Board Thread:Rewatching "Merlin" - Season One/@comment-5102537-20130316141226/@comment-5674726-20130324155732

''If I were Arthur, I would have never knighted someone who hates my father, like he did when he knew that Gwaine despised Uther. He took a great risk in knighting Gwaine and he was lucky that Gwaine never tried to take advantage of his new status.''

Don't forget Elyan. His father was killed on Uther's orders and his sister had a couple of close calls when she was accused of witchcraft. It'd hardly be surprising if he hated Uther for that.

''At the same time, Arthur betrayed his father and his father's honour by directly violating the knight's code while Uther was still king and still alive but only incapable of doing something about it. I think this was very rude and out of line when taking advantage of his father's weakness and broken mind.''

That's something I hated.

Uther was alive and, to the best of Arthur's knowledge, he was still fully capable of ruling once Morgana was defeated - and, technically, since she was Queen by right of conquest at the time of the Round Table knightings, Arthur wasn't even Crown Prince, much less King, so he had no possible authority to bestow knighthoods.

Was Arthur seriously planning on telling his father, who was bound to be heartbroken over his daughter turning against him, that he had not only deliberately violated the First Code of Camelot and gone against his express wishes on the subject of  who should be knighted but also expected him to go along with it instead of rescinding the knighthoods, as he would have been well within his rights to do?

His attitude towards his father left a great deal to be desired at times.

One particularly glaring example is the way he and Guinevere were talking in Queen of Hearts.

''ARTHUR: I promise you that when I am King, things will be different. We can be together. ''

''GWEN: I will count the days until then. ''

I estimate that Uther was in his early to mid twenties when he became King of Camelot, based on his remarks about winning the kingdom when he was Arthur's age. He would therefore have been in his late forties, very early fifties at the oldest, by this point. He was in good health, with access to the best healthcare one could hope for given the time period, and he wouldn't have had to worry about lacking for food, warmth or any other necessities. He no longer took a direct part in leading the army, and was therefore unlikely to die in battle. There was no reason to believe that he didn't have another ten to fifteen years of life left in him, at the very minimum.

Arthur seriously had no problem with the idea of Guinevere counting the days until his father died?

Did he honestly think that he'd be able to stay unmarried and childless until he was in his mid-thirties to forties, despite the dangerous life he led as commander of the army and the risk to the stability of the kingdom without a secure succession, or was he hoping that his father would oblige by popping his clogs as soon as possible, before he had to make a choice about whether or not he would put his personal desires ahead of the longterm welfare of the kingdom?