Apparently lots of people are somewhat tired or unimpressed by Martin/Rose but simply not talking about it. Well, I’m glad to be the scapegoat for you guys to talk about gay/ace/not-with-Rose Martin.
I will accept this burden.
I just wanna talk about Martin all the time, man. Doesn’t matter how. He can be the gayest, acest, biest, straightest, I love it all.
If we’re talking about in terms of how the Martin-Rose relationship was written, then I can see that. It wasn’t particularly well developed and seemed to follow the Disney-esque love at first sight formula. A while ago when one of the RedwallWeekly prompts asked for a mousemaid falling for Martin, I noticed how everybody seemed to write Martin as full of regret and incapable of establishing romantic relationships. What with his alleged memory loss (which I have my doubts about), I think he very well could have formed a close relationship. I can think of reasons he wouldn’t, but still.
In regards to hypothetical orientations: straight-celibate.
I disagree with saying ‘poorly developed’, when there was little to no romance between them in the books – actually I’d argue it’s one of the best developed relationships, because it lead the reader to wonder about romance between them on their own, while firmly establishing that they were the closest of friends at the least. I DO agree that he could form a close relationship with another later on, but never one that would overshadow the one with Rose (though Gonff comes close). I can see him as straight celibate too.
Personal headcanon (I guess): Rose era; straight, post-Rose; biromantic asexual celibate. Or something.
I love how everyone has such detailed reason for everything and then me just “he just feels gay idk”
Still I love the discussion and all the potential orientations!
I agree that the relationship isn’t poorly written – they have a very beautiful and close friendship and I appreciate that. But Jacques definitely had a habit of pushing his main characters into a “married the opposite sex love interest, have a family” traditional happy ending. Not all of them, granted. But a lot of them. Of all the others, though (Deyna and Bryony come to mind right now but there are probably more I’m not thinking of) they always seem to still read straight to me.
It was always kind of a sore point to me that he wrote characters everyone can relate to but there’s no openly gay characters or anyone ever talking about it, ever? But Martin reads gay to me, or at least, not straight. And I want this.
So it’s probably the reason I don’t like the Martin/Rose ship is that I’ve always been very gay, I’ve always read Martin as gay, so I’ve never read the story in a light that would suggest the potential future romance to me.
tl:dr it’s completely personal and not actually supported everywhere but I want it to be true so it’s ‘canon’ for me.