Ahhhh... that's the key. PositionEntity is not a normal "transformation" like RotateEntity is. It's being handled outside of the normal chain of multiplied transformations matrices. In my example, if you treat the RotateEntity like a ApplyAnAbsoluteRotationToWorld, then you can see what I was thinking. Once the cube is moved, a rotation would move the cube instead of just rotating it about it's center no matter where it is (rotating an object at x,y,z about it's center is actually a combination of transformation matrices together: translate entity center to world origin - rotate about the about the world origin - translate entity back to original position).