Something short and born from me being salty about the lack of female characters.

Disclaimer: I do not own BBC's Merlin

If, even so recently as a month ago, anyone had sat her down and told her she would save the King, Isolde would have laughed in their face. This was not, as one might expect, because she lacked the skill to save said king, but rather because she never would have bothered to do it. A month ago, she had been a smuggler. A month ago, she and Tristan had been toasting themselves and laughing at the exact same king's unwatchful eye.

A day less than a month ago, the two had met a serving boy and a simpleton that wasn't a simpleton and everything went to hell.

A week ago, King Arthur took back his kingdom, and somehow, she and Tristan had ended up charging under his banner. They had snuck into the castle, stormed the throne room, and dethroned the Usurper Queen. The saving King Arthur's life bit happened during the fighting between the storming and the dethroning. Morgana's hired thug, Helios, had borne down on Arthur and Isolde had cut the mercenary down. Helios had put up a fight, but Isolde was not so unskilled as to fail to block the last swings of a dying man; she had been smuggling for years - she had more than a few sword skills. Arthur later came and thanked her, asking her how he could ever repay her.

"If I were a man, you'd make me a knight" she had joked.

It seemed that the King had taken her seriously.

Arthur Pendragon had knighted commoners. Arthur Pendragon had, in fact, just married a commoner four days ago. Apparently, it wasn't too much of a stretch for Arthur Pendragon to knight a woman too.

Twenty minutes ago, Isolde had donned a gleaming new shirt of chainmail. Twenty Minutes ago, Tristan had kissed her and fastened a red cape around her shoulders. Twenty minutes ago, she had braided her hair back and pulled on her gauntlets and fastened a sword around her waist and gods above why was she going through with this again?

Now, she was kneeling in the Great Hall as her heart beat in her throat. Tristan stood beaming behind her. Excalibur kissed her shoulders as the King spoke the words that would change her life forever.

"Arise, Dame Isolde, Knight of Camelot."

So, hey folks. Now that you've read the fic and I won't be spoiling anything about the fic - though the title was rather a give-away, my thoughts on what inspired it. Just as a warning, spoilers for the end of Merlin season four.

In Sword in the Stone pt. 1, e meet Isolde and Tristan, and my heart immediately leaped. It seemed that we were getting a new female character, and judging by the fact that there was a Sir Tristan in Arthurian legend, it seemed to me that she'd be staying around a while. I got increasingly excited about this process as we learned more about her personality, and particularly her ability to fight. I was hoping that we'd get to see women on the good side taking part of battle scenes even more - with Isolde (and Gwen), it would have been very possible. I even wished, though I knew it would never happen, that they'd knight a woman. They'd already changed parts of the myth, and Arthur had already knighted commoners, so why not?

In any case, NONE of this happened. We didn't get a new recurring female character as I had expected. They killed her off instead. I was irritated, to say the least. And while I really do love the series, it's been festering a while. Thus, this fic was born.

Hope you enjoyed! Send me a review if you have time!