Merlin was a cool guy except for when he wasn't

My mental image of Merlin has always been mixed in with how I think of wizards like Gandalf and Dumbledore. I've never really internalized who or what Merlin was, so when I approached this reading I was interested to see what there was to learn. It was the Prose Merlin that I enjoyed more, so that's what I'll write about for this blog post.

First off, I was put off a bit by Merlin's conception. I had absolutely no idea of his origins; I always kind of assumed he was just a normal person who had discovered how to use magic and see the future and all that cool stuff. But here I was introduced to the Enemy, some devils conspiring amongst themselves, to use a woman to conceive a child with their powers. I found it interesting that the power to see the past was given by the Enemy while the power to see the future was given by the Lord. Why is that? Is it because trying to change the past is wrong while thinking about the future is right? I'm not sure of why these powers are given the connotations they are.

When Merlin spoke suddenly using full sentences, I got an almost horror movie kind of feeling from it. Like a haunted baby doll came to life and was suddenly threatening to kill people. He was born as some hairy creature that repulsed people from the start, and then he starts talking about knowing the past and the future. Pretty unsettling stuff, if you ask me. And then Merlin insults the mother of a judge who has a hand in deciding the fate of his own mother. He was one pushy child for sure.

Jumping forward to something that was a little bit more familiar for me, there is the king and the Round Table. The mental image of fifty men who had never met gathering and partying for a week before deciding that they're all brothers and want to stay forever made me happy. There's no devils or demons to talk about here, just good old friendship. These guys got together and had such a good time that they said they wanted to move their families there so that they would never have to leave. And then, after creating this environment, Merlin says he doesn't want to take the credit for himself, so he leaves. All that work and he's pleased to just leave and pursue something else? What a guy.

And then as I'm continuing on thinking, "Yeah good stuff this is great I like these things" I get hit in the face with some grimy love story featuring the king and a married woman. At first it seemed rather innocent, with the king falling head over heels for this beautiful woman (ignoring the fact she was already married I guess). He even realized that he couldn't openly pursue her because she was indeed married, so he tried to woo her on the low. In typical fashion, he responded to rejection by throwing more parties and trying to ignore the pain instead of trying to move on with his life. Now, I'm not popular with the ladies by any stretch, but even I know that harassing them with gifts in an attempt to get with them isn't going to work.

So Ygerne and her husband flee from the king's creepy advances and so on and so forth and I felt like I was reading some kind of wacky romcom or something. As such I wasn't at all surprised when Merlin was brought back and disguised the king as the woman's husband so that he could do husband and wife things with her. I guess Merlin is still kind of a bro in that way because he DID help the king out but the whole situation was dripping with scumminess. Not cool Merlin. Not cool Uther.

(I'm sorry that this post was late, it honestly slipped my mind that I was supposed to post because I skimmed the schedule and didn't see "Water" for today. It didn't register that I was supposed to post. My bad)