Had Arthur not been mortally wounded, his reaction to learning of Merlin’s magic should have been bad actually. Because every time Arthur is given a test of some sort, he has to fail first.
He has to test his preconceptions against the world and learn. He has to be wrong and be taught what right is. Not because he doesn’t know how to do the right thing, not because he doesn’t want to do the right thing, but because his story is one of learning to overcome. And there is no greater obstacle than when we take the world at face value.
Arthur is surrounded by people who benefit from social, economic, and political systems. He benefits from those systems. His entire story is one of repeatedly trying to figure out who to trust only to be betrayed. He trusts the wrong advisors, opinions, peoples, perspectives. But he learns.
He would have killed Merlin and then regretted it. Arthur learns through loss in a way Uther was unable to. He allows himself to be changed, to see the consequences of his actions and try to correct for them.
If Merlin was named Emrys, was called immortal, then it’s because the world understood that it had created a man that had to know failure to understand success. And the greater the loss, the deeper the understanding, and the better the capability for success. He is meant to unite all of Albion. He is meant to be a sword forged in dragon fire. He is only able to succeed once he understands the depth of his failure.
Arthur’s treatment of Merlin, at the most critical point of the story, at the moment where all is revealed, should be a failure. Because Arthur has never operated in any other way. It is the final doubt, the last and strongest echo of his father that must be cast off.
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