Episode 1 Roach. Since Roach does not have lines, I have made gifs of her every appearance. Since Wattpad is annoying about gif sizes, you can check out the version with gifs over on Archive of Our Own.
Roach reacts to Geralt's fight with the kikimora. She is distressed and reacting in a normal horsey way by backing up, which makes sense given a giant monster is thrashing around, but does not bolt, which makes sense because the most important thing for a witcher's mount is it not taking off every time you fight a monster. All in all, this is exactly what you'd expect of a regular horse that's been trained to tolerate loudness, unusual things, and blood.
Geralt rides her afterward, as she continues to act like a normal horse. Also, this is her carrying him and the kikimora, so she can definitely bear a reasonable amount of weight.
She does not seem to mind her weird-smelling, bloody burden at all, and a complete stranger can walk right up to her without reaction. Roach is either a very chill horse by nature or Geralt has done a very good job of teaching her to be calm.
Roach continues to behave like a calm but normal horse as she travels through town.
Geralt tells his horse to be nice. Is this because otherwise she removes fingers? Going by her continued lack of aggression and Marilka's grin, no. Either she is sometimes slightly bratty with strangers, Geralt has very high standards for Roach's company behavior and wants her to be a perfect angel, or Geralt thinks if he acts like he needs to tell his horse to be nice people will assume she's scarier than she is. Personally, I'd guess either "will try to get her nose into pockets" or "will wander off to nibble that yummy bush they passed".
Roach continues to be normal. Roach browses as a complete stranger approaches from behind her. She is chill as they converse. She observes her surroundings...and back to browsing. Then standing around being chill.
A stranger approaching me from behind? Sounds like I should continue to stand around not caring.
Time for Geralt to chat with his horse! She stands around and lets him.
And then she continues to stand around as he goes over to the fire.
In conclusion:
The Roach in Renfri's time is a chill and well-behaved horse. She can be left untied during a monster battle and not run off, she doesn't mind carrying bloody monsters on her back, she doesn't react to complete strangers checking out what she's carrying, Geralt can hand her reins to a child safely, and she doesn't kick when strange people come at her from behind. And given Geralt isn't around for some of that, it's not because he's constantly using magic to make her calm or even that she'll only behave when he's there. This is just unusual enough that it's definitely evidence Geralt is very good at training/handling horses - there's no way the people he's buying from would have a horse pre-trained to not care about his very unusual lifestyle full of large screaming predators and blood, and it's going to be hard to convince a horse of that so you'd have to know what you were doing. Also, she's a mare. If Geralt wanted aggression he'd have a stallion.
We can already tell it's dead easy to steal anything Roach is carrying and probably easy to steal Roach herself. Either people have enough sense not to do this to a witcher's horse or a chunk of Geralt's income involves following the scent of whoever stole from him and relieving them of their coins in retaliation.
Not-a-horse Roach would involve different behavior from Roach that what's seen here and would be noticed by Geralt given he's smart and knows a lot about not only monsters but horses. The only exception would be if Roach is actually a dopple horse, in which case "be nice" is part of Geralt's ongoing fiction that his "horse" definitely behaves badly sometimes, no really, you just weren't there at the time.
While not directly in the episode, the internet at large informs me of some possibly pertinent horse facts:
Geldings are considered more reliable but dumber and less cuddly, while mares bond more with their owner and have better judgement about their own safety. In other words, a gelding would be considered the more practical choice for the dangerous lifestyle of a witcher while a mare would be expected to be affectionate and is more likely to survive if something goes very wrong hunting monsters. This points to Geralt consciously prioritizing his mount's value as a pet over practicality, not merely getting a horse based entirely on practical reasons and then treating her with affection. Alternatively, perhaps he isn't comfortable with the idea of castrating horses to make them more useful to humanity, or he broadly prefers being around women and extends that to his choice of horses.
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FanfictionEpisode by episode character by character meta, aiming at trying to broadly collect the information available to us and trying as much as possible to stick to what we have evidence about.
