Merlin - The Coming of Arthur Pt 1

[daibhidc]

Again, I'm going to be quick because I'm working on my sister's computer before I go to work (the helpline people now think they know what's wrong with ours, and they should be able to fix it ... at some point), but basically WOW!

We start of with the return of the Holy Grail Cup of Life from season one's "La Morte D'Arthur", and Arthur is sent on a quest to retrieve it from the druids. This turns out to involve the druids handing it over, no questions asked[1]. But Cenred wants the Cup to make his warriors immortal[2], and Merlin accidentally drops it right into his warriors hands, enabling them to take Camelot.

Cenred utterly fails to realise that when you're a baddie in an alliance of convenience with another, more powerful baddie, and said baddie tells you that you'll get what you deserve, you should start running immediately. So he gets killed by Morguase. Well, we all knew it'd happen eventually.

And Morgana gets crowned queen! Well, there's no way Uther can doubt she's a baddie now...


[1]More to the point, no questions required...

[1]Given the silent, unemotional nature of these immortal warriors, it's tempting to suggest parallels with Lloyd Alexander's Black Cauldron, which was a bad-guy version of the Cauldron of Dagda, which Celtic-Arthurians often tie to the Grail.

Comments

[rhiannon-s.livejournal.com]

Gotta also say, the writing staff aren't doing much to convince me Uther's stance on kill all magic users and destroy all magic items is the wrong one either.

[daibhid-c.livejournal.com]

Mmm, I dunno. It looks to me like Uther's War on Magic is at least partly responsible for the current situation. Why does Morguase hate Uther? Because he kills magic users. How did she convince Morgana to turn against her friends? Because Uther kills magic users. How did Morguase get hold of the Cup? Because Uther didn't trust the druids and sent Arthur to take it from them.

To get really geeky, Uther and Morguase are a bit like Boliver Trask and Magneto in X-Men: Trask would say that the existence of an organisation called the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants is evidence that he's right to create an army of mutant-killing Sentinels. Magneto would say that he only does the things he does because there are people like Trask in power. Who's right? Well, neither of them, they're both baddies...