Board Thread:What If?/@comment-5674726-20130929195047/@comment-5102537-20131013142941

What you wrote: "My evidence for this is that if she were planning on ruling the world with Merlin, why make an enemy of him by sacrificing Gaius or Hunith?"

Because, in my opinion,  she wanted him to accept the so-called rules of the Old Religion (or her own) and to realise that he was a creature of the Old Religion too, hence accepting sacrifices and becoming more ruthless in order to help her bring down Camelot.

If you want a strong fighter at your side you need to train him first. Merlin was still young and, as she and most others thought, too naive. A good-hearted sorcerer with Merlin's powers wouldn't have been of any use for her but would have only crossed her plans. Merlin had to become tougher. So making him realise and accept that there were casulties and that saving Arthur/Uther/Camelot brought him nothing but pain was necessary to turn him to the darker side. See what happened to Morgana. Aside from the fact that I think that the reasons for her change were totally ridiculous, we were always supposed to believe that she did it because she was hurt by Uther and her friends, most of all Merlin and that helping them brought only misery and pain. Same with Merlin here. If you want to learn Kung Fu you need to deal with the pain first. And causing Merlin pain would most likely have helped her to drag him to the dark side. If everything had been so easy and fluffy and with blue skies full of rainbows, Merlin would have no reason to become bitter and to turn to evil.

So as simple as it is, I think she wanted him to start to hate first. Worked later with Morgana too. She simply didn't realise that Merlin was too strong in character (in the beginning). Instead of discussing with him forever about the possibilities to change Uther and to try it all the soft way, she needed him to get callous and tough.

I don't know whether or not she had known about Arthur and Merlin's destiny from the beginning but she definitely knew that Merlin was a powerful socrerer when she wanted to take revenge on him in "The Poisoned Chalice" already. This was the epsiode when Nimueh told Arthur that it wasn't his destiny to die at her hands for the first time. She told Merlin the same later when Arthur was bitten by the Questing Beast. It implies that she knew part of the prophecy but maybe didn't want Merlin to or didn't know about Merlin being the one to help Arthur. She wanted to make Arthur king, which proves that she was the one who wanted to  influence on him. Merlin needed to be on her side, not on Arthur's. If Merlin had adviced Arthur, Nimueh would have had a hard time to manipulate the new king.

And when both Gaius and Merlin said that Igraine was killed by Nimueh and not by the Old Religion only, it became clear that Nimueh had planned it all along, especially since both times when Arthur's life was involved/at stake, the Questing Beast was present.

And if Nimueh didn't want to hurt Merlin (or Uther) why didn't she tell both that for creating and saving a live, another life of a loved one (!) has to be be taken? She didn't tell Uther and she didn't Merlin. For a reason. If she had told Uther, none of this all would have happened. No Arthur, no Great Purge. And since she had the power to choose the one who had to die she deliberately chose Igraine. The question is why.

She was not a kind person but actually the one who triggered it all, starting with the Great Purge and continuing with attempting to bring Camelot's downfall and to drag Merlin onto her side.