User blog comment:It's Good to be the Queen/The Thrill is Gone/@comment-5939645-20130107041210

Coming back to what I said earlier...we don't know if a golden age occurred. We don't know what Gwen did or didn't do. We don't know what Merlin did or didn't do. Those are the two key figures in a post-Arthurian Camelot. The knights that had been killed can be replaced by others. Gwaine and Elyan aren't crucial to any golden age. Other heroes can rise in their place.

Gwen knew that Merlin was the sorcerer that saved Camelot. If she had Merlin behind her, the ban may have been lifted. The nobility of Camelot saw what Merlin as Emrys had done for them. Gwen had a great deal of strength, so she may have rose to the occasion, especially if Merlin stood with her. In fact, Gwen was more flexible than Arthur in many ways. She may have made a better ruler than Arthur.

I don't think that many sorcerers supported Morgana. She destroyed a city where sorcery was allowed for her desire to get Alator. The druids saw through her. Even Mordred originally saw her hatred. So I don't think she commanded whole lot of support; she even needed Saxons to fight for her. If the ban was lifted, the sorcerers would have made peace with Camelot.

Arthur may have fulfilled his destiny..... to build a new world where magic was allowed. As it said before, the prophecy never said that he would be alive for it. If Gwen and Merlin lifted the ban in the wake of Arthur's death, then the prophecy came true. Once again, we don't know.

Another question to be asked; was everything predestined to begin with or did Merlin have control over it's outcome? Were Merlin and Arthur destined to make those mistakes?

Of course, it's also possible that this golden age is yet in the future when the Once and Future King returns. No prophecy said that the golden age for Camelot had to be the first time around. Arthur's day may yet lay ahead of him.

I don't defend the producers and writers at all. They were god awful over the years. It was the actors that made Merlin, not the scripts. There are so many gaps that the producers never bridged that we can only speculate the results.

Merlin and Arthur made many mistakes. Merlin always hid his actions from Arthur so Arthur never saw the good side of magic. Merlin denounced magic twice to Arthur when he was wavering towards acceptance. The producers intentionally had Merlin fail in the 5th series. He ceased being proactive and just cruised along on the Titanic. I don't believe Merlin would have really did that, but the producers were bent on ending the series at Camlann. We are prisoners of Capps, Murphy and Jones in this version of the Arthurian legend.