Board Thread:Rewatching "Merlin" - Season One/@comment-5102537-20130316141226/@comment-5102537-20130324125527

That's interesting, ReganX and it would make sense. However, I think that first of all, Uther did not invent this code or tradition but I believe that it was common use at that period of time. Additionally to your idea, I believe that Uther indeed was convinced that those of noble blood were above peasants and commoners since they did not have to struggle for enough food, were sophisticated and had other interests than commoners. The monarchs had to stand above the commoners in order to gain the necessary respect and recoursses, and the nobles had to support the monarchs in their daily business instead of leading things to the adavantage of the commoners who, in that time, had no knowledge of any strategic or economical aspect regarding a kingdom. A peasant or commoner who becomes a knight only because he is a good fighter, always involves the risk that he feels too connected to his own heritage and therefore might betray the monarch or might clash with the monarch's way of ruling.

As Uther said, he has to trust his knights with his life, and when he says with his life, he also means the kingdom. In order to trust someone with his life/kingdom, he needs to be surrounded by those who support his/the kingdom's interest. Moreover, knighting commoners and by that giving them the status of nobility is way too tempting for powerhungry people among the commoners. Peasants and commoners could suddenly become rich and powerful only by serving as a knight in the kingdom, and they would be enabled to have a say in things they don't know much about.

I would imagine that, in case the showrunners thought of that too, Uther's reasons were a mixture of what you wrote and common traditions.

@Ambrosius. What you wrote:

"The differnece is that while Uther is behaving Lawful Stupid instead of his usual Lawful Neutral (I think that the creators made him afflicted with sudden stupidity on too many an occasion... Switching from paranoia against magic to turning the blind eye against the obvious danger like the Griffin, I wonder how he fared as a leader before in the first place; the same goes for Uther as a father: today he is overprotective, and tomorrow he sends his son to a certain death), Arthur is more flexible, he is not following the rule blindly, but he's willing to bend it sensibly for the good of Camelot."

I agree in regard to Uther. I sometimes thought that he wanted to hide from much too scary situations, thus ignoring the danger at first, telling himself that such bad things can't be true. But it's true, the show was very inconsistent and different writers characterised the protagonists and antagonists differently.

Arthur was actually lucky that the comoners he knighted were all honourable (or at least, were supposed to be honourable. I disagree when regarding "His Father's Son", for example) and his friends. Of course, the legend says that his knights were the most noble ones and we as the viewers knew from the beginning that they can only be the good guys. 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. 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.