Talk:The Tears of Uther Pendragon/@comment-173.168.115.243-20171127005725/@comment-37017073-20190501205142

'''However I do agree Merlin's partly to blame. he did poison her.'''

Which was the result of Morgana's own choices. She blindly agreed to Morgause's plan without asking what it entailed, did nothing to help the people who fell under the sleeping spell until Merlin and Arthur's arrival forced her to (which Arthur called her out on), and repeatedly lied to Merlin when he asked her in confidence what was going on.

And I don't believe for one moment that Morgana didn't know what was going on. She agreed to help Morgause, and then the next thing she knew she was back in Camelot and people were dropping like flies. She'd have to be braindead not to at least suspect a connection. Furthermore, she wasn't a bit surprised to hear that Morgause had arrived (which Merlin noticed and called her on), and responded to Arthur's questions about why she hadn't been effected with all the defensiveness of a child who's been caught standing next to an empty cookie jar with crumbs on their lips but not actually holding a cookie.

So it's really no surprise that Merlin concluded that she was in league with Morgause and reacted accordingly. Especially since he's seen her betray Camelot before. In the last episode alone she allied herself with Mordred and Alvarr in a plot to kill Uther; remained allied with them even after finding out they were after more than just the king; not only rode out ahead of Arthur, Merlin, and the Knights to warn Alvarr - thus deliberately endangering their lives by giving the renegades time to set a trap - but offered to say and help him; and drugged to the guards to allow Alvarr to escape, which resulted in the death of at least one knight. (And for the record, Morgana didn't care any more about the fate of that guard than she did about the three knights who were murdered in her scheme with Tauren, the dozens of suspected magic-users she condemned to death to say with the Druids, or the Druids themselves when she allowed them to take the blame for a kidnapping that never happened. Her disregard for other people's lives was present long before series 3.)

I agree that poisoning Morgana was not a good thing and she had a right to be angry about it, but Morgause had them trapped in a no-win situation and really, what was Merlin supposed to do? Tell Morgana that he'd somehow discovered she was the source of the spell and hoped she voluntarily killed herself? (Fat chance.) Tell Arthur that he'd somehow discovered that Morgana was the source and that the only way to break the spell was for her to die? (That would go over well, I'm sure.) Do nothing and let everybody die? (You can't kill off almost your entire cast in the second-to-last-episode of series 2. Unless it's a two-parter and involves a journeying-through-limbo-experience, it just isn't done.)