Rohan

I'm not gonna write this now (update from two hours later: i lied 😭), but let it be known that - as of October 2025, and thanks to the 2025 rewatch we're doing on Reddit, and especially because I've been getting to chat with folks who actually love Rohan - I am really coming around on the guy. 👀

I mean, I stand by what I said in my DMs to @canadamoose86 before we switched to our public chat afterwards, which was in response to her asking me if Rohan was my favourite character aside from Angus. Totally fair question, 'cause I end up writing about Rohan a lot, despite - well, I'll copy/paste what I told her in June:

Rohan's weird. I hated him as a kid (as far as a normal person can hate a fictional character) because he was so bland and generic, and I was annoyed with him being the main character. He wasn't smug, but he was always *slightly* better than everyone else. He wasn't smart, but he was always *slightly* more right. He wasn't inspiring, but he was 'the chosen one,' so we had to stop and watch his poses and listen to his speeches. That's all I remembered about him from seeing the show when I was eight. Then when I rewatched it during university, like you said, he was circling the drain on two things: "What's my destiny - no, I don't like it" and "Where's my family - hm, not like that."

It took me *so long* to find any interesting angles for him. And I had to do the work myself; the script and the casting (sorry Mr. O'Mearain 😭) were giving me nothing to work with. My only 'use' for him was making him a villain for Angus, just as a vehicle to give Angus more angst to riff off of. Even in Molten - which was before I liked Rohan at all, but *was* when I wanted to tone down the self-indulgence of having an Angus-centric fic by making it Angus-centric-through-Rohan's-eyes - the whole thing starts with Rohan getting some supernatural jealousy, paranoia and anger at Angus being closer to Deirdre (from Rohan's POV) and outrage at Angus 'daring' to tell Rohan to bail on exploring that dungeon. Which, uh, leads to Angus' death, and would've led to Rohan having to face a fully corrupted version of Angus that *his* actions created if I hadn't completely wandered off from writing it. 🥲

In fact I remember the next chapter was supposed to have a time skip to show Rohan getting obnoxiously stoic and curt, because he's refusing to process the shock of Angus' death. And everyone's letting him be a jerk about his grief because he's Draganta 🙄 (typical "sad action hero who used to be great but now he's drinking himself away"), which was me trying to match what I thought the show's vibes were bark then. So that's probably why I got bored with the story. No Angus, which was the whole point of the fic, and already a nail in the coffin. :/ But on top of that, I had Moody McManPain, and he was soooo duuuuull. From there, I got into my pattern of Angst-for-Angus plots by having Rohan incapable of *not* taking things for granted, throwing a tantrum when stuff wasn't done exactly his way, and expecting everyone to forgive him as soon as he was sad or comforting him as wallowed in how bad he felt over it. That boiled down to either, "Rohan thinks he can do everything by himself, screws it tf up, makes Angus take the hit" or "Rohan sees his friend being happier than he - the Chosen One - is, and has to nip that in the bud purely to soothe his bruised ego." He wasn't boastful like Garrett, but he *was* spiteful and petty, and I was totally happy to turn that up to being malicious.

Then I started to think, "Okay, Rohan. I get why Angus likes you: obligation and familarity. But why do you like *him*, since you're lending yourself way too well to being the Regina George of this show?" That got me into the pattern of him being like, "W-well... 🥺 I call Angus foolish and I make fun of him, but I don't really mean it. I lose my temper and fight with him, but he knows I don't mean that either. I'm just really insecure, so when you think about it, I'm the real victim 🥺🥺" Which - ugh. Even worse. And that lined up with what he's like on the show! He goes along with Angus' plans, but then immediately teases Angus for having no brains. I get that guys can rip on each other, but it was so one-sided and always at Angus' expense (bear in mind, I'm still in "Angus Can Do No Wrong™" mode around that time).

But lining up with the show again had me circle back to Angus' side. Like - "How obligated could you possibly be to a guy who's two steps from saying 'you're too sensitive' and 'I feel unsafe' if you ever try defending yourself?" I did a Rohan-through-Angus'-eyes thing, watched the show again...

... and then I thought, "Oh!! Oh, Angus is fully aware of Rohan being shitty to him. And he does not care." Rohan says he has no brains? Angus laughs and moves on. Rohan tells Angus he screwed up? Angus shrugs and basically agrees. Rohan says Angus always runs when there's trouble? Angus literally takes it as his reminder to go do that. And I was scratching my head being like, "... *Is* Angus dumb? To notice all this? There's an episode where they fight - that's the only time he's *ever* had a problem with this guy? :/"

But - um. 👀

Angus tells Rohan to shut the hell up a *lot*. Like I think, "Calm down, Rohan *immediately turns to talk to someone else*" is the closest anyone on this show has to a catchphrase. Rohan starts mouthing off a *teeny* bit to Angus in an earlier episode, and Angus jumps up with a very obvious intent of kicking Rohan's ass. Rohan's trying to read the scroll to put Tyrune back, drops it, and Angus dives in to snatch in and chuck it into the fire. In the very first episode, Rohan yelled at the king that he was going to find Draganta, shut up and let him go on this quest, and he *would* be bringing Angus, NO QUESTIONS ALLOWED... and then he goes to the jail and says, "🥺👉🏽👈🏽 angus can you come with me." And Angus SAYS NO. "That's dumb. Why would I do that?" That's Angus' CANONICAL response.

The entire dynamic flipped for me to FINALLY hook me in, and now I'm obsessed with it. Rohan's a boring, generic action hero who gets everyone to do what he says, and is in charge, and is "Go Team," and he *cannot proceed* without Angus' permission. He 😭 had to pretend to be in bed 😭 by stuffing pillows under his blanket 😭 to sneak off to summon Tyrune 😭 because he told Angus he wanted to do that, and Angus replied, "Wtf? No. Go to bed." End of discussion, so now Rohan has to sneak out like a teenager breaking curfew to go set Tyrune free.

But!! It's not even as simple as, "Actually Angus is the one in charge ☝🏽🤓," because Angus is clearly picking his battles with *some* kind of logic. Yeah, he'll tell Rohan not to tame Pyre without his weapons, but he'll still go along with Rohan anyway. He'll lose his mind that Rohan's magically lost his courage, but spend Rohan's prep time for the duel with Lugad by distracting him. He'll also say how much he hates walking, then walk everywhere and end up running after the guy. And he'll flirt with Deirdre, but as soon as Rohan's 'serious' about her, backs off right away.

So entirely due to my brain rot over how complicated Angus is, the boring-ass cookie cutter protagonist became:

1. Not the true power in their dynamic

2. Completely unthreatening in any of his jabs at Angus (because anything that'd have a true edge gets an *immediate* reaction, ranging anywhere from '😒 rohan, shush' to "🔫🙂 i am no longer asking")

3. Having to sneak around Angus, because as it turns out, Mr. I Passed the Test of Courage is a *little bit terrified* of disappointing his best friend (to the point I think *that's* why Angus is so quick to brush off Rohan's mistakes and move on - as a kindness for Rohan's pathological angsting)

4. Not-*not* the true power in their dynamic, because he's forced Angus to do what he wants plenty of times

And now it's fun! Rohan's this Big, Noble Hero with a one-year-older brother going, "this kid kicked me in the head yesterday 🤨" And that's looming over every 'Go Team' speech that Rohan earnestly makes. It's like trying to show your childhood friends how professional you are, when they have albums of you passed out with Sharpie on your face, plus your brother attending a big award ceremony for your career, and he's brought along every baby picture you thought you'd shredded already - and you *don't* know what his plan for them is. 😰 It's so much fun picturing Angus bouncing between humoring him, helping just to protect him, having genuine moments of being inspired by Draganta, and tagging along purely to see what stupid shit Rohan's gonna do next lmaooooo get the Sharpie ready

So writing Rohan is, for me, keeping him outwardly generic and sad and spiralling into doubt but blah-blah-blah rising to be the leader, all while internally trying to fight his own cringe and hoping to God that Angus doesn't roll his eyes, shattering Rohan's confidence. Then when Angus is supporting him, having Rohan feel *relief* about being able to drop the mask and finally panic about not being good enough, since Angus has already seen way worse while they were growing up and isn't afraid. And when Rohan's being a dick, knowing Angus is either watching a three-year-old say his first mean word (adorable) or finding a rock to huck at that Legendary Asshole's head (as the duty of any older sibling). And, and, and! When they're not doing any of that, they're just playing around and causing supposed-to-be-harmless trouble together. Angus might goad Rohan to stop pretending to be perfect, but tries to never let it go so far that Rohan gets killed or actually in trouble. He knows how happy Rohan's stupid cookie cutter protagonist role makes him and wants to protect it to keep the magic alive for him, and he also knows Rohan's only ever at a 0 or 100 😭

Basically, you're right about Rohan, and he's only my favourite as an *extension* of Angus. I still can't muster an interest if we're not watching Rohan explicitly to see Angus' reaction. 🤷🏽‍♀️

I think you can see why I had to stop writing all this in Tumblr's tiny, un-editable, no-HTML DMs. 😭

But honestly? Even since then? I'm starting to get it. Well, I'm getting it if I fill in all the blanks that I assume would've been filled in if it wasn't a kids' show: Rohan's kind of a mess. As much as I give him shit for the episode where he and Angus fight (since Rohan started it by being a dick and doubling-down on it; no that opinion will not change), I've actually learned to - like... see it from his point of view...?

He starts the show as a total loser. The genuine credit I keep giving to Lochlann O'Mearain is that scene in the first episode where he and Angus knock Deirdre over, and then he's trying to offer to show her how the magic was supposed to work, is that he sold Rohan's 'gentle giant' side. Absolutely nailed it, 10 out of 10, no notes. But they don't frame it as Rohan being a loser; it's that Deirdre is a snobby princess. Then the show undermines it even further by talking about how great and amazing he is all the time, trumpeting up his heroic elements, and only ever incidentally implying that - no, this guy sucks lmao

As proof:

1. He's a druid's apprentice who can't do magic. They treat it like they're one-off jokes, because it only happens three times in the entire show, one of which was totally Angus' fault, and another of which was arguably both their faults (and they were kids). Compare that to how he reads out a ritual so well that he accidentally summons Tyrune, and another time, he correctly clocks that Garrett is enchanted, effectively cancelling the two times he botched a pretty straightforward magic spell. It buries the whole concept: Rohan sucks at the one thing he's presumably spent his entire life being taught by Cathbad to do, to the point that Cathbad's seemingly keeping Rohan around because he's a nice kid and he's got that birthmark on his arm.

2. He's a bad apprentice. It's not even that he's bad at magic; he's bad at everything! We see him do apprentice work literally four times: when he's first brought to the castle (where he starts sweeping and then gets instantly distracted by Angus), in the first episode (where he's supposed to start putting the powders away but even more-instantly gets distracted by Angus), when he goes with Cathbad and Angus to get herbs in the episode with the baby dragon, and then when he's 'helping' Cathbad take inventory and Cathbad tells him - to his face - "Dude you are a shit apprentice." Rohan's a good warrior, yeah, but he's not in the castle to be a warrior. He's there to sweep up and take inventory, so he's gone from a childhood of starving and fighting people with a rusty sword to being taken in and told over and over how bad he is at his job, including the princess of the castle and his own teacher.

(not to prove my own point about being unable to write about rohan without making it about angus, but man, no wonder Angus was so quick to mess around with Cathbad's powders in the first episode - even after knowing he and Rohan cursed the whole castle ten years ago, on Rohan's first day! Angus does love magic, but he's also the only thing keeping Rohan's self-esteem hanging on by its last little thread. "It's not that hard," he says, making a mess of it while Rohan watches, mere episodes before Cathbad hands Angus a lodestone and he uses it perfectly to find his way to his armour. But then in the episode where that evil druid shows up, there's Angus saying Cathbad's magic is straight-up stupid, and in the episode where Fin Varra's gone missing, there's Angus cautioning Rohan from messing with the scrying pool at Tir Na Nog. How many years has Angus been lying to reassure Rohan, "No, it's not your fault, I'm sure you'd be great at magic if you weren't stuck with an obviously horrible teacher, you're the best, I promise"? Let that speak for itself in the episode after Rohan summons Tyrune, and Angus snatches the scroll from Rohan and throws it in the fire. He probably came so close to admitting Rohan sucks at magic in general, but the Most Pathologically Loyal Best Friend Ever left it saying, "Oh, I'm sure it's just a problem localized to this specific scroll." What a guy. What a bro. Make out a little. Who said that.)

3. He has never been a warrior before. Yeah, he's always had the sword and he's always been good with it, but he's never been trained as one. He's not even a soldier. He's a failed apprentice, and the only 'warrior training' he got from that is when Cathbad wanted to summon some skeletons and attack him for a while. Outside of that, he's only got what he's done with Angus, which apparently included huckin' rocks at each other. So when he's convincing everyone to ignore Fin Varra's explicit instructions, it's a guy who's been raised to follow instructions but never learned how, and using the power of his... warrior aura to suggest a 'strategically better' approach when he isn't a warrior. He's got no tactical understanding of what would help Kells faster or not, and they're all listening to him anyway! Deirdre, sure, she's desperate and susceptible to bad advice in that state, but Ivar had no reason to trust Rohan's opinion outside of politeness and deference to Deirdre's thoughts. The one guy who says, "Hm, that sounds fucking stupid" gets 'outvoted' (and turns out to be completely fucking right). But that's not painted as, "Oh shit, Rohan's a dumbass, why did we listen to him," especially because they undercut that by giggling about Angus getting second-degree burns on his ass (again). Instead, they paint it as, "Oh, wow, we all (Angus: ಠ_ಠ) foolishly underestimated this task due to our shared hubris, so we'll accept this as a shared defeat as well." No!! It was Rohan's fault!! He doesn't know what he's doing!

Worse, the show shifts so quickly to Rohan struggling with the weight of being Draganta, we forget that he isn't even a fucking warrior to begin with! He's just a snot-nosed kid with a sword! In the first episode, he's whining that Deirdre is calling him a boy and doing a very bad job of convincing her, "No, I'm a man >:(" But if anyone was looking at Angus and thinking, "Ugh, who would send someone like that onto a quest like this?" ANGUS IS MORE COMPETENT THAN ROHAN. We can debate how much more, you can't slander Angus but be like, "Surely Rohan is the mature one" - you're fools!!! You have it made with Angus!" Whereas Angus telling Rohan, "You could be a champion with that sword :)" in Episode Two is probably the only positive reinforcement Rohan's had since the last time anyone who wasn't Angus gave him positive reinforcement! 😭"

So that, I think, has been a big part of my turnaround on this guy. In July, I was complaining about how Rohan's dumb and the show frustrated me with no one seemed to ever realize that. Now, in October, I've finally figured out, "OH THEY KNEW," but the show left that in its environmental storytelling, and forgive me for being an eight-year-old who never picked up on it. I was distracted by the open dialogue around how Rohan's a great guy meant for great things and let's go watch how great and wonderful he is, while Angus suffers as the only sane man trying to delude himself into thinking Rohan's great for Rohan's own sake.

Yes, Deirdre was being a snobby princess. But also, Rohan sucks at his job.

Yes, Rohan starts off already being great with a sword. But also 'swordsmanship' is not his job, he sucks as his job, he's bad at any parts that don't require a sword, and it looks like Cathbad's just making the most out of the apprentice he has.

Yes, Conchobar's entrusting Rohan to go off on a mission to find Draganta, and even willing to hold off on surrendering until the summer's soltice. But also, Conchobar and Deirdre will fucking die if Maeve takes over Kells, and the legend of Draganta is - in the most factually literal definition - a fairy tale. The only reason Conchobar doesn't send someone he actually trusts is because he needs all of his soldiers on the front line. Cathbad protesting Rohan's inclusion of Angus and Conchobar cutting it off isn't a vote of confidence in Rohan's decision-making; it's a king who's going, "Dude there is no prestige to this mission, take a flock of sheep if you want, I don't care, this whole thing'll be a miracle whether or not your objectively terrible apprentice brings a thief dumb-enough-to-get-caught along or not." God, part of me wonders if Conchobar doesn't want Deirdre to go along just in case they need to flee Ireland.

With that positively buried context being restored, I can agree: Rohan is a fun character - after you add back all the storytelling they glossed over and framed to attribute to something else. :D

Is he my favourite aside from Angus?

:/ Well. Let's not confuse appreciation with affection. He certainly helps me love Angus more, since I get an even better picture of how critical their friendship is to each other. But I can love Angus without having to involve any of the other characters. I still need Angus before I have an iota of interest in Rohan's shenanigans.

Lucky for Rohan, him and Angus are a toxically codependent package deal, so there are plenty of opportunities for Rohan to get involved. uwu

Also holy shit, my Autistic!Rohan is peak 😍 What an amazing thing to explore! It really changes the context in how he interacts with the show's world, how much he was left to struggle on his own, how unfairly he gets treated (off-screen)... and again, what an absolute bro Angus is to be able to help him navigate it. Not in a "Wahhhh, it's so hard being a parent of a child with autism" way, but in a "Rohan was 100% the village's 'weird kid,' and Angus enthusiatically loves him for it" way.

Rohan: A baby dragon is called... a drageen.

Eight-year-old Me: shut up nerd

Angus: Fuckin' fantastic, you funky little dude, tell me more :D

Rohan: :)

Also Rohan's chainmail and cape looks like dragon scales and wings, which is cool costume design (please give him smaller sleeves though), so I assume he's super clingy and insecure about his friends in a very "don't take from my giant treasure pile" kinda way. Which is hot.