User blog comment:Fimber/Why I understand Uther's reasons for banning magic - and why no one is a saint on "Merlin"/@comment-67.224.1.242-20120601170617/@comment-5102537-20120602132742

Interesting. If I understand you correctly, this thought had ocurred to me, too. Arthur's destiny might have been to bring peace between the Old Religion and the non-magical society even before Uther started the war, but with the hunt on magic, it all got worse. Makes sense indeed, but I fail to see sense in the fact that the Old Religion - whoever is responsible - killed Igraine instead of somebody else and by that made everything even worse and much, much harder on Arthur and Merlin. Moreover, instead of bringing in a non-magical person like Arthur to make peace, it would have been much easier for the Old Religion to get rid of those who disturb the peace on their own. Or, instead of killing Igraine, they could have let her live and tell Uther that Arthur is supposed to bring peace. Or maybe even Uther could have been the one. Another question is, why the Old Religion wants peace at all - or was it someone else, maybe an even higher power?

But either way, Merlin's destiny has been set in stone since the dawn of time which leads again to the assumption that every little thing that happened was planned. But by whom and why? It makes things quite complicated.

It's true, I didn't mention Gwen, and I didn't mention Lancelot either. Lancelot simply had no flaws, there is nothing I could have written about him on that subject. And Gwen is a really good-hearted person who has very few flaws, but they're only human and not really worth to be mentioned. The only thing she could be accused of was being a little callous when telling Gaius and Arthur in front of Uther that she is not taking care of him for Uther's sake but that she's only doing it for Arthur. While it is understandable that she wasn't exactly a fan of Uther and she maybe even despised her new job when Uther was unable to rule, she shouldn't have said it in front of him, and not even in front of his own son. That was a very indelicate remark, especially when she saw Arthur suffering. And no matter what she thought of Uther, in that situation he was completely destroyed and punished already. From a character like Gwen I would have expected a bit more natural compassion. She obviously didn't care at all although Uther hadn't been the man he was anymore. He was a new person, so to speak, someone who was completely incapable of hurting anyone and absolutely dependent on her and others. His mental state should have shown her that he probably even regretted everything he had ever done. While it would have been too much to ask of her to like him, she could have shown at least a tiny bit compassion because she was too good to be so cold. It didn't fit her character, I think.

Other than that, there was or is almost nothing questionable about her, maybe except the fact that she didn't try to convince Arthur of Gaius's innocence when he was accused of having practised magic. She just looked upset but didn't try to take influence on Arthur and actually abandoned her long time friend Gaius.