Board Thread:Rewatching "Merlin" - Season One/@comment-5102537-20130512091538/@comment-5102537-20130514144653

ReganX wrote:The Excalibur angle made much more sense, and it also made Uther's crusade against all magic users more understandable if Ygraine's death was the unintended backlash of a spell intended to do something good rather than a deliberate action on Nimueh's part.

I think that this is what Uther believed - he probably thought that it wasn't Nimueh's deliberate choice but the Old Religion/magic's fault. Or maybe he just was unsure whether or not Nimueh had the power to choose. But either way, magic was behind it all and he certainly knew that Nimueh at least knew that someone close to him would die.

So Nimueh betrayed him when not telling him about the very likely possibility that Igraine might be the price, and magic was evil because it was tempting and seduced him. The terribe result was a tragedy coming out of something which was supposed to be good.

Even if he knew that Nimueh chose Igraine deliberately, she represented the Old Religion as a High Priestess and used Uther's trust in order to kill an innocent person and to bring misery upon Uther. I would say that this would be even more reason for him to condemn all magic, especially since Nimueh used to be his friend and was supposed to be a trusted person. She proved that magic couldn't be trusted and that it corrupts really everyone, even Uther himself.

However, "Excalibur" and "Le Morte d'Arthur" showed us two different stories about the same happening, and back then I was convinced that there was a reason to it and that they slowly pushed Uther onto his way to redemption - which might have been the case indeed. To me it seemed that Nimueh was supposed to be the one who triggered it all an lied, which gave Merlin the opportunity to be some kind of a mediator when knowing and considering all sides of the whole story. We were always supposed to believe that magic/the Old Religion deserved a second chance, redemption and forgiveness for all the cruelties, including Igraine's death (by Merlin's presence only) - so Uther deserved a second chance, redemption and forgiveness too.

Oddly, with the show progressing, they proved that the Old Religion/magic/the Triple Goddess was/were indeed an entity and a quite cruel one, and moreover something that couldn't be trusted (even Merlin was deceived, tempted and tricked by it). Nevertheless, Uther was being shown to be the bad guy in the end. Sad.