More mangled mythologising in Merlin

[daibhidc]

What bothers me about this one, actually, isn't that Mordred is now a young druid, unrelated to Arthur or Morgana[1]. It's the Broken Aesop[2]. Merlin saves the kid because it's The Right Thing To Do. Uther's belief the druids are a threat is dismissed by all the other characters, and the dragon's insistence that the boy will grow up to kill Arthur clearly doesn't justify leaving him to die.

Except ... the kid is going to kill Arthur, so where does that leave us? And the ominous final scene where we learn his name (as if we hadn't guessed) seems designed to hammer that point home, and make us think Merlin made the wrong choice. In fact, while Uther's paranoid rants about magic are consistently presented as paranoid rants, pretty much every magic user we've seen except Merlin does indeed seem to be gunning for him. I'm not sure if this is a deliberate attempt to add some subtlety to Uther's beliefs (in which case, maybe not making him completely barking mad might be a way to go), or just something they haven't thought through.

Oh. and Merlin's "druid name" is Emrys, which is the Welsh version of Ambrosius (Myrddin Emrys = Merlinus Ambrosius, which is what Geoff Monmouth called him).

[1]We didn't actually see enough of the druids for my Celtic Civilisation course to kick in and tell me they'd got it wrong. Although I'm sure that if we do see any more of them, they will have...

[2] Or possibly Warped Aesop, if we are indeed meant to think Merlin should have let Uther execute a kid.

Comments

[daibhid-c.livejournal.com]

But according to Gaius, Edwin's parents were also a genuine threat to the kingdom; that's why he didn't intervene. In fact Gaius's attitude to Uther's paranoia highlights the problem: he doesn't agree that magic users are intristically evil, but he knows for a fact that everyone apart from Merlin is an exception!

And yeah, I think Uther's attitude to magic may be related to a past relationship with Nimueh. Since Arthur's standard origin story clearly can't be made to fit Merlin's setup.

[cat63.livejournal.com]

But according to Gaius, Edwin's parents were also a genuine threat to the kingdom; that's why he didn't intervene.

I'd forgotten that part, sorry.

I reckon we're giving this more thought than the writers ever did though :-)