A/N: Here comes the second part of the "Pendragon family chronicle" (Am I allowed calling it this way?) from anthi35 and cathrine10.
Chapter 5: The Pendragons - blessed with power or cursed with madness? - Part 2
The next Pendragon we will discuss is Arthur, the fabled Once and Future King that will unite the land of Albion, free magic etc. Or, maybe not. We have to admit that he never went as crazy as his father nor went from one extreme to another as his sister. If anything he is quite moderate in expressing his beliefs. Now in other circumstances that would not be so bad, how many fanatic sovereigns can Camelot put up with without falling apart after, I think it would be safe to assume that one must posses and some other positive qualities than simply lack of fanaticism in order to be the Once and Future King. For instance, he should be independent, strong-willed and able to make his own decisions, something Arthur doesn´t seem very good face it, for all the things Arthur was supposed to be he never seemed to be able to take any sort of action without Morgana, Merlin or Guinevere urging him along. One can´t help but wonder if he actually bothered forming an opinion for himself or if he blindly follows his father´s beliefs and/or orders.
Naturally, Arthur's belief that he had to be the perfect son his father wanted caused him to develop some problems of his own. If Uther and Morgana are schizophrenics with a tendency for the extreme, then Arthur had an obsession with earning his father´s approval as well as an inferiority complex. One would think that after Uther passed on he would get over his obsession and become his own person. But, alas this is not the case. If anything, Arthur is even more hell-bent on making his father proud and spends his whole reign trying to rule as Uther would, making alliances he would approve of (Sarrum) and upholding this makes him an easy prey to traitors like Aggravaine. I swear the only thing the man had to say was `this is what your father would have done´ to make Arthur dance to his every whim.
Also, at the end it was this obsession that brought about our beloved king´s made the decision to kill Mordred´s love, because he had to uphold his father´s laws and because it was the decision his father would have much as I would like to defend Arthur on this he just doesn´t have a leg to stand on in this had one of his best knights begging him on one knee to spare his beloved, a girl who was a confused, impressionable teenager that had most probably joined Morgana´s cause for lack of a better he had shown mercy, Mordred wouldn't have betrayed him and Camlan would not have happened.
Conclusion: whoever sits on the throne of Camelot should find a good shrink or he will end up as insane as the Pendragon family.
The end. I know I also promised to write about Gwen but as it seems the files about her cannot be retrieved because they have been deleted from the hard disk or something like that thus we will not write about her.
PS: You should read the review from ProcrastinationIsMyCrime. I can only agree with this: You should write your own stories. It is really really good.