#mark of nimueh

[goddessofenergy]

Do you ever obsess over how Merlin literally confesses to being a Sorcerer in front of Camelot’s entire court in the THIRD episode

[knightswaypoint]

Happy Sweet 16, BBC Merlin!

The next two book dustjackets for the BBC Merlin book series are now (still partially) done! I still plan to make a how-to for these, as well as upload all the files for them, buuut not right now.

First two books

Symbols:

For Mark of Nimueh: Centerpiece is the Afanc egg with Nimueh's mark front and center on it, the top symbols are the pouch that Merlin used to heal Tom. Then the bottom marks are the water the birthed the Afanc, and the fire and wind that defeated it.

Poisoined Chalice: Morteaus Flower, of course. (The symbol of which I did reuse from my DVD book because I love how it turned out). The top two symbols are the two different cups that Uther and Bayard use, and the bottom marks are the ball of light that Merlin sends to help Arthur in the cave.

[messandahalf10]

How do you spend your days off from work instead of being productive and getting stuff done that you can’t during the work week? Like this, of course!!

[cynthia39100]

Merlin rewatch -- S1E3: The Mark of Nimueh

Merlin's confession scene

First of all, Arthur’s face when Merlin ran into the court was so funny lol He didn’t believe one bit that Merlin could be a sorcerer.

I like how quick Arthur jumped to defend Merlin. From the frustrated look in his scene with Gwen, I felt his determination to not allow any more unnecessary victims. Merlin's confession was obviously unreliable, considering the timing. He had to step in.

Then there was the iconic Merlin. I think it's the most exaggerated one? We'll see.

I like Arthur’s face when he said “ yes you are.”It's the way he shut his mouth after the sentence and his half-threatening face. I could hear him thinking “ Merlin you idiot stop talking just nod and smile!”

Similarly in the end when he said “There’s no way that he’s a sorcerer.” while fixing Merlin with a long meaningful stare. The warning in his voice was apparent. There was also the look he had when he watched Merlin give up (finally) and walk away. It’s such a contrast with his previous half amused half taunting face. He was so focused on preventing Merlin from getting himself killed.

I also love that throughout the whole thing Arthur never not looked nervous, even while he spoke to the counsellors convincingly.  His facial expression was tense. There was even a little nervous laugh in his voice when he said " ... the wonder is that he's such an idiot."

Bonus: Uther was so amused about the whole thing lol He was still smiling when Merlin left.

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[thesorcerersshadow]

merlin running to see gwen and stopping with wide eyes as he sees the pyre being built for her </33

[merlin-slut]

okay i bought and read a copy of potions and poison and here are some of my fav bits

if you didn’t know, there are 2 series of merlin books that are retellings of the episodes: one aimed at younger readers and the other at older. this one is part of the younger readers series.

the younger reader ones have comics so you get fun moments like these ones

or just kilgarah looking so dumb like he is

and just fun moments like defeating the afnac

plus you get some fun added dialogue and thoughts

“This failed to cheer up Merlin, who thought of himself as a warlock who just did a bit of servanting on the side.” -just amazing truly iconic

n i c e h a t

and we get arthur just being called oblivious, which is just perfect before we get this:

like it’s true but you didn’t need to say that

i have The Dragon’s Call and Valiant from the older readers series ordered right now and i’ll make a similar post when these get delivered!!! but i posted these on tiktok and realized that i needed to put them here too!!!

[groundbreakingdot872]

and you can aim for my heart/ go for blood/ but you would still miss me in your bones - my tears ricochet by TS

[xviruserrorx]

MerlinRewatch2023 -> "The Mark Of Nimueh" Book Of Job ~ Masterlist [Prev <- • -> Next]

[badly-explained-merlin-plots]

The Mark of Nimueh - Proper sanitation is key to city building

[weakforarwen]

I really like how you can see the progression of Arthur's relationship with Gwen in the episodes she's in danger.

In The Mark of Nimueh, when Gwen is sentenced to death, Arthur clearly disagrees with his father - and really argues with Uther on her behalf - yet, if not for Merlin, he would've obeyed his father's orders anyway (like in The Witchfinder). Contrast that with Queen of Hearts, when Arthur vehemently opposes his father's sentencing and even relinquishes his right to the throne to save Gwen.

Similarly, in Lancelot and Guinevere, when Gwen is in danger and Morgana is pleading with Uther to rescue her, Arthur stays quiet and publicly agrees with his father. He plans to rescue Gwen but pretends her life means nothing in front of Uther. Publicly siding with Morgana wouldn't have helped him, Morgana, or Gwen, but it would've set a positive example and shown commoners that he values their lives. In The Castle of Fyrien, Arthur hides from Uther that he plans to rescue Elyan - he has even less reasons to save a maid's brother than to save the King's ward's maid, and how would he have explained that Elyan was kidnapped because of his relationship with Gwen? - yet when he learns that Gwen is missing, he insists his father send patrols to look for her and doesn't pretend Gwen isn't worth helping, though he has to use the excuse of Gwen being Morgana's maid to win his dad's favor. Fast-forward to Lamia, Arthur makes it clear he will search for Gwen all night if he has to, and so will Agravaine and his knights, and he'll do it because he loves Gwen and for no other reason.

[myddrinmob]

Coeden Onnen

It is cold and dark, this place we are shown. Pale rock shines - coated with ice, a thousand sharp crystals - and somewhere beyond our sight is the irregular drip drip of water falling onto stone. A cave. There is someone here. Burgundy robes, which we have seen before in a midnight market. Hands which we have seen passing a necklace to and fro: we watch them now, standing before a waist high font hewn from the very stone of the cave, dipping their fingers in so that they can better work the clay they hold. They are shaping it with long digits into a creature no bigger than can be held in their hands. It is more or less reptilian, with something approaching a crest on its head, scales down its back and legs. The tiny creature is placed in a hinged egg, which bears, in expensive red ink, images of snakes and lizards and a very familiar symbol. Two chevrons, overlapping, with a dot in the diamond space in the middle.

Chapter three is here! And we have our first truly big changes from canon: the casting of Nimueh, the language of magic, and the Merlin's secrecy.

With no slight at all to Michelle Ryan, I've always thought that Nimueh should have been cast with an older actor. She's meant to be a contemporary of Uther and Igraine, part of their court in the lead up to the purge, and while her youth can be explained away -

UTHER It can't have been. We'd know her. That witch's face is not easily forgotten. GAIUS She's a powerful sorceress. She can enchant the eye that beholds her. We never knew it was her.

- I just wasn't satisfied with such lukewarm reasoning. So, the planning for this chapter included the search for a new Nimueh.

I gave myself some limitations, which I've used for all the new casting I've done for this story:

No actors who don't normally do this kind of television work - that means I can't cast Cate Blanchett in a role.

No-one who wasn't working when the show was airing - 2008 to 2012.

If in doubt draw from the known pool of BBC and period actors - the old joke that we all know Britain only has ten actors etc etc.

If you've seen my reblogs, you already know who I picked - Michelle Gomez, who can do weird as easily as she can do regal, and can hold her own in a scene with Anthony Head and Richard Wilson. We're ditching the prom dress in favour of something almost as anachronistic but many times more dignified, with inspiration from gods, queens, and whatever pre-Roman fashion I can find.

Emphasis on the pre-Roman - for a show about a Celtic myth, BBC Merlin sure gets unecessarily into the English side of it? Like, mild tangent, but we could have had three lovely Irish accents in the main cast if they hadn't been cowards about it - Nimueh sounds Glaswegian now, bite me BBC - and at least an attempt at Old Welsh for our magic, instead of the bizare choice that was Old English.

You know, Old English? The language of the Angles and the Saxons et al? The traditional enemy of Arthurian heros (if we ignore the Romans and each other) and the mooks of evil Morgana in season five? Why is our Welsh-derived mythocial magic sounding closer to Beowulf than to the Mabinogion?

Anyway, the magic is in Welsh now.

Or, as Welsh as I can reasonably get: I didn't want to use modern Welsh as our magical language because that feels weird ('Welsh is a living language, not a prop' being about the sum total of my feelings on it) and to no-ones surprise the resources on Old and Middle Welsh just aren't there in the same way as for English, so I've reached a comprimise with myself. I'm taking poetry and prose from the Welsh tradition and - choosing the lines that fit the gist of the spell, then finding those lines, changing the othography a bit, making valiant guesses - using those instead.

An example of my method, for those interested. Note - my Modern Welsh is limited to 'hello', 'goodbye', and 'tea, thanks', and my Old Welsh non-existant, so bear with me.

Lets go with a line of magic from the start of the episode:

In the waters of her font, the woman in the burgundy robe watches. The water shows her - and us - things beyond natural human sight. As the water displays the far-distant egg bobbing in the unknown pool, the woman speaks “Trannoeth y bore ef agychwynnawd hela ac adoeth y dyffrynn afon adygwyd y Camelot.” From with the egg, the creature reaches out. The shell cracks.

Working from this website, that line started out life as:

"Trannoeth y bore ef a|gychwynnawd a|e|nifer ac a|doeth y dyffrynn auon a|dygỽyd y ruuein."

"And the next day in the morning he set forth with his retinue, and came to the valley of the river that flowed towards Rome."

'ỽ' is an older Welsh letter that isn't used anymore. Most medieval and later texts gloss it as 'w', so I did that. Same kind of deal with some uses of 'u', which was often used in place of 'v' - for clarity of pronunciation, I change it to the more modern 'f', which is in Welsh equivalent to modern English 'v', so 'auon' becomes 'afon'.

Ruuein - modern is Rhufien - is Rome, which is not where Nimueh is sending the egg, so change that for Camelot. Cut ou the bit about the retinue, which involves me painstackingly trying to work out exactly which words mean what and deleting as necessary - abusing translation websites as best I can.

Lastly, something that is entirely guesswork. The OG texts I'm working from have a lot of '+' signs, which I'm confident just means a word is continuing over the line. It also has other notation that I'm not sure on, such as the '|' that appears in words, usually if they begin with a. I mostly just delete these and hope the language gods look kindly upon me.

Like I said, I don't speak Welsh, ancient or otherwise - if you do, and you want to tell me something about it (critique about my use, advice, fun facts) please do! I'm doing my best, and I'm always happy for my best to be better.

By the Triple Goddess, this is already so long. What else was I gonna say?

...

...

...

"I'm sorry," he says, words tumbling from his mouth, true but inadequate for what he's done. Gwen looks at the ground as she replies, as if she is the one who should be ashamed. "It's not your fault." "Well…" Well. It is, isn't it. Gwen is about to speak again, is looking up at him again, and if he doesn't confess now he never will -

Listen. Listen.

OG Merlin is forever alone.

And that works, to a point - part of the tragedy of the show is that Merlin only ever has enemies and allies he can never fully trust (RIP Lancelot) - even Gaius lies to him, tells him to let people die, whatever the shit was happening in 1.06. That's some juicy tragedy goodness! Love that!

But like.

Hmm.

This show isn't actually a tragedy tho, is it? We get tragic moments, we get the curbstomp moment of the finale (on xmas day??? the fuck bbc), characters die and fail and betray our heroes, yada yada.

But we also get moments that are arguably tragic, but which the show doesn't treat as tragic.

Every single moment Merlin kills a magic user - or near enough that I can't recall an exception - is treated as triumphant. Every time Merlin saves the life of genocidal tyrant Uther Pendragon - triumphant. Every time we return to the status quo - triumphant. The tragedies are only interpersonal - on the many occasions where Merlin drives Arthur further away from accepting magic, it's tragic because of how it affects Merlin, and his relationshop with Arthur - not because of the ongoing persecusion.

The show focuses on the interpersonal to the exclusion of everything else, and then it doesn't even do that full justice. Arthur and Merlin suffer a bit from the new trek Kirk-Spock phenomenon, where we forget other characters exist, and we forget their own dynamics with our main protag.

(Another part of the tragedy, right? That Merlin ends up only seeing Arthur, and nothing else - and maybe only his idealised Arthur at that. Another one that goes largely unaddressed.)

So, Gwen.

I don't want to go too much into why I wanted someone in on the secret, and why I wanted it to be Gwen - we'll get there later in the season - but at least part of it is to balance out the allies Merlin has. The dragon, who wants to get rid of Uther and return magic; Gaius, who wants everything to stay exactly as it is; and Gwen, who wants...

Well, she a different kind of moral beast than the others, isn't she? Let's just see how different.

[watcher-wilds]

Arthur shoulda kept his damn mouth shut is what

[gvaine]

MERLIN 1.03 ⋄ The Mark of Nimueh

[cynthia39100]

Merlin rewatch -- S1E3: The Mark of Nimueh

Arthur

Just the things I like about Arthur in this episode

Arthur looked like he just rolled off of the bed when he came to find Merlin and fetch Gaius for his father like a servant. He looked like 10 years old and hadn't fully awake lol

Arthur protested when Uther asked him to lend Merlin to Gaius

That tiny disgusted look when Gaius suggested Arthur read his work lol

The fact that for Arthur, searching Gaius’ room was just a dull job he had to complete. He didn’t think he would find anything. He didn’t even open the books. And he called back the guards when they were still searching. It was such a contrast from the Witchfinder. He also didn't react to any snarky comment from Gaius. Love him.

I like that Arthur adverted his eyes instantly when Uther praised him for arresting Gwen. He never thought it as a thing to be proud of. He purposefully didn't look at Gwen when the guards dragged her to the corridor as well.

Arthur's hand was pretty with that ring. Prettier when he put it near his mouth <3

“ You heard the word magic and you no longer listen.” Yep. Arthur had known it from the start.

“ I don’t believe evil is in this girl’s heart.” I’m now curious how long had Arthur and Gwen known each other. Did they get on? Probably not. But did they know each other well?

“… witchcraft is an evil father, so is injustice. Yes, I am yet to be King and I don’t know what kind of king I will be but, I do have a sense of the kind of Camelot I wish to live. It will be where the punishment fits the crime.” King Arthur moment! 

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[thesorcerersshadow]

“merlin, come here. look what i found. it’s called a cupboard. it’s a place where you can put things.”

this scene makes me so irrationally annoyed lmao. the hilarious part is that i think i would find it Really Fucking Funny if it came from anyone else. unfortunately, it comes from arthur, who has never been expected to clean up after himself a day in his life.

leave him ALONE arthur, he’s off the clock, it’s none of your business.

[godmerlin]

Bradley James as Arthur Pendragon

1x03 The Mark of Nimueh