I just picture teeanger Arthur realising first he's into boys while seeing the knights train, so he decides he's gay. But then Morgana and Gwen happen and he's like "but girls". And then he just realises he likes both and he's happy he knows that :)
i find the concept of people understanding sexual/romantic orientations outside of heterosexuality really interesting in worlds like the bbc merlin canon (and canon aus..) cos it's like.. were there laws or social norms/rules about queer relationships or feelings or ~tendencies~??
like would arthur or merlin or morgana or anyone ever have queer romantic/sexual feelings and suddenly like 'realise' or 'think' they were gay/bi/whatever? would they even have a name for that? or would they even really have concepts for different kinds of love outside of hetero marriage? and would they see things in boxes like we do or would it only be official relationships like marriages that are significant officially and like then there's lots of freedom in personal relationships to do as you please without having to hide it, as long as you weren't too horrendously obvious in discrediting the 'union' between your two families/households/realms??
like idk i always headcanon merlin as gay so i kinda figure he tried a lot of different stuff with different people and just sorta gravitated more towards what he felt more comfortable with/enjoyed more as he got older.
but arthur i always think of as totally bi/pan so personally i always see him as just kinda doing what he wanted with whoever he wanted because he was the prince and people were always interested and there were no particularly significant taboos as long as he didn't fuck up albion's politics by trying to marry a scullery maid (lol)
it's not so much that trend of "i don't subscribe to labels" but more just "my society doesn't label this so i never think about it, i just express my private passions as i see fit"
