To Kill The King

GWEN & MORGANA (+ Uther)

I’ve been thinking a lot about To Kill The King 1x12 lately and how it established, early on, that Gwen and Morgana were narrative foils.

This would’ve been a fanvid if I had the time or less than 10 Merlin-related wips lol so it gets a meta post instead <3

Merlin (2008-2012)

S1EP12

I'm not very good at making gifs but i like it

merlin: gwen. if you could kill the king, would you?

gwen: what?

merlin: like, if you had the opportunity and the means to kill the king without any repercussion would you do it

gwen: ...merlin, are you thinking about killing the king?

merlin: haha, of course not. answer the question

morgana going IN on uther is maybe perhaps one of the BEST scenes. he deserves it

oh hello bbc merlin’s “fighting against your oppressors makes you just as bad as them” tired take we meet again

Costume Design by Charlotte Morris

MERLIN | 1x12 "To Kill the King"

Now go get on with whatever you're meant to be doing.

BBC MERLIN ↪ S1E12: To Kill the King

what i love abt morgana is that she does mean good but she has a cruel streak staining her core. she sees someone she loves suffer and she goes immediately to plan the king's murder 😭

“To kill the King“

Merlin S1E12

i'm at "to kill the king" in my merlin rewatch, and i'm trying not to skip episodes this time around, but ugh, i'm so so tempted to skip this one because it's so upsetting.

saw this post with that bradley james quote about how merlin and gwen are probably the only two people who, if they told arthur they had magic, arthur would make a genuine attempt to understand. and then I started thinking about morgana, because I think in the earlier seasons, she would have been one of them, too.

arthur and morgana's dynamic drives me crazy. when she's angry, she forgets he's not his father, because for her everything is so immediate. if something is wrong you do something about it now, or else you're a coward and a fool, and if she's locked up for speaking the truth so be it. meanwhile arthur will offer a protest, and when it's not well recieved he'll nod along and say all the right things and look for the next opportunity where he can act. she needs to be right and damn the consequences, and he needs to be free to take action.

think about what happened when gwen was kidnapped in 2x04, lancelot and guinevere. arthur publicly agreed with uther for the sake of presenting a unified front (another thing morgana doesn't seem to understand the importance of), and then starts making his own arrangements to solve the problem without undermining uther's authority or compromising on what he thinks is right. then morgana storms in and doesn't bother to look at what he's doing before she starts chewing him out. this happens over and over through the early seasons. another notable time is in 1x12, to kill the king, when she is in the dungeons, and before she realises arthur is there to release her she starts taunting him for apparently siding with uther. then as soon as she sees he's trying to help her and get her back in good standing with uther, she turns around and says, you're a better man than your father. always were.

this feeling of needing to have her way immediately is the core of why she and uther had such a mercurial relationship (because he's the same way!), and why arthur could weather it better (he's used to playing the long game to get what he wants). this constant, deliberate misreading of other people's actions is the core of arthur and morgana's conflict and how they grew so far apart. morgana never stops and looks at arthur's actions. she only hears his words. and in the same way, she never stops to consider her own actions, and wraps herself up in righteousness and rhetoric until she has completely lost sight of what she intended to do.

gwen & merlin in 1x12

Adam raised a Cain

BBC Merlin, The Beginning of the End (1x08) /// Cut by Catherine Lacey /// BBC Merlin, To Kill the King (1x12) /// Comfort Me With Apples by Catherynne M. Valente /// BBC Merlin, The Crystal Cave (3x05) /// Cassandra, Florence and the Machine /// BBC Merlin, The Coming of Arthur: Part 1 (3x12) /// The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde /// BBC Merlin, The Coming of Arthur: Part 2 (3x13) /// Adam Raised a Cain, Bruce Springsteen /// BBC Merlin, The Sword in the Stone: Part 2 (4x13)

Colin Morgan as Merlin

1x12 - To Kill The King

Merlin looked so different without his neckerchief on...

(1x12)