Board Thread:What If?/@comment-5674726-20130722103118/@comment-5102537-20130723110246

ReganX wrote:

I could see Merlin having a hard time adjusting to Mithian as Queen. Not only would he be unhappy because Guinevere was his friend, I think that it was important to him that Arthur choose Guinevere to show that he valued a servant more than a princess. If he did, it could give Merlin hope that, when the time came, he too could be more to Arthur than his servant.

I wonder if it might calm Morgana down a fraction if she successfully averted a prophecy she feared. If events played out as in canon in terms of Arthur's death, I could see her dealing him one final blow by telling him that she was the one responsible for Guinevere kissing Lancelot, so he could spend his final moments thinking about what might have been.

You've almost said it all, there's not much I could add.

It would have been very interesting to see whether Merlin had continued supporting Arthur the way he did if he had rejected Gwen but married Mithian instead. As we could see, Arthur's virtue was most of all to acknowledge/accept commoners and servants, given that he kept up the ban of magic and persecuted sorceres, something which Merlin actually should have strongly disapproved of but did not for some reason.

Had Arthur not married Gwen but continued the tradition of marrying a noble woman, there wouldn't have been much that had distinguished him from Uther as a ruler, except the fact that he knighted commoners. As a matter of fact, this very thing would have been the only thing that had distinguished him from his father, so Merlin wouldn't have much of a reason to put all his and everyone else's faith in him. Part of Merlin's faith in the whole situation surely was the fact that Gwen, his friend, was on the throne. Merlin must have hoped and thought that Gwen would have influence on Arthur in regard to magic. Sadly, the show completely failed to deal with this because we never saw Merlin trying just anything to change gwen's mind in order to her changing Arthur's mind.

Nevertheless, Gwen used to be a kindhearted woman which surely was something that gave Merlin hope.

With Mithian, nobody knows how things would have turned out in regard to the ban of magic. Would Merlin have been able to influence her? Would Mithian have influenced Arthur and tried to seperate Arthur and Merlin? Was Mithian a magic-hater too?

As for Morgana, the way she was described, I doubt that it would have calmed her if Arthur hadn't married Gwen. This would have been merely an expected success for her and only one step on her way to the throne. And who knows, maybe it would have even been harder for her to reach her goal with Mithian as Arthur's wife.