Board Thread:Rewatching "Merlin" - Season Four/@comment-5102537-20131207132547/@comment-5674726-20131215212359

Fimber wrote: Showing Arthur as the fickle man he was up to that extent and turning him into an unwise and weak simpleton didn't quite contribute to the desired portait of the greatest king ever. I think that a lot of the problem boils down to the fact that Uther had been established as a great King in his own right. He won the throne of Camelot and, by the sounds of things, united the noble families - who presumably each controlled territory - under his rule. He was the architect of a peace treaty between the Five Kingdoms, as well as having separate accords with Caerleon, Bayard and Cenred, and a friendship with Lord Godwyn. He built a mighty kingdom, the strongest in Albion. Even after what happened with Morgana weakened the kingdom and broke Uther's spirit, he was held in sufficiently high regard that Caerleon didn't make any moves against Camelot until after his death.

Arthur was King by inheritance, with his predecessor doing the work to both unite the kingdom under his rule and forge alliances with other kingdoms. There was very little left for Arthur to do in that regard but he was supposed to be the great Once and Future King who would unite Albion so they needed him to do something in that respect. They also ended up trying to downplay Uther's accomplishments as a monarch to make Arthur look better by comparison. Same goes for turning Morgana into a pure villain instead of allowing her to oppose Arthur but to have very valid points on her side and to not target the innocent.

All in all, Arthur achieved very little as King.

He was able to restore peace with Annis' kingdom but he was the one to jeopardise the existing peace in the first place. He maintained the peace with Nemeth by yielding territory (who cares about the people who lived in that territory who may have preferred to remain under the rule and protection of Camelot!) but refused to take advantage of the opportunity to unite the two kingdoms, which could well have been a step towards a united Albion. He forced King Odin to sign a peace treaty with Camelot but only a fool would think that Odin was going to consider himself bound by an oath made under duress once Arthur was dead, his kingdom's military forces greatly weakened and his widow a very tempting target.

He knighted a few commoners but, as far as I can tell, they were the exception, not the new rule. He married a servant to please himself, not because he had reason to believe that it was in the kingdom's best interests. Magic continued to be outlawed until his death and, if The Death Song of Uther Pendragon is any indication, villages could convict and execute sorcerers on their own authority. The Druids were to be treated with respect, but not enough for it to be safe to openly seek help for a very sick child.

The only ways for the writers to make him look like he was half as great as he was allegedly destined to be were (a) to tell us, over and over, that he was a great King and destined to be an even better one in the years to come, and (b) to emphasise how much better he was than his father and sister.