here's the thing (god fucking help me im thinking about them again). platonic fitzloved is actually so so important to consider (in my humble opinion as an aromantic) because it helps the reader to challenge their concept of what does and does not equate to romance.
fitz is not romantically attracted to beloved simply by virtue of not wanting to socially perform romance with him. he doesn't want to get married and settle down and have a family and live publicly as A Couple with him in the way that he immediately wanted all that with molly. (we all know he could easily be lying to himself about this but let's assume for the sake of the post that he's right about this one for once). but at the same time, he does not ONCE bat an eye at performing acts of intimacy with beloved, most of which are things conventionally thought to be reserved specifically for romantic relationships. they share a bed, they cuddle, they kiss, they have a time of living together domestically and it was like the happiest fitz has ever been aside from the being half-forged of it all. they're also both incredibly possessive of each other and desire exclusivity with each other but that's a whole other can of worms that someone else has already talked about much better than i could here but ANYWAY suffice to say that all of this stuff is stuff people generally look at and go "you're a couple. only couples do that. you're romantically involved" but fitz? fitz does all this and goes "yeah it's cause i love him. obviously. he's my dearest friend and i love him." because they ARE friends (and also a secret third thing we don't have a specific word for because we don't have a way to experience accidentally merging souls with another person) and friends ought to be able to display their affection so earnestly with each other without having to think of if they're Making It Weird. (why, exactly, is it weird? why is a kiss such a huge deal?)
if we add repressed bisexuality into this mix (once again, "supple waist." the barely disguised hand kink. describing amber as a "fetching woman." come on, man) we get a fitz who feels attraction to a man (even just one specific man) and wants domesticity with him but doesn't want romance with him in the way he feels a romantic attraction to women. i could go on for days about whether that's because he simply never conceived of it as a possibility due to six duchies social norms and whether his discomfort with appearing as a couple with amber was from a genuine lack of romantic attraction or if its parallels to his marriage with molly brought him too close for comfort to realizing something about himself but again i will not do that and instead meet fitz more or less where he's at. mostly. because i think if he can understand that kissing your homie gently and holding him through the night can be done platonically, he could be persuaded to realize that exploring said homie's body can also be done platonically. fitz is undeniably attracted to beloved at least to some degree and if he wanted to they could fuck nasty about it and it would not have to mean they're immediately locked into following the social roles prescribed by romantic convention. it wouldn't have to change anything about what they are to each other, it would just be another way of knowing one another.
now beloved, on the other hand, IS romantically attracted to fitz. that's more or less canon. ("i always imagined that, had i the chance, i could show you off as befitted you.") he's a lover and a romantic and he wants to flaunt his claim on fitz. i think in his perfect world they would be going around living publicly as A Couple and doing the Social Things That Couples Do. but fitz doesn't want that and beloved would never want to force fitz into a role he doesn't want to wear (except for catalyst purposes but. you know what i mean.) even so, even with these differences, i think they could have been happy together. it just would have taken fitz pulling his head out of his ass about his internalized homophobia and learning not only to accept the fool's attraction to him but to also find his own way to embrace it (sexually or not). i think if they'd had the chance and the emotional willingness and no fucking worms they could have reached a compromise of sorts that allowed them both to care for each other in the tenderest, most heartfelt ways that they always desired with each other without having to adhere strictly to what either friendship or romance is supposed to look like. yes they have a child together yes they share physical acts of affection yes they're life partners no they don't have to get married or call themselves lovers. they could just be.
what im saying is that if we take everything that is commonly thought of as reserved for romantic relationships-- devotion, living together, physical intimacy of all levels, even marriage-- and remove them from the confines of belonging to Only One Type Of Relationship which is expected to take a certain shape, you open up the opportunity to have freer and more intimate friendships and create bonds that refuse definition. fitzloved is queer even if fitz is 100% straight because their on-page intimacy already defies the social expectation for what a friendship is and is not supposed to contain. it's not normal platonic and it's not normal romantic. and i think allowing those lines to blur (or, better yet, doing away with them entirely) can create a culture where people have a more grounded and healthy relationship with intimacy.
(none of this, of course, is to shit on reading fitzloved as romantic. they're very much coded that way. i myself am not even sure if i like fitz better as repressed romantically or just not attracted in that way. i am but humbly begging your consideration to watch me hit them with my queerplatonification beam
also i don't think robin hobb had any of this in mind when she wrote them like that. what she was actually going for i could not fucking begin to guess)
They’re besties!!! Besties with some kind of underlaying tension that they’re going to have to ignore as Merida does not want to date anyone, but that’s okay, their friendship will survive anything ❤️
