Board Thread:What If?/@comment-173.245.80.12-20140903054558/@comment-37017073-20190519205127

Brutegwaine wrote: Morgana was the main villain in S4, and most of the sabotage and scheming that happened could be traced back to her or Agravaine.

That's the problem, though. Arthur doesn't know that Morgana and Agravaine are the main antagonists of s4. Arthur doesn't even know that there are main antagonists. As far as he knows he lives in a world full of people, any number of whom could be suspects or have reason to want his father dead, and he has to rely on evidence to determine the guilty party.

Nothing about the necklace singles out Morgana as the perpetrator. Nobody saw Agravaine ride out to her hovel or put the necklace around Uther's neck, and there's nothing to suggest that his looking in on Uther was an unusual occurrence. Merlin and Gaius can offer speculation but have no proof to back it up, and they can't divulge the reasoning behind their suspicions without revealing a lot of other information that would make Arthur less than inclined to trust or listen to them for quite some time.

You are right that Arthur was in too much pain and confusion in "The Wicked Day" to be open to understanding and acceptance, and might have been more so at the end of "The Secret Sharer". His father's death by magic, realizing that both his parents died by magic, and his coronation are perhaps too many events in one episode to also include the reveal. Sadly the reveal never came, no matter how big, close, or painful the threat.

I think that the main problem was timing. For Merlin (and the audience), the reveal wasn't something that he could just throw out there next Tuesday over lunch, it was an important event. And there was always the sense that if Merlin took the wrong cue or picked the wrong moment then everything could fall apart.

Though it's reasonably certain by this point that Arthur wouldn't execute him if he learned the truth, banishment was still a very real possibility (especially if you take into account Arthur's reasons for banishing Gwen in 4x09, namely the "I'll forgive her, but I'll never trust her" conversation). If Merlin was banished, then Arthur would be left without any magical protection for however long it would take for him to think about things and come to terms with it all, and with Agravaine skulking around in s4 and his vision of Mordred in s5, that wasn't a risk that Merlin felt he could take.

I suppose one could argue that if Merlin told Arthur the truth then he wouldn't need to worry about Agravaine, but I doubt it would be that simple. Since he and Gaius have no proof of their accusations it would be their word against Agravaine's, and since Arthur has always been notoriously trusting of his relatives I doubt that would be enough for him. Assuming he gave their accusations any credence at all, he would want to conduct his own investigation to ensure that he wasn't being tricked or lied to, and that would, again, take time. Time that Merlin probably wouldn't be around for since his having magic is an issue entirely separate from Agravaine's guilt or innocence.

Also, since Arthur doesn't usually conduct investigations behind peoples' backs and Agravaine goes on to prove himself quite an accomplished liar, there's no guarantee that he wouldn't be able to weasel his way out of their claims, either. A man who can be found in the middle of nowhere holding a knife to a kidnapped man's throat and come up with a halfway reasonable explanation for it on the spot is not someone to accuse lightly, and at this point he has a lot fewer lies to trip over than Merlin and Gaius.