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Additional Propaganda

For William Thatcher:

“HE'S SO CUTE AND BRAVE AND STUPID AND DETERMINED AND FUNNY AND POETIC AND HE HAS BIG BEAUTIFUL BROWN EYES AND FRECKLES AND HE'S BISEXUAL-CODED HE'S MY BOY I LOVE HIM SO MUCH”

“The only man that could have pulled off a David Bowie dance scene within a medieval ballroom.”

For Sir Lancelot:

“He's just so pure and kind and romantic and also god*damn* his face is *literally* flawless and he's got those big brown eyes you could just fall right into and its an actual travesty that they only had him on the show like once a season he should have been a lead, that man deserves justice. For further propaganda I would like to submit the entirety of S2E4, which absolutely rewired my brain chemistry.”

“Hot as the dorky lowborn night with fluffy hair and as the evil, come-back-from-the-dead temptation.”

“Pretty much the whole of Camelot falls in love with him”

“No Arthur was not an idiot. He had to deal with another betrayal. Give him some time.”

To begin, Merlin being born with magic was not a betrayal to Arthur. Rather, Arthur betrays Merlin—who has been nothing but steadfast and loyal—by immediately rejecting him for said magic. He refuses to believe it at first, but, given undeniable evidence, he looks at Merlin with disgust and commands him to “leave me.” When Gaius arrives, Arthur says outright that he wants Merlin gone. He does not want to see him, he does not want to be around him. He does not want to be left alone with him.

Whether he distrusts Merlin for the magic, or is merely disgusted by it due to his ingrained bigotry, Arthur has betrayed Merlin here. Moreover, he decided to out Merlin as a sorcerer to someone who could have meant him harm, as per his own laws—or at least, someone he hoped would be equally as suspicious. To what end is not clear: he may have wanted Gaius to help him get away from Merlin since he was presently unable.

In any case, he pretended to be asleep until Merlin was out of earshot and then attempted to out him, only failing because Gaius already knew. If it had been someone like Leon, Merlin might’ve gotten stabbed, too. His law is to execute sorcerers, and Leon follows it unquestioningly—the same legal adherence that Arthur expects of everyone, even Gaius.

It’s only after talking with Gaius that Arthur comes to the decision to have Merlin return his royal seal to Camelot, seeming to trust him now. Merlin has openly pledged his magic to Arthur and singlehandedly swayed the battle, saving Camelot, so there’s no reason to think Merlin is going to randomly destroy it. Arthur isn’t stupid, after all: only willfully ignorant.

While Arthur is apparently able to distinguish that Merlin doesn’t mean any harm—perhaps due to that aforementioned steadfast loyalty that Gaius reminded him about—he still sees magic as a trait to be upset with. There is absolutely no reason left for Arthur to despise magic as a whole, but especially Merlin’s magic, which saved his kingdom.

Merlin and the Dolma (who Arthur has not figured out are the same person lol) both helped Arthur, Guinevere, and Camelot, simply out of the goodness of their hearts. Will, who Arthur believed to be a sorcerer (Merlin again), sacrificed himself to save Arthur’s life. The blue light in the caves (Merlin) on the search for Merlin’s cure saved his life, too. Gaius established in The Secret Sharer that Dragoon (…also Merlin) did not deliberately kill Uther, and therefore Arthur should fulfill his promise to free magic as king. Arthur has all the information he needs—has had it all along—to understand that magic is not inherently evil.

The fact of the matter is, Arthur is out of excuses for his disgust and discomfort over magic. It’s not inherently evil, because Merlin just singlehandedly saved the Battle of Camlann and the Dolma saved Guinevere. At the time, he insisted that the Dolma’s actions prove nothing because there are evil sorcerers who exist, too, but the Dolma’s parting words (“There is no evil in magic… Only in the hearts of men.”) tore the stereotyping defense apart.

Since magic is not inherently evil, and Arthur knows this well enough by now, there is no real reason to be upset by the fact that:

Merlin has magic

Merlin lied about having magic in self-defense and to continue defending others

Magic exists as a (neutral) part of nature

If magic is not evil, then it should not be criminalized. If magic is criminalized (it is), then innocents who use or possess it must hide their magic or else be wrongly treated as a criminal. In this instance, Merlin’s lies are only a defense against Arthur’s own wrongdoing.

Since Arthur infers that Merlin is not evil just for having magic, and since the law enforces the torture and murder of anyone like Merlin—regardless of their individual actions and beliefs—then that means Arthur is at a point where he understands that he put an innocent, loyal civilian into the position of either hiding his identity or being tortured to death. Yet even so, Arthur continues to subject Merlin to further rejection and dehumanization for it.

So, in summation: Arthur was not stupid, he was willfully ignorant. Arthur was not betrayed by Merlin being born a certain way or lying to avoid being tortured to death for his birth circumstances. Arthur himself was the traitor. Arthur had time enough to work through his bigotry, which he should have done earlier. It is generally accepted that the appropriate approach to life or death situations, such as literal execution, is to first make absolute certain that you are correct.

“You act [as if Arthur] ate [Merlin’s] cat.”

We all know that Arthur is the one who killed Freya, so this is a moot point.

“Arthur didn’t react badly. He didn’t call Merlin a monster or anything. He wanted to be alone.”

Setting the standards for a bad reaction to only one specific act (calling Merlin a monster) in order to exclude Arthur from any criticism is a deliberate oversimplification. There are many possible bad reactions, and though he never used the word “monster,” he still decidedly treated him like one while he defended his own discomfort over Merlin’s mere existence.

As I detailed above, Arthur did indeed react badly. He was visibly disturbed by Merlin’s confession and treated him like a stranger (especially apparent when he says, “I thought I knew you.”). He attempted to out Merlin to Gaius, who he assumed would be equally anti-magic, potentially endangering him (thoughtlessly at best, but deliberately is still within bounds). And then it gets even worse.

ARTHUR: Why are you doing this? Why are you still behaving like a servant?

MERLIN: It's my destiny. As it has been since the day we met.

ARTHUR: I tried to take your head off with a mace.

MERLIN: And I stopped you, using magic.

ARTHUR: You cheated!

MERLIN: You were going to kill me.

ARTHUR: I should've.

MERLIN: [pauses, perturbed] I'm glad you didn't.

“I should’ve [killed you]” is what Arthur settles on, while Merlin spoon-feeds him soup and travels with him in the hopes of healing him.

Ironically, this conversation perfectly encapsulates the issue with Arthur taking offense at Merlin’s lies. Arthur was ready to kill Merlin for no reason except that he stood up to a noble, so Merlin defended himself with magic. Arthur finds this an executable offense. The subtext that he wishes he’d never met Merlin, as well as the dialogue itself that he wishes he’d simply killed him when they first met, both speak to Arthur responding “badly.”

The reason Arthur wants to be alone immediately after the confession—and for the following days before he ultimately dies—is because he sees Merlin as a stranger and a threat. He conveys this to Gaius, who attempts to convince him otherwise, stressing that Merlin is Arthur’s only hope of survival and would never do him any harm. Arthur can’t avoid the fact that this is true, but he is still upset that Merlin lied to avoid being tortured to death by someone he considers a friend, and he still sees Merlin as a stranger who he regrets not killing—and regrets spending the last ten years with, despite Merlin’s loyalty.

Again, if Arthur understands that Merlin is not evil for having magic, then he can very well understand that lying about being part of the group that is wrongly persecuted under Arthur is a matter of self-defense. Considering the fact that Merlin willingly told Arthur he has magic despite Arthur’s beliefs, he really has no ground to stand on. The problem isn’t that Merlin lied to Arthur. It’s that Arthur is lying to himself. He has been all along.

“There were fucking layers in this situation.”