Trans Ralsei could be canon, but I don't think there's a high chance. However, if it does happen, I'll be very happy for those of you who want it to happen. I know this post has a high likelihood of being unpopular, but I'm posting it anyway. Not to be brave or different or anything like that, I'm just not convinced that people have enough evidence to be using she/her pronouns for a character that uses he/him pronouns and hasn't expressed any want otherwise (especially since people get so up-in-arms about Kris's pronouns being explicitly they/them in the text, which I believe is a good thing).
Anyway, so, supporting evidence that I've seen for Trans Ralsei: Asgore and the Title "Dark Vine" refer to Ralsei with they/them pronouns, and Flowery referring to Ralsei as a "princess", as well as Ralsei saying that he hasn't tried it yet. Along with a long history of expressing stereotypical femininity. Any further evidence would be nice so I'm not just building up a straw man here.
It feels a little disappointing to be the one that breaks it to you that Asgore referring to Ralsei as "they" is a polite thing to do because they've never met or been introduced and Asgore doesn't know Ralsei's pronouns.
The Dark Vine title using gender-neutral language is interesting, I'll admit. Titles have used pronouns and gendered terms before ("Prickly Prince: Deals damage with his rugged scarf", "Stool Boy: Boy with stool-like abilities"), so it's not like "they" is used here to be more vague to evoke normal class titles in other video games. I don't have a good argument here, I'll admit. All it points to is Ralsei being either a demiboy or trans-nonbinary.
Ralsei expresses interest in being a princess if you don't have Starwalker. He also says it's fun to have options while Kris inspects their wardrobe. The latter is fairly weak evidence in favor, but I'm submitting it anyway. As for the former, I honestly don't really know. Another point at which my counterarguments falter. He does turn into a lot of things. A plush, a yarn ball, a butler. He's very malleable and seems to enjoy tempory changes. He has more different forms than Susie and Kris, at least. Which may or may not just be another point in favor of Trans Ralsei. But being a princess honestly seems to have the same appeal to him as being a box in the video game section, especially since he seems to have been put here by someone else or something. He views it as exciting, then says it's just a difference in self-expression, and that it's fun to try new things.
Flowery is very laissez-faire, especially when it comes to dealing with the Fun Gang. He grows bushes to hide them, blows them away so he can skateboard through a puzzle himself, and smushes Ralsei into the ground. He also seems to enjoy teasing Ralsei, verbally riposting Ralsei's accusations of messing with and falsifying game data with "Look who's talking." (It's a pity we still don't really know what this implies.) His voice lines are establishes in his first scene to talk about "ladies" and "princesses" (He calls Susie a princess right after introducing himself), and we know some of his lines are anime fansubs-level off due to the Japanese theme (Jarona, anyone?). It makes sense for Flowery to call Ralsei a princess, between his teasing towards Ralsei specifically, as well as his theme of old-timey chivalry and the mistranslation gimmick (though I'll admit this last part is less supported because there is no audible voice line that plays when he calls Ralsei a princess, but I don't think there was a "princess" voice line in the first place). Additionally, blue and pink are Kris's colors or Kris and Susie's colors. Elaborating on the chivalry, I think Flowery probably learned it from stories that Asgore read to them. Stories that usually involve a few things: Kings (twelve guesses who this is) who make decisions, Knights who carry them out in honorable, stylish, and cool ways, and Princesses, who need to be protected and/or rescued. There aren't usually a whole lot of princes in classic storybook fantasy tales, and if there are, they're usually just romantic interests for the princesses (who are also normally somewhat devoid of personality, but who at least are connected to other characters in the story by relation).
(all pictures courtesy of BeardBear's Youtube playthrough)
So, Ralsei's feminine self-expression and crossdressing. He knows that he's cute, and wears dresses and other feminine outfits. This is the part where we dip into the supplemental thoughts that I have prepared for us.
The core trio of the Fun Gang is designed as a masculine (or butch) female character, a somewhat androgynous nonbinary character (a subversion of the "main character with a selectable gender" trope), and a feminine male character. This is a fun group dynamic that I thoroughly enjoy, parallel gender subversion. In Chapter 4, Susie admitted at the tea party in Castle Town that she had to act tough in the past and is now starting to get over that. This doesn't mean she's dropping the masculine identity as a whole, it just means she is dropping the more toxic and performative aspects of it (overly violent, refusal to interact with or participate in cute things (ribbons). It's possible Ralsei goes through a similar arc, dropping the more toxic aspects of femininity that are holding his self-expression back. We've already seen him express more annoyance this chapter, and choose to focus on singing instead of baking and sewing, stereotypical female household chores.
Anyway, Susie is masculine. And yet I don't see anyone claiming that she's transmasc. I don't think that's a valid counterargument against Trans Ralsei. Just a data point. I'm also not going to claim "No one wants Susie to be a man because that would prevent her from being lesbian". But I have thought that, and written that. I'm sure it means something, even if that something is that I'm delusional. Oh well. Susie's identity as a masculine woman and a lesbian should be celebrated. I'm happy whenever I see her and Noelle together.
So, back to clothes and gender expression. Ralsei wears a dress in Chapter 5. Hey, uh, back to the "Mirrored gender subversion" thing the Fun Gang has going on... Susie can wear a tuxedo and she doesn't say a word about it, at least not anything she doesn't say about everything else. And it's pretty obvious that she's put off more by the fuss than the outfits (she'll put on the full duck costume when you leave for the Light World too). There's another piece of Chapter 5 Trans Ralsei theory, the Butler Outfit Rejection. That's fairly obviously because he dislikes Flowery putting him in the costume. I honestly don't think Ralsei has really cared about being put in any outfit except chapter 3's horse costume. Speaking of which...
There's at least as much evidence for Transhorse Ralsei as Transfem Ralsei as far as I can tell. Especially if we're going with the "in the closet" metaphor. I'm not really advocating for this either, just putting up more Ralsei self-expression things that we aren't sticking onto the Ralsei's Self-Expression conspiracy board in explicit favor of a giant Venus symbol with four pieces of evidence.
In conclusion, Ralsei's self-expression is just gender- (and perhaps species)-nonconforming. Just (or mostly, in the case of species) like his mirrored-gender-subversion partner-in-crime, Susie. Even though this chapter had a lot of focus on self-expression and self-exploration, Ralsei is still doing that but most of what we've seen out of him this chapter is largely what he was doing in previous chapters.
Would transfem Ralsei make sense? Yes. The themes of the story of self-expression, acceptance, and not accepting the status quo would make it very easy to weave such a narrative through the story. Toby Fox is also a pretty good writer of LGBTQ+ characters.
Has Ralsei been shown to want to be a girl? Yes. But it doesn't seem all that important to him. Just something else to try. He seems to have equal desire to be a horse, something he tried and actually liked.
Additionally, I actually think that if his arc so far mirrors Susie's, he will end up a bit less feminine by the end of the story.









