#even if the early texts about arthur she's kind of lame as a villain

[lit-in-thy-heart]

you know one thing that really bothers me about bbc merlin? morgana's motivations. and this has probably been said a hundred times before but i'll say it again because it really gets on my nerves.

her initial motivation is to kill uther, right? fair enough, she reckons that by doing that she can then claim the crown (though tbh i don't think she would have even gone for that if morgause hadn't pushed her towards it; she has/had a good heart but she had no idea how to run a kingdom) and legalise magic and overturn all the oppression. and that's pretty valid. perhaps murder isn't the best option but she's trying to break free from a very controlling father figure and taking vengeance along the way.

but like. after uther's dead she just goes after arthur for no real reason. i mean it's implied that it's due to him not legalising magic and her wanting the crown to do that, but her attitude completely changed overnight. she completely turned on gwen and her own brother (i'm not counting merlin because as much as i love him i completely understand that poisoning someone will probably ruin your friendship) and there's no concrete reason??? if morgana's hatred of uther is so strong, then she would want every opportunity to piss him off, which would include secretly encouraging the relationship between gwen and arthur. i know she exposes them because she's hoping arthur will be disinherited and she'll be named successor (or at least that's what i got from it, it's been a while since i watched it) and she's had visions of gwen becoming queen but the change is so. sudden.

when morgause is around there are strategic plans that have been properly thought out. after morgause dies and morgana is left on her own her plots are a series of half-baked disasters. and it's not just because merlin is awesome and can stop everything, i think it's also because her heart isn't really in it. it was morgause's dream to rule camelot through her sister -- and i don't think morgana ever recognises that, as much as morgause loves her, she is using her -- and morgana has no real desire to be queen, she's just going through the motions that have been left for her.

maybe morgana realised that she didn't particularly want the crown but it would be far too late to backtrack and make amends so she sticks with what she knows and gradually becomes more and more twisted. but it makes no sense. because arthur has effectively ruined uther's legacy anyway. yeah, he hasn't legalised magic, but he's married a servant, stopped all the war and expansionist campaigns, and has made commoners into knights. by destroying that, morgana cancelling out that destruction of uther's legacy.

people with magic don't have it easy under arthur, but they're not brutally persecuted like they were under uther. the public executions in s4/5 are only when related to outright treason, not just sorcery. and you'd think that would make morgana hate arthur just a little bit less.

essentially she just falls into the stereotypical trope of evil because we need an antagonist and her complete personality shift out of nowhere does not track at all with how she behaved in the first season. like unless there was actually some damage after her fall, it seems to just happen for the sake of plot. and they had the potential to go in so many different directions with morgana's character, but just went for the basic trope of hating the hero because that's what villains do.