Board Thread:Rewatching "Merlin" - Season Two/@comment-5102537-20130629093831/@comment-198.144.116.184-20130716145723

Fimber wrote:

While Uther and Nimueh proved in a private (!) conversation that Uther had no idea that Igraine will die, "The Sins of the Father" suddenly changed this all and made Igraine claiming that Uther sacrificed her because he knew that the price would be another life. This wouldn't have been a problem if the episode had pointed out that Igraine either wasn't real or that she was simply led to believe that Uther sacrificed her.

Uther would have no reason to hate magic if he had sacrificed Igraine willingly. The very fact that he lost her and was shocked by it was the reason why he started to hate magic in the first place. And I doubt that he told Igraine "sorry dear, you are dying now because I made a deal and sold your life. Thanks for the son, see you". He loved Igraine and was devastated over her death, so he didn't sacrifice her and he didn't know that her life would be taken, as was evident in "Excalibur". Not to mention that Nimueh chose Igraine, as was evident in "Le Morte d'Arthur".

I found it very obvious that Ygraine's spirit wasn't real but a set up by Morgause.

Mind you, Nimueh didn't even say that Uther knew that a life had to be taken in exchange for creating one. In the conversation with Gaius, Uther mentioned that he knew about a price that had to be paid and Gaius confirmed that he couldn't to know that the price would be Ygraine's life.

According to this, a price could have been just anything and Uther had no idea that even someone else would have to die or even suffer. It didn't happen often that he was innocent, but in this case he obviously was. He was ready to pay a price, unaware that someone other than him would suffer from it, and this shows that he wasn't a coward and accepted the rule unless others or Ygraine would be affected by it.

Ygraine couldn't have been real, except perhaps if she was fed with false information. In any other case, the first series of Merlin must have been a hoax or a dream then ;)