User blog comment:Fimber/Things that went wrong in "The Death Song of Uther Pendragon"/@comment-5465618-20121024031756/@comment-5102537-20121024111840

Hello Sweetnatured, thanks for your response. Please me respond to some points you made here.

''"The Beginning of the End" Merlin's mother begged for Uther's help -- he refused because it was not in his realm. ''

Uther showed sympathy for Hunith and the villagers as well as disgust for the offenders. The reason why he couldn't help them was that Ealdor belonged to Cenred's kingdom and an official act from Camelot would have fulfilled the qualifications for a declaration of war. No king could ever risk a war with another kingdom only to help a few people in a village outside his own kingdom. Imagine, in case you are living outside the USA, for example, and your neighbourhood is attacked by rebells or any other group of offenders. Then you go to the President of the United States (or any other leader of any other country) and ask them to send troops into your country in order to protect you and maybe one hundred other people. Do you think that any leader would do that and interfer in foreign policy, risking a war between two countries? Never. If Uther had interfered, he would have violated the peace contract (or armistice or whatever) as well as Cenred's rights in his own kingdom. Only Arthur's secret and inofficial inteference could help the people of Ealdor, which was a great risk neverthelss because it could have triggered a war at any time if Cenred had gotten wind of it since he wasn't a friend of Camelot. Uther's decision was absolutely right.

"Merlin and Gwen lives were at stake and he refused to allow Arthur to recuse them. "

Merlin and Gwen, as much as we love them, are/were only servants and therefore not very respected by royal people. In these particular cases, Arthur's life was naturally much more important to Uther as a father and a king since the prince is the future king and can't risk his life for a servant that Uther doesn't even know well. Servants and commoners were always distrusted by the royal people throughout history since in reality, most of them were very unsophisticated (they couldn't even read) and often easy to be manipulated by others. Uther actually had no reason to really trust a servant. They were serving those who were socially were above them, naturally any servant could be plagued by envy and jelousy and therefore become a threat to a royal or noble one. Why should a king risk the life of his son and the future king in order to save a servant? Same with Gwen. Again Uther would have risked a war with Hengist and he also would have shown weakness if he had given in and allowed others to blackmail him - only to save a serving girl. Again it was the secret mission that saved Gwen - and Uther didn't punish Arthur for doing it afterwards, did he?

Maybe you have forgotten that at the end of The Poisened Chalice Uther even told Arthur that he did the right thing when saving Merlin.

"Gaius his most loyal friend and servant he nearly put him to death when he hired that witchfinder. "

Gaius admitted in front of Uther and everyone else in court that he practised magic. Uther had no other choice than to execute the law in this situation because he couldn't make exceptions for those he loves or likes in front of everyone. You surely saw that he left the balcony when Gaius was about to be killed, devastated by his friend's fate. Remember that even Arthur threatened even GWEN, his one and only true love, to be executed, should she ever return to Camelot when he banned her.

"Not to mention the fact that he messed around with his best friends wife and produced Morgana. "

Well, since when does adultery make anyone evil? If this was the case, more than half of the world population would be evil ;-)

"Remember when he slapped Gwen in "Queen of Hearts" and was going to have her burn to death. Who does that? An evil person -- so I am have to disagree with your premise."

Yes, I remember. This epsiode was again written by Overman, the one who has always made Uther much more unsympathetic than any other writer on this show. However, even slapping someone doesn't make anyone evil. While I totally disapprove of slapping/hitting women or anyone else, Gwen hit a nerve when she accused Uther of not knowing about real love. Remember, he started the Great Purge when he lost his beloved wife because he loved her more than it was probably good for him. He hadn't been with another woman after Igraine's death for 26 years at least - this tells us almost everything we need to know about how much he loved Igraine and how faithful and loyal he was towards her, suffering for decades due to the loss. And then a serving girl dares to accuse him of not knowing what true love is. That is why he lost his temper and slapped her. It was obvious because no matter who he had sentenced to death, he has never gotten directly physically violent towards them but sentenced them to death without touching them. And he sentenced Gwen to death because all evidence was against her that she had enchanted his son on order to get to the throne someday. She not only "practised magic" but also "manipulated and enchanted Arthur" (in Uther's opinion since all evience was against her). Of course, he sentenced her to death (but released her when she turned out to be innocent).

As for your other points, the Great Purge and its reasons are such a big subject, I would have to write an essay again to explain my thoughts about it but I have done this already on my first blog here. Just remember that people can do "evil" things without being evil. This was what the writers have shown us (except, of course, for this farce called "The Death Song of Uther Pendragon"") - Uther did horrific and bad things (as well as good ones) but wasn't an evil soul.