I find it fun to think about how Owain views relationships
I see Owain as both autistic and aroace. The Owain vs yuri bit is iconic and I think it would be fun to expand it beyond Owain doesn’t understand yuri.
If you have seen my relationship chart for the KotRT you’ll know that I view them as being extremely tight knit. They are a brotherhood with many famillial ties. Relationships are bound to get messy and blurry. Before I wanna touch on the yuri, I would like to talk about Nom, Katie and 4c. Owain finds out Katie and Nom are siblings pretty early on in canon. 4c and Nom view eachother as brothers. Katie and Rc are also extremly close and may also view eachother as siblings, but I’m not as well versed in those two. But yeah, Owain figures out these relationships and his adopted self, who doesn’t percieve a difference between blood family and adopted/chosen/found family, pointly catogorizes those three as siblings.
Can you imagine him refering to 4c as Nom and Katies brother in front of others pre Nom and 4c falling out. Owain is known for taking things litteraly and suddenly we have Nom loudly trying to explain to Owain how 4c isn’t his brother. And Owain just goes “oh, did something happend”, because in his mind for Nom no longer to view 4c as his brother something terrible most have happend. And now both Nom and Owain are confused. Nom explains that 4c is like a brother to him, but not his actual brother. Which only serves to confuse Owain further. So he’s your brother, but not your brother. If it were just to be the two of them, I don’t think they would come to an understanding of eachother. But if others like Graecie, who is smart about people, were to be there, they might figure out what Owain means. Might because when it comes to himself Owain has got the emotional intellect of a rock.
Now back to the yuri. I see Owain as being on the absolute no romantic attraction at all part of the spectrum. He knows it exists. Kind of. But has no idea what it is. I like to think that “I love you” is not a sentance with romantoc conotations to Owain, but rather just an expression pf general closeness. All of this is because of the KotRT and the pretty tightknit brotherhood. Kay and Bedivere may be married and may have tried to explain romantic love. But I am aromantic and I don’t understand wtf it is, so neither does he. Also I haven’t decided how I wanna do the Arthur, Guinevere and Lancelot situation, but I am between consenual polyamory, open relationship or A & G only staying married on paper now that Arthur has “an heir”
All of this to say. Owain won’t assume someone is in a relationship, unless they directly tell him. Otherwise it doesn’t occur to him that that might be the case. Especially with Shan being Owains best friend, he would assume she would tell him that if it were to happend. He is not as close with Eloise, so he does not have the same presumptions with her, which is why he asks Shan about them, when he hears the. talk about their relationship
Lastky I wanna quickly talk about Owain and Kitty. Neither of them experience romantic attraction and the best way to label their relationship would be as a qpr. But I imagine their relationship to be ambigious with both of them content with it being unlabeled