#Smacked him in the face. He’s known it’s wrong - he hasn’t been nailed with the emotional horror of how wrong yet

[ondeadpeasantgirls]

Again, I haven’t gone here in a long time -

But let’s talk Arthur.

He was not Uther. He was a better man and ruler than Uther but Uther forged him. It’s very difficult to be a healthy person when the foundation of your personality is cracked - affection starved. His worse impulses enabled or encouraged. Thrown in jail for fighting with his father. Participating in massacres at fifteen. Raised since birth to hate an entire group of people.

Who does he go to when he breaks his own laws to save an elderly woman from burning alive? The father who wrote those laws. The father whose legacy was genocide. It was his destiny to undo that legacy.

Fulfilling it required him to change as a person in a way that would’ve been incredibly painful. It would’ve required self introspection Arthur wasn’t fully capable of yet and something/several things to radically reverse his attitude toward magic. It would’ve required facing the fact that his only parent, who he can acknowledge wasn’t always good, was evil. Truly and deeply evil.

Season 5 made it clear it would’ve happened eventually (esp. if Merlin took the opportunities given to him to push for magic to be legalized) but it was too late. He was out of time the moment Aithusa was put in that pit with Morgana.