Board Thread:What If?/@comment-5674726-20140630220202/@comment-5674726-20140705135540

This one would have been a potential game changer, if Uther decided against going through with it rather than lose Ygraine, as there would be no Arthur, no Great Purge and no Merlin.

If Morgana was older than Arthur, Uther would have had the option of claiming her, staying married to Ygraine and raising her as his heir - or, if he wanted to keep the secret of her paternity from Ygraine, "adopting" the daughter of his dear friend as his heir. If she was younger, and therefore not born at the time Uther had to abandon all hope of a child by Ygraine, I'd say that he'd have had to steel himself to end his marriage to Ygraine and find himself a new Queen to give him an heir. It'd break his heart because they were in love but he was a man who was very conscious of his responsibility to the kingdom he had forged, and he'd know that things wouldn't end well for Camelot if he had no heir.

I could see him feeling a measure of resentment towards magic for its limitations but not so much that it would lead to him trying to wipe it out.

I can't see Uther going ahead with it if he knew that Ygraine would die. His reason for resorting to magic rather than the more conventional solution of ending his marriage to a barren wife in the hope that he would have better luck next time would have been that he loved her and wanted to stay married to her, so I doubt that he would have knowingly chosen a course of action that would have ended her life in nine months. I'd say that he would rather that she was alive and not married to him than dead.