Merlin- Sins of the Father S2 Ep8

Plot Summary

Season two episode eight of Merlin, “The Sins of the Father” starts with a mysterious knight coming into the castle and throwing down their gauntlet to challenge Prince Arthur to a dual to the death. Arthur accepts and the anonymous knight removes their helmet to reveal that they are a woman named Morgause. They dual the next day despite everyone’s hesitation. She fights fiercely and wins, rather than killing Arthur, she instructs him to find her in three days, at which time she will issue him challenge of her choice. Arthur gives his word and accepts the challenge. Despite King Uther’s aggressive attempts to stop him Arthur sneaks out of the castle with the help of Merlin, all the while bringing up the promise, he made to Morgause. Arthur has no idea where he was going but his horse led the way to her eventually. Merlin and Arthur arrive at a seemingly abandoned castle and see a sharp axe stuck into a tree stump. Morgause appears and issues her challenge: Arthur must place his neck on the tree stump while Morgause wields the axe. She spares him claiming he fulfilled his promise and proved to be a man of his word and offers for him to meet his mother. It then cuts to Uther attempting to find his son and making a rather ominous statement regarding Arthur’s birth. It then cuts back to Morgause summoning what appears to be the ghost of Arthur’s mother, Queen Igraine. Igraine then explains how Arthur came about with Uther making a faulty deal with a sorceress that resulted in Arthur’s birth and Igraine’s death. The ghost eventually leaves, while reaffirming her love for Arthur. Arthur and Merlin rush back to the castle, where Arthur then proceeds to run off and attack his father in private. Merlin and a miscellaneous knight come in at the nick of time and verbally talk down Arthur as Uther vows his

(Above) Shown is a screenshot from the episode
 showing just what Uther said to defend himself against
Morgause's claims (5).

 love for Igraine and his positive intentions surrounding Igraine, notably Uther does not actually argue against any of the actual claims made by this ghost but rather just argues his intent and love. Arthur nonetheless takes his vow at face value and assumes Morgause lied about  everything. 

The Myths that Inspired It

The first and one of the most visible moments of inspiration was the first scene where an anonymous knight of unknown origin arrives and issues a dual. This is a relatively common trope, appearing prominently in both Knight of the Cart (1) and Sir Gawaine and the Green Knight (2). This Green Knight comparison is by far the most prominent as later scenes become more an mor eon the nose. Morgause succeeds in the dual leading to her instructing Arthur to find her in time, very similar to the way the Green Knight instructs Gawaine to do the same in the Green Knight. Around this time in the episode Arthur also starts insisting on how if he doesn’t respond to the dual and later the challenge that that would be a strike on his honor, as he would be breaking an oath. Oaths appear again but, in this case, made by Gaius to Morgause’s mother and only further solidifies the power that oaths and promises have, connecting to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a story that is all about vows and honor. The challenge that Morgause ends up issuing to Arthur when he arrives is to place his neck along a chopping block while she is holding an axe. This is relatively similar to the ending section of Sir Gawaine and the Green Knight, with both Arthur and Gawaine surviving not because they are strong but because they are honorable, and that they honor (or in Gawaine’s case more or less honor) their promises. Rewarding him, Morgause in a very round-about fashion reveals how Arthur was born because of magic. This is a parallel to the Le Morte D’Arthur (3), in which Arthur is born because of a trick Merlin plays to allow Uther to sleep with Igraine. In this the story is slightly tweaked to have Uther and Igraine already married but be infertile, leading to Uther making a deal with Nimueh. This also in its own way mirrors the way that in Le Morte D’Arthur Arthur is unaware of his royal heritage, therefore not being aware of certain aspects of himself, where Merlin’s Arthur was unaware of a piece of his birth, which is also a piece of himself. The last moment that is mythologically significant is at the tail end of the fight between Uther and Arthur when Uther makes a very misleading vow to Arthur that, if you weren’t aware of the context to made Uther seem entirely innocent when in fact the only thing, he was very innocent of was malicious intentions. This rung similarly to Isolde’s promises in The Romance of Tristan (4). These misleading vows serve to cast both characters in a very trickster light though one is a lot more sympathetic than the other in my eyes. It also seems to cast Morgause in a very similar light to Frocin in that story that is continuously calling Tristan and Isolde (or in this case Uther) out on their behavior but are continuously outmaneuvered, or ignored by the person who should be listening the most (King Mark and Arthur). 

Changes Made

(Above) Shown is screenshot from the
 episode, at the moment where it dramatically
 revealed the knight was woman (5). 

One of the first and most interesting change apparent in this episode is that the anonymous knight in the beginning doesn’t reveal themselves to be an already established honorable male knight but is instead a mysterious female knight. This change from every source material both plays into the themes in the source material while also adding a very modern twist, after all people back then would never make a knight a woman. At the same time as that modernness it also serves to play into the other world concept with her character. The green knight stands out is is othered due to his contradictory appearance and greenness and Morgause stands out because of her being a woman and a magical one at that. It is an extremely clever way of going about using period tropes while also twisting them into a shape a modern audience will enjoy. Something similar is also happening with the axe scene in the episode. They call upon cultural images of the Green Knight taking his swings at Gawaine, and you go into this scene thinking it will be a similar thing where it somehow doesn’t harm Arthur or by Merlin deflecting it with magic. Instead, it chooses to have that happen with Morgause instead placing the axe down, which serves to both show her intention of doing no real harm to Arthur as well as serving to call back to the original work. It makes an allusion that the people watching the show (mainly the British public considering it was aired on the BBC) would recognize only to subvert it. Then there’s Arthur’s magical birth. A story line more like the one within the myth involving Uther disguising himself would not play over well with modern audiences. Most people with even a small awareness of consent would see that as nothing short of rape. Keeping that would both alienate members of the audience who don’t like seeing or hearing about that while also adding nothing to Uther’s character beyond it reaffirming our already very low opinion of him. The backstory in the show softens that blow a bit, while also presenting Uther in a slightly more sympathetic light, especially after his confession to no malicious intentions. The story in the show adds complexity to a character that is barely present in the legends, while also explaining Uther’s motivations (as flawed as they were). There are also some other changes I want to talk about surrounding the character and the casting. First up, making mor of the character peasant is a pretty prominent change that only becomes more present as the series progresses. This a change I feel was necessary for modern audiences who are not by and large noble or royal, unlike the audience reading the original legends. This change allows modern audience to more closely sympathize with the characters, while also allowing us to sympathize with the peasant being killing by whatever monster of the week our character must face off against. This allows the stakes of these fights to feel just a bit higher. Then there’s casting. Overall, I really enjoy the casting, especially that of Guinevere. While she isn’t very prominent in this episode, I think the character they are attempting to portray (which is admittedly not very similar to the legendary one) is cast well with her actress. Guinevere being cast as a black woman is also an interesting but overall good choice. Having more diversity (even historically inaccurate (not that magic and insults like “prat” are very accurate) diversity) really welcomes a whole new group of people to this show, while also adding to the social-cultural conversation around many characters being changed to commoners. I feel like the casting of Arthur and Merlin is also on point, with both the actors having some great platonic chemistry. I was bit thrown off by Lancelot’s casting until I realized my only hang was that he wasn’t blond, and I got over it. Overall, I was very pleased with the way they constructed the story and the changes made to better suit a modern audience. 

A Defense of Adaptions and the Nature of Myths and Legends

I believe adaptations without changes are boring. Adaptions necessitate change and without them they often fall flat for their new audience and are never good enough for their old. Coming into any new piece of media with preconceived notions of what it should be is always a recipe for disaster and ultimately takes away from the experience of viewing something as its own thing. The phrase, “the book is always better than the movie” has been one that I have repeated in the past up until I realized how much it was ruining the experience of watching a movie and how it didn’t allow me to look at the movie in its own right. It didn’t allow me to see past the tip of my own nose and see the amount of love those adapting something I love also to love the source material. Adapting something, or even just creating something inspired by something else, is a labor of love and often illustrates a deeper understanding of the source material than most casual readers possess. The whole point of adaptation is for a story to be retold in a slightly new way to reach a new audience or even just recapture the hearts of an old one. This is very similar to the process with which legends and myths get passed down from generation to generation. A slight tweak or change here or there happening repeatedly over the course of possibly centuries changes stories in huge ways that often suit the audience they are told to much better while still allowing the myth to live on. There is a beauty to this process with generational gaps often being bridged via adaptations. While my dad doesn’t know what the show Merlin is, he does know Monty Python and the Holy Grail. This repeated adaption and rerepeated myth making fill the gaps that often appear as culture and myth erode with time. Yes, we will always have Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Le Morte D’Arthur and I hope those stories will continue to be retold well into the future, but I also hope we will also get more Merlins and Legendborns as people see and love the stories that came before they did. Inaccuracy is, in my mind, a means to an end needed for myths and legends to live on. 

(1) De Troyes, Chrétien. “Lancelot, or Knight of the Cart,” Four Arthurian Romances: Erec et Enide, Cliges, Yvain, and Lancelot, edited by Wiliam W. Kibler, Wilder Publications, Inc, 2019.

(2) Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, edited by Keith Harrison, Oxford University Press Academic, UK, 2008.

(3) Malory, Thomas, and Helen Cooper. Le Morte d’arthur: The Winchester Manuscript. Oxford University Press, 1998.

(4) Béroul. The Romance of Tristan. Translated by Alan S. Fredrick, Penguin Books, 1970.

(5) YouTube. (2022). Merlin. YouTube. Retrieved November 7, 2023, from https://www.youtube.com/watchv=je4BlJ4djSk&list=ELBLeo0QJ_FXRnEmD8DTVJTw&index=8.