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im gonna do this the profiler's way because i dont do analyses and have no idea how to format this otherwise

BEHAVIOUR - his actions

i actually typed this in a draft that has since been deleted but i wholeheartedly believe all his actions are a RESPONSE to something someone else does. even just when we first meet him in the brothers hawthorne jameson describes him as a "chameleon" because rohan switched disguises like three times. there's this ongoing joke-ish about how rohan matches everyone's freak and personally i think it's all because of this.

one example of his actions being a response to something else is the way he fights. he says it himself that he doesn't have a fighting style and that is his strength. he focuses on the other person and studies their body language and fighting style before he even tries to go in and fight them. that's why he never loses a fight (even verbally that's why he's a d1 ragebaiter).

and speaking of how he reads body language, when he first met savannah in the grandest game (ch12), he could read a lot of things about her immediately: soft-soled shoes, aggressive stride, weight skewed toward the balls of the feet. and then he also examined how she would react about the clue she read on the lock. and then he immediately clocked her anger just by how she climbed and walked. he reads everything about savannah that he can learn just by body language and then acts accordingly.

exhibit B on how fast he clocks body language and words is when he had his first meeting with both grayson and savannah (also in ch12) and immediately clocked that grayson was overprotective and that savannah doesn't want to be protected.

even when he approached brady in glorious rivals (ch71), he approached with the intention to make BRADY throw the first punch. all these things is the reason why he's so good at manipulating people and ragebaiting people too.

so yeah he's never started a convo or a fight. he's only responded.

PERSONALITY - how he thinks and feels

he's a weird area for personality because on the one hand he's fully aware he's terrible but on the other hand he doesn't care.

obviously how he thinks is heavily dependent on his upbringing in the mercy but i also dont think it's fully just the mercy. he even knows the mercy isn't all that good either(see: "children didn't come to the keeping of the devil's mercy for good reasons"). but in gr, that flashback he had when he first arrived to the mercy (ch35) there are already things he thinks that are concerning (for anyone let alone a five year old) and feelings that match who he is as of gr.

thoughts: "people will hurt you, if you let them" (mind you he hasn't actually gotten into the keeping of the mercy yet as of this) "dark purple liquid that reminds rohan of blood in the night" (so specifically in the night??)

feelings: "rage burning inside him" "wants to be the one holding the quill, holding the book." "he wants it all."

there was already something in his past that shaped him as a person BEFORE the mercy. no healthy five year old kid is thinking "people will hurt you, if you let them." and if we remember that rohan was purposefully drowned by his own family, there's a lot of possibility that he killed someone from his family.

^sorry it's turning into theories but another support for this is actually when he says "family was capable of inflicting wounds the rest of the world could never match" talking about savannah and grayson. he doesn't exactly have... family... so why would he know that or think that at all? family is a big theme in the inheritance games in general and even for rohan it's a big theme because his trauma is so bad from his family he suppressed it so deeply.

BUT ANYWAYS im getting sidetracked. as a 5 y/o he has so much rage and we don't really see that in the person he is now. but he recognised that anger in savannah almost immediately. and in the brothers hawthorne there was also this description jameson used for him when avery: "there was a flash of something in rohan's eyes—not anger, not exactly—but a moment later, it was gone." that was more of a glimpse of the rage he had as a five year old. so imo? i think he has just as much rage as savannah does, but he suppresses it way more than savannah.

he's also way more "the bolter" than people acknowledge. everyone knows grayson pushes people away and jameson treats people as games when they care too much right? rohan is basically a combination of both. when he found out brady's offer to savannah, he kept trying to get her to break off the alliance. because he didn't want to get hurt. because he cared too much. (yes i have evidence for everything: "betray me. hurt me. do your worst, savannah grayson. pain only counted if you didn't see it coming. pain only counted if you cared.") he basically had the michael townsend mentality here too: "if you can't keep them from hitting you, you make them hit you. at least that way, you're ready. at least that way, it's not a surprise."

he's also forced to trust her because she didn't break off the alliance and she didn't betray him and in the end, he had to give her his dice (monumental moment btw). he's forced to fight the thoughts he's had ingrained in him since he was FIVE.

ENVIRONMENT

like i said the mercy has had a lot of influence on him. the proprietor in particular. if rohan in gr now has so much clocking power, then imagine how much the proprietor has. like rohan, the proprietor has been groomed into this position the same way he has. this is basically what makes the proprietor different from tobias to jameson or grayson too imo.

the proprietor probably never tells rohan stuff like "this is because i love you" or something like that. the proprietor is strictly rohan's mentor even if rohan thinks of him as the closest thing to a father. but the proprietor has exploited rohan just like how the proprietor was probably exploited. he knew rohan had a secret and even if he was five, he found a way to get rohan to say the secret out loud. and then he trained him to become suitable for the role of proprietor, only to make him compete with someone who has all the resources that he doesn't (no hate to zella she's a diva).

but even so, rohan wasn't even surprised when he found out zella was his rival for the throne. he knows of prejudice and he knows of unjust. and one of his favourite lines ever is "the house always wins." he's also never shown any signs of prejudice against people (because he just estimates everyone the same way: a threat #equality). presumably, the mercy has taught him all this somehow. or, his family. both of which were his environment for parts of his childhood.

michael townsend & dean redding