Rose Quartz, the former leader of the Crystal Gems and the mother of Steven Universe, was
once seen as a mysterious figure that was almost perfect and extremely powerful.
But with the latest batch of Steven Universe episodes, everything we thought we knew about
her might as well just be wrong.
I’m Hailey from Cartoon Universe and in this video I’m going to address everything
that we learned about Rose Quartz in the season 5 episode, Your Mother and Mine.
Turns out the Rose most of us wanted simply never existed.
Yes, she did end up a legend. So much so that each of the Off Color gems had a different
version of her creation. This makes sense because they have only known life on Homeworld,
where they really hate this gem and everything that she did.
“Don’t worry, Rose Quartz isn’t real” –Flourite, Your Mother and Mine
Do I hear a new theory in the making?
All jokes aside, we finally get the full story from Garnet. Or well, for now it’s the full
story. There’s only so much you can fit into eleven minutes!
There has actually been much controversy in the past about where Rose Quartz was made.
But here it was 100% confirmed that Rose Quartz was indeed made on Earth.
Yet people did consider her a Homeworld gem for a while.
This may have been partially due to her status as being the leader of the Crystal Gems. Surely
she already had some power on homeworld and therefore was easily able to rally together
an army once she came to Earth!
In addition, there were a few times where Pearl mentioned Homeworld and how the Crystal
Gems had to sacrifice ever going back there.
“Some Gems, like your mother, Garnet, and myself, felt that this was unfair to the
life that already existed here, and so we swore to never let the Earth be used for their...
purposes. Even if it meant- Even if it meant we could never go home.” –Pearl, On the
Run
Pearl specifically says “we” could never go home. Since this is the same episode we
learned that Amethyst was from Earth, including that sentence made Rose’s origin unclear.
Even Rose supposedly called Earth home.
"Please, please understand if we lose, we'll be killed, and if we win, we can never go
home."- Holo-Rose, Rose's Scabbard
So Amethyst would never consider Homeworld her home, as she says to Steven in On the
Run, but Rose would despite likely never going there?
It's possible that since had experiences with Pink Diamond and the way gems worked for a
few years it was possible that she was able to call Homeworld home, but it's not the most
logical conclusion.
Gems likely do classify home very differently than humans, but this detail just really bugged
me.
Regardless, we had little indication that Rose was such a young gem that had only experienced
life on Earth.
But then we learned more about kindergartens.
In both the beta and prime kindergartens, every gem made there was a Quartz. There were
Amethysts, Jaspers, and Carnelians.
Obviously, Rose Quartz is also a quartz, so it’s very logical that she was made on Earth.
Then we also got Bismuth saying:
“Just another Quartz soldier, made right here in the dirt, but she was different. And
she was different because she decided to be.” –Bismuth
Some would have considered that the nail in the coffin, but not everyone was totally sold
until Your Mother and Mine where there can be no questioning as to where Rose was from.
However, this confirmation on Rose’s origins raises some concerns.
This means that Rose never really had the ties to homeworld that we thought she did,
so it was much easier for her to give up a place she had never really lived.
She was never controlled by homeworld for thousands of years, being nothing more than
a mindless worker as she was forced to help take over planet after planet.
In fact as I mentioned before, she may have never even been to homeworld!
So the fact that Rose made claims like:
“Something about Earth that set gems free”
Is almost total nonsense.
Sure, she did witness the effect of Earth on Homeworld gems that she was able to get
onto her side. But who is to say that if Rose had been on another colony and got inspired,
the same thing wouldn’t have happened?
We know that there were other places with life that Homeworld conquered, such as the
place that the Jungle Moon orbited likely had organic life.
Earth was likely only special because Rose was created at the right place and the right
time, with this being Pink Diamond's first colony. This was not the rebellion of some
gem on Pink Diamond's court that had been inspired because of the uniqueness of Earth
compared to all other colonies.
So, what else about Rose is now completely out the window?
How about her relationship with the diamonds?
Just being a quartz soldier, it may have been difficult to even get an audience with Pink
Diamond. We don't know the specifics of how PD ran her colony, but I would think that
no random solider could talk to a diamond without at least going through an agate first.
Only after Rose Quartz began to make a scene did PD summon her.
Not to mention the fact that Rose had likely never met another diamond.
Perhaps she met them in the zoo, but as far as we can tell from Your Mother and Mine,
she never actually went there.
Speaking of the Zoo, many fans were convinced that this is the location that Rose Quartz
was specifically created for, as her healing powers and ability to be passionate about
human kind would make perfect sense for a job like this, not for dragging rocks around
as we were shown in the flashback.
It was probably more ideal she was already on earth and didn’t have to travel there
from the zoo. But I feel that the story would have been stronger if she had fell in love
with humanity through working with the zoomen. Even just seeing a small portion of what organic
life was like was able to convince her to try and save the planet.
And then when she finally did go to earth, her mind would have been blown even further.
But that was not the story we got. Once again, she was as normal as a gem could have been.
It did not even appear that Rose Quartzes were even that rare of a gem. Garnet makes
no claims of Rose having any sort of special status, even though we can tell that Rose’s
powers were extremely useful.
It’s interesting to see that Rose Quartzes alone have powers that can interact with organic
life. And this does make sense because she was made on earth in organic soil.
But then shouldn’t Amethyst and Jasper have some of these abilities as well? Just a thought
of course, but I am definitely curious about this.
That brings us to Pearl. “The Pearl who belonged to no one”
This was a huge revelation. If what Garnet says is true, then Pearl is also not the gem
we thought she was at all.
I will probably talk about this more in depth in a following video, but this does explain
why her color scheme incorporates the colors of all the diamonds and not just one like
Blue or Yellow Pearl.
I’m now very curious as to how Rose and Pearl even met in the first place.
If Pearl belonged to nobody and Rose never left Earth, how could their paths have crossed?
Without belonging to a diamond Pearl likely didn’t get to travel to earth with permission.
At the moment I am inclined to think that she snuck aboard a ship to earth and later
met Rose once she landed. Maybe she even built a spaceship herself. With homeworld technology,
anything was possible.
Or, she did still have a job but was not tied to a specific owner and met Rose through her
job. She was a fancy Pearl after all.
Back to the main topic of this video, I don’t think we are done learning about Rose Quartz’s
past just yet. Every time we learn more about her, the more she strays from what we originally
thought she was.
That’s not totally the fandom’s fault, since this view of Rose Quartz was often reinforced
by what the show told us about her.
But, with each flashback more of this gem’s true identity is revealed.
Finally, I do want to talk about the significance of Garnet being the one to tell us this story.
Can we trust Garnet with everything that was stated?
I don’t think that we can. One important detail Garnet mentioned was that Rose shattered
Pink Diamond with her famous sword. Yet, as Bismuth said:
“I designed this sword for a fair fight. It can cut through a Gem's physical form in
an instant! Destroying the body, but never the Gem.”
This was even stated in the recap video!
Perhaps after a lot of the fighting, Pink Diamond actually started to listen. She learned
from the Quartz soldier that there was a lot to love about the earth, and that the life
on this planet made it special and it should be saved from diamond rule.
This was Pink’s first colony after all, and she could have been easily influenced.
She realized it was a mistake to call on Yellow and Blue Diamond for help, and made it seem
like Rose shattered her so the fighting could stop.
She likely didn’t predict the corruption song, however.
Yet it is important to note that the only flashback footage we saw that was not stylized
was the Diamond’s attacking the Earth with the corruption song.
So any part of what Garnet told us could be wrong. It's likely that this is just what
Rose told Garnet, but someone is lying big time.
The conspiracy grows stronger…
As the saying goes, every rose has its thorn.
But before I end this video I need to know your thoughts on these newest episodes. Did
Your Mother and Mine change the way you viewed Rose Quartz? Or did you always suspect that
Rose Quartz was nothing special?
Tell me in the comments section below! Also, to stay updated on any new videos I or anyone
else on the Cartoon Universe Crew Creates, be sure to click the bell icon to stay notified!
Also follow us on twitter, facebook, and tumblr for updates!
I would also like to give a huge shoutout to a new Patreon supporter, Tyler Douglass!
All my patreon supporters are part of what keeps this channel going. We still have a
lot to cover, so stay tuned!
A few of the new tracks you hear in this video are instrumentals by Joshua Hartshorn. I will
link his youtube channel in the description below.
Thank you guys for watching, and have an animated day!