User blog comment:Fimber/Why I understand Uther's reasons for banning magic - and why no one is a saint on "Merlin"/@comment-3325613-20120530102529/@comment-3325613-20120530105358

I think I'll start leaving a few points that I hope you'll find interesting:

In S1Ep.3 I think there's the perfect sentence, spoken by Uther, that could sum up his potitical views towards magic and indirectly the situation that was likely to be in Camelot before the Great Purge: "This is the kind of magic that undermines our authority, challenges all we've done. If we cannot control this plague, people will turn to magic for a cure". In my opinion, before the Great Purge magic was likely to be very, very common among commoners and village people. Not the very powerful magic of the High Priestesses and of life and death, but still magical tricks, everyday remedies, simple spells and of course elements of dark magic like poppets and curses. The situation of chaos in which the Five Kingdoms were depended, as far as I'm concerned, mainly not because of the "high" magic users that you would see as a part of every court (although the political balance depended on the order of the High Priestesses and their control over the enormous power of the Old Religions), but on the fact that the use of magic by common people created a chain of attacks, defenses and then revenges perpetuated with magic.