Interesting tidbit of info, but the reason that we (live-evil) picked up Rose of Versailles back when we did was because we had just finished subbing the final 13 episode arc of Utena and were looking for something to fill the void, so Rose of Versailles was the obvious followup
We even used some of the same typesetting from Utena in ROV to pay a homage to it ^_^;;
-Tofu
Utena's inspiration most definitely came from Rose of Versailles, there's no denying that.