I’ve been saying this since relatively early on: Greg’s just… such a good person. And Rose needed that. She needed to learn it. How to be just a good person, to see others as equals, to relate to other people in an equal level. We learn that that’s something she struggled with even after the Rebellion. She didn’t know how to be good and loving without also being distant and treating others like she herself was treated by the Diamonds. She was also incredibly conflict averse, like, most of her issues are because she won’t. talk. to. people. when there’s disagreements. Greg taught her how to be kind, how to forgive mistakes and set boundaries without blaming others for their flaws, and realize that people’s imperfections can be amazing and perfect in and of themselves (If every porkchop were perfect, we wouldn’t have hot dogs).

Her tragedy, I feel, is that she was too scared of herself and her own flaws, and too scared to confront them, and still feeling like she herself was unable to grow and learn and to confront people- first of all herself- in a healthy manner in order to fix her mistakes.

What’s really sad and interesting is how much Rose really internalised that idea that the magical power humans have that gems just don’t is the power to change. That gems could maybe change their behaviour and they could change their minds but they could, somehow, never truly change who they are. Diamonds gonna lead. Rubies gonna guard. Bismuths gonna make stuff. Amethysts gonna fight. etc. She became Rose rather than Pink to try, to make sure that the rebellion wasn’t just gems choosing which Diamond they wanted to continue to follow, but it kind of just compounded the problem because she never felt she’d truly be able to not be a Diamond. Which led to her misguided belief that the best thing she could do for the world was to die and create Steven, because if gems ever could become more like humans then they’d ALL need someone like Greg - they’d need a Gem with all the human virtues.

In a way, she wasn’t entirely wrong. Steven was clearly a hugely positive influence on so many gems, and where Rose could teach them to fight to defend themselves and how they wanted to live, she couldn’t ever truly teach them how to reform Gem society or respect individuality and love differences because she struggled with those things still, because of the conditioning of years and years behind her. She couldn’t even really conceive of a truly equal Gem society, she knew she was just on the first steps to something good by accepting anyone into the Crystal Gems. She can’t really imagine a life without Gem society as it is - like, god, the fucking buildings are conscious Gems there - so her solution seems to be just ‘anyone who wants to be a Crystal Gem can be! And everything’s fine in the Crystal Gems!’ and homeworld can kind of just do whatever, as long as Earth is safe.

Problem number one, of course, is that it wasn’t fair to put all that on Steven, and birth someone with the expectation that they’ll hopefully fix all your mistakes and be the good person you couldn’t be.

Problem number two is that she was absolutely wrong. Gems can and do change and grow, perhaps more slowly than humans but given the right encouragement and environment Gems are as capable of radical change as humans are. And it’s weird that she never really thought to question it when the most obvious example (besides herself, which she thought didn’t count) - ie, Pearl - was right there with her the whole time.