Every Rose Has It's Thorns

Preface

So, here I am writing again my life while waiting for your birth Steven, but also for my inevitable death. It is curious, I feel good after revealing this, to show to you and my family, the Crystal Gems, that I, Rose Quartz, I am also Pink Diamond, our number one enemy that I had to shatter. I hoped that faking my death could put an end to the war. But it isn't. If I knew that my other family, the Diamonds, really loved and cared about me, I wouldn't thought in shattering myself.

Besides everything that they did to me, I loved them and they loved me. Of course they weren't perfect, but nobody is, and that's fine. I hoped that they realized that. I hoped that they could have changed during the Rebellion war and saw that the way that the Great Diamond Authority was managing the Gem Empire and the Gem race, also that the way that we entered to war to many other planets and races to colonize them was wrong, that the rules imparted by White Diamond made all of us unhappy, unproductive and that was oppressing the soul of the Gem race, not letting everyone to be themselves and forcing them to be what White Diamond idealized of them according to their Gem type. I really hoped that, as I changed to become a better Diamond as well secretly becoming the best Rose Quartz soldier of my court and of the entire Gem Empire. But not, they didn't changed at all, principally by the fear (and respect?) that they had for our mother, White Diamond.

There are some things that I regret as Pink Diamond, as Shining Star, as well as the rebellious Rose Quartz, things that if I could change I will change them, but there is no way to travel to the past. I was young, loyal to Gem Empire and to my people, the Gems.

But I am not here to talk to you about my vain hopes in the past about how the things could have been different if the Diamonds changed their mind. No, I am going to tell you, Garnet, Pearl, my daughter Amethyst/Nora and my son Steven, about my past as Pink Diamond and as a Rose Quartz soldier. I hope that you already read "Planting a Rose", in which I narrated how I, Rose Quartz, begun in a squadron of Pink Diamond's army.

I wasn't happy and I am not happy to lying to all of you, but I did it because I feared to lose you. Even now, I fear that if I tell you the truth you will abandon me and trait my son, Steven, as culprit for my sins. that you will tell him the terrible lies that I said about myself, Pink Diamond, in order to make him ashamed of his Diamond heritage. He is innocent of all my faults, but I fear that you, my son, will finally feel ashamed of me, your mother.

Lying was the only way that I found in the Gem Empire to grow as a Diamond and as a Rose Quartz soldier. As well to protect my people.