Board Thread:Rewatching "Merlin" - Season Two/@comment-5102537-20130629093831/@comment-5102537-20130719132051

198.144.116.184 wrote: 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 ;) I agree. I believe that in season one they intended to give Uther redemption at some point of time, which changed later with the show progressing. Sometimes an upcoming redemption was obvious (for example, when he went broken after Morgana's betrayal) and then they changed it all again and described him as a psychopath or war mongerer. Most of it depended on who wrote the script for the epsiodes in question.

We just need to remember what Gaius said in the character introduction of the Season One DVD, when he explained that Uther brought peace to Camelot by banning magic but at the same time left the kingdom and his son vulnerable to evil by this. This remark alone described magic as being evil, with the rare exceptions of Merlin, Balinor and the druids, and it also demonstrated that the peace in Camelot was only possible by banning magic.

I'd also like to add that I found it quite weird of Uther not to ask any question about Igraine. He knew that Arthur and Merlin talked to either Igraine or an illusion, so he surely would have wanted to know what she looks like and what exactly she said, how she's doing (in case that he believed she was real). If he thought that she was just an illusion, he could have asked Arthur to describe her in order to find out whether the illusion resembled her at least. And in case she didn't, Uther could have told Arthur what Igraine really looked like. If I knew that someone talked to my dead loved ones, I would want to know everything about them. Uther could at least have shown any sign of curiosity or interest. But then, the show often failed in showing some depth when it came to interesting plots and situations.

ReganX wrote:

I don’t know if the Ygraine in this episode is supposed to be misinformed or an illusion or if they were rewriting history but it would make no sense for Uther to be willing to sacrifice his wife in order to have a son. If he was willing to get rid of Ygraine in order to have a son, he could have divorced her, remarried and fathered a son by his new wife. He sought magical help because he wanted to stay married to Ygraine and have a son. True. He could also have conceived a child with another woman and pretended to the public that it was Igraine's. There would have been numerous possibilities to get an heir without using magic. Obviously, the showrunners' intention was to demonstrate how important it was to him to have a child with his wife because he loved her.

Whatever reason they had to suddenly change the story of Igraine and Uther in season two, they didn't do a good job on it. It's not only unbelievable and illogical but it also makes a mockery of Uther's reason to hate magic, let alone of season one at all.