Dear Morgana,
How are you, pray? Sleeping well lately? How spectacularly did the plan to take over Camelot and kill its king fail this week, hmm? And how many allies have you lost or killed now? Seven? Or was it twenty-three?
Oh, don't flash those green eyes at the parchment and burn it to cinders just yet, if you please. Believe it or not, I want to help you. Not so much because I'm a vindictive witch myself, or want Arthur's lovely head on a spike, as that I'm really out of patience with your continued incompetence. You're just hurting yourself, love. So listen up.
You have a few recurring problems that keep bringing about your failure. First of all, you're entirely too direct. No, you really are. No matter how many disguises you adopt or traitors you employ, if you go straight for Arthur, Guinevere, and Camelot, you will fail Every. Single. Time. Your second problem is related to it. You consistently and predictably underestimate your opposition.
Now, I aim to first make you aware of these problems in your attack, and then to advise you on how to fix them. So. We'll start with direction. Tell me Morgana, have you ever in your study of sorcery researched demolition? You know, say you're in a cave, or, perchance a castle, that you'd really like to bring crashing down about everyone's ears. It wouldn't do to exert precious energy trying to push or pull the whole thing down. No. Instead, you focus your energies on the cave's supporting boulders, or the castle's supporting pillars. You spend a fraction of an effort knocking those down instead, and the entire structure comes crumbling down obligingly, nearly of its own accord.
My idea for you is that you try to employ a similar principle to the conquest of Camelot. You've tried often enough so you ought to know: if you try to pull Arthur down to begin with his allies and friends support him, and you waste energy and injure yourself in the attempt. But if you knock his friends out from under him first?
You know who your enemies are. God knows they've brought you grief enough. His knights, chief among them Leon, Gwaine, Percival, and Elyan. Mordred as well now, unfortunately. About that—I am sorry. There is also the physician Gaius. There is your childhood friend, Arthur's queen, Guinevere. And there is Merlin. All of these must be considered in any assault upon Camelot. All of them would, in most circumstances, die for your oh-so-estimable brother. And some of them, at least, must do so before you can get at Arthur at all.
Before we go into actual planning, dear, I ought to address this antipathy you have to killing your enemies, despite your poisonous words. Now, believe me, I understand. You have history with Arthur and his friends. Many of them were your friends once. Some of them you loved dearly. And I understand, too, that it can be lonely being evil. No one to gloat over, no one to explain your brilliance to or love you when you've become queen of Camelot at last. But you really must get over all that and kill your foes once they come into your grasp. Otherwise they, being at least as clever and resourceful as yourself, will escape, band together again, and defeat you. So when the time comes, don't just stand there lecturing Arthur, or Merlin, or Gwen, or whoever it is. Don't chuck Gwaine into the dungeon and make him fight shirtless for your amusement, however handsome he may be. Kill them. Then burn them, and bury the ashes a thousand miles from Camelot.
Do you understand? Good. Interlude over. Onto the plan of attack. Each of your enemies has strengths that have previously gone unsuspected, underestimated, or unaddressed by you. But each of them have weaknesses that you may exploit to tie them up during your attack, or otherwise destroy them. I shall outline these, and provide certain recommendations for each. Make sure to remember, too, Morgana, that all of these foes must be considered before any plan to take over Camelot is undertaken. They are the pillars that hold up the castle of Camelot, and Arthur its king.
First of all, Gaius. If it comes down to battle, the man will not be much of a threat to you. Gaius is an old man, and has spent his life healing the sick and wounded, not wounding people himself. In addition, by this time you are a more powerful sorceress than he, even should he use the powers he has long been out of practice using. However, you must know that the man is as sharp as twelve pins. He notices everything, and knows almost everything about poisons, magical creatures, and magical attacks besides. What's worse, Arthur trusts him even as Uther before him did, and, being a more generous king, heeds his advice a good deal more.
In all your secret doings, before you take on Arthur, you must be mindful of Gaius' watchful, suspicious eye. But fear not. Gaius the physician has loyalties above his loyalty to his king. He would not compromise the safety of his ward, Merlin, whom he loves like a son, though Arthur and all Camelot fell. This is something you may keep in mind, and use against him.
Now let us discuss Arthur's closest and most loyal knights. The most long-standing is Sir Leon. Leon has known Arthur, and yourself, from boyhood. And though noble himself, he has had no objection whatever to Arthur's knighting of commoners, or to his unusually strong friendship with his manservant. Indeed, he is as much friend to the common knights of Arthur's Round Table, and to Merlin himself, as any man in Camelot. He would spend his last breath to protect this. Unfortunately, he can never quite manage it. Leon has the most unaccountable resiliency. Though he pass through dragon fire, forty bandits to his one, an undead army, and fall down a steep ravine, he will return to Camelot alive, and relatively unscathed.
I would advise you not to expend your energies testing this resiliency of Leon's. Instead, take advantage of the fact that he is a solid and experienced knight, rather than a particularly fierce-fighting one, and keep in mind that though he probably is pretty much invulnerable to sword, fire, water, and magic alike, he can yet be captured. Indeed, at some point when Leon stands in your path, it might be a good idea to capture him and keep him as your toy. As long as he is alive to gloat to, you will have the ability to better kill other enemies you may encounter.
Mordred. Oh, Mordred. He is a good fighter, despite his youth. He has had to become one. And as far as I can tell, despite his sorcery, his loyalty to Arthur is genuine. He remembers that Arthur helped save his life once, and now that Arthur has given him position and friendship, he fights all the more fiercely for the king of Camelot given the sorrow he has experienced. Indeed, he threw himself in the path of a spear hurled at Arthur, once.
Yet for all that, the boy is a coward. You know that much by the manner in which he wounded you in the caves of Ismere, by the way that he serves Arthur now, forsaking his magic and masquerading as an ordinary man. His devotion to Arthur is indeed genuine. But only up to a point. I doubt that, were his place at Camelot in jeopardy, should his identity as a sorcerer be under threat of exposure, he would remain entirely loyal to Arthur. After all, he has proved once a traitor, and might therefore be suspected again to do so.
There is Sir Elyan, courteous and inspiring brother to the queen. He is both strong and bold, and doubly loyal to his king because of his family connection. But he has proved loyal beyond that, for when you made it so that Arthur and the world thought Guinevere false, he did not defend her, but stood by Arthur in her banishment.
Yet I think that now Arthur has married Guinevere, now that she has proven an able, gracious, and virtuous queen, Elyan's loyalty would be first to her, should Guinevere be separated in any way from Arthur. And this is what you must do.
For Guinevere herself is no little threat to you, Morgana. She knows you, or knew you well. She was your closest friend, before Morgause came and you turned on Camelot at last. You know her to be clever and insightful. She has Arthur's ear and all the power that her office has given her. Any direct attack upon her would prove disastrous, as you have cause to know. So, dear, you must be more subtle.
I ask you, is not gossip sometimes more hurtful than swords? And has not the queen been wed to Arthur these three years without producing a son and heir? Might this not be a curse upon the son of Uther, who killed his wife by forcing her to conceive and bear a son by magic? Or rather, might this not be a curse upon Camelot's commoner queen? And is it not sometimes the custom of kings to put aside their wives when they prove barren and wed a more fertile mate? I'll leave you to consider this, Morgana. A rumor in a listening ear can be the first flicker of flame that sets a town on fire. In this way you might drive a wedge between Arthur and Guinevere, and between Arthur and Elyan. And even should they discuss the rumors amongst themselves and claim they are completely unfounded, would they really believe it? Would not Arthur become slower to trust his queen, his knight? Would not Guinevere become slower to go to him, when she noticed something amiss?
Arthur's other supports, your other foes, are not so easily dismissed and dealt with. Alas, I really think you shall have to kill them before you move against Camelot and its king with any success. But, I warn you, Morgana: be careful how you do it. You want to destroy these enemies slowly, over a period of months, so Guinevere, Gaius, or worse, Merlin, do not come to suspect your hand in their deaths.
Sir Gwaine is perhaps the most dangerous of Arthur's closest knights. He is a fierce fighter, almost as good as Arthur himself, capable of taking on several warriors at once though unarmed. He ain't bad to look at or talk to, either, which means it is a hard thing to really want him dead. Yet, he is reckless of his own safety and the most passionate knight of all the Table in defense of his brothers in arms and his king. On top of that, Morgana, he is just as loyal, or more so, to Merlin as to his king and has been known to work with Merlin when he has foiled you before. He must be destroyed.
Fortunately for you, Sir Gwaine is also by far the easiest knight of Camelot to attack. He has a debilitating weakness for drink. His tavern bills are legendary. He goes earliest there when the day is done and stays longest. Imagine how easy it would be, dear, to station a man there (one of those rough-and-tough brigand types you run into so frequently) to provoke a fight with the hot-blooded Sir Gwaine when he is at his drunkest. Imagine how easy it would be for that man to, say, topple over a heavy shelf of ale barrels and crush Gwaine or push him down a stairwell in a last effort to escape Sir Gwaine's mighty wrath? His death would become, if brought about in this way, a tragic accident, and if it occurred while your man was seemingly trying to preserve his life it would have the additional effect of tarnishing Gwaine's already rusty reputation, and by extension, Arthur's.
Your next target would be Percival. He is the strongest knight of the Round Table, and after Gwaine, most passionate in its defense. He is as chivalrous as was Sir Lancelot himself, and this is his weakness. Sir Percival cannot resist aiding a woman or child in peril.
Just think, Morgana, think and savor, of all the nasty things you can do with that. Consider how you might lure Sir Percival into a trap with a hired child or young woman to play injured innocent. A cliff disguised by magic or leaves would be best- Percival's the sort that won't look beyond the wide doe-eyes he's trying to rescue, and after his tragically fatal fall, you could get rid of the evidence and it would be nobody's fault. But I suppose if you must do something violent and showy at this juncture, you might have your young actor or actress lead him into the loving bosom of a bunch of bandits- fifty at least. Have them maul him to death. Whatever. But I cannot impress the significance hard enough upon you that neither child nor bandits are ever traced back to you. Even if you wait several months between Gwaine's death and Percival's as you ought (and you won't- you incompetent impatient idiot), Gaius, Merlin, and Guinevere might begin to smell a rat once two of Arthur's closest knights have died in succession.
Merlin. My dear, darling dunce, Merlin is your most consistent and most glaring failure. Time and time again he has thwarted your schemes, and what's worse, you know he has thwarted them! But never, never have you paused to consider just how, or how you may neutralize or destroy him in the future to make sure it does not happen again. Well, start considering him, Morgana! Get past your Pendragon pride and get it through your thick skull that Merlin is not just a pesky, persistent, and peasant-y manservant. He is in fact your greatest threat.
Consider first what you know of him. You know that he has been willing, time and time again, to put Arthur's life and Camelot's welfare before his own. He has offered his life not once, but several times, in place of your brother's. You know he will defy any odds, and walk through any hell, to rescue Arthur when he is in danger, and manage it, too. You know that above any other man, above his wife, Arthur listens and trusts Merlin. Though Merlin is Arthur's manservant, he is also his closest friend. And you know that if there is any plot against Arthur or Camelot, Merlin is the first to suspect it, before Gwen and Gaius, even.
Now consider what you don't know of Merlin. That is, exactly how he defeats you time and again, though an indifferent warrior at best. How does he wade through armies and come out unscathed though Arthur himself is sorely wounded? How does he rise up again, almost unaffected by your strongest magics, so long as you can't see him?
On an unrelated note, how do chandeliers and tree branches and spears from nowhere and timely earthquakes follow your brother around ready to protect him?
On still yet another unrelated note, think about Dragoon. I think you know him as Emrys. How did he know, that one time you were conspiring to get Gwen killed as a witch, to show up and foil your plan? How did he find your hovel, back when you lived there?
And finally, out of the blue, can you tell me about that aging spell you used during that recent scheme of yours to keep tabs on Princess Mithian? Though, in the end it, too, proved ineffectual, I personally thought it was completely brilliant. No one recognized you at all, though they'd known you all your life. Why, you might have been anyone!
Anyway, back to Merlin. His weakness is that he's so busy protecting Arthur and Camelot, and thinks he's so safe as a manservant that he would never in a millennia expect you to attack him directly. If you really want to take him out, and believe me, you do, you could do something as simple as send a zealot-y, suicidal assassin (another type you tend to meet frequently), have him weave through Camelot's notoriously bad security, and attack and kill Merlin in front of everyone. All Camelot would be so surprised Merlin would be dead before anyone had a chance to protect him. Of course, then everyone would compete to kill your assassin at once. Merlin is almost as universally beloved as Arthur himself.
Of course, the key point of this plan is that you must kill Merlin in front of everyone, and not lure him off by himself or have a big battle. If that happens, your assassin will still end up dead, and furthermore, Merlin will still be alive at the end of the day. I hope you're clever enough to have read my letter closely and that you know why now. I hope you're fuming at your own stupidity. I think it might be amusing if you exploded with the force of it, actually. But I doubt you're that clever.
In any event, once Merlin, Gwaine, and Percival are dead, once Gaius is neutralized with grief and Guinevere and Elyan are estranged from him, once Leon has been captured and Mordred has been duly threatened into submission, Arthur may just submit his head calmly to the chopping block. But if he doesn't, you can take advantage of Camelot's bad security again, open the gates to whatever waiting army of baddies you've mustered that week, and calmly take the place over.
Of course, then you'll have to deal with an outraged populace that hates you and an even angrier dragon (one much bigger and badder than Aithusa). Your army, too, I doubt will actually be loyal to you. But hey, if Uther managed it, you can, right? The task I set myself was to instruct you on how to take over Camelot. I don't like you enough to tell you how to keep it.
By the way, don't bother tracing this letter. You're growing more powerful every day, Morgana, but I still don't think you quite know how to jump universes. And I'd deny ever writing it anyway. Only extreme frustration at your ineptitude could have made me write such an epistle. I like the knights of the Round Table. I like Merlin. I especially like your brother. But don't let that prevent you from taking my advice. It'll work. Whenever I do something, I do it properly.
With Profoundest Scorn,
An Amateur Villain