Board Thread:What If?/@comment-5674726-20140630220202/@comment-24762954-20140807063429

ReganX wrote: In Excalibur, we are presented with a Nimueh who sounds sincere when she tells Uther that she didn't know that Ygraine would die, and her point that she would never have helped him if she knew how it would play out is completely logical. Only a complete idiot would use magic to help a King have a son by his barren wife, allowing him to have an heir without having to set his beloved wife aside, deliberately sacrifice the wife's life and expect it to end well. As viewers, we are given no hint that she is misleading Uther when she tells him that she didn't choose Ygraine.

I'd say that Nimueh was retconned as having deliberately sacrificed Ygraine in order to shield Merlin from the consequences of his decision to mess with the power of life and death while leaving his "hero" status intact.

Picture this scenario:

Merlin goes to the Isle of the Blessed in search of the Cup of Life and meets Nimueh. She gives him the Cup but warns that it is unpredictable and that he cannot control whose life will be sacrificed to save Arthur's. Merlin goes through with it anyway, only to discover that his mother is dying as a result of his use of magic to save Arthur. He then returns to the Isle of the Blessed and uses his magic to murder Nimueh, who is not making a move to harm him and who is offering to help him make Arthur King, so he doesn't have to pay the price magic has ordained he pay.

The writers weren't willing to let Merlin murder a woman who was not making an aggressive move against him in order to evade the consequences of his arrogance so they went against previously established canon, not to mention plausibility, to make her the cause of the Great Purge so their Designated Hero could knowingly sacrifice an unwilling victim and still come out smelling like a rose.

Frankly, I find it a little insulting that the writers could expect me to find it in any way plausible that Nimueh would deliberately sacrifice Ygraine.

If they wanted Merlin to kill her so he didn't have to pay the price for his choice to mess with a power that he had no business messing with, they should have had the guts to let him take the step of murdering her rather than trying to claim that she controlled who would die to balance the scales of life and death, even when she wasn't the one to use the power of life and death. You think Nimueh is nice person? She caused a plague in S1E3 and then in Excalibur she summoned Tristan de Bois. If the person is angry, desperate etc the harsher actions come after more accurate not the other way round. And it shows that Nimueh always had very good way to dispose of Uther but she didn't try it for long time and murdered many innocents instead. And it could be that Nimueh was just trying to create Excalibur that way - not vengence. Deliberately sacrificing Ygraine fits into pattern.

And Nimueh wasn't retconned because it's only hinted that she is guilty. It seems most people overlooked it. There is no sense in retcon no one notices.

Merlin isn't arrogant. First of all it was dragon's advise. Second, he was acting in tune with Destiny. He was only naive, believing he is the only one to pay any price.

And lastly - do you really believe Merlin would agree to pay innocent life to save Arthur? It's questionable since in Mordred's episode we have similar situation.