everlasting true love, i am yours

But then we have Wendy As Joshua. Here, she’s disguised and not easily identifiable as herself. In this guise, she goes beyond the silent, indirect cruelty of the Rose Princess and is outwardly abrasive and tyrannical. Throughout the game, Wendy As Joshua leads Jennifer into danger and forces her to take part in his “games,” going as far as to threaten to kill her if she doesn’t play along. He rants at her about how “bad” she was and demands that she continue her journey until she remembers what she did. It’s in this guise that Wendy brings Stray Dog to the orphanage (in the game, anyway) and commands him to attack Jennifer. However, immediately after driving Gregory away, Jennifer sees this disguise stripped away. Wendy As Joshua Unmasked is perhaps the most important facet of Wendy that Jennifer meets in the game. After removing her disguise, Wendy berates Jennifer for not recognizing her and explains her motives before she, clearly overwhelmed with regret, gives Jennifer the weapon she needs to defeat Gregory. Of course, this isn’t really Wendy speaking. It’s Jennifer’s subconscious speaking to itself, calling her out on the fractured way she’s been viewing her former friend, seeing her in easily digestible pieces rather than a complex, challenging whole. Because in the end, Wendy was all of the people described and more. She was lonely, she was loving, she was a liar, she was powerful, she was weak, she was cruel, she was kind, but most of all, she was a child. All of these things are part of the Wendy Jennifer loved, hated, lost, forgotten, and is now learning to remember. And this is why the last words Wendy speaks to Jennifer before the epilogue are, “I’m sorry.” Jennifer’s subconscious is beginning to put Wendy back together, not into a perfect angel or a hateful traitor, but a frightened, teary-eyed girl who never meant for things to go this far. It’s also extremely significant that in the epilogue, in the beautifully silent Once Upon a Time storybook, we are given a glimpse into what Wendy and Jennifer’s relationship truly was. In the story, we see two lonely children binding themselves to each other in hopes of not being alone anymore, but then one of the children is able to pull herself free by forming a relationship with a puppy, engaging with a world beyond their miserable existence in the orphanage. The other girl is left alone. That is the heart of the relationship between Jennifer and Wendy. There was a time they both needed each other, painfully alone as they were, but Jennifer was able to move on, while Wendy couldn’t. Too frightened to leave her fairy tale, Wendy lashed out to defend it, and that fantasy’s eventual, inevitable collapse led to even greater tragedy. It’s also important to note that Jennifer’s last words on Wendy are, “poor lonely Wendy,” words not of condemnation but of sadness and pity. In the epilogue, we see Wendy one final time. It’s probably significant that the last time we see her is outside the orphanage walls – though not outside the gate. She’s the only orphan and one of only two human characters, the other being Gregory, that Jennifer meets in the epilogue. This final scene is affectionate and friendly, Wendy smiling and drawing on the ground just like a regular child. Jennifer has chosen to hold on to a gentle memory of Wendy, a memory of her sweetly playing in the sun, not a rose in sight. And yet, the recollection remains bittersweet – a memory of Wendy could hardly be anything but – because she cannot follow Jennifer back into her life. Wendy will always be, at least in part, the Lonely Princess, eternally left behind. But though Wendy, in all her heartbreaking ugly complexity, is gone, Jennifer will never forget her again.

Jennifer encounters Wendy in many different forms throughout the game. First we have, Wendy the Lonely Princess who represents Jennifer’s original perception of her friend. She is kind, sickly, and weak, always coughing and often bedridden. She dresses in white and blue and is one of the only characters to treat Jennifer with any friendliness or kindness. She also, interestingly, seems to get along with Brown in this guise; he even runs up to her for attention, something he doesn’t do for any other character besides Jennifer. Perhaps this reflects the relationship Jennifer had hoped her two beloved friends would have. This is the Wendy Jennifer loved, the one who rescued her from Gregory and gave her the rose brooch, which Jennifer wears through much of the game without recognizing its significance (and which very interestingly, entirely disappears from both Jennifer and Wendy’s clothing in the true ending; perhaps its absence suggests a casting off the lies that tainted their relationship). This Wendy is always alone and mentions being bullied by the other children. One could read this as a straight lie, but I think it’s more complicated than that. This is both Wendy as Jennifer originally perceived her and in some ways, who Wendy truly was. She was a child so afraid of being alone and abused that she created a whole fantasy world where she could be loved and protected. Unfortunately, because the world Wendy grew up in was so dark and twisted, her fantasy became the same. Then we have Wendy the Rose Princess, the liar, the betrayer. This Wendy is a symbol of the corrupt power structure that Jennifer has to overcome to stop the cycle of violence and abuse perpetuated in the orphanage. She dresses all in red, a stark contrast to the soft cool colors of her original outfit. The Rose Princess never coughs or shows any physical weakness at all (until Jennifer knocks her down). This is the Wendy Jennifer came to hate, the one who took Brown from her and utterly betrayed her trust. However, the Rose Princess is still quite clearly Wendy. The Rose Princess leads us neatly into Wendy the Lying Princess. As discussed before, Wendy gains her power from lies; it’s only through illusion that she can gain any advantage over the older, stronger children. Sickly coddled Wendy would be a perfect target for bullying and bullying is no small problem in this orphanage, so she came up with a way to protect herself. To avoid becoming a victim, Wendy invents a fantasy in which she can be a beloved leader, but as her new title suggests, this fantasy kingdom is built on a flimsy foundation of lies. Once her illusion collapses, Wendy becomes a pariah, despised by both the orphans she feared (and controlled through fear) and her only real friend. But as despicable as she may become, Wendy the Lonely Princess, Wendy the Rose Princess, and Wendy the Lying Princess are all forms of Wendy that Jennifer can easily understand. They’re still fragmented and incomplete, but even in her distorted memories, Jennifer can confidentially call all of these disparate people Wendy.

Another key facet of Wendy’s character is fantasy. To escape her dreary existence, Wendy remakes her world. The orphans become royalty; she herself becomes a princess and Jennifer becomes her prince (and when Jennifer herself can no longer fill that role, Joshua the Bear takes her place). Jennifer suggests that Wendy pretended to love Peter the Rabbit in order to fill the hole left when Jennifer began spending time with Brown. And she pretends to be Joshua in order to manipulate Gregory, inventing the story of Stray Dog to protect herself from the other orphans. It’s this final fantasy that gives her the power to remain the Red Rose Princess, the only one with the power to pacify Stray Dog. Because Wendy uses these fantasies as a substitute for a reality she doesn’t want to face, she lashes out violently when these illusions are broken down. When Brown intrudes on her fairy tale relationship with Jennifer, she demands his execution. And when Jennifer dethrones her, she brings Stray Dog to the orphanage. [As a side note, I fully believe that the scene we see in-game of Wendy As Joshua heartlessly unleashing Gregory on the other orphans is fabricated by Jennifer’s subconscious. After all, the story Jennifer finds before the battle, Stray Dog and the Lying Princess, is clearly a retelling of The Boy Who Cried Wolf and in that story, the final warning, though too late and tainted by the lies that came before, is absolutely earnest. I think Wendy wanted to warn the other children that Gregory was coming – and was beyond her control – but her earlier lies left them unwilling to believe her, hence the tragic end to the story.] Any power Wendy possesses comes from illusion and deceit. Pretending to be Joshua gives her power over Gregory and lets her live out the fantasy of being a child with a family. And Gregory himself is eager to play along. After all, he too lives on fantasy – namely the fantasy that his son is still alive. And this fantasy also ends in blood. In general, violence and death haunt the ruins of Wendy and Gregory’s illusions. Perhaps this may imply that Wendy herself is slowly dying of her illness (especially once the adults “vanish,” taking all medical care with them). There’s no confirmation either way, but it would certainly fit with her desperate desire to deny the inevitable and reject the truth. Wendy’s refusal to acknowledge reality can be most plainly seen in her drawings in the sickroom. There are pictures of the orphans playing together, which completely belie the ugly truth of bullying and abuse that went on in the orphanage. Her loving portrait of Peter is what prompts Jennifer to wonder if Wendy truly loved the rabbit or just made herself believe she did. There is also a picture of a girl who looks like Wendy and a boy (or a girl dressed like a boy) who looks like Joshua/Jennifer, reflecting the fairy tale love she thought they had. Perhaps the most telling image of all is her drawing of Gregory’s “Gingerbread House,” at the center of which is a starkly realistic gun, a core of brutal truth in a shell of defensive childish fantasy. But of course, like all the characters, Wendy is difficult to fully comprehend because everything we see of her is filtered through Jennifer’s perception. And, given Wendy’s preoccupation with fantasy, it’s no surprise that Jennifer’s view of her is fractured, incomplete, and contradictory.