All 17 Requiem of the Rose King Manga Volumes — Your Complete Collection at a Glance
Here’s the good news up front: Requiem of the Rose King is a completed manga. All 17 volumes are out. The story is finished. You can start collecting today knowing the entire run of Requiem of the Rose King manga volumes is available in English from VIZ Media.
The series spans 78 chapters across those 17 volumes, telling the full story of Richard’s cursed rise and devastating fall. If you’ve never heard of it, the quick pitch is this: take the Wars of the Roses — a brutal 15th-century English civil war between two rival royal families, the Yorks and the Lancasters — and filter it through Shakespeare’s Richard III, a famous play about a scheming, tormented king. Then twist the whole thing with demonic horror, gender identity, and gorgeous gothic artwork. The result is one of the most distinctive dark fantasy manga you’ll find in English.
Created by Aya Kanno, the series was originally serialized — meaning published chapter by chapter in a magazine before being collected into book form — in Japan’s 月刊プリンセス (Monthly Princess) magazine by publisher 秋田書店 (Akita Shoten). These are the original Japanese publisher details; what matters for English-language collectors is that the series ran from 2014 to 2022 and VIZ Media published the complete English edition with a matching 17-volume count. Nothing was cut, nothing was reorganized — what Japanese readers got, English readers got.
For anyone who’s been burned by investing in a manga that went on hiatus or got cancelled, this is a breath of fresh air. The whole story exists right now, waiting on shelves and in digital storefronts.
The Easiest Way to Collect All 17 Volumes
Single Volumes Are Your Main Path
The standard single-volume paperbacks from VIZ Media are the confirmed English format for this series. As of this writing, no omnibus editions (collected volumes that bundle multiple books into one), box sets, or special collector editions have been announced in English. That means if you want the physical set, you’re building it one volume at a time.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Seventeen volumes is a very manageable number — you’re not staring down a 40-volume mountain here. A dedicated shelf can hold the complete run without much trouble.
Digital vs. Physical
If speed and convenience are your priority, digital is the fastest route to a complete set. Every volume is available digitally through platforms like the VIZ Media website, and you won’t run into the occasional print availability hiccups that can affect completed series (more on that later). Digital also means no shelf space concerns and instant access.
Physical collectors, on the other hand, get those beautiful covers lined up on a shelf. Aya Kanno’s artwork is striking — dark, elegant, and very much part of the experience. There’s something about holding these particular volumes that feels right given how moody and atmospheric the story is.
What a Full Set Typically Costs
Each volume carries a standard manga paperback retail price, typically in the range of $10 to $13 per volume at list price. Multiply that across seventeen volumes and a full physical set runs roughly $170 to $220 at retail before any discounts. That’s a meaningful but not outrageous investment for a complete series.
For budget-conscious collectors, buying the full run at once can sometimes save compared to piecemeal purchases over months — especially if you catch volumes during major seasonal sales at various retailers. Mixing physical and digital is another option: grab the volumes you love most in print, fill gaps digitally.
A Smart Starting Point
Not sure if you want to commit to all 17? Volume 1 is the natural entry point and gives you a strong sense of the series’ tone, art style, and pacing. If you’re hooked by the end of it — and most dark fantasy fans will be — you’ll know the remaining 16 volumes are worth pursuing.
Requiem of the Rose King Manga Volumes — Key Arcs to Know
All 17 volumes form a continuous narrative. You really do want to read them in order. But here are some key milestones to give you a sense of how the story builds, without spoiling the experience.
Volume 1 — A Cursed Birth
The story opens with Richard’s birth under a dark omen, haunted by visions of a figure connected to Joan of Arc — here reimagined not just as a historical figure but as a supernatural presence that shadows Richard from the very beginning. Right from the start, the series establishes its blend of historical drama and horror that goes beyond the physical. The Wars of the Roses are the backdrop, but Richard’s internal struggle — with identity, with fate, with a body and soul that feel like a curse — is the real engine. Volume 1 sets the tone: beautiful, bleak, and impossible to look away from.
Volume 5 — The Political Web Tightens
By the fifth volume, the war between the York and Lancaster factions has escalated into something far more dangerous than battlefield conflict. Political scheming, secret alliances, and the threat of betrayal from within Richard’s own side make these chapters feel like a pressure cooker. If the early volumes draw you in with character and atmosphere, Volume 5 is where the plot’s teeth really sink in. This is a strong natural checkpoint — if you’re buying in batches, Volumes 1 through 5 form a satisfying first arc to test your commitment.
Volume 9 — Relationships Fracture
The midpoint of the series hits hard. Richard’s personal relationships — romantic, familial, political — begin to crack under the weight of the supernatural darkness woven through the story. Characters who seemed like allies reveal conflicting loyalties, and the emotional cost of Richard’s choices starts to compound in ways that feel genuinely painful. This is where the manga’s emotional depth becomes fully apparent. It’s not just a war story with demons. It’s a tragedy about a person being torn apart from every direction at once.
Volume 13 — The Crown and the Horror
The crown is within reach, and the cost is becoming horrifyingly clear. Betrayal and occult horror escalate together in these later volumes — the demonic elements, which appear as literal supernatural visions and forces that influence characters’ actions, are at their most intense here. The Shakespearean tragedy at the heart of the source material is unmistakable. Everything Richard has done, everything that’s been done to Richard, starts converging.
Volume 17 — The Final Chapter
The last volume brings Richard’s story to its conclusion. Without spoiling anything: this is a tragedy, and it ends like one. The series commits fully to its vision, delivering a finale that feels earned by everything that came before. Seventy-eight chapters build to this, and the ending doesn’t flinch.
Requiem of the Rose King
A quick note: these five milestones are highlights, not the only volumes that matter. Every single volume contributes to the narrative. Skipping volumes would be like skipping chapters in a novel — you’d lose the thread completely.
Availability Pitfalls — What Collectors Should Watch For
The Mid-Run Gap Problem
Here’s something that affects a lot of completed manga series, and it’s worth knowing about before you start collecting: mid-run volumes can sometimes be harder to find in print. Volumes 1 and 17 tend to stay available because they’re the entry point and the finale. But volumes in the middle of a run — think roughly Volumes 4 through 8 — can sometimes go through periods where physical copies are scarce.
This isn’t unique to Requiem of the Rose King. It’s a pattern across the manga industry for completed titles. Publishers keep their catalogs active, but the number of physical copies printed for a finished series aimed at a smaller audience isn’t always consistent. VIZ Media keeps the series listed, which is a good sign, but stock levels at individual retailers can vary.
How to Navigate This
A few practical approaches:
- Check multiple retailers. Major bookstore chains, online retailers, and the VIZ Media digital storefront are all worth checking. If one store is out of stock on a particular volume, another may have it. Don’t assume a volume is unavailable just because your first-choice shop doesn’t have it.
- Consider digital backfill. If you’re building a physical set and one volume is temporarily unavailable in print, grabbing the digital version lets you keep reading while you wait for a restock.
- Be patient, not panicked. Temporary stock gaps are normal. They’re usually not permanent. Resist the urge to pay inflated prices from third-party sellers unless you’re certain a volume has genuinely gone out of print — meaning the publisher is no longer producing new copies.
- No reprint announcements or special editions are known at this time, so the standard VIZ Media singles remain the format to target.
A Realistic Expectation
For most collectors right now, assembling a complete 17-volume set is very doable. This isn’t a situation where half the run is unavailable. It’s more that you might need to shop around for one or two specific volumes. That’s manageable, especially for a set this size.
A Finished Story — Will Your Collection Stay Complete?
The Story Is Fully Told
This matters more than people sometimes realize. Requiem of the Rose King ended in 2022 at 17 volumes. All 78 chapters are published. There is a definitive conclusion. No sequel to the main story has been announced. A spin-off manga exists in Japan, but the 17-volume main series tells a complete, standalone narrative.
When you buy all 17 volumes, you own the complete story. Period.
What About the Anime?
An anime adaptation of the series does exist, covering the earlier portion of the manga’s story. However, the anime doesn’t change the manga’s completeness. The manga is the original and complete source material — all 17 volumes tell the full story from beginning to end, regardless of how far the anime goes.
If you watched the anime first and want to experience the full story with all its nuance and detail, the manga is where you’ll find it. Adaptations inevitably compress or adjust material — the manga is the definitive version.
A Safe Bet for Completionists
If you’re the kind of reader who hates starting a series that might never finish — and honestly, that’s a very reasonable concern in manga — Requiem of the Rose King is one of the safest picks you can make. The story exists in its entirety. The English translation is complete. Your shelf won’t have a gap where Volume 18 should be, because Volume 18 was never needed. The story ends where it’s meant to end.
Who Should Collect Requiem of the Rose King
Dark Fantasy Readers Who Love Historical Tragedy
If you’re drawn to manga that blends real history with supernatural horror, this series was practically made for you. The Wars of the Roses — that 15th-century English civil war between the royal houses of York and Lancaster — provides a rich, brutal historical foundation, and the manga layers demonic visions, cursed bloodlines, and horror that works on the mind as much as the body on top of it. Psychological horror here means the dread comes from paranoia, identity crisis, and the feeling that something is deeply wrong inside, not just from monsters or violence. It’s dark fantasy with genuine historical weight.
Shakespeare Fans Looking for Something Unexpected
This is a reimagining of Shakespeare’s Richard III — and it takes that premise seriously. For those unfamiliar, the original play follows Richard, Duke of Gloucester, as he schemes and murders his way to the English throne, only to be destroyed by his own ambition and the enemies he’s created. Aya Kanno’s manga doesn’t just borrow that plot. It engages with the play’s themes of fate, ambition, identity, and the monstrous labels that society places on people who don’t fit neatly into its categories — then adds supernatural horror and a deeply personal exploration of gender. If you’ve read or watched Richard III and thought “this would make incredible dark fantasy manga,” someone already agreed with you and created exactly that.
A Note on Mature Content
The series features mature themes throughout: violence, questions of gender and identity, psychological horror, and demonic imagery. These elements are handled thoughtfully as part of the narrative rather than gratuitously, but they’re present and significant. This is a work aimed at older readers — it doesn’t shy away from darkness, and the emotional weight of its subject matter is considerable. Readers who appreciate that kind of unflinching storytelling will find a lot to admire here. Readers looking for something lighter should know what they’re getting into.
The Commitment Level
At 17 volumes, this is a mid-length series. It’s longer than a quick three-or-four volume mini-series, which means the story has room to breathe and develop its characters properly. But it’s dramatically shorter than the sprawling 30+ volume epics that can feel like a lifetime commitment. Seventeen volumes is a sweet spot — substantial enough to tell a complex story, concise enough that you can realistically collect and read the whole thing without it becoming a years-long endeavor.
The Verdict
Requiem of the Rose King is one of the most distinctive dark fantasy manga available in English. The combination of Shakespearean tragedy, Wars of the Roses history, and supernatural horror is genuinely unique — there’s nothing else quite like it on the shelf. Aya Kanno’s art is gorgeous. The story is complete. All 17 volumes are published in English by VIZ Media.
If any of what you’ve read here sounds appealing, grab Volume 1 and see for yourself. You’ll know within the first few chapters whether this is your kind of story. And if it is — you’ve got a beautiful, complete, 17-volume collection waiting for you.