Top 10 Reasons Rose Quartz is the Greatest Cartoon Network Antagonist of All Time
Rose Quartz is a Cartoon Network character of Steven Universe, in this list if she is an antagonist or a misunderstood heroineWe see the havoc from the Gem War everywhere in Steven's Universe episodes, from the Corrupted Gems to Lapis' mirror. The emotional, psychological, and physical damage inflicted on the Crystal Gems and the Homeworld Gems alike is terrifying. The toll on prehistoric human life must have been similarly ugly, as godlike superbeings battled not just on the planet's surface but within the atmosphere.
Rose started these killings with no clear plan due to mental imbalance. She underestimated Homeworld's soldiers. Worse, she tried to end the war by faking her death. The Diamonds were fierce, powerful goddesses who loved her. That misstep led to Earth's dictatorship, and the thousands of years of sadness and monster madness that followed for almost every Gem left on Earth.
In the end, she did her best for her people and friends, but her mistakes were too large to evade. Rose understood this and never forgave herself. She grew and matured because of her mistakes. She understood the value of humans and planet Earth, thousands of years after her death.
Blue Diamond carefully guarded her daughter figure's dictatorship. Her regret and love forced her to. This included the Zoo that Pink Diamond established as a sort of animal captivity. To her credit, the Zoo seems to be an Eden-like garden of bliss for its population. To her detriment, she stole dozens of people from their houses and deprived them of even the illusion of free will, keeping their innocence in bondage for thousands of years.
Creepy enough, Pink must have been the Zoo's boss as well. She must have designed the Zoomans' behavioral life, their cycle of constant benign distraction, their willful free system of pairing and mating. As Rose Quartz, she did start to appreciate both human beings and human lifestyles, but she never tried to free her prisoners. An order from Pink Diamond could have returned every Zooman to his family.
For much of the series, the Crystal Gems' first mission is protecting Earth from dangerous evil Gems or monsters. All well and good, but what about protecting Earth from Rose's creatures?
There's the peculiar moss Lars that Steven found in "Lars and the Cool Kids." Not actually bad, it still could have consumed all of Beach City, but it was Rose's favorite monster. It was placed in quarantine instead of being bubbled or killed.
Similarly, Rose created Lion, Steven's powerful and friendly "pet." Fortunately, this beast isn't interested in animals or people. However, he is paranoid, eccentric, immortal, and powerful enough to destroy a major city. Rose lived on Earth for thousands of years. She "bent the rules" for any creature that caught her fancy. How long before all her creatures emerge?
Pearl spent thousands of years with Rose, secure in the knowledge that Rose would always choose her. When Rose chose Greg instead, Pearl's life's work ended. Her sense of self-worth was destroyed when Rose died. Rose's decisions were not entirely wrong. She deserved to be happy with Greg and to have the child she was to give birth to. She had the right to trade her life for her child's.
Even when Rose was trying to care about others, though, it's obvious she didn't see what she was doing to her friend Pearl. Rose and Pearl were together for thousands of years. They loved each other. There's no evidence Rose tried to soften these blows for Pearl, and whatever she did do, it clearly wasn't enough. Pearl shows signs of untreated PTSD and obsessive-compulsive disorder, and her instability has endangered both the Crystal Gems and Steven's life in many episodes.
Rose gave up everything for her son, literally. After his birth, there was nothing left of her. She knew what she was doing. She knew she was making a baby, and that Steven's existence would end her life.
Rose also understood that her Crystal Gems were rookies, perfectly loyal and perfectly lost without a leader. In "Three Gems and a Baby," Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl kidnap the infant Steven away from his father's supervision. They don't understand what he is or where Rose has gone, and Pearl even talks about removing Steven's Gem, a nightmarish thing we later see perpetrated by White Diamond. Only Pearl's love for Rose and Garnet's care prevent a tragedy from being created.
Earth was Pink Diamond's planet. She was in charge of Earth's reign and, as she also led the war against the Diamonds, she was the perfect two-face. She must have known Homeworld had slipped a massive collection of Gem shards into Earth's atmosphere, but she told no one about that illegal weapon that was definitely going to destroy the world.
Why? She may not have wanted to confront the problem or was too afraid after her previous attempt at preserving Earth's conditions in the episode The Zoo. Regardless, she did nothing but leave The Cluster as a problem for her son to solve in his way.
When Steven found Bismuth's Gem, bubbled and locked away inside his lion (It's not what you're thinking), the audience had every reason to trust Rose's judgment. Then a confused Bismuth attacked Steven and tried to destroy his Crystal Gem. This reinforced the idea that Bismuth was evil. And she was dangerous to Pink Diamond.
As Bismuth herself pointed out, the Pink Diamond idea shows Rose's behavior in a terrible new light. Rose attacked Bismuth, a friend who trusted her completely, and disappeared her for no reason. Only Rose (or Steven) could find Bismuth, and Rose didn't leave any clues about her location. She was willing to let her friend be forgotten forever.
In the Season 5 finale episodes, viewers finally got to know the Crystal Gems' most powerful villains, the Diamonds. At first, they seemed like true enemies, and in fairness, they are the eternal demons of a perpetually expanding intergalactic empire. However, Steven learned that Blue, Yellow, and even White loved Pink. Blue spent more than 5,000 years crying, trying to perfectly preserve what was essentially her daughter's life. Yellow reacted to Pink's disappearance with hate, pouring herself into conquest and avoiding her feelings, crushing even more worlds under Homeworld's power.
In my perspective, Rose was right to leave. The Diamonds abused her and couldn't accept her. Instead of standing against the injustice she saw, she faked her disappearance and provoked an intergalactic war. Rose learned to talk to Greg. If Pink had learned to talk to the other Diamonds, she could have saved millions of lives.
Pearl was in love with Rose. There was nothing anywhere near the borders of truth and lies she wouldn't have done for her Diamond, lover, and friend. Even knowing this, Rose's last act as Gem royalty was giving Pearl an impassable order: she could never tell anyone about Pink Diamond or her death.
It hurt Pearl's professionalism, knowing the truth she was physically incapable of telling anyone. Perhaps Rose's motives were pure at the beginning, but she used the Crystal Gems to free herself from a life she never wanted, and she almost used Pearl up in the process. It was a cruel thing to do to someone she loved.
The episode "A Single Pale Rose" shows her creating the Rose Quartz personality out of boredom. She first infiltrated the ranks of her Quartz soldiers, then fell in love with the planet she was supposed to be overseeing.
Seeking her own freedom, she led a rebellion, forcing a war on the Gem Homeworld and the Diamonds, and killed thousands of lives. She faked her own death and let her Homeworld family be depressed for thousands of years. She told neither the Homeworld Gems nor her surviving followers on Earth who she really was.
Of course, there was one person who knew the truth, and that was Pearl.