christinapotter09:

thefairyandherking:

lady-of-style:

thisislostinlace:

lady-of-style:

butnotquite:

lady-of-style:

I like most of the ships in the Merlin fandom, but I am really hampered by the Armor ship because of its incestuous characteristic.

It`s canon in the legends! :D I don`t care if it`s incest, because they are so perfect. Also in most version of the legends they are together. 

What’s canon in the legends (well, in the ones where Morgana is present, anyway) is that she does fuck all to kill him.

yes, but they were lovers as well. Mordred was their son. 

Morgana IS NOT Morgred’s mother. That was in the abridged whitewashed child’s version that was made for contemporary audiences who couldn’t understand the full story or the versions where tertiary characters were merged into single primary characters. Morgause, Arthur’s full sister, is Mordred’s mother which is why Mordred thinks he has a legitimate claim to the throne. Once again it’s another villain who doesn’t grasp the concept that a claim of inheritance must come through a legitimate marriage from the father AND the mother.

For the most part Morgana doesn’t even exist in many versions, it’s Morgause she’s mistaken for. Much like the Galahad/Lancelot connection. They’re either related as Father/Son or they are taken to be the same character if they exist at all.

Check your facts before claiming “IN THE LEGENDS” please.

Btw, no they do not end up together. There’s actual physical and cultural proof of that. When early Dark Age Celtic, and in this case Welsh, tribal warlords were buried they were buried as a family unit. Arthur would have been entomb under a mound with his very young children and his wife(s) Guinevere. When archeologist look for “the real King Arthur” they’re looking for a king and queen(s). There’s no way in hell he was not buried without his weapon and wife(s).

Sorry.

I have read some wrong (other) versions then, and I am sorry for my mistake. Also I will thank you for at least being polite when replaying, and also for good facts :) Though I will still keep on believing in the versions of the legend I have read, but next time I will not state them as canon. btw, where have you read this with Morgause? Would be intresting for me to read! 

Don’t apologize! First of all, there is no cultural proof of anything as, realistically, Arthur never existed and any attempts to connect him to a real person have more to do with wish fulfillment than actual history.

As for the legends, Morgan does feature often in most of them, going back to when she was still called Modron and she and Arthur were friends. She didn’t become related to him in the legends until de Troyes got his hands on them in the 12th century. At this point in time she’s still not his enemy but his trusted healer, as she was for centuries beforehand. Even Geoffrey of Monmouth, to whom so many wrongly attribute the evil-scheming-bitch-witch sister interpretation of Morgan, portrays Morgan as a good healer and trusted by Arthur (and not related to him in any way).

She’s not an enemy of the Knights until the Vulgate Cycle, beginning in the 13th century. But even then she’s not an enemy of Arthur; it’s actually Guinevere who expels Morgan from court for falling in love with a man that wasn’t her husband (rich, given Guinevere’s extra-curriculars). She and Arthur have no beef with each other.

14th century. Morgan still doesn’t try to kill Arthur. She dislikes the Knights and Guinevere, dislikes the hypocrisy, but she’s still not an enemy of Arthur. Sir Gawaine and the Green Knight: she shape-shifts, plots again the Knights, tries to kill Guinevere. She’s Arthur’s half-sister and called “the Goddess”, but she’s actually still on relatively good terms with Arthur and Merlin.

A lot of people have a problem processing that so Morgan’s relationship with Arthur is always called antagonistic by fans. It’s impossible for them that Morgan could try to kill Guinevere and yet still have a relationship with Arthur. These people often overlook the fact that Arthur and Guinevere had a political marriage, that Arthur usually married Guinevere for status-related reasons, that he was generally aware of her affair with Lancelot for years before he ever did anything so he knew damn well she was betraying him, and he does sometimes try to kill Guinevere for her adultery. So. Not the love of his life. No more than he was for her. 

His relationship with Morgan has, however, always been complicated and was usually positive. Either he understood her, her place in her community, the agita that Guinevere caused her, or he just simply loved her and found it difficult to turn against her. She’s not someone he just writes off. Even in one of the instances she did try to kill him:

15th century. Best know text would be Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur. They have a tragic relationship in this one. Arthur’s father kills Morgan’s father and rapes her mother. Morgan is banished to a nunnery (great for a witch) before being married off to old Uriens at the tender age of 16. She and Arthur don’t meet until after the marriage, when Morgan already has a son. He trusts her immediately, seeming to have a connection with her, and entrusts Excalibur to her. (Keep in mind that the sword prevents harm to its bearer, so that was no small thing.) But Morgan’s got rage issues, abandonment issues, and “I was married off to an old man I didn’t want when I barely had breasts” issues. So she plots to become Queen. She gave Excalibur to her lover (nice!) Accolon and gave a fake to Arthur and then set up a fight, which Accolon almost won. Nimue intervened and saved Arthur. Arthur sent Accolon’s remains to Morgan as a warning. Morgan was busy trying to kill Uriens herself but her son stopped her and Morgan had to agree to leave Camelot. She makes another attempt to kill Arthur before eventually deciding to just travel. Take in the shore, give village life a go. She’s assumed dead by most but Arthur stumbles across her new digs one day, and they hug it out. These two kiss and make up. Later, after Arthur dukes it out with Mordred, Morgan takes him to Avalon.

16th-19th centuries didn’t add much that was new and what was added tended to be cartoonish. 20th-21st century works try a little harder to get back to the spirit of the earliest legends though there is an annoying tendency to try to make Guinevere a warrior (which is hysterical, never works, and always makes me feel a little embarrassed for the writer).

Canon is a word that has no meaning when it comes to legend. Morgan isn’t often Mordred’s mother, that’s usually Morgause. Morgan spend more time as a friend of Arthur’s than as an enemy, and even as an enemy their relationship was complicated by affection and a curious sort of loyalty. They almost always go way back and Morgan is often the most important woman in Arthur’s life. (He and his mother are never close, he’s rarely portrayed as close with Morgause, and his marriage to Guinevere is fairly boring.) She’s been his friends, his healer, a massive well-loved pain in his ass (no matter how often she moves against the Knights he rarely retaliates), occasionally his would-be assassin, his saviour. She sometimes, through immortality in Avalon, provides him with a legacy.

As for this confession? Zoikes. Look, I don’t care for retconning. If the Merlin writers wanted all of the fans to accept that the first season didn’t heavily feature a UST-filled repressed romance between Arthur and Morgana then they shouldn’t have published the first season scripts on the BBC website that not only make it perfectly clear that’s how they were being written but even featured a love confession. From both of them.

Some fans can swallow an unnecessary retcon. Some can’t. I can’t and I have no particular reason to. It’s bad writing, plain and simple. And I’d rather ship a couple that was well-written that is now incestuous, than ship a couple that required a retcon to even happen. If the writers had stuck to their guns in the first season then this show could have been amazing. Imagine a series in which Arthur and Morgana do carry on with their “I hate that I love you; My Lady, My Champion” relationship but their feelings become stronger. And just when they’re about ready to admit it Uther finds out that Morgana’s a witch and completely loses his shit. Morgana flees Camelot because she likes her head on her body and Arthur is crushed. He’s pissed at Uther, he still has duties to perform and now his dad wants him to hunt down and kill a group of people that the woman he loves is a member of. Morgana is working with the magic community to make a better world for themselves, she leads attacks on the Knights (because no matter how charming they are these guys are the ones who’ve been dragging witches to the square and burning them or chopping their heads off). It’s all angsty and no one is a villain (except for Uther who may rot in hell). Epic battles, epic loves, you can still do Arthur/Guinevere/Lancelot because he’d have to take a bride anyway. Then you could have the final battle, Arthur getting the fatal poke, and Morgan taking him off to Avalon to heal him and helping him realize his destiny as the Once and Future King. SO MUCH BETTER.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^all of this with extra love and support andf AIUSHsdfjkhaerkgherg from a massive armor shipper, I too don’t agree with the effort to show Morgana always as the sister of Arthur or his lover, in many cases Morgause was the woman but hater or not of Morgana and Arthur or whatever, people need to underst the shippers’ point of view: we like them so much “together” because as said above, they have been having feelings for each other (no matter the kind of feelings if you wish) for centuries through the legends and usually they end up reconciling with each other…

(Source: bbcmerlinconfessions)