User blog comment:Morganaforever/The people of Camelot/@comment-5102537-20120604162758

That's very interesting and I just referred to a part of it on another blog post some hours ago.

I too was wondering what the people of Camelot really think about the ban of magic and Uther and Arthur as rulers. At the risk of repeating myself - but here you directly spoke of that subject, so I have to - I am sure that most people supported Uther's ban of magic. If not most, then at least many of them because in the dark ages, magic was what people feared and what was considered to be evil because they did not understand it (or what they thought was magic) and considered it to be unnatural. It would be odd if the majority of people had practised and understood magic, and given that magic corrupted before Uther conquered or won Camelot, a lot of people were surely releived when magic was forbidden. In The Witchfinder we saw a woman reporting to Uther about magic and she seemed to be truly scared of what she had seen. Other people who supported and even wished to practise magic most certainly were against Uther's reign but I can't imagine that it was almost all of them. Moreover, in season one Gaius said that Uther brought peace and prosperity to the land, something the people of Camelot surely benefited from and were content with.

So I would have wished to see more about what commoners and other people thought of Uther's way to rule the kingdom. We only saw sorcerers or supporters of magic rising up against him. Every other thing we heard about other people was what you mentioned, namely when Morgana or someone else mentioned them. It's likely that it was only the opinion of those who supported magic, it's not proven that most people really were discontent with the ban of magic or Uther as a ruler.

The thing about Uther being ruthless towards his people... I have paid a lot of attention to it when rewatching the episodes with friends now and then but I couldn't find situations in which he was ruthless or cruel towards those who didn't have anything to do with magic. It had always been only about magic, even when someone was falsly accused. Uther didn't want war but always avoided it and he was endevoured to have peace with other kingdoms.

His reign can't be compared to what Morgana did, despite the cruelties towards magical people/sorcerers/people who practised magic. Morgana is 1000 times worse than Uther. He never enjoyed killing people and he never tortured them (except when Aredian tortured Gaius), at least we never saw anything like that. He wanted to get rid of sorcerers as fast as possible and they were sentenced to death quickly. Morgana on the other hand genuinely enjoys the misery and torment of others. Moreover, she attacked Camelot and therefore a lot of innocent people died, so the citizens had no reason to accept and to obey her. They died and were ripped of the safety that Camelot had always provided when Morgana conquered Camelot. Why would they obey her? She was a traitor who tried to kill her own father and stopped at nothing to gain power and control, without valid reasons and obviously completely out of her mind. She, together with Morgause and Cenred even killed an entire army that consisted of thousands of men by turning them into undefeatable zombies that slaughtered everyone on their way to the castle, no matter who. Also, Uther killed people because they used or were accused of using magic, which was against the law - Morgana killed them just to make them obidient and to hurt Uther. And for fun. She surely even killed some of those who would have supported her on restoring magic in Camelot.

Why people love Arthur so much is a mystery to me. Maybe they just... like him. Maybe he is just likable, and perhaps they got wind of Arthur trying to help them when Camelot was cursed and out of water and food whereas Uther wanted to save the army first (by the way, I think both were right, Arthur as well as Uther). There must have been something the viewer didn't get to see to make the knights and the people of Camelot admire Arthur so much. Shame we didn't get to see it.