#not going to tag anti arthur bc it just dumps it right in the tag anyway 💀

[donttouchtheneednoggle]

oh oh 💋 what I would v much like to ask is how do you see Arthur and gwens relationship progressing after "Selfish" (which no joke ive read about 15 times now) - like do you think theres any coming back from that for Arthur or do you think there'll always be a part of Gwen that was hurt by him and his behaviour?

Oh boy now I have to think actual thoughts... For you Will I will 😘

I just. By s5 Arthur is not an actual person. He’s been reset so many fucking times beyond the point of any reason, so I honestly don’t know any reasonable way to reconcile with him.

Like s1 him (beloved, actually) understood in ep 3 that not all magic deserved the same treatment. He was capable of that nuance. S2 Arthur is absolutely furious that his father used magic for his own means then turned around and condemned it. He understood that hypocrisy. 

But by s5 he has been written over so many times that though he has no excuse he is just treading water for eternity. God knows how one stands being married to that. So I genuinely don’t know how you would reconcile with him or how he could repent. If he realised how wrong he was why did it take literally five years to realise something he understood at eight years ago, and why is it Gwen’s responsibility to make him realise that? This man deadass ‘rescued’ someone from being burned to death as a very direct consequence of his own laws without a shred of self-awareness. Does he not think of the horrors he permits, just as long as they are out of his sight? This man who really genuinely does love his people so much but has such a humungous blind spot towards so many of them? He just straight up doesn’t make sense past like s3 if I’m being generous but remember that time he held a kid at swordpoint.

Every time I think of an Arthur Pendragon redemption scenario post s3 all I can think of is everyone he cares about ditching him until he comes around. Because why should they humour him and continue their unconditional loyalty when he never thinks to take their feelings into account but insists they tiptoe around his, and makes it quite clear their place in Camelot where everyone they love is is conditional on his feelings towards them because his loyalty is conditional? (case in point: Gwen’s banishment. Arthur sends her out into danger and homelessness away from everything that she knows and loves because it hurt him to look at her, and banned anyone from even mentioning her because he was heartbroken but when Merlin tried to voice his own feelings he got threatened, and the knights straight up asked Gaius to keep any suggestion of Elyan’s dissent from Arthur quite clearly out of fear of what he might do to him) 

A’snd why should they return once they’ve left him? They all love him dearly and once in a blue moon it’s clear why, but it’s just not nearly enough. All his friends who comes from a variety of fucked up childhoods are capable of basic reason and awareness of others feeling (don’t get me wrong no one in this story is simply good they’re all morally complex yes Merlin yes the knights yes even Gwen they’re all still part of this regime aren’t they alas the story relies on it. and besides anything they all have flaws and a lot of them can be complete twats sometimes dkfkgkh) but Arthur is just so goddamn selfish after so many chances I just don’t think he’s forgivable by s5. There’s only so many times he can fuck over the people he loves and get away with it.

And now bestie we shall veer wildly off track See the way I see it there are two realities in Merlin. There’s the reality the show mostly focuses on. The one that Selfish is mostly set in. The fantasy that Gwen and the knights live in, that everyone in Camelot does except Merlin and Gaius and Lancelot do (Lancelot gets a near total free pass on everything. Man did his best and stayed in the system to protect Merlin. You could argue he should’ve dragged Merlin away from all that bullshit but i digress. He’s the exception :)). Where morality comes down to being nice to people and like. Not killing anyone but bad guys. There’s very clearly good guys and bad guys. In the context of that, they’re all great. And that’s why they're so easy to love, because within this system it’s pretty simple: they’re wonderful people. And it’s fun! It’s so nice to write writing this fantasy, where these lovely people really are just lovely people and being a knight is just running around the woods having fun and getting stabbed as the whump requires. (and there’s literally nothing wrong with just writing within this ndsmfkgkflg not every fic has to be a fuckin moral crusade which is exactly why I like it who has the time)

Then there’s the wider context. When you zoom out and really see the whole story. That they all serve and participate in a system that committed a genocide and continues to perpetuate it. The writers try to dodge it as much as possible by just sending them on fun quests but the knights’ principle job is to hunt and arrest enemies of the state. A lot of whom are sorcerers who are tired of being oppressed and demonized as soon as they show anything but total passive acceptance of it. And the sorcerers do not have to have committed a crime to be arrested, as is confirmed in 5x05 where Osgar kills several knights trying to escape being arrested and executed for literally just existing as a known sorcerer. And what does Gwaine call him? A heretic and a murderer. The only way I can find to redeem any of them in canon is have them be part of an oppressed group themselves and just trying to survive like Merlin is. Even them having nothing against magic falls flat because then why then do they stay and do what they do, and with no protest too? They are self-aware! 

Obviously when Gwen was a servant she is not at all complicit she has no power over things and is just tryna like. Live. But she becomes queen. Yes because she loves Arthur but she still does. And she has a say in things and yet them go on the way they are. I get tired of people insisting Gwen is perfect and always completely innocent (you are doing her a disservice!!!!) and has nothing against magic. Like most of the knights her opinions on it are danced around and never really stated (which is ludicrous when this is meant to be the crux of the whole show). There’s no way she would become queen and not try to enact any change in four years if she believed it should happen (unless she was too afraid of what might happen to her if she suggested such a thing which is sadly  possible but opens up a whole other tin of Yikes). When she tells Sefa (her servant who she makes believe she’s going to die and uses her as bait to trap and kill her loved ones, sound familiar? FYRIEN.) that respect must be earned and cannot be bought with blood it is because she can afford that moral high ground. She can afford to preach nonviolence because her very existence is not outlawed. However much struggle she has to face as a servant turned queen and don’t get me wrong that is a very real and pressing thing that is neatly dodged around with the three year time gap, she has other powerful people protecting and backing her up and the option to rise above it and prove them wrong and if it comes to it she has the power to banish them. Magic users do not have that option when they’re being killed on sight and they certainly do not have that kind of power. The only power they do have is their magic used for violence. But as soon as they do they are evil criminals that now deserve to be executed. And as much as I love Gwen’s canon reaction to merlin’s magic I would not be pleased if I realised I’d been contributing to my best friend’s oppression for the last four years. (the magic ban is still largely Arthur’s fault don’t get me wrong. but the others are still complicit.)

It just doesn’t make sense. To establish how wonderful and kind and good these people are and yet not have them raise a single protest at how things are done. Yes they have grown up with the prejudice. Yes some of them have suffered as some consequence of magic. But to have that little nuance when they’ve met and been saved by and helped and protected good kind vulnerable people with or associated with magic who are the furthest thing from dangerous (Mordred, the ghost boy, the druids as a whole) evade the law that they uphold without ever once examining that core belief that magic is pure evil... It makes no sense. And they must believe it, because how else could they stand to remain in that system?

Which is why I dislike the prevailing idea that once Merlin’s magic is revealed everyone immediately comes round to magic because their friend has it. To grasp that a thing people can’t always control if they have or not and can be used to healing and creation is not inherently evil only when it becomes very personal to you is something I would believe only of Arthur.

I love Gwen and the knights more than anyone else on the show and I realised a while ago it’s partly because they commit the least atrocities. They’re usually innocent in any situation. Because they’re normal people with options. Merlin (he’s a complicated case) and Morgana (not defending her, let’s not go there) do not have those options.

Guess who does :)

Arthur fails to be a decent human being on both of these levels of reality. He maintains the oppression of magic users but he is also selfish and ignorant and uncomfortably near abusive at times towards his loved ones. Arthur does not live in the same fantasy that the others do, but he pretends he does. He hides behind it whenever his essentially tyranny is brought up ‘but I’m a good and just king 🥺 I’m not ruthless and irrational like my father 🥺’ and he’s NOT he’s right but his ignorance and selfishness are almost as destructive. He improves throughout the show only at the most shallow level. He stops bullying everyone around him that he has power over and learns a little bit about his own privilege. On the surface he is a much nicer and better person in s5 vs s1 but if you dig even a little bit I would say the opposite is actually true. I would take s1 Arthur who is a total dick but has normal morals and is capable of nuance over s5 Arthur who is so blinded by how far he’s come (as he’s told by all the people who for some reason still coddle him) and is utterly blind to the injustices he perpetuates.

Arthur has the most power of anyone on the show after Uther dies. There’s no possibility of him secretly being ok with magic but keeping his mouth shut out fear of banishment or worse. He knows things the others don’t, he’s been given unique opportunities to understand magic is not evil. Hell, he even understood it at the start. And I know. I know he’s been abused and brainwashed and I know that’s not easy thing to overcome. But the stakes are way too high to hide behind that and not at least try.

So while you can analyse the other characters to some extent as actual people despite the writing not doing them justice at all and maybe find workarounds that don’t make them actually not great people if you sit down and think about it, you just can’t with later seasons Arthur because he’s so badly written he’s straight up impossible.

So 🤣

I don’t know what Gwen will do. Within the confines of the show there’s no way she’d do anything but forgive him. But by that point everything’s overwritten itself so many times there’s no reasonable outcome. this show′s a fuckin mess :)