Board Thread:Rewatching "Merlin" - Season Four/@comment-5102537-20140111151000/@comment-5102537-20140115130559

Yes, and the odd thing is, they could have solved this problem by simply revealing that Gwen was enchanted. That way they could have made the later marriage believable, plus Lancelot and Gwen's honour would be restored. They could have even done it after Arthur had decided to marry Gwen nevertheless, meaning when he still thought that she had betrayed him willingly (that way the big forgiveness and the later blessing from the nobility would have been combined).

All this would have contributed to a little insight into the way things were back then, even if only in a fictional story. More conflict, more "reality" but also a solution.

For some weird reason they didn't let Arthur know what Morgana had really done to him. He never learnt that Morgana killed his father and that she enchanted Gwen which led to the break up and a time of desperation and broken hearts. He also never knew that he almost killed Gwen who was turned into a deer by Morgana.

For a while, after "The Death Song of Uther Pendragon" I thought that maybe (and only maybe) they did it because they needed Uther to have valid reasons for blaming Arthur to trust too easily. In retrospective, Arthur trusted the wrong people indeed, at least in regard to Agravaine, Morgana (until she revealed herself) and also Gwen - but trusting Gwen was, of course, justified, just not in Uther's point of view who probably thought that Gwen had really betrayed his son. On the other hand, since Uther knew what was going on in Camelot, he should have known from the beginning that Gwen was enchanted, that Mordred was the druid boy he wanted to kill and that Merlin was a sorcerer and also Dragoon. Not to mention that he died at the hands of Morgana.

If they let Arthur in the dark about it all in order to get rightfully scolded by Uther later in regard to trusting others so easily, it should have had an impact on Arthur. The sad thing is that it didnt. The entire episode contributed absolutely nothing to Arthur's development since he didn't change anything at all and the events of both episodes ("The Death Song..." and "Lancelot du Lac") didn't contribute to a real development and change. Had Arthur learnt at some point that he was betrayed by Morgana up to that extent (killing Uther, enchanting Gwen etc) and that Gwen was the victim, he could or would have done something about Morgana instead of simply ignoring her completely, no matter what she did. He could have felt great anger and maybe desire for revenge, he could have either changed his point of view about druids and break his promise or he could have changed his entire point of view about magic and joined forces with the "good" ones in order to stop the dark magic once and for all.

I agree with you on what Uther might have done, ReganX. Though I actually doubt that he would have banished Igraine just so. Uther broke his own laws when Morgana was about to die, and back then, before he began to hate magic, he probably wasn't that stubborn and tough. Maybe he was more tolerant, especially when considering his youth, so I could imagine him to try to win Igraine back - and perhaps even with magic. Uther, as well as Arthur, had a tendency to be blind towards unpleasant things that concerned his loved ones. He just wasn't so naive and had a direction, unlike Arthur.

I wonder what the whole enchantment thing here was all about, if not to make Arthur open his eyes about Morgana and what was going on, realising that magic can either be fought ony with magic or realising that magic has to be eradicated once and for all. I can't really see that letting Gwen off the hook by being enchanted was necessary in order to keep her character clean and pure. Kissing her first true love in the heat of the moment would have been an interesting development of her character, plus it would be only human. Why it wasn't supposed to be shown on a family show is beyond me, since they showed torture, death, lying, misery, manipulating and emotional and physical cruelty and suffering all the time. Betraying someone by kissing another is inapproppriate but lying to and manipulating so-called best friends is alright? Killing the own parent is alright, torturing others, killing others, betraying the own family and friends is alright... but being unfaithful is not?

That's actually ridiculous.