User blog comment:Fimber/Things that went wrong in "The Death Song of Uther Pendragon"/@comment-7285162-20130415005522/@comment-5674726-20130425001035

''Arthur was persecuting sorcerers, you say? Interesting. This point was never clear to me. Officially, magic was still outlawed for obvious reasons, but I got the impression that Arthur turned a blind eye on it on many an occasion.''

What "obvious reasons"?

In any case, I can't imagine that the distinction would mean much to somebody with magic who feared persecution.

Under the law, the use of magic is a capital crime. Arthur may decide to disregard his own laws on occasion but they're hardly going to feel safe, much less like a citizen of Camelot who has the same rights and is held in the same regard as any other citizen, if his whim is all that stands between them and being burned at the stake. What happens to the village witches whose lynchings Arthur doesn't happen upon when he's in a mood to defend a magic user? Is there any kind of penalty exacted against those who execute magic users when they haven't done any harm with their magic? What are the odds of them being punished for carrying out the law, as it stands?

As long as the laws against magic stood - aka. for the entirety of Arthur's reign - I would say that he had no possible claim on the loyalty of any person with magic. Not all of them have a dragon insisting that he's going to restore magic one day, and even if they did, who could blame them for taking the so-called prophecy with a grain of salt? They can only judge him by his actions. If he doesn't reverse the laws against magic, or at least amend them so that it's only a crime if a person uses magic to do harm, they have no reason to believe that they're any safer under his reign than under Uther's.