& hearts ;

doylefan22:

theburningfox:

doylefan22:

theburningfox:

merlinconfessions:

If this show is about anything, it’s about unrequited love. Gwaine’s in love with Merlin, who’s in love with Arthur, who’s in love with himself but is pretending to be in love with Gwen who’s in love with Morgana, who’s in love with Morgause but she’s in love with power, who’s in love with the slash dragon. No one gets what they want in Camelot and it breaks my heart.

Perfect confession, save for one thing: Morgause was never in love with power. Practically everything she did made it clear that power was the last thing she was interested in. She had countless opportunities to take power for herself, yet all of them went wasted. When Arthur came to her after their duel, she had him at her mercy. She could easily have killed him and removed the only known heir to the throne, leaving it vacant in the event of Uther’s death and that much easier to claim. Instead, she gave him information that she believed would provide enough motivation for him to kill his father and assume the throne himself. Then, in “The Fires of Idirsholas,” she proved yet again that she had no intention of taking power. She infiltrated Camelot with seven knights. Seven. Magical knights, yes, but still… SEVEN. You don’t invade a kingdom you intend to conquer and rule with less than a dozen men at your command. You know why? Because it’s fucking suicide. She meant to get in while the sleeping spell was in effect, assassinate Uther, and get the hell out before anyone woke up. How does any of that suggest a desire for power? A desire to save her people from persecution and death at the hands of a mass-murdering dictator, perhaps… but not power.

Morgause demonstrated time and time again that there was only one thing/person that mattered to her in the slightest, and that was Morgana. Not only did she sacrifice a guaranteed victory against Uther to save Morgana when she was dying, but she also backed Morgana’s bid for the throne completely and without question. When they attacked and conquered Camelot at the end of season three, it would’ve been simple for her to take the kingdom for herself. After all, the immortal army was bound to her will, not Morgana’s. And for someone whose only concern was power, the rights of succession would’ve been of little to no concern. They certainly hadn’t concerned Uther when he conquered Camelot thirty years before. However, Morgause made no move to undermine Morgana in any way. Quite the opposite. She seemed perfectly content to be nothing more than a weapon at her sister’s disposal. Everything she did from the moment she was introduced in “Sins of the Father” was done to bring about the end of an oppressive, genocidal regime and to protect the women she loved. It was never about power, and to imply that it was does a disservice to her character and all that she stood for.

In the end, it just makes Morgana’s arc even more tragic because she had what she wanted. She was loved. And now it’s gone, just like everything else.

Ugh, this got so out of hand… it’s just that I have a lot of Morgause feelings and people keep calling her power-hungry and it makes no sense because NO SHE FUCKING ISN’T and and and SHUT UP I’M ALLOWED TO BE STUPID AND OVERPROTECTIVE LEAVE ME ALONE.

^ This.

Morgause is powerful and she uses power and, yes, enjoys her power, but it’s a mistake to say she was in love with it. It wasn’t what she wanted. Hell, she already had it, it was hardly an unrequited love!

It’s good to see a woman who is shown as powerful both physically, mentally and sexually (using that power to make Cenred do what she wished). It’s just a pity that yet again that’s displayed as the ‘evil’ side by the show. I mean, Morgana gets powerful and that makes her ‘evil’. When she was in a weak position, oppressed and terrified, she was good. Nice commentary show!

This is exactly why it bothers me when people say that they miss “good Morgana” and that they wish everything could just go back to the way it was in season one. You do realize that “good” in this case translates to “terrified, repressed, and under constant threat of death from the people she’s supposed to trust to protect her,” right? And that she spent all of seasons one and two being verbally, emotionally, and physically abused by her father because she was the only person willing to call him on his homicidal bullshit? Because those are kind of important things to consider when discussing her development in later seasons. But I suppose that’s the issue, isn’t it? Most of the fandom doesn’t realize any of that because they’re too busy trying to justify all of Merlin’s morally shoddy decisions to pay attention to anyone else’s motives. The fact that the show enforces that ignorance by intentionally demonizing empowered!Morgana and deifying the scared, powerless child she used to be really does create some seriously problematic commentary. Then again, this show is pretty much built on nothing but problematic commentary and narrative failure, so…

I can appreciate that people want it to go back to when it was all OT4 puppies and kittens and everyone liked each other and worked together. I can see the appeal in that. I also think it’s very blinkered. Morgana wasn’t happy from mid season one onwards. Her season two was horrible for her. I mean, having to hide what you are because everyone will turn on you and you’ll be executed if they find out? Hardly fluffy. She tried to turn to Merlin and Gaius - they mostly lied to her and told her she wasn’t right, that it wasn’t magic and she had nothing to worry about. How can you justify keeping that from her? I can understand their reasoning but it isn’t right and never should have been portrayed as they right thing to do. They should acknowledge that they handled it badly instead of all this ‘we behaved perfectly and she’s just a horrible person who chose evil’ crap. And Merlin’s attempts to help her went as far as a half-arsed attempt to get her to the druids. Good start, nice try but not good enough. In the end he cared more about keeping his own secret than helping her. I don’t mind him being selfish because perfect!Merlin is boring as anything. But let’s acknowledge his flaws.

People blame Morgana for not trusting that Arthur would be on her side if he found out - that she should have known he would have stood by her - but how is that her fault? Surely they should be looking more at what it is about Arthur that makes her think he’d stand by and just let her be executed? What’s she seen in him that makes her doubt? And yes she could have trusted Gwen, but that doesn’t do her much good. Gwen was in an even weaker position than she was and had no means to help her. And when Morgana’s mind gets in such a bad place that she’s self hating - as she later states when she’s talking to Uther in the cells - is it any wonder that she thinks even Gwen would abandon her?

But too many don’t really think about that. They just think she decided to turn on all her lovely, perfect friends because she wanted power. Or because Morgause brain washed her.

It of course doesn’t help that the writing is still so shoddy that they decide to skip years and have us make up the character development for Morgana in her most crucial time (between s2 and s3) rather than bother to actually SHOW it to us on screen. The trouble with that is some of the audience can’t, won’t or don’t bother to think about her emotional/psychological journey. They don’t really think about where she’s come from. They just see her being mean to poor Merlin.

Katie is right - it’s not about thinking that Morgana is doing the right thing necessarily. It’s about understanding that she does the wrong thing for the right reason. I don’t agree with her methods (although I think some things are wildly written ooc - like why she didn’t just kill the Camelot knights since that whole plot made absolutely no sense), but I can totally see where she’s coming from and how she got there. I can see why she thinks what she does and why she believes she’s entirely justified. I don’t hate the character of Merlin for being her enemy. I hate the way he’s written so that he’s entirely right and she’s entirely wrong. They can’t even consider whether he’s really done the right thing. It isn’t as simple as that.