User blog comment:Lolcano11/Camelot: History, Geography, Politics and Culture. Discuss./@comment-4623180-20120416024502/@comment-5102537-20120604103742

I think the writers haven't thought much about the society and political side of Camelot. They also contradicted themselves every now and then, for example when Gaius told Merlin in season one that he thought of Uther being a good king who brought wealth and prosperity to the people of Camelot, but changed that when Arthur said that they are barely living off what they have later in season two. In my opinion, they often change facts or storylines in order to match a situation of a certain epsiode, wether it fits the previous storylines or not.

All in all, Camelot seemed to be the strongest and maybe biggest kingdom because even Cenred was cautious to attack it, and during the seasons, there hadn't been a real threat towards Camelot with the exception of Cenred's attacks with the help from Morgause and Morgana. And he failed both times. It hints that Camelot's knights, strategic powers and ressources are the strongest ones and well developed, which actually hints for a well developed civilised system, actually a very modern one. We can see it when compared to kind of biker gang-like Cenred and most of all Hengist.

Uther was a tyrant when magic was involded but he wasn't towards the non-magical people, moreover, he never wanted war. Winning or conquering Camelot might have been due to the destruction caused by magic back then. Gaius told Merlin that magic corrupted the land and brought chaos before Uther came to the land. So he was the one who brought indeed peace (aside from the war on magic), prosperity and stability to Camelot. In most legends, Uther is of Roman heritage, and we know that the Romans were much more civilzed and progressed back then. Building up the army and becoming strong and wealthy seemed to be a very important part in order to keep the safety. As a strong kingdom, Camelot surely attracted a lot of wanna-be conquerors, yet no one dared to touch it. I'm a little disappointed that it has never really been mentioned in the show what other kingdoms thought of the ban of magic. Since magic really threatened and almost destroyed the Five Kingdoms before Uther came to Camelot, most of them actually should support the ban of magic, not to mention most commoners or citizens who surely were of afraid of magic, too.

The education system has sadly never been mentioned. Merlin and Gwen can read, so perhaps they do have an education system. Or maybe they just can because Gwen was working in the royal household and Merlin was/is studying magic and was taught by someone in Ealdor, probably Hunith.

Another thing about the taxes - Tristan complained towards Arthur about the high taxes, but after several attacks by Morgana/Cenred/Morgause and the search for Morgana which cost Camelot certainly half of its soldiers, if not more, neither Uther nor Arthur could have lowered the taxes. On the contrary, they actually would had to raise them in order to provide the strength Camelot needs. Though Camelot could have never replaced all the lost soldiers in such a short time period during the attacks. I wonder how Arthur could have gathered so many men when Annis declared war on Camelot. Basically, Camelot was destroyed after the attacks and every other kingdom or even smaller army of an attacker could have conquered it easily. It was very unrealistic that it was still so strong in season three and four. That's another thing that has been ignored by the writers, as it seems.