I don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up only for Soman to dash them, but I think there is textual evidence for Sophie being bi/gay, and for the possibility of her being in a relationship with another girl becoming canon.
First, there’s the obvious fact that the emotional intimacy Sophie shares with Agatha runs deeper than any she had with a boy in a heterosexual relationship, and that their love for each other is 1) genuine, and 2) equal in power to romantic love – Agatha could revive Sophie with a kiss, which is only possible if she truly loved Sophie, and it wasn’t mere gratitude that she felt for Sophie saving her life from the School Master’s blade (e.g. Marius Pontmercy kissed a dying Eponine for taking a bullet for him in the Les Miserables movie.)
But the story also makes clear that Sophie’s and Aggies’ true love isn’t romantic in nature, despite having the same (or possibly even greater) intensity and level of emotional intimacy as Aggie’s true romantic love with Tedros, simply because Sophie and Agatha themselves (as they were written) never were romantically interested in each other nor viewied their relationship as anything but friendship, however great or deep it may be, despite acknowledging that they were soulmates. This is reinforced in the text: after Agatha revives Sophie with true love’s kiss at the end of Book 1 and they get sent back to Gavaldon by the Storian, Sophie resumes her old self-centred Sophie-ish ways while Agatha pines for Tedros. Now, if either of them had latent romantic feelings for each other, the ultimate affirmation of those feelings that was given by true love’s kiss would have awakened them to at least the possibility of a homosexual romantic relationship with each other. The Woods might be so heteronormative that homosexual romance is unheard of there, but romantic love is a universal experience as well as an extremely powerful feeling at the individual level; when it’s actually present in a person, he/she can’t just be completely oblivious to it and continue dreaming about straight romantic relationships without at least some internal conflict about why she feels this way about her friend.
However, while Sophie and Agatha aren’t gay for each other, their relationship is proof that Sophie’s only fulfilling relationship to date is with a girl, while all her romantic relationships with boys have failed miserably. In fact, it is the yardstick by which Sophie judges her heterosexual romantic relationships so far as emotional intimacy/ mutual understanding is concerned
“Marrying Rhian was supposed to be true love.
She’d thought he’d understood her. When she looked into his eyes, she’d seen someone pure, honest, and Good. Someone who acknowledged the shades of Evil in her heart and loved her for them like Agatha did.”
So even though Sophie isn't romantically interested in Agatha, she wants her heterosexual romantic relationships to have the same qualities as her relationship with Agatha which she regards it as the “gold standard” for a healthy, committed relationship -- even though it’s with a girl, and after the events of TLEA, a girl who’s her twin sister.
The other bit of textual evidence that opens the possibility that Sophie might be gay/bi and have a fulfilling romantic relationship with a girl in the future, is that Sophie has been shown to find another woman physically attractive:
Hustling behind, Sophie peered at the Dean’s reflection in the breezeway. She’d never seen anyone so beautiful—even her own mother. Proportions exactly out of a storybook, rose-petal lips, hair so lustrous and full, as if the Dean had been drawn to a page and brought to life. What did she use on her skin? Even thistleroot can’t get pores that small, Sophie thought, comparing them in the polished glass to her own—
– A World Without Princes
Of course, Sophie was not romantically interested in Evelyn, but this passage is evidence that Sophie is capable of feeling attraction toward females, as it mirrors the way she was stunned by Tedros’ looks when she first saw him
“And one more walked in.
Hair a halo of celestial gold, eyes blue as a cloudless sky, skin the color of hot desert sand, he glistened with a noble sheen, as if his blood ran purer than the rest. […] Sophie gaped, bewitched.” – The School for Good and Evil
Also, Sophie’s starstruck reaction to Evelyn’s looks is significant in that Sophie literally goes to school with dozens of beautiful princesses, but none of them had caught Sophie’s attention or inspired such a reaction from Sophie, not even Beatrice, who “was so beautiful she didn’t look real”. So it was some quality about Evelyn’s beauty in particular that appealed to Sophie. And then Sophie becomes smitten with Rhian at first sight, whose looks take after his mother, and has the pretty much the same reaction as with seeing Evelyn
“The boy had tanned skin the color of amber and copper-brown hair cropped close to his head like a soldier’s helmet. He had a strong brow bone, a long, straight nose, sensual lips, and thick dark brows that ran flat over his eyes like two streaks of paint. […]
He looked her age. Perhaps a bit older.
One thing was for sure, though. She’d never seen such a beautiful boy in her life, masculine, sultry, and smelling of salt and sand, as if he’d been dewed from the mouth of a desert flower.” – Quests for Glory
“The two professors and two girls turned to see a tall, ravishing woman push through the door, milky smooth and full-bosomed in a teacher’s electric-blue dress decorated with a pattern of butterflies. She had a waterfall of chestnut hair to her midback, forest-green eyes under thick dark brows, a luscious pink mouth, and a gap between her two shiny front teeth.” – A World Without Princes
“The quest team now saw Rhian’s tan, sharp-jawed face in full view, his hair glinting like a bronze helmet, his sea-green eyes running briefly over the Snake, who was still out of sight of the people. ” – A Crystal of Time
I’m really interested in how Soman will elaborate on the Sophie/Evelyn Sader connection in the last book. So far, we know Evelyn’s dress and whatever vestigial trace of Evelyn contained in the dress seem to like Sophie, in a maternal way like Lady Lesso was fond of Sophie.
Lastly, Soman himself is gay, and as he has written much of his own personality into the Sophie character, it’s reasonable to guess that the endgame of the SGE series could be Sophie eventually realising her own homosexuality and being comfortable with it like Soman had.
Tim Ferriss: When did you become openly gay?
Soman Chainani: I think it was my senior year of college. It’s so funny because now I watch kids come out, and it’s done with such empowerment and this kind of beautiful freedom.
And if there’s one thing I’m sort of envious in the entire world, it’s the way that kids come out now. Because when we did it in the early to mid 2000s, there just wasn’t anything out there to help you. So it was just traumatic, having to come out to people, to your parents, to your friends. Every time you did it, it was just trauma.
So I think once I actually came out is when everything sort of broke open and that’s when I think the path I was on… Up until then, I thought I was going to be in business. I thought I was going to be a consultant or a banker or any of these things. And it was only after I came out that I think my creative self came back. It was almost like that had gone in the closet, too and it took time for both to come out.
– Interview on the Tim Ferriss Show
We’re already on book 2 out of 3 for the second trilogy. Maybe there’d be more LGBT representation in the later books (if the book after ACOT isn’t the last SGE book) when the characters have unambiguously become adults. One reason for the dire lack of LGBT representation in the earlier books could be due to the age of the characters and the intended audience, like having 16/17 y.o. teenagers read about a 20/21 y.o. year old lesbian main character is less controversial (=more sellable) than featuring a 16/17 y.o. lesbian main character in a book for 12/13 y.o. children, because for better or worse, homosexuality, and any actual sexual content, is considered a “mature theme” and thus not a suitable topic for books for younger readers.
