Just for fun I thought I'd do something marginally useful with AI, I asked one of them "I recently received a bouquet containing ivy, white roses, baby's breath, and Scottish thistles. What message would this amount to in Victorian floriography?" So this was its answer:
n the Victorian language of flowers (floriography), this bouquet carries a beautifully complex, highly dramatic, and protective message. A Victorian recipient would read this arrangement as a declaration of everlasting, faithful devotion combined with a fierce warning against outsiders. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
Because the Victorians viewed bouquets as complete sentences, your arrangement balances soft, pure affection with sharp, defensive boundaries. [1]
Decodable Meanings of Each Component
Ivy (Fidelity and Wedded Love): Ivy represents eternal friendship, continuous attachment, and unshakeable faithfulness. Because it is evergreen and clings tightly to its surroundings, it anchors the bouquet in a message of a lifelong, reliable bond. [1, 2, 3]
White Roses (Purity and Worthiness): White roses signify innocence, pure intentions, and a spiritual, protected love. In a romantic context, they translate specifically to the phrase, "I am worthy of you." [1, 2, 3]
Baby's Breath (Everlasting Love): This delicate flower symbolizes pure, undying affection and sincerity. It acts as the connective tissue of the bouquet, amplifying the white roses by signaling that the giver's pure intentions will last forever. [1, 2, 3, 4]
Scottish Thistle (Retaliation and Protection): This is the wild card of the arrangement. While modern times view the thistle as a symbol of resilience, Victorian dictionaries like Burke's Language of Flowers explicitly assign the Scottish thistle the meaning of "retaliation" or a severe warning. It sends a clear message: "Do not provoke me" or "I will defend this love at all costs." [1, 2, 3]
While you think about the implications of that I noted one other interesting thing: I couldn't make out the tree in the deep background so my guess was Yana did not intend to represent any other specific coded floral item back there but there was one other thing I noted in amongst the flowers, a fluffy-looking white globe I could only guess was a dandelion which had gone to seed. I decided to look that up too, not really expecting to get any particular meaning back for such a thing but I was surprised and very wrong. This is what it had to say about dandelions which have gone to seed:
In Victorian floriography, a dandelion gone to seed specifically represented the "Rustic Oracle" and was associated with coquetry (flirtatiousness), faithfulness, and wishes. [1, 2, 3]
The Victorians used the seed head as a playful tool for divination and secret messages: [1]
The Oracle and Time: Often referred to as a "dandelion clock", the number of breaths it took to blow the remaining seeds away was said to tell the time or answer yes-or-no questions. [1, 2]
The "Love Meter": Lovers would blow on the puffball. If all the seeds flew away on a single breath, it meant your affection was returned, but any seeds remaining indicated your partner was hesitant or unfaithful. [1]
Wishing: Much like today, the feathery seeds were believed to carry a whispered wish directly into the wind. [1, 2]
In Victorian floriography, the connection between the dandelion and flirtation (coquetry) stems directly from the plant’s flighty, delicate, and unpredictable nature once it transforms into a seed head. [1]
Because Victorian society heavily restricted the open expression of romantic intent, courtship often felt like a high-stakes psychological game. The dandelion perfectly mirrored the lighthearted, non-committal phase of this game for several reasons: [1, 2]
1. The Fleeting Nature of "Coquetry"
A coquette is a flirt—someone who leads a suitor on with attention but remains elusive, non-committal, or easily swayed. The dandelion seed puff, known in historical floral dictionaries like Madame Charlotte de la Tour’s Le Langage des Fleurs as the symbol for coquetry, embodies this exact behavioral trait. It takes only a single, gentle gust of wind or a soft breath to scatter the entire seed head. To the Victorians, the plant represented a lover whose affections were easily blown away, fickle, or superficial. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
2. Low-Stakes, Coded Communication
Gifting flowers in the 19th century carried immense social weight. Sending a red rose was an open declaration of passionate love, which could force an awkward, binding social dynamic. Handing someone a dandelion—frequently dismissed as a common, cheap garden weed—was an incredibly clever loophole. It allowed someone to signal, "I am playing the game of courtship with you," or "I see your flirtatious nature," without making a serious, formal commitment. It kept the interactions playful, casual, and safe from strict parental scrutiny. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
3. The Ritual of "Will They, Won't They"
Flirtation relies heavily on anticipation, and the dandelion puff served as a literal prop for romantic testing. Lovers would engage in a flirtatious ritual: turning toward the home of their crush, whispering a secret message or thought into the feathery seeds, and blowing them away. [1, 2]
If a suitor blew on the puffball and not all seeds detached, it was interpreted as a sign of hesitation or a lover who was holding back secrets.
If every single seed scattered in one breath, it meant their flirtatious targets were entirely captured by the sender's charms. [1]
Now I want to be clear on my own interpretation of the main character of this manga. Love of any kind hardly applies here. It is not in his nature. However there is little doubt Sebastian likes to play games. He definitely does have a sort of flirtatious nature. He teases as easily as he lies and he lies very skillfully and very frequently. Usually by omission or redirection, while adhering to the letter of his agreement with Ciel not to lie to him. But I think you could stretch a point and call what he does when he starts bantering with the boy 'coquettishness' or flirtatious behaviour. But the boy knows and so do we, when the demon starts talking about his desire for the child, he's not talking about something that in our modern world we'd be calling childrens' services about. Sebastian's in the throes of a kind of lust though, there's no doubt, and while it skirts very close to feeling like a carnal one, we know that's not really what he's about--not that he's above any of that. There is no real code of morality in him, of course not. G=He's a demon, the definition of a force of evil. But it's not about the carnal. He's lusting for the kid's soul. I also think there just might also be the suggestion of a genuine admiration for the kid growing in him too, how he's pretty faithful to his agreement with the demon, as well as brave and willing to face his own 'demons' in the form of his fears and phobias, and willing to do most anything needed to achieve his goals.
But I've got to admit, here's a lot more suggestions of affection, admiration and loyalty in the floral choices I see in this artwork than I expected to see, and it has me wondering, could it possibly be a coincidence? Is Yana trying to tell us something, perhaps about where this is all heading? Or if she's just playing with that part of the fandom who like to imagine a more intimate relationship between these two characters? She's pandered to that segment before, we've all seen her do it, and why not? They are fans too and their enthusiasm for the manga helps pay her bills the same as the rest.
But I also see both of them making quazi-flirtatious expressions and comments and sly inside jokes between themselves, fully aware that what they are really doing is more akin to whistling when you pass a cemetery at night- on Ciel's part at least- using humour to drain away some of the tension from a rather fraught situation. I would be doing exactly the same thing if I were in Ciel's place, on purpose, to convince myself i can laugh in the face of the eldritch horror I live with 24/7. And the eldritch horror in question would probably find it pretty funny too to laugh and joke so openly with the one he will eventually eat. Brave little soul that he is. I've just gotta say an examination of the possible symbols in this artwork feels a lot warmer and more affectionate than I was expecting.
It is pretty interesting though, isn't it, how consistent the message is, how warm, how apt, how spot on.
