conqueror of shamballa deserved better

roy mustang purposely built himself up as a womanizer and a heartbreaker in the eyes of the public. everyone knows roy mustang loves women, he’s constantly talking about the dates he’s been on recently and the ones he’s going on soon. no one would ever doubt that

IN ACTUALITY the women he “dates” work for his aunt, who is a skilled intelligence operative, and they are actually just gathering intel for him and his squad. for all of the rumors and all of his talk he has been seen on a date exactly once and this is what happened on it

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we see him flirting with a woman named elizabeth over the phone, who turns out to be lt. hawkeye under a codename. the flirting is actually coded information so she can update him on the mission they’re doing

alchemists typically write their notes in code - marcoh in the form of recipes, ed in the form of a travelogue – roy uses the names of women. it’s also notable that all the code names for his team (elizabeth for hawkeye, kate for feury, jacqueline for havoc, vanessa for falman, etc) are names of women, even though 4/5 of his team is men. this isnt like hard evidence of anything it’s just furthering the idea that the womanizer persona is intentional, it’s thematic, and it’s in the pursuit of military strategy.

putting on the facade of heartbreaker to stay closeted isnt uncommon but roy in particular EXCELS at this stuff. it’s just what he does. everything he does HAS to serve at least two purposes or it’s a waste of time (just one example: fma 03 episode 5). in this case he’s protecting himself (a gay man in the military with extremely lofty ambitions) AND doing his job

here’s where facts end and speculation begins

what about his relationship with riza?

theyre very good friends who have known each other for a very long time (i’m guessing roy started alchemy training by at the latest 16 so that puts them at like…12 years of friendship?) and trust each other very very much. riza is also a lesbian. they are #solidarity and if they did ever get together after the series ended, know that it was a lavender marriage

so he’s not into women but how is he into men?

admittedly there arent a lot of examples of this, mostly because roy doesn’t fucking care about anything except work. he and hughes undeniably had an extremely powerful bond though, however you want to interpret that. hughes and riza are the only people we ever really see roy be emotionally vulnerable with. they are his best and only friends.

one of roy’s primary motivations throughout the series is to find and kill the person that murdered hughes - episodes 53 and 54 of brotherhood are mostly just roy burning up the whole underground out of grief and rage. also he canonically still speaks to hughes’ grave, brings him flowers, and talks to him when he is alone. this isnt shipping it’s just factual things that happened

if you do want to get into shipping though: roy was in love with hughes. idk if hughes knew but i know