Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-5102537-20140620091030/@comment-5674726-20140705142156

Fimber wrote:

That's the problem with the whole situation. It wouldn't have come across as such an inevitable and "right" thing to do if the show had pointed out that what Merlin did was a mistake or at least extremely irresponsible. That was the problem in general. The show avoided holding Merlin accountable for his major mistakes and wrong actions by treating them as inevitable/destiny.

His actions in The Crystal Cave are another example of this. He sees scattered glimpses of a possible future and interprets them to mean that Morgana is going to kill Uther. He is specifically warned by Gaius that the crystals are treacherous and that what he saw might not be all it seemed, and Gaius also points out that he shouldn't panic when he thinks that he sees the first vision play out because Morgana goes riding every day and seeing her with a horse is nothing new. He even gets firsthand experience of how interference to prevent an event can trigger the same event when his reaction to Arthur giving Morgana a dagger for her birthday leads him to purchase the ornate dagger he foresaw. Had he kept his mouth shut, Arthur would have given Morgana the other dagger for her birthday.

He convinces himself that Morgana is going to kill Uther and the actions he take to prevent this succeed only in keeping Morgana from visiting Morgause on her birthday, setting into motion a chain of events that will lead to Morgana learning that she is Uther's daughter, knowledge that would influence her actions from that point onwards.

In the same episode, despite knowing that it's dangerous to mess with the power of life and death, and despite being warned by Kilgharrah that changing the future is fraught with danger, he forces Kilgharrah to save Morgana's life because it upsets him to see others grieving for her.

Kilgharrah: But I warn you, the evil that will follow is of your doing, and yours alone.

I wonder if the power of life and death was triggered when Merlin used magic to save Morgana. The rule was that to create/save a life, another life had to be taken. I don't recall any mention that the other life would be taken immediately, or that it would be taken by visibly magical means, ie. being struck by lightning or afflicted by a mystical illness. Ygraine is an example of a time-delayed death (nine months or so after magic was used to conceive Arthur) and a death that was not caused by visibly magical means.

Perhaps Merlin did have to pay a price for saving Morgana's life, and that price was Arthur's life, albeit a number of years later. Instead of Morgana dying and being mourned by her father and brother, she lived to bring havoc to the kingdom, break her father's heart and take actions that would lead to her brother's death.

Merlin may have ended any hope of fulfilling his alleged destiny and seeing Arthur become the Once and Future King who would unite Albion and restore magic the moment he decided to save Morgana's life.

We have no way of knowing how it would have played out if he had just ignored the Crystal Cave vision fragments rather than trying to intervene.