Merlin; My Thoughts and some Rambling Part 2.2

[sugaredwhimsey]

Part one is Here.

Arthur is the opposite from Merlin in many ways. His position in the world is certain; he is the son of Uther Pendragon, will be the heir to the throne. Arthur understands his place in the world, as does everyone around him and they behave accordingly. His life of privilege has made him a bit of an entitled bully with no ability

Comments

[tanoshi_ame]

Funny that you mentioned the creators/producers' nonsense. Just now I was listening to an hour long interview with one of them; didn't exactly imbue me with confidence either. S5 sounds to me like they're trying to do too many things, and I'm kind of in doubt how well they would go about that in just 13 eps. For now there's only one thing I'm certain to be excited about, and that's BAMF Merlin, though I'm excited to see some returning characters again as well.

Yeah, they're doing a 3 years jump. 3 years that could have shown Gwen struggling, making mistakes and learning to be Queen/rule a kingdom. Without it, I'm just angry. Extrapolating from all the articles/interviews we have so far, we might very well only get to see Gwen being a fair and just Queen after 3 years while Arthur, training for as long as he was living, still made disastrous mistakes as of S4. To me, that doesn't seem to do respect for the people/characters who spend twice, thrice the time learning, perfecting their craft and still have to live with their bad decisions. From what I read, her character seems to only get more positive traits and none of the conflicting emotions. I'm more or less dreaded to see it on screen.

Arthur chose what we imagine to be the socially acceptable one.I wonder if Arthur realizes in many ways he substituted her in there.
Yes, I like your observation here. In fact, what I've been looking for in fics mostly has to do with Arthur making that connection/revelation and the emotional impact of that, while already being in love/married to Gwen. Sadly though, not many stories would go that route without (in my opinion) downplaying Merlin's feelings to something I feel less than that. I guess what I want to see is how terrified Arthur would be if he knows the depth of that devotion, which, while noble and beautiful and all that, is just equally dark and scary as hell.