So the producers do intend to force Arthur/Gwen
Australia's Channel TEN just put up three clips of an interview with one of Merlin's producers - Johnny Capps. If you're in Australia or you use a proxy server, you can watch the video here. Warning: Arhur/Gwen fans, you may not want to continue to read some of the comments in this post.
Yesterday, in a discussion, someone thought it was the writer of the article used that word "romance" and not the producers. Now we get the evidence. We can hear and see how Johnny Capps wanted to show the audience how did Arthur to fall in LOVE with Guinevere (around 2:30 in clip 1), blah, blah, blah.... ;p Mr. Capps kept using the word "suddenly", e.g. How did she sudddenly go from the low working class roots to suddenly become this beautiful queen?
And he kept on saying "we all know Guinevere untimately marries Arthur. At this moment, very early on in the series, we see Gwen is interested in Merlin, not Arthur." They hope this will intrigue people to wonder "how did that dynamic change? when did Arthur start to have eyes for Guinevere? when did Guinevere start to have eyes for Arthur"? No, thanks! I am not intrigued after watching 13 episodes, and see no chemistry between Arthur & Gwen whatsoever. Mr. Capps also mentioned friendship (between Arthur and Morgana) will blosom, but untimatley we know that Morgana will betray Arthur. Here I was not sure, he was talking about the legend, or how the show will develop.