Board Thread:Rewatching "Merlin" - Season Two/@comment-5102537-20130727145913/@comment-5674726-20130730215212

Fimber wrote: I completely agree, ReganX. And, actually, to me it shows that the showrunners either ignored it or lacked of sense of tact in regard to Uther in particular. And even more, it was also hard for Gwen to look  after the one who was responsible for her father's death, plus it didn't serve Arthur's character very well when considering the fact that he had the nerve to ask his one and only true love who was also the one who lost her father because of Uther and who was sentenced to death by Uther, to take care of exactly that person. Everything was so wrong about it. But it was also quite typical for the showrunners. They never showed much of a sense of tact when it came to anyone on this show, especially when it came to Uther. In my opinion, this was all very immature and not very well thought through.

I'd say that it was a case of them not looking too deeply at what they were doing, only at the surface goal. In this situation, I'd say that they wanted to (a) give Guinevere a job in the palace that would keep her close to Arthur and highlight how trusted she was, as opposed to being an anonymous palace servant, and (b) showcase her devotion to Arthur by showing that she was willing to tend to the man who ordered her father's death and who sentenced her to death on more than one occasion, for his sake. Making her Uther's attendant accomplished this but they ignored the issues with this, namely that it was bound to be very distressing for Uther to have his estranged daughter's maid hanging around and that, given the level of care he required, it was inappropriate to have a woman caring for him.