Thank you! :) With Merlin I'm never really sure where I'm starting to over-interpret, but with this episode I think it was fairly obvious on a more than subtextual level that this was not just a random love story.
I know you've changed your mind re Arthur knowing Merlin has Magic, but I dunno, I think he does know - on an unconscious level - and he's being protected (by his subconscious)from that knowledge so that he doesn't have to deal.
Actually I was still more or less convinced Arthur at least strongly suspected in The Witchfinder, the way he physically shoved Merlin out of the hall before he could say anything (self-incriminating?); or at least wasn't prepared to take any risks. Obviously no one and nothing else would have stopped Merlin in time, and the witchfinder had suspected him before, so Arthur would have realised it wouldn't have taken much for Merlin to also end up on the pyre, but the way it was done it still seemed, I don't know, a bit of an extreme reaction for the crown prince, and somewhat at odds with Arthur's ostensible disbelief when the witchfinder first accused Merlin...
But it makes a lot of sense thinking about this in terms of conscious/subconscious. After The Moment of Truth I thought unless he was completely, wilfully blind, Arthur had to know, and I'd still argue the episode was deliberately ambiguous in this respect. But I could see how he might be blocking on a conscious level something that would lead to a permanent major conflict of loyalties, especially in view of the complicated relationship he has with his father.
And come to think of it, it's about more than loyalty. I think deep down Arthur did want a reason not to kill his father in TSotF, just like Merlin said, but because he'd put the pieces together and so completely understood the situation, the psychological motivation behind Uther's obsessive crusade against magic, it had already become about more than just losing his mother, it also was about the suffering and pain of the innocent people Uther had executed, so Merlin had to give him a reason he could accept as objective. And in hindsight this might also be why Arthur can't let himself know on a conscious level about Merlin's magic, because Merlin has proven again and again that he's not evil, which would mean that Uther is wrong and is having innocent people killed, and Arthur's honour would force him to do something about that...
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I know you've changed your mind re Arthur knowing Merlin has Magic, but I dunno, I think he does know - on an unconscious level - and he's being protected (by his subconscious)from that knowledge so that he doesn't have to deal.
Actually I was still more or less convinced Arthur at least strongly suspected in The Witchfinder, the way he physically shoved Merlin out of the hall before he could say anything (self-incriminating?); or at least wasn't prepared to take any risks. Obviously no one and nothing else would have stopped Merlin in time, and the witchfinder had suspected him before, so Arthur would have realised it wouldn't have taken much for Merlin to also end up on the pyre, but the way it was done it still seemed, I don't know, a bit of an extreme reaction for the crown prince, and somewhat at odds with Arthur's ostensible disbelief when the witchfinder first accused Merlin...
But it makes a lot of sense thinking about this in terms of conscious/subconscious. After The Moment of Truth I thought unless he was completely, wilfully blind, Arthur had to know, and I'd still argue the episode was deliberately ambiguous in this respect. But I could see how he might be blocking on a conscious level something that would lead to a permanent major conflict of loyalties, especially in view of the complicated relationship he has with his father.
And come to think of it, it's about more than loyalty. I think deep down Arthur did want a reason not to kill his father in TSotF, just like Merlin said, but because he'd put the pieces together and so completely understood the situation, the psychological motivation behind Uther's obsessive crusade against magic, it had already become about more than just losing his mother, it also was about the suffering and pain of the innocent people Uther had executed, so Merlin had to give him a reason he could accept as objective. And in hindsight this might also be why Arthur can't let himself know on a conscious level about Merlin's magic, because Merlin has proven again and again that he's not evil, which would mean that Uther is wrong and is having innocent people killed, and Arthur's honour would force him to do something about that...