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The Scarlet Devil Mansion is where many of the most prominent residents of Gensokyo either live or are known to visit, yet there's many mysteries surrounding it. This page is for people to share thoughts and ideas concerning everything about this cryptic house. Feel free to make you own additions and comments, but try to leave as much of what was already here the way it was. -Redpanda

Uh, I think you should use horizontal rules to separate the various threads of discussion, not everything that everyone writes. Use indents to make the replies stand out more. -7HS
I was about to give subsection titles for each section for organization, but so far I can't think of more than one subsection for each section (Origin for The Scarlet Sisters section and Age for Meirin's section, for example). Maybe if more content is added later with more subjects then that change can be made. After that change is made (maybe someone wants to do it?) then formatting ideas can probably be moved to talk. Redpanda


The Scarlet Sisters

I feel more and more like the Scarlet sisters, Remilia and Flandre, are French in origin.

  • Scarlet Devil Mansion is a European style house.
  • All the maids wear French maid uniforms.
  • "de Flandre" is a French surname meaning "of Flanders," a region now part of Belgium and the southern part of which is now part of France. All my searches for the name "Remilia" are coming up with very little. There's a few people with that as a first or last name in the world, but not enough for me to pin down an origin. I found a handful of very minor connections to French and Spanish names.
Imagine: "A Sakuwan of Flanders." Fearsome. -7HS
  • Perfect Momento suggests that SDM was not originally located in Gensokyo- "Later, the Scarlet Devil Mansion relocated to within Gensokyo," maybe in the same way that the Prismriver mansion wasn't originally inside Gensokyo.
  • The same page says Sakuya is not originally from Gensokyo.
  • Another page of Perfect Momento also says Remilia is not originally from Gensokyo- "She was called the Scarlet Devil before coming to Gensokyo."
  • Patchouli is the name of a plant/oil that is used in many perfumes in Europe. France is well known for making many perfumes, and a google search for patchouli France produces many, many results.
  • Probably unrelated, but New Orleans (heavy French influence) is actually known as the "vampire capital of the world." -Redpanda
  • Remilia states she's descended from Vlad Tepes, who was Romanian. Could be a vampiric line of descent (i.e. one of Vlad's progeny bit her) rather then a physical one, though. -7HS
ZUN wrote that nobody could be sure whether she was lying or not with that statement. ZUN then directly refutes it himself (see Remilia's page). But the vampiric line of descent could still fit in with his statement.


The Great Library of Patchouli

The theme song for EoSD Stage 4 (set in this library) is "Voile, the magic library". Many doujin call the library itself "Voile". However, do consider that 'Voile' is French for "tada~". Psieye


I was wondering just what the herb patchouli is for and where it's from, since it seems like such a random thing to choose for a character name. According to wikipedia it's from the East (originally) and West Indies and is very popular among hippies. It's also a popular perfume in Europe, apparently. Might be interesting to see a fan comic of Hippy Patchouli... *hinthint* This page from The Fifth Sense has a good description of what Patchouli smells like. Considering the East Asian connections, I might have to come up with some sort of Indian (a hindu god lives inside patchouli) or Chinese outfit for her... *hinthint* -Redpanda

I found on various websites that patchouli (presumably as an incense or aromatherapy oil) relaxes the mind and opens it to spiritual knowledge. It's also an aphrodisiac. -7HS

Actually, what are the chances Patchouli was given that name when she was born compared to Remilia giving her that name when they first met? She's about 100 years old so was born after the Sealing. Why would such a 'young' Youkai have an extremely non-Japanese name like that? Hmm... worth expanding this speculation at some later time I guess... *makes a note to do so* Psieye


Sakuya's Deflated World

Sakuya is probably one of the most mysterious of all characters. So much is known about her because she's been so prominent since first appearing but for everything known there's many unanswered questions to go with it. In Perfect Momento it's written that Sakuya "...claims to be in her late teens, but this is unlikely judging by her refined manner and the level of her abilities. Rather, she seems to be a human who has been living for hundreds of years." This could also support the theory that Sakuya may possibly be a Lunarian that some fans have suggested. In the past I had thought, before reading some other things about her, that maybe she had at some point accidentally (or purposely) frozen her own time hundreds of years ago and was fated (by Remilia) to come out of that frozen time in the present. Maybe not.

I noticed the side comic on the article Aya wrote about Eirin, seen here, suggests that if Sakuya stops/slows time to do more work too often she'll age faster. Maybe it shouldn't be taken too seriously (like so many other "facts" in Gensokyo's tabloid- I mean the Bunbunmaru), but it could refute theories that Sakuya may be extending her age through time manipulation by saying the opposite is what would actually happen. Maybe more support for the Lunarian theory. Redpanda


Chinese Tea with Meirin

We really know very little about Meirin. Apart from being Chinese, a martial artist, and not the sharpest knife in the drawer, there's just not that much else. I've always wondered about her age, specifically. Gensokyo was sealed from the outside world in 1884 [edit-has been corrected]. Meirin comes from China. Last I checked, China is not located inside Gensokyo. Therefore, Meirin (along with much of the rest of the household) originally came into Gensokyo from the outside world. So the question is did she-

  • 1. come through the barrier after the sealing (supposedly very hard to do and could make her any age)
  • 2. was she already in Gensokyo before the sealing (which would make her over 120 [edit-has been corrected] and possibly older than Patchouli)
  • 3. She came into Gensokyo along with the entire rest of the Scarlet household whenever it was that SDM was transported inside Gensokyo (possibly the least likely since, if SDM originated in Europe as I think, it would require Meirin to have been all the way over in Europe at some point).

The most likely of those three options seems to be 2, which means Hong Meirin could actually be older than Patchouli Knowledge. -Redpanda


Wait hang on, what's the source for "1864"? The timeline suggests 1884 and furthermore, Meirin's boss theme is titled "Shanghai Alice of Meiji 17" which implies (Meiji 17 = 1884) the sealing was at 1884 and Meirin was alive back then. Psieye

Originally I had written 1884 from memory, a couple edits ago, but then I looked at the Gensokyo page and saw it said 1865. I then proceeded to change what I had written to 1864 because it was 3am and I wasn't paying that much attention. Maybe the Gensokyo page needs a correction? Redpanda
The previous date was probably estimated prior to Bohemian Archive (where we first got actual calendar dates for events in Gensokyo), based on the statement that "the moon landing was nearly a century after Gensokyo's sealing." I've corrected it. -7HS

Perfect Memento in Strict Sense identifies Meirin as a Youkai. Yet her title in EoSD is "Girl of Chinese Descent". This could be interpreted to mean that she's from a line of humanoid Youkai who live in China and she happened to be caught in Gensokyo when it was sealed. Psieye


The EoSD music room for Meiling's theme mentions the French Concession. According to that webpage it was a rather quiet and unremarkable place up until the 1930s, when it became a notorious red-light district. ZUN described it in Dolls in Pseudo Paradise as "A smoke of opium is drifting all around the city. Many people are dancing waltz in a dazzling dress..." suggesting that he had the red-light district in mind, but where's Meiji 17 enter into it? -7HS


Scarlet Devil Mansion's Migration to Gensokyo

When would the SDM have moved to Gensokyo? When it was sealed or much more recently? Aya's article implies it wasn't very recent, and further theorises that it marked the end of Vampires & Maids in the outer world. When did Maids go out of fashion in France? At a guess, I'd say when the French Revolution got rid of aristocrasy (Napoleon's time) so... Maybe SDM moved to Gensokyo before the Sealing?


Assume Sakuya was already working under Remilia when the SDM moved. The Great Library could then have been tailor sized when Patchouli came to live with them, expanding as she wrote more books. Also, note that Sakuya isn't the only Maid in Gensokyo (Mugetu and Yumeko), yet they're all dressed like French Maids. I would assume that the SDM brought the French Maid fashion into Gensokyo and it became popular enough that even a Goddess (Shinki) would model her strongest creation as a Maid. Psieye

This would probably require Sakuya to be well over 100 years old, so gets into theories about her being 1. something other than human or 2. older than she claims as a result of time manipulation. Redpanda

Maribel Han in Changeability of Strange Dream saw the mansion on her dream-visit to Gensokyo, and apparently somewhere in Perfect Memento it's mentioned that her visit was hundreds of years prior to the present day (due to some sort of time slippage.) I should find where that was said though, currently I'm going off the Japanese TouhouWiki. -7HS

The Gensokyo Timeline mentions it, but I don't know the source on that. Redpanda


Endless Fairy Maids

Given the above assumption that SDM was in Gensokyo from slightly before the Sealing, we can assume that any ordinary human Maids the SDM previously employed either died of old age or left before the SDM came here. Again assume that Sakuya was with them at this early time. Could it be that the Scarlet vampires wanted to recreate the atmosphere of having an array of Maid servants, thus didn't care what ability the fairies were when they 'recruited' them to be the next generation of Scarlet Maids? Psieye


I thought it was odd that Sakuya's Perfect Momento page would describe the fairy maids as "The fairy maids are mostly useless" and "Cleaning their own shirts and making their own food is about the best they can do." If they're receiving free food (and uniforms) for doing nothing but picking up after themselves and sometimes uselessly dying at the hands of an intruder then it makes you wonder why they're even kept around. Just the food alone must be a huge expense for Remilia, who isn't exactly known for her generosity. Unless they somehow pay for and get their own food, maybe Remilia is really just paying to have company? Maybe Akyu was exaggerating in Perfect Momento? Redpanda

My hypothesis is the Scarlet Devil Mansion probably has trouble recruiting anyone else. Humans hate and fear the Scarlet Devil too much to work for her, and youkai see maid work as below them; it's rare enough for them to hold any job at all, as Meiling does. While Sakuya can (and does) do all the work herself, Remilia still wanted an army of servants, and thus decided to employ a lot of useless fairies merely for the sake of appearances.
Also, food and board is all they get. SDM maids receive no salary, this is mentioned in the help wanted ad in Bohemian Archive. Another reason why humans and youkai aren't interested in the job. -7HS
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