Talk:Royal Round Table/@comment-96.242.179.217-20130819055430/@comment-5674726-20130826053248

''You may be right about Uther not marrying Igraine had she been a commoner according to what we know about him. However, what we know about him refers to his older self as a king who had been ruling for more than two decades. Who knows how he would have reacted when he was young and unexperienced. He came to Camelot as a young man, and given that Arthur still made many mistakes when he was king already, Uther could have been similar and could have ignored the political and social side when it came to his personal feelings. I could even imagine that he was a bit like Arthur before Igraine died, especially since he was a lot more civilized than some other kings we were introduced to during the seasons (like Cenred, Align, Olaf, Caerleon and Sarrum, most of all). And since he loved Igraine so much that he didn't even want to find another woman after her death and spent decades being alone, chances are that he might have given a damn about strategies and social requirements when he was young (in case he had met Igraine due to some reason, had she been a commoner or serving girl).''

Given his accompaniments as a young man - he united a kingdom under his rule in his early to mid-twenties, after all - I think it's safe to say that Uther would have had to have not only been very savvy about how to obtain and retain the support of those who could help him achieve his goals, he would have been very ambitious and willing to fight for what he wanted, and would have avoided the pitfalls that could keep him from becoming King.

When he caught Arthur and Gwen together in Queen of Hearts, he initially laughed it off and said that he was familiar with the temptations of servant girls, which would indicate that he may have had the occasional fling with a servant in his youth but that he knew where the line was drawn and how far it should go before the time came to end it. He viewed it as a acceptable for a young man to have a bit of fun with a servant girl but that it shouldn't reach a point where it became an embarrassment or a complication. I can't see him undermining his support base among the nobility by marrying a servant rather than having her as a mistress. Even at a young age, I could see him being clever and sensible enough to have a realistic view of how it would affect his prospects, rather than donning Arthur's rose-coloured glasses and deluding himself into thinking that the very class-conscious society in which he lived would embrace the idea of a servant as Queen.