User blog comment:Fimber/Things that went wrong in "The Death Song of Uther Pendragon"/@comment-7285162-20130415005522/@comment-5102537-20130426225553

So, back again.

What you wrote here: "Uther enjoys using magic himself, the laws only serve his needs as a tyrant, and Camelot is nothing compared to his own personal needs (family for example) for him. "

This isn't true. He used magic only once after Igraine died, and that was when he saved his daughter's life because Morgana had died if Uther hadn't wanted to have Gaius using magic, which Merlin did in the end.

If he enjoyed using magic himself and if he only forbid everyone else to practice sorcery in order to strenghten his own power or to conjure himself a golden chamber pot or whatever, he would have used magic in order to get an advantage over other kingdoms, to conquer them, to get richer, to get immortal/undefeatable or whatever. Since he didn't do it, he indeed thought that magic was evil. Which is no wonder because he himself was the best example for someone falling from grace when using magic. He was tempted and seduced and trusted it and the result was the death of his wife. If he couldn't control it then others couldn't either without paying terrible prices or abusing it. So he tried to erase magic instead of using it himself. Even those slugs that rip powerful sorcerers off of their powers were almost completely eradicated by him and he didn't use them to take away the powers of his magical enemies.

Asking for magic when Morgana was about to die wasn't an evil act. It was hypocritical but nevertheless born of good intentions since it saved someone else's life. I wonder what happened to the life-for-a-life policy when he had Morgana healed. According to season one, he should have paid another price for Morgana's life, yet the whole thing was suddenly forgotten.

As for Nimueh, in "Le Morte d'Arthur" Gaius made clear that Igraine was chosen by Nimueh and Merlin confirmed that later by saying that not the Old Religion chose Hunith and Gaius but that she did. In both cases, Nimueh didn't object but instead offered Merlin to work together with her. Here is the dialogue:

GAIUS I come to ask for your help.

NIMUEH As you did once before for Uther? You did not like the outcome.

GAIUS I offer a chance for you to atone for the death of his wife.

NIMUEH I have saved the life of her son. What more do you ask for?

GAIUS That this time, you take a just price. Merlin intends to offer his life for his mother's. I want you to take mine in his place.

NIMUEH (laughs) With all my powers of prediction, I could never have foretold this. Gaius the hero. Why should I grant your wish? You stood and watched as our friends burned in the Great Purge. You are nothing but a traitor.

GAIUS Merlin is the one man who can bring magic back to this land. At Arthur's side, he can help forge a new kingdom. A world of peace and beauty that we can only dream of.

NIMUEH And you're willing to give your life, Gaius, for the future they will bring? I'm waiting. Are you ready to die, Gaius? Gaius?

GAIUS For Merlin I will give my life.

---

MERLIN '''It is not the Old Religion that has done this. It is you.'''

NIMUEH Come now. We are too valuable to each other to be enemies.

MERLIN No! I share nothing with you!

NIMUEH With my help, Arthur will become King.

She obviously lied to Uther when she claimed that she didn't know that Igraine would die. Maybe she did it to make Uther feel even more guilty. Why she killed Igraine is a miracle but maybe it had to do with all the prophecy-stuff. Maybe she was jealous, maybe just in a bad mood or maybe the writers didn't know why either... I have no idea.

Fact is that even if Nimueh didn't kill Igraine, which she obviously did according to Gaius and Merlin, she definitely knew that someone close to Uther would die. She could have said that Igraine might be the price, yet she didn't. It would be illogical if Uther had willingly risked Igraine's life and later started the Great Purge. He either didn't care so much about Igraine and wouldn't have started to hate and to fear magic or he did care but wouldn't have agreed to risk her life. Starting the purge and hating magic even though he just shrugged about Igraine dying wouldn't make any sense whatsoever.

All in all you regard only one side of Uther but ignore most of what I wrote and/or asked you about. The one-sided view comes, in my opinion, most of all from the statements of other characters like, for example, Morgana who desperately and vehemently denied any good character traits in him and demonised him to justify her own hatred. Then we have all the weird and sudden changes, especially in Overman-episodes who obviosuly didn't care much about consistency and changed Uther like people change their underwear.

You're only talking about the Great Purge and the questionable/bad things he did but you actually never go deeper into all his other sides. Therefore you can't find a connection and the causality of things and events. So what I mentioned in previous postings mostly remained uncommented.

As for all the sorcerers attacking Camelot out of revenge. This is definitely not true. As a matter of fact, the majority of magical attacks had nothing to do with revenge on Uther. For example:

Valiant, the Griffin (conjured by whomever), the Questing Beast, the Shide, the Pixies, the Anhora, Cornelius Sigan, the troll/Katrina, The Witchfinder (he at least place a magical object in Gaius' chambers), (poor) Freya/the beast, King Align who used Trickster who then used magic, the Goblin, the bandits who disguised as knights in order to kill Arthur and to win the tournament, Cenred, the Manticore, the Lamia, the ghost of the druid boy...

They all had other reasons that didn't have anything to do with Uther and/or taking revenge on him. Cornelius Sigan is one of the examples for the destructive magic of the Old Religion since he promised the former king of Camelot to destroy the land, which wasn't Uther's fault because he probably wasn't even born at that time. Other creatures are good examples too. The Questing beast was invented to kill people, the Lamia to destroy men, the Knights of Medhir to defeat mortals, the Afanc to kill, the Griffin to kill... An dthey all couldn't be killed by mortal weapons and normal human beings. Even the dragons obviously attacked the land as was said in a deleted scene by Arthur (if the deleted scenes are even relevant).

Those who seeked revenge on Uther were Nimueh, Edward, Morgause, Mordred, Morgana, Tauren (at east he wanted Uther's downfall and power, don't know about revenge) and Alvarr (he, at least, wanted to be free. If it is really revenge, I don't know).

Even the druids told Morgana that she must not fear Uther but pity him since he is a broken man. And the druids really would have had enough reasons to take revenge on him.

Arthur was a grown up man, not a puppet on a string and I really disapprove of his character description especially in the later seasons. He had a mind of his own, yet he was very fickle and always manipulated by Merlin and Gaius, like a teenager who didn't know where his place was. Yet he not only talked to his father his whole life. He also had contact to commoners and a lot of people in and around Camelot. Uther surely wasn't the oldest inhabitant of Camelot (not to mention Gaius) but there were naturally people the same age or older than Uther who witnessed the times before or during the Great Purge. If Uther had lied about the chaos that magic brought to the land back then, neither Gaius nor anyone else would have confirmed that. Someone would have mentioned a different story and Arthur would have heard of it. It's the show's clear and undoubtly canon that peace in Camelot started with Uther and that magic had caused chaos and destruction before, for decades, if not centuries. And Uther himself never ever mentioned it at any point. He never said "I was the one who ended the destruction of magic". It was Gaius and Arthur (within the show).

Everyone knew about that, especially the older citizens. And the dangerous creatures  that encountered Camelot and the stories that Gaius told about them proved it all.

Comparing fictional (or real) people to Hitler or Stalin or other dictators is always easy, yet not so simple. You can't compare Napoleon to Hitler, for example. I think nobody could ever be compared to Hitler at all. But repeating this all would be too much now. I've already talked about this here on my blog with another user. If you're interested in reading it just scroll down a little.

Yes, Uther's bad temper cost Tom his life. But his actions in this case were motivated by his panic of magic, and the panic didn't come out of fun or because he thought that it was amusing to invent a new law that forbid magic. He had good reasons for it. This doesn't make it alright but it also doesn't make him a coldhearted bastard. And an evil psycho like his ghost would never feel sorry for his actions like Uther did with killing the ones he feared and hated the most.

I think, no matter how much and how long we continue discussing, you miss my point I'm trying to make the whole time. All the multifacetted character descriptions of him made him a twisted, desperate, tragic, interesting, questionable yet not bad character who was convinced that he had to protect his family and his kingdom and who was indeed right many times (not always but many times). If you deny this all, everything that the show has presented to us for years, I think we can talk about this forever and only repeat what we said before. There was no logic in Uther's return as a ghost whatsoever. It was an epsiode and the great talent of the actors and the once so great and brilliant character descriptions wasted for nothing and flushed down the toilet. A completely silly, ridiculous and destructive epsiode that served no purpose at all.

As for Nimueh (again), I think that she was an interesting character. I would have preferred redemption for her (and Uther) because it would have made the whole show much more interesting. Nimueh and Uther/Gaius/Kilgharrah obviously shared an interesting past and I would have loved the show to explore it further.