Princess Principal Episode 6: (case 18) Rouge Morgue

Remember how I said last week the emotional impact wasn’t there for me between Chise and her father? This week it definitely was, and it really does have to do with me knowing Dorothy more than Chise. Chise barely had screen time until last week, and even then her appearance was quick and the fight happened so quickly. I forgot to mention this last week, but I think the emotional impact from last week would have been stronger if we had seen some sort of flashbacks to at least give us an idea to what a great father Todo was. Last week’s episode was more bitter, while this episode was more bittersweet as there could have been a possibility of Dorothy and her father patching things up.

The mission this time was the search of a cipher in a human corpse that would arrive in a certain morgue. Control has sent Dorothy to take the case, find the corpse with the cipher, and bring it back to them. They specifically chose her because of her personal connection to the place and the man working there, her father.

And of course the reunion wasn’t a happy one. Dorothy, accompanied by Beatrice on this mission, temporarily take on jobs at the morgue so they can have an easier time to find the corpse they need. And while the old woman is showing them around and explaining their jobs, Dorothy, whose real name is actually Daisy, reunites with her father who is happy to see her. But upon meeting with this man, we can see how violent and easily angered he can get, and seeing why Dorothy has such ill feelings toward him isn’t hard to figure out. He just makes himself look worse as he threatens to hurt Beatrice when she yelled at him to act more like a father. It was a loud and emotional scene, which then led us to learn Dorothy’s (Daisy’s) backstory.

I don’t know what it is with fathers in this show but they’re the worst. And I do find it cruel that Control would assign Dorothy this mission knowing how bad and personal this all is for her. Her father used to be a great steam engineer and a great father, but after having a bad accident and losing his hand it completely changed who he was. From a loving father and husband, he turned violent and alcoholic, driving his wife away and beating Dorothy to a pulp every day. Dorothy finally made the decision one day to just leave her father, and when she did the Revolution happened to take place and with the wall erected she was separated from her father permanently. Dorothy is actually the name of her mother, so I find it interesting that Daisy would take her mother’s name for her new life. It makes me wonder because she never mentioned her mother, so we can only guess what kind of relationship she had with her.

One thing that I really loved in this episode was the little friendship/sisterly bond between Dorothy and Beatrice. They both had bad pasts with their fathers, both of them extremely abusive towards their daughters, so Dorothy found it easy to tell Beatrice everything. I saw some people saying that Chise also could have done well to work with her, and I know some people say this because they don’t particularly like Beatrice (sadface) but I think it’s only Beato that could have understood for obvious reasons. Yes, Chise had a strained relationship with her father but it was for a short time. She said she grew up happily with her father, and that he was caring and kind, singing her songs and such. It was only when he betrayed his family two years prior that their relationship changed, and we never knew what it entailed. He just went against his family and clan, but he never once raised a hand on his daughter (until the fight last episode). Chise’s case was a little different, so Beatrice being there for Dorothy was a good choice. They work well together and Beato’s sweet personality melts Dorothy’s more serious one. Also, it’s nice to see Beato interact and be friendly with someone other than Princess. But most importantly, it was great seeing another side to Dorothy because I was getting really worried about her character being one note.

Dorothy’s father was scum, but in the end it actually looked like he wanted to change his life and make things better between him and his daughter. We saw how he kept his daughter’s drawings and pictures of her, keeping them up on the wall next to his bed. And while there were still ill feelings between them, Dorothy went out of her way to copy the cipher and give her father the original so he could get the money. If he hadn’t gotten so overly greedy, maybe it could have happened. However, seeing as how the Duke of Normandy is not a man to trust, he might not have let him live anyway.

It was just incredibly sad in the end when Beato and the rest of the men started singing the song of her childhood in the pub as Dorothy sat there with a smile and blush on her face, waiting for her father to arrive, as we saw her father’s corpse being pulled into the morgue and put away into a coffin with the sounds of song and merriment in the background. The sinking feeling just gets worse when he know that Dorothy has no idea what happened to him. Dramatic irony is one hell of a thing.