#morgaus le fay

[forthegothicheroine]

Hi! Question: I know that in Arthuriana the big evil magic users are mostly women (Morgaus and Morgan Le Fay) but are any evil wizards? Had an idea that would have Merlin vs a very Tim Curry evil wizard and for some reason all the lists of Arthuriana characters are in alphabetical order rather than by character type and I'm not super hyped about spending hours digging through thousands of names. Thanks!

Ooh, good question! There are various men with bad magic throughout the Arthurian stories- these often overlap with giants, who seem to have been your standard humanoid monster. I think it could be fun to do the father of Olwen, who assigns the knights a bunch of impossible tasks if Culwch wants to defeat him and marry his daughter, as a being of evil magic!

Followers, any other suggestions?

[acciofandomlove]

The Weirdly Manipulative Narrative of BBCM Characters

Let's start with the character that is the easiest to explain and whose sympathetic narrative is the easiest to break from:-

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#1 - Uther

Part 1 - Ygraine

Uther starts off as this big bad villain who every viewer hates. He kills magic users, is a tyrant, emotionally manipulates Arthur, is a narcissist, a natural liar and so forth.

Then we get to know more about his past and realise that he's just a broken man. Someone who lost his wife due to magic and couldn't handle the loss so he chose the only path he understood as a warrior king- violence and bloodshed.

“ She was my heart, my soul. And you took her from me. ”

But here's the thing.

Uther cheated on his wife.

“I loved your mother. There isn't a day that passes where I don't wish that she were still alive. I could never have done anything to hurt her.”

Yeah, sure Uther.

Now, I'm not saying that Uther didn't care for Ygraine. But cheating (and barely showing any guilt over it later) is not the action of a man who "loved" his wife. Considering the fact that Gorlois was clueless about the infidelity, we have to assume that Ygraine was too.

To prove my point further, let's consider the fact how we all know how much Uther valued tradition and arranged marriages. Is it so hard to assume that he would've married Ygraine for her family standing and pedigree rather than "true love"? Especially since he was a new king who had just conquered all of Camelot.

"Your father betrayed me."

So, then why was he so angry at her death? Why did he remember her so fondly? Why did he always call her the one he loved?

The same reason Jane Seymour was the only one Henry VIII truly loved.

Because she gave him a male heir.

"I'm sorry Arthur. Your father has deceived you as he deceived me."

Like I said, this doesn't mean that Uther didn't love her at all. The pain he feels about her death shows that he obviously did.

But a lot of his pain also comes from guilt.

Ygraine probably lived her last moments feeling the fear that she was going to die, sorrow that she would not get to see her son grow up and betrayed over what fate her husband helped write for her.

"Those few seconds I held you were the most precious of my life."

The most precious moment of her life was also the one tinged with the most sadness.

Uther was not some tragic Romeo. Instead, he was the Othello that let himself be his own downfall. But what sets him apart from his Shakespearean counterpart, what truly makes him the villain is what he did next.

“You showed yourself to be a man of honour. You inherited that trait from your mother.”

Uther destroyed Ygraine's life, her friend's life, her legacy, her kingdom.

Ygraine is shown to be sympathetic to magic from the way Nimueh and Morgause describe her. But he turned her death into a cause of war, killing thousands in the process.

He tore down homes for the magic he used to create his own. Kills children for the sake of the one he sired. He not only rages but actively lies and manipulates as he did with Balinor. He spread propagandas and used Ygraine's death as emotional fodder.

He got Gorlois killed in his fight of hatred, Nimueh's life destroyed, Vivianne to have to hide one of her daughters and Gaius to lose his love and watch people he cares for die. These were all people Ygraine knew and was most probably friends with.

Her brother Tristan was killed and Agravaine reduced to a snivelling villain who Uther barely tried to hold any correspondence with as far as we knew. You could say it was because Uther didn't trust him but the very reason that was true was because Uther sacrificed Ygraine and then had the audacity to blame innocent people for it.

He lied about her sacrifice to not only her subjects but also her son, dishonouring her life and cheapening her death.

No matter how much you try, you can never show Uther in any way, shape or form as "sympathetic". The death of the mother during childbirth was quite a common thing during that time, regardless of magic. How that can be used as a reason or justification for literal GENOCIDE is beyond me.

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Intro

#1 - Uther Part 1 // Uther Part 2 (coming soon)