tangled gave us so much, but mostly it gave us the beautiful and intense love of a horse and the man he is chasing in order to imprison
i personally believe that maximus was the former captain of the guard who was cursed into horse form pretty recently, and everyone’s having trouble adjusting to it.
like, he’s entitled to sick leave, he really ought to take a couple months to break the curse and come to terms with whatever the fuck just happened to him, but instead of embarking on a journey of self-discovery and healing he just keeps showing up to work. no one can get captain maximus to go on his fucking voyage of self actualization and fix the curse because he’s obsessed with catching flinn ryder. everyone really fucking hopes that when he finally catches this guy the curse might be broken anyway, but it isn’t.
he just keeps showing up to work. he glares at the stablehands until they saddle him up. everyone’s gone over the regulations a dozen times but there’s nothing there saying you’re not allowed to saddle and ride the captain of the guard if he makes you do it. his former second in command rides him around like ‘sir i really don’t know about this’ and he’s just like ‘are we going to catch some criminals or what.’
you can see in the movie that everyone in the royal guard defers to this horse. it’s absolutely because that’s their boss. and secondarily because now he’s two thousand pounds of percheron.
there is no evidence against this theory and you cannot prove me wrong.
