Board Thread:What If?/@comment-20237552-20130917085057/@comment-5674726-20130917190942

1. What if: Merlin was caught by Arthur using Magic in "The Moment Of Truth" ?

I'd say that, at that point, Arthur was far from ready to accept magic so the most probable scenario is that he would have told Merlin that he wasn't welcome to return to Camelot with him, Morgana and Guinevere. He probably wouldn't have wanted to kill Merlin and, technically, they weren't in Camelot at the time so he had no authority to arrest him or anything like that. I could see him feeling very betrayed by Merlin, so much so that it's unlikely that he would have had a change of heart and invited him back any time soon.

For his part, while Merlin would have had no intention of staying away indefinitely, I'd say that he'd have known that he needed to give Arthur some time, and Hunith wouldn't have wanted to let him go back to Camelot if she thought that there was a chance he'd be killed for it. At the very least, she'd want to wait to get confirmation from Gaius that Arthur hadn't told Uther about Merlin's magic.

I'll give Arthur the benefit of the doubt and assume that he would have succeeded with Anhorra's challenges - assuming that the unicorn wasn't only there to be shot because it was drawn to Merlin, in which case the curse mightn't have happened without him.

Among other things, Merlin's absence would mean that Uther and Morgana might die in To Kill A King, since even though Morgana had a change of heart about letting him be killed at the last minute, she and Uther would have had Tauren's men to fight off, as Merlin wouldn't have taken them out. If they didn't succeed, they would both have been killed, as Tauren's men wouldn't spare Morgana if they thought she'd set them up.

Arthur would die from the Questing Beast's bite. Nobody else was going to try to use the Cup of Life to save him.