User blog comment:Knightofthecart/Uther, the once and future king, part I/@comment-5102537-20130101112329/@comment-5674726-20130214000757

I think that the power of life and death is one of those things that, just because you can do something, it doesn't mean that you should.

I don't think that Nimueh realised that Ygraine would die. She may have known about the life for a life bit, since she warned Uther that there would be a price to pay, but not that magic was going to choose somebody close to Uther. When they spoke in Excalibur, she told him that she wouldn't have granted his wish had she known that Ygraine would die, not that she would have made sure that somebody else died, which indicates that she didn't have the power to choose who would die, not at that point. However, her ignorance doesn't absolve her. If she didn't know that the life taken would be that of somebody Uther loved - which makes sense, in a twisted way; it wouldn't be much of a price if a random stranger dropped dead - she should have known it before she even thought about trying to mess with the balance of life and death. Even if she knew, I'd say that it's something that should have been left alone.

The power of life and death was used to bring Arthur into the world and later to keep him in the world but was that something that benefited Camelot? Had Nimueh not used magic to bring him into the world, the Great Purge would never have happened. Who's to say that the Questing Beast wasn't the Old Religion's way of cleaning up Nimueh's mess, and that Merlin didn't do more harm than good by taking it upon himself to interfere with the balance of life and death to save Arthur?

Uther's guilt would have been like that of somebody to whom a genie grants a wish but warns them that there will be a cost. They don't know what the cost will be, just that there will be one, and decide that, whatever it is, it will be worth paying. They wish for a house and, the next thing they know, their parents/sibling/best friend die(s) and they inherit a house from them. The genie's magic killed the person whose death facilitated the wish being granted but the person who made the wish is still going to feel guilty for ploughing ahead when they didn't have all the facts, and because it was their wish that led to the death.

''Yes. This was either a plothole or the demand of taking another life in exchange ended with Nimueh's and the Questing Beast's death. Or maybe it was Uther who paid the price in the end since he died at the hands of Morgana (and the Gleeman, Agravaine, Arthur and Merlin). Maybe he knew that he would die? I have always been wondering what Gaius meant when said "you can't risk everything".''

Perhaps Gaius was afraid that, if saving Morgana called for the balance of life and death to be restored, the most likely sacrifice would be one of her relatives and that, since Uther was the one who wanted her saved, the price would be one that it would hurt him to pay. If he didn't die, magic might have saved one of his children but taken the other.