Morgan(a) and Seizing Power

Both BBC’s Merlin and actual Arthurian legends start off with Morgan le Fay/Morgana being lovable and awesome, and end with her being tattered and gratuitously evil. There are a few reasons for this, but, given that there are several thousand years between the two texts, they’re a little different.

 Morgan le Fay starts off as a superhero in Arthurian mythology. She’s badass, she’s literally and metaphorically magical, she’s a savior figure who heals Arthur and is kind of his sister, and they’re super tight. But by the end of Arthurian mythos, her depiction has been reduced an evil, hag-like conspirator who only even has (dark) magic because she seduced Merlin. One reason for this is her being a woman of power. The sole purpose of women in Medieval times was basically to produce offspring and care for that offspring. Girls were typically pregnant by age 14, and, if they survived childbirth (they often didn’t), had kids by 15. Morgan at the beginning of Arthurian legend is sort of contradictory to these societal norms. But what I really want to emphasize here is that, by the time she had already been vilified, she was vilified for being a woman who pursued power. She’s constantly lurking around the court, waiting for opportunities to further her schemes, she seduces men rather than being an object for them to pursue, and has magic at her disposal. She and Merlin both started out as protectors of Arthur, but Merlin was allowed to stay a good guy because he didn’t break strict gender norms, even as Christianity rose and magic was seen as devilish (but I’ll discuss Christianity’s impact on Morgan’s shift later.)

Morgana from BBC’s Merlin experiences a similar descent in a very different time. Merlin began in 2008. There were more female characters in media, we were in the third wave of feminism, and women had become much more than baby-birthers/tenders. So why do we see this same shift from cool and strong and likable to “what are you even doing, I feel frustrated every time you’re even on screen by this point?” The obvious answer that comes to mind is that they were just sticking with the mythology. However, they nonetheless vilified her. At the beginning, it made sense. There were “little” catalysts—the actions her cruel father-figure, Merlin attempting to poison her because the dragon in his basement told him to, realizing that her father figure was actually her father and he never told her (at least partially) to prevent her from having a claim to the throne, etc. But then, after they played that development out, she just got evil to the point of it being annoying. By the end, she had lost the thoughtfulness which had previously made her such an interesting character and was running on blind malice. I can see how they introduced Morgana in as a strong female character, calling Uther out for the senseless slaughter of magic-users, showing empathy to everyone, and being at least Arthur’s equal with a sword. Unlike the original text, they tried to explain her fall in a more understandable and sympathetic way. But does it say anything that they still vilified her? Her entire goal became to seize power—she had herself crowned queen when it seemed like her schemes had come through, and she was immediately portrayed as irrationally evil—the same character who had stood up against senseless slaughter, who wanted to become queen supposedly to end that senseless slaughter, almost shot up a bunch of hostage peasants, and relished tormenting others, killing without hesitation. A woman pursuing power to (in theory) end the execution of people with magic was depicted as evil. If she had remained empathetic would this takeover have even been a bad thing? And as soon as they were done developing her into a villain, they basically cast aside that development altogether.