The black knights are coming to attack the kingdom and kill the beloved king. Arthur Pendragon will be no more; his kingdom, the kingdom he gave so much to build, will fall into the hands of his evil, twisted, hated younger half-sister Morgana; the child no one was supposed to know about, but everyone wondered about. The child who discovered her gift and turned against her family, the child no one could understand yet everyone hated to know. The one who destroyed sanity in a single stroke and turned to laugh over her fallen enemies; the one no one could trust and no one could kill…. until Merlin- Emrys- her dreaded doom, the only one with superior powers and a kinder heart. Merlin who hid his gift and lived in the shadows; the silence power behind Arthur's lavish rule.
The one who knows no praise, only punishment. The man who held undying faith, even in the face of impossible odds and overwhelming evidence to the contrary. The one and only man Arthur trusted when all else failed him and all others turned away. The one who never listened, but always cared; who would die for the world Arthur was building.
The world in which the powers of people were not discussed in secret, in caves, in the night, under disguise, but instead in the light and the day This world believed in magic as a force- not for good, not for evil- but as a force used at the decision of its master. The powered were not evil people to be hunted and distrusted, but were force that held the kingdom together.
The force that saved the king and that he in turn struck down and betrayed. His mistrust put a crack in his armor and his reign. Arthur, the once and future king, half decent king in the words of his knights, knew not who to be or what to represent.
His acceptance of Merlin and his powers led to a changed world; the world in which the magic was a force that rescued people and not turned them down. A force that drove people together and kept them. And with that force came betrayal and the laws that bind against the love of Arthur and his Queen. The same love that bound his Queen to the throne, to her place among the people and to the love of magic, the same love that made the knights fight and die in Arthur's name and glow in his glory and drown in his sorrow. The same love that bound the king to the throne just as it bound Gwen to the throne and the knights to Gwen. The love that lived as long as the last person who had known it, did not die until every last memory its existence had faded. The love that survived the lies and secrets and continued when the dark engulfed the world; and when the dark was lifted, love was still there; buried under the surface, waiting until its time and, in times of troubles, once again binding the King and his land.