merlin.

at the end of the film we leave off with eggsy and tilde getting it on and merlin left in the plane, presumably to wait until eggsy is done so they can go pick up roxy.

that’s not to say that merlin was just waiting.

with chester dead, merlin became interim arthur until a new one was nominated and voted upon. he has a great deal of kidnapped celebrities and dignitaries to transport back to their respective homes so the first thing he does is call in backup to their location so that can begin to happen. but before he can even do that he has to start taking a body count. he has to reach out to all agents and staff to check their status. he has to take down a list of casualties and then make arrangements to retrieve their bodies and inform their families.

once that’s done, once they’re back at central, he has to start his work taking stock of the true extent of the damage worldwide both in terms of death count and the political and economic effects. he and his techs have to keep an eye on the stock markets, on political movements (because lord knows they blew the heads of so many world leaders they’re going to need replacements) and criminal activity from anyone trying to take advantage of the chaos.

he, his staff, and the kingsman agents have quite a few fires to put out. now, presumably they’re not the only organization doing this so it’s not solely on them but they are able to operate at a more discreet level than most.

suffice to say, he doesn’t get much sleep that first week if at all. not much that first month, in fact, even after a new arthur is chosen and inducted. at any given time during this period you’d be able to find him in his office running solely on a steady diet of coffee, caffeine pills, and pure adrenaline.

there’s no time to decompress post mission as they normally allow their agents. there’s too much to be done. too much fallout to try and contain. he doesn’t have time to process harry’s death, much less grieve. nor does he have time to process the massive number of people he killed by activating those implants, regardless of whether or not it was necessary to complete their mission.

it’s not until a couple months later that it finally comes crashing into him and the guilt is fairly stifling. guilt for not being able to save harry, agonizing over what he could have done differently. guilt over the people he killed (not for those who chose to take the implant but valentine’s employees who perhaps didn’t know what they were signing up for, family members of people who took the implant who were merely trusting their spouse or parent and the people that those who died left behind). guilt over any staff that they lost during v-day.

merlin has always had a soft spot for animals, dogs in particular. he didn’t have a dog growing up, but there was a friendly stray in his neighborhood that he used to sneak out of the house to feed scraps from his suppers.

while training under his predecessor, during the first recruitment he experienced, he adopted the dogs that weren’t chosen in the process. they would’ve just been sent back to the shelter they were taken from but he thought they deserved a loving home. 

his first dogs were a german shepherd named captain (cap), a golden retriever named curie, a pitbull named faraday, and a shetland sheepdog named tesla.

in the second recruitment he experienced (lee and james’) he adopted a bernese mountain dog named darwin, a greyhound named apollo, a german shepherd named charlemagne, and a shiba inu named newton.

in the third recruitment he experienced (eggsy and roxy’s) he a adopted a bassett hound named winston, two english foxhounds named remus and romulus, and a harrier named athena.

since he started adopting the dogs, most have passed at a healthy old age. the second group he adopted seventeen years ago and since then all but newton (now eighteen) have passed in the last few years.

you wouldn’t be able to see them during work because he always keeps them covered but merlin has four tattoos. each hold meaning to him and he did not get them for the purposes of aesthetics but for the purposes of keeping a physical reminder of certain events or times in his life and experiences he went through.

the first tattoo that merlin got was after he fought in the falklands war. he served with a great deal of english and irish and once he returned to uni, began to school his accent to something softer in order to fit in. he wasn’t ashamed of his heritage but recognized that there was a natural bias towards his scottishness in some of the circles he ran in. he wanted something to honor his heritage. the design looks like THIS but the scrolls say nemo me immune lacessit, which is the national motto of scotland. it means “no one provokes me with impunity”. it’s on his right shoulder/bicep, his dominant arm.

he got his second tattoo after the completion of his sas training. he was one of seven men who actually made it through to the end of training and he went to get the tattoo immediately afterwards. it’s a modified version of the sas insignia, which looks like THIS. his tattoo is black and white line work and the sas motto, “who dares, wins”, is written in script. underneath the scroll on either side of the point of the large dagger there are two smaller daggers, representing two men he served with that died in combat. it’s on his left shoulder/bicep.

after merlin lost an agent in the field for the first time he got his third tattoo started. he worked with a tattoo artist to create a design of celtic knotwork that could grow continuously up his right leg through multiple session over time. he had the first part done immediately and went back over the years each time he lost an agent or anyone else in the field. there is a section for lee, a section for james, and one for harry. each section includes the date, small, in one of the knots. he also added to it when his mother died. by the time they went to kentucky, the design had reached up to his knee. you can still see some of the ink on the stump of his right leg just below the knee. it seemed, to him, ironically fitting that it was blown off after kingsman’s fall and absent for it’s subsequent rise from the ashes.

the position of merlin has never been one that has specifically required field work but since he had a history of army service and had participated in agent training, merlin did find himself in the field more frequently than his predecessors. after twelve years in the military, merlin was content with a less active position but he’s always been very hands on. when a certain mission required someone more adept with technology or his particular expertise, he would join agents in the field.

merlin had been working for kingsman for about seven years, five as merlin, when he was shot during an assignment in spain. it had been necessary to send in an operative who was capable of complex hacking and there wasn’t enough time to teach an agent in more detail so merlin took the lead with galahad as his backup. his mark, however, was tipped off during one of his meetings with him and it turned into a shoot out. severely outnumbered and with harry en route, merlin was pinned down and a bullet struck his chest just over the lapel of his jacket.

after a great deal of blood loss, a great deal of surgery, and some very close calls, merlin was stabilized. it was decided that, because of the nature of his position and the necessity of having a merlin, he would not be put on any active field assignments in the future. since then merlin has primarily remained at his desk, observing from behind a screen. every so often he will provide on site technical support but always from a nearby building and never actually getting into the action itself.

Hamish Sangster joined the army at the age of eighteen, serving during the Falklands War. He completed his schooling after the war, getting his degrees and later joining the SAS. After serving for twelve years he was approached by Kingsman. He was brought into the organization with the intention of having him study under and ultimately replace Merlin when the time came. The decision was made based on his test scores, evident genius level intellect, ingenuity, and performance during his time in the army which was watched closely by his predecessor prior to contacting him.

While he was not a candidate for an agent position, he did train alongside a group of recruits, the timing of which was not coincidental. He participated in field training with the group (including picking a puppy though he wound up adopting all four that were left after the candidates chose theirs), and observed all tests the candidates were put through alongside Merlin. He had to meet the rigorous physical, marksmanship, and combat requirements that were expected of all agents, a feat that he found slightly challenging even given his previous army training.

He was treated in a similar classist manner to Eggsy by the majority of the candidates given his middle class upbringing and Scottish heritage (in spite of the fact that he’d schooled his accent to something softer during his time at uni). He was met with further disdain for his lack of participation in the additional tasks the candidates were given as well as the fact that he was older than the recruits. Hamish merely ignored this and focused on completing his own training to the best of his ability (though he may have put one particularly pompous boy in his place during a sparring session).

Upon completion of his training, Hamish was given the codename Emrys and started shadowing Merlin. He learned the ins and outs of Kingsman, assisted Merlin in the creation of new weapons tech, and occasionally ventured into the field for on site tech support that Merlin (a senior citizen by this point) could not provide himself.