I LIKE Arthur but I feel like he never really gets to change as a person like you could deadass randomly rearrange most Merlin episodes from the first seasons before Uther’s death and everyone would show character changes except Arthur because his noble acts are stuff he does starting from Valiant…
I also like Arthur but he is written into a corner.
When he's first introduced he is the worst, just bullying a servant for the fun of it. But by the second episode they need to soften that down so people are willing to root for him.
then beyond that there are tangible reasons to show he's changed (standing up for Gwen in episode 3, risking his life for Merlin in episode 4 etc) Therefore actual reasons to root for him.
But after that he needs to be stuck at a certain level for the shows premise to work, and that level is him thinking that magic deserved to be outlawed.
Even though it contradicts a certain level of compassion that arthur portrays constantly, i mean the guy saves mordred, a young boy who Arthur knows has magic, but he has enough compassion to understand that he is a child who has done nothing to deserve being executed wether or not he has magic.
But the shows premise is following a young boy who needs to hide his powers, and for that to work Arthur needs to not know about his powers, and the only way that works is if he has a reason to be sceptical of magic
And when you consider that the writing was moreso episodic, in the sense you could tune into any episode and still understand the full story, as opposed to one series telling a full story, the writing of Arthur was at a crossroad that the writers couldn't get him out of.
He needed to be a compassionate character, a compassion that extended to even those with magic, whilst also giving him reasons to believe genociding a whole demographic of people was still a fine thing to do.
I think it all boils down to the writers being afraid to fully explore the topics they presented in the first place.
