The Once And Future King - Blog Posts

I know people talk about this all the time but the fact that Merlin’s magic has the natural instinct to protect Arthur is just AHHHH. Call it fate or destiny but I call it love.

When I picked this up at the library, I had no idea how much Macdonald talks about T.H. White - the last book I read was The Once and Future King! Synchronicity to the max. In the week that I spent with it, H is For Hawk taught me about falconry, T.H. White, bearing grief, and the importance of having mercy on yourself. 

Dinner and book number 8 for the year.

Physicists often quote from T. H. White’s epic novel The Once and Future King , where a society of ants declares, ‘Everything not forbidden is compulsory.’ In other words, if there isn’t a basic principle of physics forbidding time travel, then time travel is necessarily a physical possibility. (The reason for this is the uncertainty principle. Unless something is forbidden, quantum effects and fluctuations will eventually make it possible if we wait long enough. Thus, unless there is a law forbidding it, it will eventually occur.)

Michio Kaku

Just for your info, actually he’s talking (without quoting) about the Gell-Mann’s Totalitarian Principle:

“Everything not forbidden is compulsory.”

(via scienceisbeauty)

Merlin AU

FEM! OC | Imagine Headcannon

Imagine if Merlin and Arthur knew each other before Season 1. Imagine if Uther, Arthur's father, and Igraine, Arthur's father, were friends with Merlin's parents Balinor and Hunith, before the Great Purge and before Uther band all magic practices. What if when Merlin comes to Camelot and after he saves Arthur he finds out that he and Arthur's parents were once friends and that he was betrothed to Arthur by their parents.

What if Merlin and Arthur became married and were actually in love with one another?

(Arthur is 2 years older than Merlin. In S1 of the show, Merlin is 17 years old and Arthur is 20 years old.)

Merlin came 2 years prior to season 1 and married him.

Merlin was 17 when he married 20-year-old Arthur Pendragon.

They are actually both in love with each other (#merthur). Merlin is still born with magic and is still Emerys. Arthur knows that he has Magic.

Instead of Merlin coming to Camelot in Season 1 it is Elizabeth James (OC). She was born to a Sorceror/Dragon Lord and a farmer's daughter two towns/villages east of the town Merlin grew up in, Ealdor. The town's name was Ambonisa. Gaius is Elizabeth's mother's half-brother, making him her uncle.

*Basically Elizabeth James replaces Merlin as a servant and Merlin replaces Qwenievere as Arthur’s love interest and Queen. (I know Arthur and Gwen don't get together or married till like S3, but I think this is a great story idea. Especially to all the fans of the BBC Merlin series who ship Arthur and Merlin together. I know I certainly ship Arthur and Merlin)*

A/N: The idea for this story came to me while watching Merthur TikTok. I ship Merthur all the way. Best ship in the whole series. Also the GIF images are not mine. Credit to whoever made these GIF's they are amazing

Arthur, in one of the earliest episodes: I want to live in a Camelot where the punishment fits the crime.

This is in reference to Gwen apparently using magic to heal her father from the plague.

This is a not-yet twenty year old Arthur fighting for what he thinks is right. Almost in the next episode, Arthur fights for inclusion of Lancelot in the Knights' ranks. The last discussion that Arthur and Uther have on this is something along the lines of 'Lancelot deserves to be a knight because of the honour and courage he has shown. Screw the first code' and Uther being 'I see you feel very strongly about this' before Lancelot barges in to say he is leaving on his own. And I don't know if it's me, but Uther looked close to giving in to Arthur and you can see the respect in his eyes grow when Lancelot says he is leaving.

There are so many instances in the first season itself (going into danger for a servant, trying to be fair even with the constraints Uther set him, defying Uther in ways that he can, caring for every citizen of Camelot) which show Arthur is going to be fair and just King. It's all there. And it does happen to some extent.

The First Code is scrapped. Punishment is fair. No magic user is unjustly punished during Arthur's reign. The Queen is a commoner. Some of the best knights are commoners. And, I like to think, if Arthur had known everything going on in his kingdom and even without it, the major 'repealing of the magic ban' might have happened eventually. And, all this is after Arthur personally has almost never had any good contact with magic where he knows it's being used for good.

That is why Arthur is a great King even if it's not highlighted so much in the show. Because when you compare Season 1 and Season 4 (ie Uther and Arthur), you see the difference in the way Camelot works. You see not any and every sorcerer attacking Camelot except Morgana and she has a personal vendetta. There is no Edwin or Mary Collins or even Nimueh, who are all hell-bent on revenge or trying to justify their acts as bringing magic back to Camelot. There is only Morgana who has got a personal stake in this and the agenda of bringing magic is long gone and only the throne apparently being rightfully hers is the reason for her continued attacks. You see people not only listening to the King but also discussing with him. You see people following the King out of respect and love instead of fear. That is the Camelot that Arthur wanted among other things.

Arthur, getting Camelot to where it was at the end of Season 5 even when left with the residual hate from Uther's reign is a huge thing. Of course I wish I would have been able to see more and I wish it would have been highlighted more but there are changes. There are great changes and Arthur ultimately did become a great King even with having Uther as a father and it's so underrated sometimes.

*Don't cry don't cry don't cry fck I lose...*

^ THISSS

okay i'm done with the argument on whether merlin should have told arthur about his magic it's so rehashed that i genuinely hate it it's done we're getting rid of it

NEW discussion: it's not arthur's fucking fault that merlin never told him about his magic, and it's not arthur's fault that merlin's relationship became so obsessive and unhealthy towards him.

first of all, you can't help someone if you don't know what's happening in their lives. arthur loves merlin, he's expressed concern for his happiness and safety, he's gone out of his way to protect that happiness and safety on multiple occasions.

with his stages of grief in 5x13 we can see that arthur isn't upset about the magic. he's upset because merlin was hiding things from him. because merlin didn't trust him. because, despite years of arthur considering merlin his truest friend, merlin's secrets solidify for him that that affection wasn't returned.

but that's not why merlin hid his magic, you say! he did it because he didn't want to make arthur choose between him and his father, him and the laws of camelot!

he would have chose merlin. he chose merlin over his father in season one episode four. decide what you want for angst or fluff or whatever, go on how merlin didn't know that and it's not merlin's fault (not the topic rn), he would have chosen merlin.

also, who can blame him for distrusting magic users when the most prominent antagonists in the show are sorcerers and creatures of magic? when, by his perspective, his sister was kidnapped by a sorceress, shown magic, and then became absolutely insane with power? when he's been fed that sorcerers are evil from birth and never given a reason, like his best friend who he sees as the most brave and loyal person in the world having magic and not being corrupted by it, to see magic as anything but evil and corruptive?

the reason arthur's character development is so stagnant and slow, and i've discussed this before, is because no one ever gives him the fucking chance to grow. everyone is petrified of arthur thinking for himself and making his own god damn decisions. everyone manipulates him and holds his hand and tells him what to do and what to think. no wonder he second guesses every decision he has to make on his own: he's so controlled by everyone else he doesn't trust his own judgement.

do you really think that if arthur knew what was happening to merlin, his grief and his anger and his obsession with destiny, he'd be comfortable with it? that he wouldn't be upset for merlin? that he wouldn't be, at least somewhat, disgusted on merlin's behalf?

i'm so sick of ppl acting like it's arthur's fault that merlin ended up the way he did!! he didn't even KNOW about destiny!! he didn't know about all that merlin sacrificed for him because merlin never TOLD him, not even in the end! even when arthur was trying to learn of all the things in merlin's life that he missed, merlin was still protecting arthur's feelings.

and that's the thing. arthur's feelings were valued above everything else, and they shouldn't have been. again, say what you want on how it wasn't merlin's fault and he had no obligation to tell anyone. i agree! but arthur deserved to know not because of honesty or their friendship, but because arthur always having the wool over his eyes kept him from becoming a better person. it kept him from making hard decisions - and hard decisions are what kings HAVE to make. everyone in bbc merlin treated arthur with fucking kid gloves, whether he knew it, or they knew it, or not.

tl;dr: regardless of how you feel about merlin not telling arthur about merlin's magic, it's not arthur's fault that merlin viewed arthur above everyone else or that merlin decided that his friendship with arthur was more important than literally everything else to the point of becoming jaded and bitter and angry. arthur didn't know. you can't take the blame for something that was completely out of your own control.

The thing I love about Arthurian mythology is that it's basically entirely made up of fanfiction, and nobody seems to grasp exactly what that means.

Look, as far as we know, the first King Arthur accounts were at least slightly meant to be historical. So either there was a guy named Arthur at around that time, who may or may not have been anything like the Arthur of legend, or some monk couldn't remember who really fought in that battle and just went "well, Arthur's a nice name. And, let's see, he killed... 900 men."

And then people started writing RPF about this guy, and Geoffrey of Monmouth's version got so popular that people started writing fanfic of that specifically, and then some of that got so popular (particularly with new OCs like Lancelot and Galahad) that they started writing fanfiction of that, and it all just spiralled from there.

And the thing nobody seems to get is that this means that there is no canon.

Like, technically you can't claim that any piece of writing about Camelot is more valid than any other, because there's no single, accepted, 'true author' and there's no original text (at least not one that contains everything everyone would like it to) and the entire thing is just a fucking mess of people enjoying themselves and writing about these characters because they like them and they can.

So like, Gawain and the Green Knight is canon, but so is BBC's Merlin. And the Vulgate cycle. And Disney's Sword in the Stone. There is genuinely no reason to claim that any one of these is less 'canon' than the others, because there is only fanon here.

Seriously, you could go away right now and write a fic in which Lancelot fucks a dragon, and if enough people like it then it will just become canon. It will just be an established fact of Arthurian mythology that Lancelot fucked a dragon (à la Donkey from Shrek) at some point.

And I really don't know why we don't take more advantage of this.