It could have been far worse for Uther.

Based on deadliness, number of instances, likelihood, and supernaturalness

First of all, he could have been Vortigern. But, unlike that asshole, Uther was actually pretty good at this High King business. He was universally tolerated among the peasantry and gentry.

The nobility–all those lesser kings and princes and dukes–mostly tolerated him, as long as he didn’t look too closely at their taxes.

Secondly, for the first time since ever, the island of Britain wasn’t under the threat of a foreign invasion.

For one reason or another, all the nearby nations were all dealing their own issues to worry about the High Kingdom of Briton. Yet Uther found himself restless.

Actually, “restless” isn’t quite the right term. “Being forced to consistently roam the countryside because all your vassals are kind of jerks” is a little more accurate.

With Merlin at his side, Uther spent the better part of the year roaming the Kingdom. He settled old feuds and stopped new ones; taxes were collected, and immediately put the money to good use on public projects; and more often than not, Uther was judge, jury and executioner.

It’s all about results, man.

December

The right sneeze? Demons. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Uther woke up one morning with a terrible cold. Remember, these were the days where the wrong sneeze could kill you.

Merlin, who had some practical medical knowledge in addition to being wise in the ways of magic, sent away the court physicians and forbade Uther to leave his bed for a good few days.

“You’re going to ride yourself to death, and I can’t allow that,” Merlin said. “I’ve foreseen things.”

“But I’m only two days from West Saxony,” Uther said. “I can’t let the Saxons go unsupervised for too long. They start getting ideas.”

Merlin thought about this for a while. Finally, he said, “Instead of you running yourself down, why don’t you summon everyone here, to London?”

Uther sneezed. “Do you think they’ll come?”

“Why not?” Merlin said with a little shrug. “You’re the High King. They’re supposed to listen to you.”

February

And so, the summons went out. All the dukes and princes and lesser kings of Briton obeyed Uther’s command and gathered in London. Everyone went willingly–everyone except Gorloise, the Duke of Tintagel, who had to be persuaded (read: dragged along begrudgingly) by the other dukes of Cornwall.

As a sign of his appreciation, Uther held a grand tournament for his vassals, followed by an even grander feast.

Uther was in the middle of a (rather undignified and unking-like) drinking contest with Llewellyn of Rhos when he saw her.

He elbowed Llewellyn and, belching, pointed. “Who’s that?”

“Who?” Llewellyn asked. He swayed in his seat, trying to follow Uther’s gaze.

“Her,” Uther said.

She was a lady of poise and grace, such that Uther had never seen before. In short, she was the most beautiful woman Uther had ever laid eyes on. He was in love.

“That’s Igraine,” Llewellyn said after a long pause, remembering in his drunk stupor that his lord and king had asked him a question. “Duke Gorloise’s wife.”

“She’s hot,” Uther said.

“She’s married, my liege.”

“Yeah, but I’m the king.”

“I don’t think it’s a good idea, my liege.” Llewellyn signaled to a servant, hoping to occupy his monarch with another round of Drink the Mead.

“I’m going over,” Uther said.

Uther didn’t forget.

Throughout the next day’s events, he sent increasingly suggestive gifts to Igraine: things like furs and jewels and pear trees and milking maids.

That evening, Igraine and Gorloise agreed they had enough of this shit and peaced out of London.

March

Have you ever been so angry at someone that you’ve threatened physical violence? For most people, it’s just empty words–once they’ve calmed down, they realize they were overreacting.

Not so much for Uther. He immediately declared war on Tintagel. Not even Merlin could stop him.

“OK, this is going to sound weird,” Merlin said, “but if I get you into the castle, there’s a good chance that Igraine will sleep with you. If you do get down with her tonight, there’s a really good chance that you two will conceive a kid. I need you to give that kid to me within an hour of his birth, and never speak of any of this again.”

“Yeah, that works,” Uther said. Admittedly, he had stopped paying attention halfway through Merlin’s speech. “I promise to do all the stuff you just said. Now, how are we going to get into the castle?”

This was good enough of a promise for Merlin. “So, I’m going to disguise you as Gorloise…”

Meanwhile, Gorloise had been watching Uther’s camp from the castle battlements. He saw Uther and Merlin ride away. This, he decided, was the perfect opportunity to launch a sneak attack on the King’s army.

It did not end well for Gorloise. As I mentioned earlier, Uther brought with him his best knights, and they promptly ended Gorloise’s life, thereby ending Uther’s little siege war.

Six months later, the widow Igraine reluctantly married the High King, and moved to London with her daughter, Morgause. A few months after that, on a cold late-December afternoon, she gave birth to a son.

Though his wife wept, Uther kept his promise to Merlin.

Of course there was war.

“Well, fuck me,” said Uther, hoping for a nice, quiet reign. (Source: British Library Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts)

There was never not a war during this time. This war, however, was a little different.

First of all, seeing the success their island counterparts had, all the various tribes of Angles and Saxons finally started to band together to form a sort-of oligarchy. Then, they decided to go to war on the Picts.
That was where Uther Pendragon drew the line.

He was cool at first with the Angles and Saxons getting their act together. The all the various tribes and kingdoms of Briton did that under his dad, and—aside from the whole Vortigern incident—things turned out really well for the Britons. There was peace and prosperity, and even a little bit of education and innovation.

And, seeing how well this worked out for him, Uther wanted the same sort of good things to happen to all of his immediate neighbors. After all, peace for them meant more prosperity for him, and who doesn’t want that?

First of all, there was Duke Gorloise down in Cornwall, who was BFFs with young King Lot of Orkney.

Then there was Llewellyn of Rhos who was tight with Mungo of Fib.

Finally, there was Strathclyde which was a Pictish Kingdom signed on with Briton under King Constantine.

So, yeah, Uther wasn’t happy with the Angles and Saxons, and interfered in their war on behalf of his Pictish friends.

It wasn’t a pretty war, so I’ll skip to the end: Uther won, and became High King of the Britons, the Angles, and the Saxons.

Meanwhile, in Brittany…

Ambrosius and Uther, sons of High King Constantine, gathered armies, for this was a time when one could gather armies as easily as one could gather flowers. Ambrosius and Uther crossed the South Sea and returned once more to their homeland to wreck havoc and revenge upon the vile usurper, Vortigern.

“Well, fuck me,” said Vortigern. (Source: British Library Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts)

TL;DR

Constantine’s kids showed the fuck up and went to war with Vortigern. To no one’s surprise, they won. (They may have had some inside help.)

With Vortigern dead, Ambrosius was named High King. Peace returned to the Britons—the same sort of peace that Constantine brought, what with the Britons chilling and the other kingdoms too busy with their own wars.

During this time, Uther and Merlin roamed the countryside to enforce Ambrosius’s rule and give general counsel to the Dukes and Chiefs and other Lords that served under Ambrosius.

One particularly cold night, Uther found himself in the middle of nowhere, camping with his men. He happened to look up, and there he saw a strange sight: a red comet, blazing across the sky.

“Merlin!” he cried as he reached for his sword.

“Yo,” Merlin said.

Uther pointed to the comet. “What the fuck is that?”

Merlin did not look, for he already knew what it meant. “Your brother, Ambrosius, is dead. You, Uther, are now High King of all Briton.”

Broken hearted, Uther and his men returned to Ambrosius’s castle, Camelot. He was greeted with a weary cheer, for Merlin was correct—Ambrosius died the night of the comet, killed by a sharp blow from a coconut.

Uther was named High King. He took on the surname Pendragon, which means “Lord of the Dragons and OH SHIT, YOU GUYS, FUCKING FIREY COMETS.”

It’s at this point that we should probably discuss Merlin.

No, not that Incubus. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

He’s a pretty important guy. He’s also fucking mysterious.

Some say he was a sage and a madman. Others say he lived his life backwards, but in a cool way and not like Benjamin Button; and others still say he’s a cambion, the child of an incubus and a mortal woman.

Thing is, no one really knows the whole truth about this guy.

Here are the things we know for sure about Merlin:

• He’s most certainly from Wales. Hence his intimate knowledge on various forms of dragon entertainment.
• He knows a lot of kings. Or, will know a lot of kings. Or, both.
• He knows his shit.
• He does possess a significant amount of magic, the type that hasn’t been seen since.
• He’s a Slytherin.

Basically, he’s magical as fuck, and we’ll be seeing a lot of him.

To recap on the last post:

Romans, no Romans, war, war, war, King Constantine, less war, Vortigern kills Constantine.

The moment Vortigern declared himself the High King all the wars started up again.

This time, however, everyone was fighting for peace: see, Constantine was a pretty alright dude and everyone got used to the way things were when he was running Briton. Vortigern, meanwhile, was really shitty at being a king—and this is a time full of shit-tastic kings.

Oh, and Constantine had two sons who he sort of promised the throne: Ambrosius and Uther. They were off in Brittany when shit with Vortigern went down because in those days you hung out in Brittany a lot when you were the son of a king.

Brittany, 600 CE

Anyway, back in Briton, Vortigern somehow managed to stabilize the area. He was semi-decent at talking other people into not killing him or each other.

He realized two very important things:

1. He needed a public building project to get the people’s attention off of how awful he was.
2. The ruined former Roman outpost he was chilling in wasn’t the best place for a despised usurper, and he really needed a home he could defend.

So he decided to build a fortress in Wales. It made sense—Wales was in the heart of Briton, and it was pretty much infested with dragons those days (the sheep-and-cattle stealing variety, mostly harmless).

Not being an architect in the Dark Ages, I’m not going to go into too much detail here, except that progress on Vortigern’s fortress didn’t, well, progress. Every day, his masons and other buildery type people would start on the base of a kick-ass wall, and every night it would be knocked down.

This went on for a month.

Finally, Vortigern decided to bring in a consultant.

His advisors told him about this kid, Merlin, who was wise in the ways of magic, despite being a kid. Vortigern listened and brought him to the building site.

“Merlin!” Vortigern said on his arrival.

“Yo,” was Merlin’s reply.

“You are he who is knowledgeable in the old magics and some of the new; you are he who can see the past, present, and future,” Vortigern said.

“Yeah,” Merlin said. “That’s me.”

“Tell me, oh Mystical One, why does my fortress not progress?” Vortigern asked. “Why do my masons and other buildery type people start on a kick-ass wall each day, only to have it knocked down each night?”

“Dude, this is dragon country, and you’re building on top of dragon wrestling grounds,” Merlin said.

“Oh.” Vortigern had some of his men investigate a cave that ran under the fortress’s grounds.

An hour or so later, they returned, confirming what Merlin had said: two dragons were asleep, one red and one white. What was more, the cave was lined with Dragon Wrestling Federation posters.

“I totally didn’t know that was even a thing,” Vortigern said.

“It’s totally a thing,” Merlin said. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Shit, there’s a lot of history before we get to the part before Arthur. I’ll try to sum up the best I can. I’ll start with the end of the Roman Empire, at least in the West, and—

Actually, wait. Let’s start with a map.

The British Isles (and Brittany!). This is where the shit happens. Mostly (we’ll get to that later).

Anywho, a really long-ass time ago, the Romans peaced the fuck out of Britain. They left behind some walls, some baths, a shit-ton of ruins, and a power vacuum.

Besides power vacuums, of course.

Source: British Library Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts

After like 250 years or so, things finally settled down-ish when this dude Constantine won a bunch of wars and became the High King of the Britons.

Everything was cool for a little while under Constatine’s rule, in that the other kingdoms and clans and in Great Britain calmed down and stopped warring with the Britons.

They did keep warring among themselves, but did so less often and only like half-assed it anyway.

This sorta-peace didn’t last.

See, there was this dude, Vortigern. Vortigern was an okay fighter (at best) but he looked really good in gold and jewels and all the fancy shit. But, all that luxury was reserved for the king. So, Vortigern killed High King Constantine.

His fighting skills aside, Vortigern was actually pretty good at regicide.