#one day i'll elaborate on uther killing emrys but yeah

[ofglories]

Uther is...not a good person.

Not by any stretch of the word.

And not just because of the entire Igraine situation.

He killed his brother out of a mix of jealous, spite, and a possessive need to control everything in his life (even if Emrys has yet to fully accept that it was purposeful and not an accident as a Servant) and then pinned it all on others. Blaming Vortigern for Emrys ever even leaving Rome, blaming Merlin for not healing him even though Uther himself prevented Merlin from doing so, and blaming Emrys himself for being careless. For being "weak". Because clearly if he had been stronger, more ruthless and cold, he could have blocked Uther's sword from being driven through his back.

Clearly.

And then as king of Camelot he was...a tyrant. Of course that's obvious considering even the meaning of his name was changed to *tyrant* instead of the previously used *glorious* but still. Uther was horrible. When King Claudas disagreed with him over the unfair trade tariffs Uther put in place (overriding Emrys' previous agreement with the three kings of Gaul that Claudas and his brothers-in-law Ban and Bours made up), Uther responding by sending his army to raze Claudas' lands entirely. Nothing remained, leaving him as the "king" of the Wastes. And Ban and Bours could only bend the knee and allow it to happen, for fear of the same retribution striking them. All over a mild disagreement.

Uther was cruel, ruthless, and paranoid.

Any statues of Emrys that had been built (against Emrys' wishes but that's for another time) were destroyed. Anything that bore his name was renamed, and all mention of King Emrys Pendragon was forbidden in Camelot and the surrounding lands.

His cruelty was so great that even the allied kingdom of Rheged slowly pulled back until the alliance was strained near to breaking. To say nothing of the lands of Orkney and Lothian once Lot, previously Emrys' ward, took his place as the king of these northern lands. There was no alliance with Camelot to be found from the lands ruled by the Wolf King and his allies scattered across northern Scotland. Only an uneasy truce, sitting upon a knife's edge that was sustained purely on the continued threat of Vortigern.

...Then, on top of mistreating Arthur until Merlin took him away to Ector's lands, he would send spies to infiltrate Ector's servants to keep an eye on things. And assassins, to "test" the boy's "worth".

It's only poetic that he died alone with no vigil at his deathbed from an illness. An ignominous death, and a fitting one. To fade away in silence as his hated son was crowned king to the hopeful cheers of the entire kingdom.