#To Kill the King

[calebauer]

season one • season five

[pyjamacryptid]

To Kill The King

GWEN & MORGANA (+ Uther)

I’ve been thinking a lot about To Kill The King 1x12 lately and how it established, early on, that Gwen and Morgana were narrative foils.

This would’ve been a fanvid if I had the time or less than 10 Merlin-related wips lol so it gets a meta post instead <3

[bucketsofmonsters]

Hey everyone, I wrote a book!!

A new kingdom, a new king, a new life. But nothing ever really changes for squires. A banished knight has no choice but to abandon his home in search of a new kingdom to serve. That knight's squire, on the other hand, is less content with being pulled around due to someone else’s mistakes. When a dark figure offers the squire a second chance, how could he not take it? However, this deal might be more than he bargained for. A disenchanted squire with more potential than he realizes and a cunning mage who might not be as proficient at magic as she claimed join forces to save themselves by fulfilling their end of a cursed bargain: to kill the king.

If you're interested you can order it in all forms here

[cabbageheadss]

BBC MERLIN ↪ S1E12: To Kill the King

[groundbreakingdot872]

The Sins of the Father

[merlin-slut]

arthur's really just trying to make sure that his boyfriend also doesn't end up dead for treason

[witchmd13]

uther is like "[gorlois] was the greatest man I've ever known... a hundred times he saved my life on the battlefield” and then went and fucked his wife i mean

[weakforarwen]

To Kill the King

I wish this episode was more Gwen-centric. At first, it seemed like it would be Gwen, Merlin, and Morgana working together to prove Tom’s innocence, or help him escape, but Gwen’s plight was only a means to turn Morgana against Uther. When Gaius’s lover, Alice, almost got executed, she was saved, but Tom couldn’t be. Tom didn’t even matter, in fact; neither did Gwen. I think Gwen deserved better than having her father murdered for Morgana’s evil origin story.

As usual, Arthur was quite useless. In the beginning, he didn’t get nearly as much protagonism as in the later seasons, and that is actually something I appreciate about seasons 3-5. When the writers let Arthur succeed or fail without Merlin’s interference, he can be quite interesting. Anyway, as usual, Arthur didn’t quite agree with the King, but did little to stop him, although it was nice of him to check in on Gwen - these small moments build-up their romance.

The real “villains” of this episode aren’t Uther and Arthur, who are always so consistent, but Merlin, Gaius, Morgana, even Gwen:

Gaius, for actually saying Uther was a good King and that Arthur wasn’t ready to take the throne. I don’t disagree that Arthur wasn’t ready to become King, and Uther wasn’t a bad King compared to many others, but Arthur surely wouldn’t be much worse than Uther, and he would’ve had Morgana’s help too. Gaius argued that Arthur lacked experience and discernment - true -, but doesn’t everyone? Is anyone ever ready to become King? Sometimes you have to choose the lesser of two evils, and, to Gaius, that was Uther. Gaius was always too complacent and cowardly. 

And Merlin? Well, he listened to Gaius too much... He saved Uther too many times - even saving his life once was already one time too many. Merlin acted as if murdering people was wrong, yet he watched people get murdered all the time and murdered, or severely injured, some himself.

It’s impossible to defend his and Gaius’s decisions. I can understand them, but I can’t defend them. I guess Merlin is just too nice to let Uther die? Doing nothing when you know someone will die makes you an accomplice to the crime, and Merlin wasn’t ready for that. However, even when his own death toll began to grow, he still wasn’t “ready” to kill or let Uther die, and neither was Arthur ready to become King, so... This is why I couldn’t like Merlin in the beginning. He and Gaius were often on the wrong side of the fight. 

I don’t want to be too hard on Merlin or Gaius though. Gaius is certainly not a killer - though he does aid one?... and Merlin doesn’t want to be a killer either, though he already has blood on his hands... 

The issue with this episode is that it tries too hard to be moral. Killing is wrong and you can’t kill a killer. Well, that may be true in a world where you can, at least, sentence one to life in jail, but it doesn’t work when it’s the King. 

Gwen helped convince Merlin that Uther shouldn’t die. More accurately, she said Uther’s death would make her feel nothing - which I absolutely understand and relate to - yet, when pressed by Merlin, she also said killing Uther would make her as bad as he. I get where she’s coming from. Taking a life would pain her, traumatize her, and she wouldn’t feel any better at all. It would be unfair to make her feel that way after the loss of her father - a cruel punishment. I would guess that, in Merlin’s place, she would save the King too. 

The problem with refusing to take a certain life, though, is that many more may get taken in its place. No one wants to trigger a cycle of violence - the King kills a man, someone kills the King, Arthur kills his father’s killers, and so on and so forth - and there is no guarantee that Arthur’s reign wouldn’t hurt Camelot in the long run too. However, doing nothing also makes Gwen, Merlin, Morgana, and Gaius no better than Uther. If, at least, Merlin made it his mission to protect magic users and to find a way to perhaps control Uther so he couldn’t be a threat... Merlin did protect magical beings when he could, but he couldn’t always do much and his priority was Arthur. I imagine that Merlin would also oppose to enchanting Uther, because magic must be used for good, blah blah. 

It’s hard being the bad guy, everyone wants a clear conscience. No one wants to make the decision to take a life, and saving a life feels better than taking one. However, in order to keep the moral high ground, the characters risked becoming the bad guys themselves - a sentence very much true in Morgana’s case. 

As for Morgana, she, unwillingly, got Tom killed. He was gonna die anyway, so at least she gave him a chance. However, in doing so, Tom “proved” his guilt and died in disgrace in the eyes of the people of Camelot. Morgana’s hatred of Uther is very much earned, but I still can’t understand why she began to despise Gwen and Arthur too (Merlin, I get - it was the assassination attempt). Morgana was fair, treated everyone with kindness - including servants - so why did she change? She didn’t just grow hateful, cruel, willing to do whatever it took to get her revenge on Uther, but her ideals also changed completely - she despised Gwen for being a servant; she didn’t want a servant to become Queen. I will never understand why Morgana went evil, but in many ways the show went downhill when she did. I understand why Morgana couldn’t go through with killing Uther, as he was her father figure, but she ended up sentencing her accomplices to death. I fear this episode made her resent Uther and herself even further, for being too weak to kill Uther and getting others killed (killing a man herself), for loving a tyrant, for trusting one. Uther admitted he was wrong to kill Tom, and that he should listen to Morgana more, so she began to hope he could still change. Hope is our worse enemy sometimes.

Overall, it’s a very frustrating episode and I don’t like it. Were the writers unfamiliar with the concept of moral ambiguity? I think they tried so hard to make everything so black and white that they missed how morally ambiguous their characters were becoming. Or maybe that was precisely the point? I don’t know if the writers were being clever or cowardly. The take away here is that no one wants to feel bad about themselves. People are like that. We don’t want blood on our hands, even if it prevents blood from being shed elsewhere. Saving Uther wasn’t the most ethical decision to make just because killing is wrong. The characters had two bad choices and they chose the easiest one - I’m not convinced it was the best one, though they might’ve been. 

[susantyrrell]

Susan Tyrrell and Lance Henriksen behind-the-scenes in To Kill the King, 1974.

[dont-let-me-eat-pears]

i'm at "to kill the king" in my merlin rewatch, and i'm trying not to skip episodes this time around, but ugh, i'm so so tempted to skip this one because it's so upsetting.

[8-0mph]

The Dead One

[quadrantadvisor]

Imagine if the GIW started gunning for Jason without the Batfam ever meeting Phantom. Like, Bruce has to figure out on his own that the guys in white suits with Lazarus guns are 1. a legitimate government agency, and 2. are perfectly within their rights to hunt Jason like an animal, because 3. there's secret government legislation that says that since Jason's body processes ectaplasm, he's classified as non-sapient and has no legal protections.

Bruce calling up Clark like

Bruce: I am currently in the process of breaking into a government facility in order to dismantle their operations.

Clark: Okay? Do you need... help?

Bruce: Yes.

Clark: Sure, I'll be right there.

Bruce: Not that kind of help. Oracle is sending you the files now. I'd like you and Ms. Lane to make these people wish they were never born.

Clark: [speed-reading the documents] Oh yeah, can do. This is truly disgusting. If the public is half as outraged as I am, we'll get this sorted as fast as the courts can manage.

So Clark Kent acts as a whistle-blower, the Justice League publicly condems the Anti-Ecto Acts as inhumane, the GIW is disbanded, and Batman gets pardoned for all of those crimes that he technically did by assaulting federal agents. And after all that gets sorted, some white haired kid pops up in the Watchtower like "haha thanks for that I really didn't want a war between Earth and the Infinite Realms" and the League are like "wait what"

[bucketsofmonsters]

I have decided to post like 3-4 sample chapters from To Kill The King on here, I try not to talk about it too much because I prefer to keep this blog on theme but the urge to talk about this book is too strong and also it feels like a good idea to give people a little sample to see if it’s their cup of tea

[cabbageheadss]

BBC Merlin | Morgana in ‘To Kill the King’

[leafwateraddict]

Don’t forget guys~

@htsan

[parlapina]

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