pls share your headcanon about merlin and arthur visiting hunith when they’re ~together~
Like Merlin/Arthur dating and going to visit Hunith? That's honestly adorable as a concept and I love Hunith so...
~ Hunith is the sort of mum to tell embarrassing childhood stories and Merlin gets easily embarrassed. I'm convinced that a Merlin-In-Love around other people is a tomato around 50% of the time and Hunith isn't helping this.
~ Arthur has very set ideas about how relationships "should be", which he's learned from literal textbooks on etiquette. He hasn't really known any adult couples to learn from instead, so he just... has no idea how to act around Hunith and is somewhat awkward for quite a while.
~ As in, he speaks very formally to her to the point that Merlin's just trying not to laugh at him. And he keeps wanting to offer to help her around the place because "that's what you do for your partners parents" but... Hunith lives on a farm and he's the KING and he's just so lost. But he's trying his best he really is.
~ In 1x10 she treated him very much like the Prince he was, but now she sees that he isn't his father, that Merlin is safe with him, she relaxes a little. She isn't so tense.
~ To add to that it then takes Hunith approximately 0.2 seconds to realise that Arthur has never had a wholesome and loving parental figure in his life at any point ever, and then another 0 seconds for her to promptly adopt him.
~ No she DOESN'T care if that's the King of Camelot, that is her son's boyfriend and she is going to make him breakfast and hug him through his sadness.
~ This is, of course, after she spends several hours (gently) extracting all of his opinions on sorcery and Merlin and making sure her son will be safe with him (afterwards, Arthur really can't remember how she managed to get him to just casually admit his entire life's thoughts without a second thought, while preparing dinner — Hunith is somehow worryingly skilled at getting people to talk).
~ Once Arthur's comfortable around her, he replies to her embarrassing stories of Merlin with some of his own. They enjoy that conversation greatly. Merlin does not (except he does really because it means so much to him that they both get along as well as they do).
~ Merlin wouldn't have admitted it before they back to Ealdor, but his mum's opinion on anyone is always the most important thing to him. Knowing that she likes Arthur, as a person not just a king, means the whole world to him. He tells Arthur that one time and one time only, late at night, and Arthur gets so emotional over it he hits Merlin over the head with a pillow (and says he's glad too).
~ When they leave to return to Camelot, she chooses to stay in Ealdor for now, but promises to come and visit soon, and she does. Maybe she comes to stay in Camelot permanently once she can guarantee herself work there (they all know Arthur would never let her go hungry or homeless, or want for anything, ever, if it was up to him, no matter what — but as a matter of pride and boredom she wants to keep working).
~ When they say their goodbyes, she hugs Merlin and kisses him on the top of the head in that typical mum fashion... and then she pulls Arthur in for a hug and does the same to him and that's when he realises he literally cannot leave this relationship ever.
Hunith as Arthur's mother-in-law (or whatever the word is if Merlin and Arthur are just together) is a beautiful concept and I wish Hunith and Arthur could have had more interaction in the later seasons in canon. Seeing her gentleness and love for Merlin contrasted with Uther's harshness could have made for some really interesting differences noticed between Merlin and Arthur — and how their parents shaped them into who they became as much as, if not more than, destiny or magic.
