"Amaranthine"

"She was Amaranthine. Whatever that meant. And she made her own way."
--Last line of Eve of the Eternal

In The Perennials, Rose is a very different person from Rose Tyler in Doctor Who, no surprising consequence of being ten thousand years old. As part of this change, from here on out, Rose will frequently call herself Rose Amaranthine rather than Rose Tyler.

I first thought of the name "Amaranthine" when I was writing Cypnov, the second part of the saga. I don't remember exactly where I came across the term, but I learned about the amaranth flower as a symbol of immortality. Of particular significance is the story from Aesop's fables, "The Rose and the Amaranth," which I thought fit post-Void Rose so well that I couldn't resist the reference:

"A Rose and an Amaranth blossomed side by side in a garden, and the Amaranth said to her neighbor, 'How I envy you your beauty and your sweet scent! No wonder you are such a universal favorite.' But the Rose replied with a shade of sadness in her voice, 'Ah, my dear friend, I bloom but for a time: my petals soon wither and fall, and then I die. But your flowers never fade, even if they are cut: for they are everlasting."

I thought this was very interesting, especially since the amaranth flower isn't actually a particularly attractive flower (as the story suggests), but amaranth blossoms do have a longer lifespan than most other flowers. As such, the amaranth has always been a symbol of longevity. The word comes from Greek, a combination of the words amarantos ("unfading") and anthos ("flower").

I also decided that it would be of particular irony if the Helials gave Rose that name, instead of Rose choosing it. While it was Helial technology that made Rose ageless, the Helials themselves weren't directly involved in Eve's actions, so I decided that when they first brought Rose on board the Eternal, they attempted to extract as much information from her damaged mind as was possible. They only thing they could extract was the image of a blue rose, which strongly resembled a flower from their home world. The Helials, correctly guessing that the flower signified Rose's name, thus called her by the name they associated with that image. The flower was called a "denekh," which means "without age," because like the Helials, the denekh is biologically immortal. Thus, though the Denekh resembles Earth roses, the word is linguistically closer to "amaranth" than it is to "rose." Therefore Rose's Taledrevan name, in English, is Amaranthine.

I picked a blue rose because it is a symbol of enigma and complexity, such as is Rose's character throughout The Perennials.