to Folsense; they need someone expendable for Clive to take.

Flora is the girl in the tower; she is made to be imprisoned. She was supposed to be free of it, but the writers never freed her from the tower. She will always be the Golden Apple, the Mysterious Girl, the Rapunzel looking for someone that will save her in the eyes of the story. Her purpose in the narrative is not as a third investigator to the Layton and Luke dynamic. Her purpose in the narrative of Diabolical Box and Unwound Future is just as it was in Curious Village; to be imprisoned and then set free by Layton and Luke.

She is never given a chance to exist beyond that.