Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-5102537-20140217120328/@comment-5674726-20140306201130

Fimber wrote: In regard to sorcery, nothing had changed in Camelot. There was no hint whatsoever about anything that Merlin had tried in this time gap, instead he hopped around happily until the events with Morgana took place once again.

One thing that the writers could have done, if they wanted to give Merlin a reason not to take advantage of the three year period of peace to work on Arthur's view of magic, they could have had him demoralised over the fact that, while Arthur has knighted other commoners and married a servant, his own position hadn't changed since the day Uther foisted him on Arthur as a servant. Even if he didn't have the combat skills for a knighthood, at least two members of Uther's council were commoners yet, for all Arthur's lip service about trusting Merlin above all others, he never even considered giving him a place on his council. This would be a valid reason for Merlin to worry that maybe Arthur doesn't esteem him as highly as he'd like to think he does, in which case he might not respect his view if he tries to speak for those who use magic for good.

However, I think that the writers didn't want viewers to doubt that Merlin was Arthur's bestest friend of all his friends.