Discussion thread, I guess? I just wanted to post some minor personal thoughts, but it feels kinda awkward and too loud doing it in an empty forum.

Anyway, I ended up rereading Flower Flower for the first time just now 'cause I was bored. Awesome cute series. I couldn't really keep up with the 'something terrible is gonna happen' foreshadowing and plot stuff originally though cause of the breaks between new chapters. Am glad to say that after this reread I now get it.

So, Sou-sama and Shuu are expected to marry in order to maintain the purity of the royal bloodline (birthmark, dark skin, black eyes and hair). Sou's displeasure with Nina has to do with Nina and Shuu getting carried away in their own world when eventually Shuu is expected to submit and become his wife.

It was difficult to imagine what exactly Sou's "plans" were, though, in the context of backroom court politics or whatever 'cause it didn't seem like he'd be able to do anything to blatantly to persecute her when she is decently well-accepted there. But it seems kinda obvious to me now that a scheme for seperating Shuu and Nina all along would be to kidnap her (Nina) in the middle of the night during the harvest festival, and then blame it on bandits or whatever taking advantage of the occasion and also blaming Shuu for sneaking out without permission. Pretty evil actually, if that actually turned out I'd foresee a long painful wait before a return to fluffy yuri shenanigans.

As such I am kinda hoping it doesn't turn out that way, but anyway Nina's feelings right now are really beautiful and Shuu is just such a likeable protagonist so yeah, really big fan of the series.

Also, maybe this is a kinda vague thing here in that I don't know for sure if it's in Japanese as well but I really have to give the scanlators credit for conveying so well some of the amazing contextuality of some of the lines in this series. The hidden despair/helplessness revealed at the moment of "Hey, Shu. Where are we going next?" and the terrible sense of unknown foreboding evoked when Shu spoke into the nearly pitch black night "It's too late to go today, but if you want, we can go tomorrow" are incredible moments in the manga.

Awesome work. Also, if anybody actually goes through all this, thanks for reading.

I've been translating the more recent chapters of flower flower, and I have to say, it's one of the more difficult series that I work on because of how much foreshadowing there is in each chapter. The series is a lot more subtle than most in its dialogue, so it ends up taking more time to finesse it. I am glad to hear that people appreciate those details. I'm not crazy about this looming doom and gloom plot, but I do like Shuu and Nina a lot. I'll be interested to see where the series goes. Doesn't seem like it's going to be ending any time soon, so if you're a fan, you're in luck.

Here's to hoping it ends like Hamlet.

Poisons, murder, everybody dies? lol, I thought I'd mistaken Hamlet for Macbeth for a second, but that was Hamlet's ending after all.

...er, well nah; I think I'd prefer brain-melting fluff actually. :P

Anyway, phew; thank god I was wrong about the kidnapping. But damn, does the plot keep thickening. Who staged the attack; what were they after? The convolutions seem nearly endless!

1. Who were the attackers? (staged?) Assassins from Adingala; staged assassins by Sou; an unrelated third party?

2. Who was the shadowy messenger claiming to represent Adingala's King? A legitimate dispatch? Or Sou making use of his knowledge of the King's letter? I interpreted Nina's defense of Shuu as a refusal, but whether it was or it wasn't, what does that mean?

3. What is Sou after? He has the potential to have set up any part of the ambush, but it seems pointless for him to have set up all of it. Were the assassins real? Or was the messenger real? And could they really have unknowingly stepped onto a stage Sou had prepared for them?

Seems like we've got at least two confirmed forces between Nina and Shuu's happiness now: Sou's continued incestuous machinations (this is really starting to manage to creep me out btw, and I am usually okay with this kind of stuff lol), and the King of Adingala's manipulative intentions (pretty clear now that that letter contained some rather incriminating instructions). Oh man, looks like a seriously long way to go. May they thoroughly destroy each other.

last edited at Dec 28, 2010 3:35AM

My assumption is that the attackers were a third party. I believe Nina was instructed to assassinate the heir to Shinka i.e. Shuu. Sou read the letter, so he's aware of that fact. I believe his intentions may be genuine and and that he really is only looking out for Shuu's best interests. That confrontation, which he was aware would happen because of his intel network, would serve as a test for Nina's true intentions. The Adingala assassin was urging Nina to fulfill her duty and kill Shuu, but she didn't. In a way, she passed Sou's test. For the time being.

At least that's how I read it.

If the attackers were a third party, how was Shou able to stop them on command?

Sou showed up with a militia behind him. He didn't command them to stop, he demanded it. The attackers probably ran off given that they were outnumbered.

this is the kind of manga that i want to read until the end n reread it again until i get the whole picture... right now i'm just enjoying those sweet moments between Nina n Shuu... xD

Cheers to the awesome work you've done, Dynasty... xD