Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-28430223-20160511160512/@comment-37017073-20181023222436

I tend to think that the life for a life policy was only a requirement when it came to giving life, as opposed to saving a life. In the case of Arthur and Ygraine, for example, Nimueh was essentially using magic to create an entirely new life, a life that could not naturally occur without her direct intervention. As such, the idea that she would have to pay for that new life by sacrificing an already existing life - effectively trading one's place in the world for the other's and maintaining a balance - does makes some degree of sense. But in the case of magic being used to save a life, the person using magic isn't creating a new life whoever they're saving but rather sustaining the life that they already have, and as such it doesn't make much sense to me that that another life would have to be ended in order to maintain a life that already exists. The show would appear to agree with me, as not only are numerous people saved from grievous illness or deadly injury over the course of the series, but some of these healings occur even before Nimueh first mentions the life for a life policy in "Excalibur". Gaius, for example, uses magic to complete the antidote that saves Merlin's life in "The Poisoned Chalice", and Merlin uses magic to save Uther's life from Edwin's beetle in "A Remedy to Cure All Ills", and no one's life had to be sacrificed in either case.