I'm trying 🤔 to understand 🤔 Rohan and Angus' living situation 🤔
The hut. It's Rohan's, basically. At one point, Angus mentions getting "his own hut" (in excitement) and gets super pissed off about that bratty kid-king taking his spot because ">:( I stay with Rohan, wtf." For that, he just chills with Ivar for the night, and we've seen Deirdre asking him to stay at the castle too. Even more than that, I think it's only maybe once in the whole show that anyone ever says "That's Angus' hut," because every other time, it's either:
1) "Rohan, someone's at your hut"
2) "That's Angus' bed"
3) "Rohan and Angus are in this village"
So everything's towards it officially being Rohan's hut, and Angus just being the friend crashing on the couch.
There's even more when you think about how it's always Angus who grabs his stuff and stomps off. Rohan runs away once, but it's when he's fear-poisoned, and he doesn't pack for it the same way Angus always does. There's also jail, since that's where this guy spends at least 30% of his time. There's also-also that bed in Cathbad's chamber - which is interesting, because it's sure as hell not Cathbad's bed (we see that in the Ghost of Balin episode) and Angus makes himself very comfy on it (kinda everyone does, but Angus legit lies down on it). So it's probably Rohan's bed.
👀
And that's 👀 what started me on this. 👀
Rohan already has a bed in the castle from when he was an apprentice. He still has it, since it's not like it's gone and it's big enough for an adult, but for as much as Angus is all perky about getting to stay in the castle occasionally (when he isn't furious about some other shit), Rohan has clearly moved out.
Rohan got a hut.
Cathbad straight up says in the first episode that Rohan was scrounging around looking for food or a fight as a kid (so Angus was too :( unrelated, just /sadface), which makes it pretty damn unlikely that he happened to have a hut as a kid and got a second bed anyway.
And while everyone seems to agree that it's his hut, Rohan has been consistently matter-of-fact that, "Yep, that's Angus' bed. That's Angus' side of this place."
It makes it all so interesting, because I've got so many ways to interpret it but I've settled on this main one:
- Angus didn't like sleeping on the ground in the first episode. He likes beds. He likes being comfy.
- Angus technically always has a place to stay 'cause his ass is always getting hauled off to jail.
- When Angus - as a kid - shows up to check out where Rohan went after Cathbad adopts him as an apprentice, Rohan seemed... surprised? That Angus found his way in? Which is a point saying, "This kid can wriggle into any place so he's got a million places to build a nest" and another saying, "I don't think Rohan expected Angus to find him, and it came off as a 'holy shit, you actually did? I have a friend!' moment when Angus did show up."
- For whatever broke-ass reason, Angus doesn't have his own hut. That's despite at least pitching the idea as being worthy of a wish, so something's stopping him from getting it. It's not that he's choosing to live with Rohan over living in his own place.
- Rohan, who's not constantly in jail and has a job (???), got a hut and then happily devoted half of it to Angus, even though he already had a place to stay without Angus (assuming Cathbad would make good on his promise to kick that kid out of there if he was discovered, even though we know Rohan's hiding his buddy all the time). Whatever resources/time/currency it took, Rohan thought it was worth that price, and also worth sharing.
- Angus does chores. He cooks and cleans. Everything? Maybe not, but we see him doing it or talking about it way more than Rohan does. He even helps with Rohan's sword.
- Rohan's got a teeny tiny case of the Fatal Fuckin' Abandonment Issues and an even worse problem of ':( where is my real family, that'll fix all of my troubles'.
- Angus - although he's S-tier for loyalty, and has unquestioningly jumped face-first into solving whatever problems or physical danger Rohan's put himself into - does have more of a "if it sucks, hit da bricks" attitude. Especially since he gets into his own trouble, there must have been hundreds of nights where Angus - just... didn't come home. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Jail, tied to a tree, attacked and injured, purposely stomped off, crashing with somebody else... Again, an undeniable A+ for his dedication, but also kind of a flight risk.
- We've seen Angus interacting with other background characters. Flirting, chatting, scamming - he's got a whole life. Rohan's really only just got Angus (and Cathbad, but Angus takes priority 'cause Rohan'll straight-up argue with Cathbad to keep 'im).
If you add that up, what you get is one person who's rooming with his best friend and is comfy with doing chores to pay his rent, and another person who basically kinda definitely seems to have uhhhhhh acquired a hut to quasi-bribe his best/only friend into staying as close as possible and doesn't seem to like... need Angus to do chores? At least not consciously. There's a vibe of "This is where you live, you don't have to earn your keep to stay here" from Rohan, and it leaks out enough in how Ivar - who's new - describes things over time that you almost see how clear it is from the outside looking in: from 'This is Rohan's hut' to 'This is where Rohan and Angus are staying'.
You can take it to a sad place really easily. Like, Angus still sees it as a transaction of some kind - something that can be revoked since it's all based on his friendship with Rohan - and that's why he's so willing to leave whenever he's angry. "I'll abandon you first, and on my own terms!" And that immediately clashes with someone like Rohan, who goes on about how he never knew his family, how much he needs Angus around, and how he kinda low-key accepts that sooner or later, something'll happen (in or out of anyone's control) where Angus leaves him for good.
You can also take it to a nice place by being like, "Angus seems like he was taking care of Rohan long before Cathbad was on the scene, and sure as hell has kept doing it throughout the show, so maybe this was Rohan's first chance to pay him back a little." And that Angus doing chores is him not understanding that, locking them into a loop where Angus is effectively paying Rohan back for paying him back, probably pushing Rohan to pay Angus back for paying him back for paying Angus back in the first place. :) They're idiots. It's adorable.
But you can also take it a fantastic place.
Angus spends so much screentime hyping Rohan up, putting himself in front of danger for him, defending Rohan's reputation, rescuing him... and Rohan does the same thing at the same intensity except for hyping Angus up. Rohan's a tearer-downer, really. It doesn't bother Angus, since however it looks in the show, Angus doesn't act as if Rohan means it beyond surface-level teasing. It canonically never becomes an issue for them. (Hogging credit? Different episode lol) But while Angus is going from, "You can't be Draganta!" to "Fuck Balin, you're the hero of our time, don't let anybody tell you that you aren't perfect, I'll stab Lugad if I have to istg," we have Rohan taking until like THE THIRD LAST EPISODE to give a 'royal you' to a whole group of people about how they're Rohan's close-enough-I-guess family.
And like... sometimes I still wonder how that's fair, but stuff like this makes it balance back out. Angus is doing all the little things all the time, and the big things. But while Rohan does the big things too, what he does instead of the little things are these big mostly-unspoken gestures. They're infrequent but they're enduring. It's Angus caring enough to cook and clean and wake Rohan up (figuratively and literally, like in that episode where Rohan ran off to summon Tyrune like an idiot -_-) and generally tend to the home, while Rohan's like, ":3 i bought us a home. yes, for us. i already had a place. this is a place for you to stay without you getting chased by cathbad and you have your own bed forever because you're safe here now" and ":3 i have to go on a suicide mission and you're the only person i want to bring with me, oops we're knights now and i need you to be at my side while i lead us further into war, okay?"
idk - someone flip through that big ol' book on Love Languages and tell me if Rohan's doing Quality Time or "Gifts" (by his own definition) to keep up with Angus' Acts-of-Service and ✨ affirmations!💖 shtick.
I absolutely adore their friendship, omg. It's perfectly controlled chaos. Fire in a pit, safely surrounded by rocks. :D