Merlin Episode 12: Living With a Dysfunctional Family
Sorry to be late with this. Life's been extremely bus lately. Owl is crawling and standing up for whole seconds at a time and basically getting into everything, and on top of that I have Uther-fic crowding into my brain which must wait until after I've watched the last episode. On with the meta....
We all realize by now that the Pendragons are a dysfunctional family. Since Daddy Pendragon is also a Dark Age King a.k.a. absolute military dictator a.k.a. tyrant, that means Camelot is a dysfunctional kingdom. This episode focuses on the methods used by both his offspring and his subjects to cope.
The most common method of course is turning a blind eye. While that method has worn thin with his immediate family, most of his subjects are far enough removed for it to be useful. Just keep your head down, mind your own business, and don't ask questions about those who lose the King's favor and end up dead in the square. Most of the time that'll work, and allow you to get on with your life and do the important job of looking after your family. This method is working fine for Gwen's father Tom as this episode opens, right up until the time he gets arrested. Turns out the man he's doing experiments for in his forge is a sorcerer.
Tom is a poor blacksmith. I usually take the show's anachronisms and near-anachronisms (Roman-era eyeglasses have been found) with good cheer, but my baloney-meter went off at the idea of a poor blacksmith. I know a thing or two about smithing, and pre-Industrial Era blacksmiths were too busy to be poor except in the most destitute communities. Settlements that didn't have one would pay the setup expenses to have one come in, and in some cases the training expenses as well. So why are they poor? Either Tom sunk all his money into "the finest forge in the kingdom" or they had some serious outstanding debts. But those could both be paid off in a few years. Maybe Tom's bad at handling money. There are hints of that in this episode.
But why hasn't Tom asked more questions of his mysterious client? In his defense, some casting experiments are better done at night. You can't stick a thermometer in molten metal, so you have to judge the temperature by subtle color changes which can be washed out by sunlight. And if they did discover how to do something new, Tom would have an advantage over every other smith in the kingdom. Still, what's he doing letting some stranger play around with his equipment without explaining to him what they would be doing? Those tools are more easily damaged than they look.
No one doubts Uther will execute Tom, including Tom who berates himself for his folly. The mysterious sorcerer turns out to be Tauren, a known rebel dedicated to destroying Uther. Tauren demonstrates another method of coping with Uther's dysfunctional style of parenting/leading, outright rebellion. It's the preferred method for those with hot tempers, but it's not working too well for Tauren. In his defense, however, it's an easy choice to make when you are one of the group of people Uther wants to wipe off the face of the Earth.
In this episode Morgana tries outright rebellion as a coping mechanism. In the first draft of this paragraph I characterized her as "hot-headed" but the term doesn't really fit. While we find out that she used rebellion as a child coping with her father's death, the present Morgana has shown commendable patience in the pursuit of her cause, to wit, talking Uther out of killing random people on the grounds that they are or know someone who is Magical . Back in Episode Three Morgana doesn't appear to even think of rebelling when Gwen herself is accused of sorcery, trying reason and sideways thinking (solving the actual problem) instead. Uther rejects her reasoning. She thinks about but doesn't try rebelling when she forsees Arthur's death at Sophie's hands. She tries to counsel Uther instead. Uther rejects her counsel. When the hunt for the Druid boy is on, she tries underhanded rebellion and gets caught after Uther rejects her counsel a third time. Between the constant rejection and her new-found knowledge that she herself is Magical, is there any wonder that she has moved on to outright rebellion? Perhaps if she had another Magical person to talk to, as Merlin does with Gaius, she would be better able to temper her deeds, but she does not. I blame Gaius, but I can understand why he might not want to trust her, perhaps with too-vivid memories of her rebellious childhood.
It's often said of seers that no one wants to listen to them. Morgana's gift hasn't even begun to kick in properly, and already no one wants to listen to her. That's not a good place to stand when one is young and proud.
We don't know if Tauren is hot-tempered or simply worn down in the same way that Morgana is becoming worn down. All we know is that he and his colleagues are dead meat if Uther catches them.
But Morgana isn't the only person close to Uther. How does Arthur cope with his father's paranoias? Not successfully. In the first scene with the Pendragon family Arthur knows his father won't listen to him before he opens his mouth, but he tries anyway.
I finally realized this episode that Arthur's coping mechanism is to try to be like Gaius. He's tried various others with limited success. He tried reason back when Gwen was captured, but that backfired horribly. He tried outright rebellion himself, with Sophie, which was a spectacular failure. He tried humor to get Merlin out of trouble and that succeeded, but that appears to only work when Merlin is the butt of the joke. But his fallback position is to counsel for more evidence and/or a moderated sentence, which is the same tact Gaius uses when the problem falls within his scientific/magical jurisdiction.
There are problems with that method. The first problem, as we saw demonstrated back in Episode Three, is that a lot of people can die while you're busy gathering evidence. (I found that sequence where Gaius was basically waiting for people to die so he could autopsy them chilling. And have they no concept of nurses? Nurses were around long before coroners.) The bigger problem is that while Uther will usually listens when Gaius tries this tact, he won't listen to Arthur doing the same thing.
As Crown Prince, Arthur has the additional burden of public perception. What opportunities does the public have for seeing him and forming an opinion? There's the arrogant prat knocking over market stalls in fights, the Champion/military commander winning tournaments and battles at a distance, and there's the King's Enforcer, rounding up fodder for the executioner's ax. All in all, these glimpses offer a distorted and not entirely flattering portrait to his future subjects.
When Arthur counsels for obtaining more evidence, Uther twists his words into looking for more victims "conspirators" to execute. In other words, Arthur's attempt to get Uther not to kill one person is going to lead to more people being killed. How does Arthur feel about that? Not good, judging from his expression. While he doesn't say anything, his body language shows the same discomfort he showed back in Episode Six, when his father spoke of implementing the Purge at Arthur's birth. He, too, will experiment with different coping mechanisms before this episode is over.
Gaius suspects Tauren may have been using alchemy to turn lead into gold, which takes powerful magic (or a nuclear fusion reactor). The magic is powerful enough that Merlin can feel it being used even through his sleep, as he demonstrates by waking up when Morgana, looking for Gwen, stumbles upon Tauren's magical doodad at the forge the next morning. Morgana then confirms to Merlin (and the audience) that Tom's case is hopeless.
She takes matters into her own hands and tries to free Tom without enlisting Arthur's help by slipping Tom the key. The attempt goes as well it did the first time she tried to sneak around Uther without enlisting Arhtur's help -- it fails utterly and gets Tom killed.
On hearing of Tom's death, Morgana goes ballistic in a way that we have never seen her do before, verbally attacking Uther and getting herself chained up in the dungeon. Why is she so much more upset over this incident than over anything else that's happened so far? While she is justifiably sick and tired of Uther's tyranny, I think part of the reason is guilt. Had she left well enough alone, it's almost certain that Tom would have died anyway, but the way that it happened lays part of the blame on her shoulders, since she gave Tom the ability to free himself but not the ability to escape. How much of her tirade is fuelled by guilt? And how much is her subsequent vendetta against Uther like Uther's own vendetta against magic, which seems to me to be partially fuelled by Uther's own guilt over his part in his wife's death?
Meanwhile the Guard, as per Arthur's inadvertent "suggestion" to Uther, arrest and execute the innkeeper's family who put Tauren up for the night, with no evidence that they knew that Tauren was a wanted man. Arthur, Merlin, and some unhappy-looking townspeople watch, Arthur with his distress peeking through his stiff upper lip and Merlin with his distress plainly visible. When Merlin questions the King's decision Arthur snaps at him, even though Arthur questioned Uther directly earlier and is clearly as troubled by what he sees as Merlin is. But Arthur can't show overt disagreement with his father in public, and he may well be feeling guilty for his part in calling Uther's attention to others in town who met Tauren.
Arthur wants to do something though, preferably without ending up in the dungeon himself -- again. He finds Gwen and tells her that her job is secure and that she has clear title to her home (I guess there were some outstanding debts), and offers to take care of anything else she needs. He's uncomfortably aware of how little he has to offer as he expresses his sorrow over what happened, but it's a very subtle and mature response to the problem that puts the needs of the survivor first.
While I know Arthur is not doing this for political reasons, I must point out that it's the most politically useful way he can cope. It conveys his displeasure with Uther's actions without breaking any law or directly crossing his father. In the public's eye it moves him from simply being just the King's Enforcer to the Loyal Opposition. I hope he's planning to do this for the innkeeper's family and will continue to do this in the future. (He's won how many tournaments in a row at a thousand gold pieces a pop? He can afford it.)
Gwen's response is interesting. She thanks Arthur, but when Tauren threatens to kill her a few hours later she doesn't rush to Arthur to take him up on his offer of help even though she knows Arthur is looking for Tauren. Gwen doesn't yet trust Arthur that much.
Morning finds Arthur at Morgana's cell. She hasn't calmed down in the least and is still spitting venom, taunting him with the accusation that he is nothing more than a mini-Uther. For the first time in 12 episodes Arthur is completely unresponsive to Morgana's taunts. I was impressed, there's another clear sign of maturity. Arthur frees Morgana and tells her that he swore to Uther she would not challenge Uther again. (This is an age when such oaths are serious business.) Morgana takes back her earlier accusations against Arthur without going so far as to say she's taking them back. I can't help but wonder how badly she's going to crash when she finally gets off that adrenaline high.
Unfortunately she gets a fresh shot of adrenaline from the terrified Gwen tells her of Tauren's threat against Gwen's life. Morgana makes the sensible suggestion to send the knights instead. Does she mean it and change her mind later, or was she already plotting something else? We don't know. The next time we see her she's pulled the stone out on her way to deliver it to Tauren himself. Drawn by the stone's pull, Merlin follows.
I partially blame Gaius and Merlin for what happens next. Morgana is Magical and alone, and has already been threatened by Uther. She doesn't know what to do, and has no role model to follow. The first Magical person that she meets after finding out that she is Magical is Tauren, who has also been threatened by Uther and who plots his death. Is it any wonder that Morgana takes Tauren for a role model? Gaius and Merlin could have told her that they were Magical, that she was not alone, that there was another way to cope besides Tauren's way, but they did nothing. They turned a blind eye to Morgana's Magical nature and left her to cope with it on her own. So when she stumbles onto a Magical assassination plot against Uther, she instantly becomes a key player. Yes, it's also Uther's fault and Tauren's fault and of course the lioness' share of the fault lies with Morgana herself, but this is the very reason why you don't leave insecure young people to twist in the wind with no emotional support. The chances that they'll do something stupid is astrononmical.
And it is a stupid strategy. The basic problem with planning any assassination is, what happens next? If a sorcerer kills Uther, does that mean sorcerers will no longer be killed? Just the opposite. Even back then it had been a standing policy for over a thousand years that assassins can't be allowed to win under any circumstances. When as assassin killed a king Alexander the Great was about to defeat and execute, he hunted down and tortured to death the enitre gang on principle. If word got out that Uther was assassinated by sorcerers (and Tauren's too stupid to hide the fact) the outcry among the nobles would be so great that Arthur would not be able to rescind the penalty against sorcery for a long time without appearing to be "giving in to terrorists". (There are ways to pull an assassination off, but that's getting off-topic.)
All this political theory is obviously over the heads of Tauren, Morgana, and Merlin, who think killing Uther will stop the persecution of sorcerers. This (mistaken) belief leaves Merlin with a dilemma on his hands, let Morgana and Tauren kill Uther or find a way to stop them. Colin Morgan looks older and more serious (and hotter) in this episode than we've ever seen him in this series, even before the trouble starts. Merlin gives the matter serious consideration. The Dragon counsels Merlin to turn a blind eye, but Merlin has given up on the Great Game of Camelot. He knows full well that would make him an accomplice to an assassination. He has to decide how well murder would sit with him. He's killed in the defense of himself and others and it doesn't seem to bother him much (it would be out of character for his culture if it did), but murder is a very different thing. He's visibly shaking when he asks Gaius if Uther is a good king who should continue to rule.
Gaius' reply reminds us that Camelot is analogous to Communist Germany: however bad the young people think they have it, their elders can remember when things were ten times worse. And just like in Communist Germany, that's an argument that holds no water with the young people, including Merlin. (In Uther's defense, he's a paragon of virtue compared to, say, the average Merovingian king.)
Gaius thinks Arthur not seasoned enough. That's a good point, but the valid counter-argument is that most new kings aren't seasoned enough. Right now it looks to Merlin and the Dragon as if it's a question of Arthur taking over now and being a better king than Uther or taking over later and being a great king, i.e. it's an improvement either way.
Morgana guilt-trips Uther over the death of her own father to lure him out of the castle into an ambush. She's only tried deceit once before with Uther, but she's much better at it this time. She's obviously a fast learner.
Merlin dithers while Morgana rides off with Uther, still not certain what to do. His coping mechanism to to try to help people on the sly, but what's the best way to help at this moment? Save Uther, or let him die in the hopes of saving his future victims?
Gwen finds Merlin. She laments that be trying to run away, her father branded himself as a criminal in the eyes of the people. This may or may not be foreshadowing; in some versions of the Arthurian Legends Guinevere and Lancelot are falsely accused of adultery but are unable to prove their innocence. It also points out what the people are sure to think of Morgana if she succeeds and of Merlin if it becomes known that he (passively) assisted. No matter Morgana's and Merlin's reasons, this deed would still brand them as regicides.
As both his friend and a victim of Uther's, Merlin asks Gwen the same question he's asked Gaius and the Dragon, should Uther live or die. Gwen comes down on the side of life. She points out that the only thing that would be changed by Uther's murder would be the state of the murderer's conscious, "(T)hat would make me as bad as him." This is both the correct moral decision and the correct political decision. Of the Camelot Four, Gwen and Arthur are the more politically astute. Gwen knows that nineteen times out of twenty she has no power, and chooses her battles carefully so as not to waste an ounce. Arthur appears powerful at first glance, but he is all too aware that the majority of his power comes at Uther's sufferance and could disappear in an instant. He usually chooses his battles carefully as well. Morgana rushes in where angels fear to tread. Merlin wishes he could as well, but Gaius and concern for Arthur's welfare hold him back. Merlin still acts as if he has never been seriously hurt in his life. It takes Gwen, the most vulnerable of the people we know at the Court, to point out how allowing Uther to die would hurt Merlin.
Merlin digs out his Sidhestaff and races after Uther's party. As he did in that episode, he apparently runs at a speed equal to that of a group traveling on horseback. Once again, how much of the limits on Merlin's magic exist solely in his mind?
Uther and Morgana travel to the grave of her father, where Tauren and his henchmen secretly wait. This is the only time other than the beach scene where we've had larger-than-frame faces. Is this scene supposed to be the equivalent for Morgana and Uther of what that scene was for Merlin and Arthur?
At the graveside Uther breaks down, remembering what a great friend Morgana's father Gorlois was, how often he saved Uther's life on the battlefield and how he tempered Uther's tendency to judge harshly. This remembrance brings us around to the question of Uther's own coping mechanisms. Once upon a time Uther Pendragon solved all his problems, set up a system of laws to run everything the right way into perpetuity, and stopped. Unfortunately for him time did not stop as well. We know from Episode Five that in his younger days Uther surrounded himself with warriors he could trust, but the original warriors who became the knights are either dead, busy, or too old to travel. Their sons may or may not be as good and true as their father's, but Uther will consider no one else for a knight, even though he could not have won the kingdom in the first place under those rules. Probably he once had an Inner Circle of Gorlois, Ygraine, and Gaius who moderated Uther's temper and refined his ideas, but Ygraine died 21 years ago, Gorlois died around 10 years ago, and since then it's been just Gaius, and Gaius can't keep Uther in line on his own. Uther won't allow anyone else to fill those vacancies, and thus won't allow anyone to keep him in line.
As Uther sings Gorlois' praises, he unknowingly shows Morgana another option. Morgana would rather have her beloved father for a role model than some no-count sorcerer who hurt Gwen. But she's a girl young enough to be Uther's daughter, not a warrior who fights by his side. Will Uther accept her in that role?
Uther says he will, apologizes for all the harm he's done, and, calls Morgana the daughter he never had (which everyone except the two of them has already figured out), and promises to listen to Morgana next time. She believes it enough to save him from Tauren while Merlin covertly takes out the outliers.
If Uther does indeed listen, it's possible Arthur, Morgana, and Gaius could form a new Inner Council. It could work. Possibly. But learning how to listen seriously to your grown children is a challenge even for saints, let alone hot-headed tyrants. Still, what other choice do they have?
But one thing is clear: Morgana doesn't want to be a villain and won't take that road if she thinks she has another choice. If -- when -- Morgana changes sides it will be because it's the only way she can see to do the right thing. And it will be all the more powerful for that.
But, since Camelot is a dysfunctional kingdom, how are the commoners coping? We've seen blind eyes, we've seen rebellion, we've seen people like Gwen dealing with the consequences, we've seen sullen faces as the condemned are lead away. Morgana and Merlin can't be the only ones chafing under Uther's reign. Tauren says bribery is rife at Camelot. We've seen no evidence to support that, but we have seen lax security at the perimeter. It will be interesting to see where they go with this idea.
(Fellow fic writers, that fuzzy thing Morgana wears is a fur stole. Miss Manners describes it as being appropriate to wear --in modern times -- when it's cold enough for a cardigan but the occasion calls for something dressier. Or in this case when cardigans haven't been invented yet and you're a princess in all but name.)
Hallelujah! In just a few hours more I get to watch the finale! Yippee!!!!!!!!!!
Episodes 1 - 3
Episode 4 Review: Innocence at Camelot
Episode 5: (The Once and Future) Lancelot
Episode 6: (Death Is) A Remedy to Cure All Ills.
Episode 7: Deception for Dummies
Episode 8: Deception for Non-Dummies
Episode 9: What Color is Your Fairy Tale?
Episode 10: The Practical Exam
Episode 11: Today is a Good Day to Die