What's that? You want to hear my full analysis for the argument that I only just came up with today that Erik in Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom of the Opera is aegoromantic/aegosexual? Odd request, but okay!
Think about the way he must have first become aware of Christine: when she was onstage. Probably playing a role. Aego folks often develop romantic/sexual feelings for celebrities and fictional characters. Her being a figure onstage fills both roles.
Now let's look at the big three times the two interact in a romantic context.
First there's Music of the Night. It's...very choreographed. Christine doesn't get a word in edgewise. There's a real theatrical flair to the whole thing. Magnetic, sexually charged, erotic? Oh, yeah. But on Erik's terms. When Christine herself tries getting closer, he either turns away or turns her away. Infamous pizza roll gif, anyone?
"No, Christine, I'm doing a thing here. You can touch me but only when I move your hand and hold you in my arms. You're like the dummy in the mirror, okay? Oh, you don't know what that means! Here, let me introduce you to the dummy in the mirror. What are you fainting for? Hm. Oh, well. Still counts as a successful romantic interaction! I'm gonna go back to work on my fanfic opera now."
Next we have Point of No Return. You know, the literally staged scene from an opera where they communicate with each other using lines he himself wrote. Again, all sincerely erotic, up until Christine consciously realizes what's up. He relies on those lines, that staging. It's the only way he feels safe letting her touch him.
When she pulls down his hood, it's spoiled for him. He panics. And what does he do? He cops her fiance's romantic lines instead. "Say you'll share with me one love, one lifetime...."
Damn that Christine, she keeps messing up his plans by going off script! Now we have to skip several chapters and go straight to the wedding scene below.
Which leads to our last big romantic scene: when she kisses him. Unstaged, unplanned, and real, so very, very real.
And he can't hack it.
Yes, in the context of the show, he's broken by her compassion and that's why he lets her go. And of course that's probably the biggest most conscious factor. But.
What if the act itself is too much for him? What if it actually hits him wrong? What if part of what breaks him is the unspoken realization that what he thought he wanted all along wasn't what he wanted at all?
Now of course, for an aego person, all of this is a problematic reading at best. We're not all broken; we're not all aego because of life's cruelty that moulded us into fantastical, murderous sewer goblins. But there's no denying that, on an individual level, trauma can absolutely inform our sexuality.
So while you or I may have been born this way, there's no reason why Erik's life of isolation and long exposure to the artifice of the opera house wouldn't give him an inclination toward expressing his sexuality through distance, through projection, through the safe cover of blocking, costumes, pagentry. And that's not really what aegoroamanticism/aegosexuality is, but it's surely one way it can present itself.
Can Erik one day have a relationship with someone real? Sure hope so, for his sake and mine, I'll admit. It's what I want, but like Erik, I keep turning toward the pizza rolls.
[A lot of this can certainly apply to Lerix as well, but I see it more with Merik. Lerik wishes for a heteronormative life above ground, while Merik wants to keep Christine below living a life of illusion with him.]
