Board Thread:What If?/@comment-173.245.80.12-20140903054558/@comment-37001937-20190512223147

'''If Arthur was struggling this much with using magic when it was his idea and the only means of saving his father's life, I really doubt that he'd be in any state to weather Merlin's magic reveal after seeing Uther die, much less to sit and listen to him hash out the differences between him and Morgana and take in the standard magic-can-be-used-for-good speech. I can't see him being particularly receptive to Gaius's theories about Agravaine's alleged treachery, either, especially after he realized that Gaius himself had apparently been lying to him for years.(In fairness, I do think that Arthur would probably reach a reasonable enough frame of mind to process it all eventually - by the end of 5x07, for example, he'd made enough peace with his father's death that he was able to calmly listen to what Gaius had to say about Dragoon and how he wasn't responsible for Uther's death - but that wouldn't really do anything for Merlin and Gaius's immediate predicament.) '''

Merlin needed to reveal his secret sooner rather than later. That conversation was always going to be uncomfortable, to say the very least, and my biggest regret with this show is that the writers avoided this completely by Merlin revealing his magic to a moribund Arthur. Morgana was the main villain in S4, and most of the sabotage and scheming that happened could be traced back to her or Agravaine. Gaius and Merlin knew this, but chose to stay silent and hence allowed Morgana to take Camelot a second time.

At the heart of Uther's death story was both Pendragons' hypocritical relationship with magic. They were willing to use it to save their loved ones without giving a thought to the people who are persecuted for being borne with it--Uther so save Morgana, Arthur to save Uther, and then Arthur again to save Gwen, breaking his own decrees. Merlin always let Arthur off the hook when it came to using magic in secret.

You are right that Arthur was in too much pain and confusion in "The Wicked Day" to be open to understanding and acceptance, and might have been more so at the end of "The Secret Sharer". His father's death by magic, realizing that both his parents died by magic, and his coronation are perhaps too many events in one episode to also include the reveal. Sadly the reveal never came, no matter how big, close, or painful the threat.

Arthur acknowledges that the Druids are peaceful people, but there are Druids rebelling against the kingdom because they are not free to be who they are or practice their faith. The longer Arthur took to talk about accepting magic, or making it legal, the more people like Alvarr, Kara and Ruadan were willing to even kill him to meet their goal. It was in Merlin's best interest, in terms of fulfilling his destiny, to make sure that Arthur was a fair and jsut king to all the people in his kingdom.