Rose Walker

Rose Walker is a fictional character from the Sandman series written by Neil Gaiman. She makes her first appearance in issue #10, part one of The Doll's House story arc. She is a beautiful young girl, a blonde with red- and purple-dyed streaks in her hair. (In later issues she is shown as having red hair with a blonde streak.) There are various indications that Rose is, or became, one of the immortals occasionally featured in Sandman. Desire of the Endless is Rose's maternal grandparent (so identified, because androgynous), and Rose, therefore, is often desired by others.

The Doll's House

When she first appears, Rose is awakened by her mother, Miranda, from a dream. Upon attempting to recount the dream to her mother, Rose is ignored; a caption of her internal reveals her mother "wasn't interested in dreams, back then".^[1] She and her mother are traveling to England to see a woman named Unity Kinkaid. On the way, Rose has another dream in which she sees Morpheus and Lucien, talking about a "dream vortex" (Rose herself), which might destroy Morpheus' realm. In England, Rose and her mother learn that Unity Kinkaid is actually Miranda's mother and Rose's grandmother: a victim of the 'sleepy sickness' that resulted from Morpheus' capture, during which she was impregnated and caused to give birth in her sleep. Because Rose's brother Jed is missing, Rose goes in search of him; eventually to Florida, where she finds a place to stay in a large boarding-house near Cape Canaveral. With the help of her neighbor Gilbert and Morpheus, Rose saves Jed from a convention of serial killers; but is herself sentenced to death by Morpheus, to prevent her vortex from destroying the Dreaming. Unity, on grounds that the vortex originally belonged to her, exchanges her own life for Rose's, and dies; whereupon Morpheus learns that his sibling Desire had conceived Rose's mother on sleeping Unity, to trick Morpheus into killing Rose.

A Game of You

Though Rose has no physical appearance in A Game of You, Morpheus claimed that the Cuckoo was bound to Barbie's dream skerry partially by Rose's actions; whereas Barbie's housemate Foxglove is the former girlfriend of Rose's deceased friend Judy.

The Kindly Ones

In The Kindly Ones (Sandman #57-69) it is revealed that Rose, in her twenties, is living in an apartment beneath Lyta Hall in L.A. She is living off her grandmother's inheritance and writing about 1950s' TV shows. In her spare time she babysits Daniel Hall and looks after Zelda, the only living tenant of The Doll's House. On one visit, Zelda gives Rose an offer from her grandmother (suspected to be Unity, or possibly the androgynous Desire), to regain her heart (which Unity had earlier taken, to exchange her own life for that of Rose); and Rose returns to England, where she is introduced to Paul McGuire, the lover of Alexander Burgess, and the Three Witches; and later has an affair with Jack Foldaway, her lawyer's nephew. Disappointed by him, Rose visits Paul, and wanders into the basement wherein Morpheus had once been kept prisoner, and there encounters Desire of the Endless. Their encounter is interrupted by Paul, who discovers her heart, left by Desire in the form of a silver 'art deco' cigarette lighter.

The Wake

In The Wake, Rose converses with her brother Jed in the Dreaming, and makes amends with Lyta Hall. She reveals, in both encounters, that she is pregnant; presumably by Holdaway.

References