Board Thread:Rewatching "Merlin" - Season One/@comment-5102537-20130309111322/@comment-5102537-20130924135557

ErinKenobi2893 wrote: I think that Uther is just evil. And it wasn't punishment, it was de facto MURDER. I think he intended for Merlin to die at that moment, but when it turns out that Gwen, Arthur and Gaius saved him, Uther just didn't care.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion but I strongly disagree that he was evil.

While I agree that crushing the flower was mean and wrong from our today's point of view, it made sense in Uther's/the king's eyes especially in those times.

I'm not justifying it at all because my morals and ethics are based on the time I'm (we are) living in and on my education of a civilised, modern world. So, of course, I strongly disapprove of it, as well as of such a thing like the Great Purge.

However, as said before, Uther was not an ordinary man who could afford disobedience from his son. As king he had to protect his kingdom and his heir. As a father, he had to protect his son and to teach him a lesson. The lesson was supposed to be that Arthur would never again risk his life for a servant since Arthur as the prince was much more important for the kingdom (naturally) - and much more important for Uther because Arthur was his son.

If Uther had allowed Arthur to get the flower to Merlin/Gaius, Arthur wouldn't have suffered from the imprisonment at all. He would have waited a short time until he is released again and then forget about the punishment because in the end, his trip would have been worth it and he would have gotten what he wanted (the flower that saved Merlin). What is a short time in the cells compared to losing a life? This was something which Uther wanted to avoid in order to make Arthur see that this kind of disobedience, when risking his life for a servant, would never lead to a satisfying result. He wanted to make sure that the punishment would make an impact and that Arthur will never try anything like this again.

Imagine you have done something which was very important for you but wrong in your parents' eyes,  and your parents ground you for a day or two. Would this prevent you from doing it again? No way. You would need a very good reason for never doing such an important thing again. Since Uther couldn't and didn't want to beat the cr*** out of Arthur in order to threaten him, he wanted to show him that all his effort was invane and will be invane in the future if he ever risks his life again for someone who can easily be replaced.

He didn't do it to punish Merlin but to teach Arthur a lesson that he wouldn't forget in order to secure the kingdom and most of all the life of his son.

Sure, regarding Merlin's life as being replaceable is harsh and in our eyes plain cruel and wrong. But life was much more dangerous back then, things were a lot more complicated in regard to all the dangers and Uther didn't love Merlin but he loved Arthur.

In our today's real world, a leader of a country doesn't need an heir anymore to secure the safety of a land. When someone is in danger, they can send search parties, they can save lives with a very advanced health system,  they have unbelievably huge armies and weapons to save the countries and we're not so eager to go to war and to conquer countries anymore like people were in the dark ages. Every sign of weakness was a great risk back then and was taken advantage of by others.

Uther had to take it all into consideration when putting the life of the prince and of his own son over the life of a servant who, in his eyes, could have provided nothing to the kingdom. And the kingdom didn't consist only of Uther, Arthur, Morgana and some friends but of thousands of people that had to be protected.

Since Arthur was someone who would have done such a thing again, at any time (and he actually did indeed), Uther wanted to make sure that he wouldn't.

It should also be taken into consideration, as written before, that Uther later told Arthur that he had done the right thing. He saw sense and praised Arthur.

Uther was many things but not evil at all.