Character Analysis
A Peculiar Rat
Rats-ugh. Shmoop's not a fan, and we doubt you are either. But just like with mice, fictional rats aren't all the same. Some are wise.
When we're first introduced to the rat Roscuro, he doesn't seem all that different from Despereaux. Like our heroic mouse, he's a bit different from the rest of his community. Roscuro is born in the dungeons, where the rats hate light and avoid anything beautiful or good. But he longs for light; he wants to be up in the castle, where he can look at all the beautiful things:
Reader, this is important: The rat called Chiaroscuro did not look away. He let the light from the upstairs world enter him and fill him. He gasped aloud with the wonder of it. (17.7)
Unfortunately, when Roscuro does make it up to the castle, he has a very unfortunate encounter. He stumbles into a royal feast and is so taken with everything that he climbs up a chandelier to get a better look. As he's swinging around and taking in the sights, Princess Pea looks up and spots him:
Rat.
A curse, an insult, a word totally without light. And not until he heard it from the mouth of the princess did Roscuro realize that he did not like being a rat, that he did not want to be a rat. This revelation hit with such force, that it made him lose his grip on the chandelier.
The rat, reader, fell. (20.15-17)
With that one proclamation, the princess startles Roscuro and he falls into the queen's soup—which causes her to die of shock. This experience is so traumatizing that Roscuro changes forever; he becomes an isolated, bitter rat, bent on revenge.
Driven by Revenge
After the fiasco that leads to the queen's death, Roscuro mulls over how the princess looked at him with disgust. He decides that his one purpose in life is to get revenge. He sits in the dungeons and plots. When he meets Miggery Snow, he finally finds someone who he can trick into helping him put his plan into motion:
"Yes, yes," whispered the rat, "a lovely song. Just the song I have been waiting to hear."
And Roscuro fell in step behind Miggery Sow. (31.7-8)
Roscuro takes advantage of Mig's dimwittedness to make her believe he wants to kidnap the princess in order for her to become Mig's servant when Mig became princess.
The rat's plan was, in a way, more simple and more terrible. He intended to take the princess to the deepest, darkest part of the dungeon […] and he intended to keep the glittering, glowing, laughing princess there in the dark.
Forever. (36.26-27)
We'd call that a bad rattitude.
In the end, Roscuro's revenge doesn't bring him any pleasure or happiness. It turns out that all this plotting and unhappiness just twisted him—to the point where he'll never recover fully, even when he gets what he wants:
What of Roscuro? Did he live happily ever after? Well… Princess Pea gave him free access to the upstairs of the castle. And he was allowed to go back and forth from the darkness of the dungeon to the light of the upstairs. But, alas, he never really belonged in either place, the sad fate, I am afraid, of those whose hearts break and then mend in crooked ways. (52.3)
Roscuro does have one redeeming act, though. He leads the princess and Despereaux out of the dungeon and tells the princess about the prisoner with the red tablecloth. This allows her to put two and two together and realize that it must be Mig's father, so she pardons the prisoner and arranges a reunion. Score one for the light.