the irony of the last High Priestess of the Triple Goddessāthe last true priestess of the Old Religionābeing killed by the one person destiny chose to restore it.
she was the High Priestess. she carried rituals no one else performed anymore. she invoked the Triple Goddess. she blessed and cursed in the names of the old powers. when everyone else connected to the Old Religion had diedāthe druids were scattered, the priestesses huntedāshe was what remained.
and then emrys killed her.
the man prophecy calls the other side of the coin. the one born of the Old Religion. the one the druids worshipped. the one whose entire destiny was supposedly to usher in a world where magic could exist freely again.
the last priestess dies by the hands of the religion's last great champion.
with her dies centuries of accumulated knowledge. every ceremony she knew. every prayer. every initiation rite. every tradition passed from high priestess to high priestess. every piece of sacred history that had survived the Purge.
she dies without an apprentice. without a successor. without passing any of it on.
and merlin doesn't know those things.
he knows magic instinctively. he's unbelievably powerful. he doesn't know the liturgy. he doesn't know the ceremonies. he doesn't know what morgause learned, what nimueh learned, what morgana learned. his magic is personal, natural, intuitiveānot institutional.
so when morgana dies, it's entirely possible that the religious structure of the Old Religion dies with her.
the irony is devastating. because merlin wins the battle. and loses the culture.
he preserves magic. but not necessarily the civilization built around it.
if magic ever returns under albion, it won't be the same Old Religion that existed before uther.
because there is no one left who remembers it.
prophecy forced the two people who should have been standing together at the rebirth of magic to become the instruments of each other's destruction.
the last High Priestess. the last Dragonlord. the last Great Dragon. all alive at the same time. all capable of rebuilding the Old Religion together.
and instead, by the end, one is dead by merlin's hand, one dies, and one is left wandering the world alone for centuries with enough power to remember everythingābut not enough knowledge to bring any of it back.
