As requested by @vallirenwrites, my theories as mentioned in my notes to the reblog of this post.
The question: How did Uther commit genocide against a bunch of sorcerers and also literal dragons without dying 50 times over?
It’s a valid question. If just one sorcerer could easily kill Uther, then how did he survive the height of the Purge when a whole community of sorcerers would conceivably be gunning for him at the same time? If one dragon can burn Camelot to the ground, then how could Uther have possibly fared against 100 of them?
Well, here’s one possibility: divide and conquer.
Many other people have mentioned, say, Balinor and Gaius in the notes of that post. It’s confirmed canonically that Balinor was tricked into helping Uther chain up Kilgharrah, and it wouldn’t be surprising if Gaius used his magic against his own people too.
And that’s definitely on the right track. Uther could probably only subdue magic by relying on other magic users and then betraying them. We know for a fact that he did just that with both Nimueh and Balinor, albeit for different reasons.
Many people, myself included, have theorized that the real reason Uther started the Purge was because magic is a threat to hierarchy. That is to say, letting poor people learn or at least have access to such a useful skill would equalize the power dynamics between nobility and peasantry. If a poor person has access to magic, they can resist authority. They can turn to magic for food and medicine and protection instead of relying on knights and kings. If they don’t like a king, it’s that much easier to depose the bastard. And if a peasant has magic while a noble doesn’t, then suddenly the peasant arguably has more power in that scenario.
Long story short, magic is a logistical nightmare for authoritarianism.
Resource and education management within the lower class was, if not the main reason behind the Purge, then a very beneficial side effect.
As Gaius says in episode 1 when Merlin asks him about the Purge, magic users started getting bolder. Started, according to him, doing bad stuff with it. But remember that Gaius is a noble too, probably, or at the very least he’s very chummy with a lot of them. And we know he’s at least marginally sympathetic/supportive of Uther’s cause. With the stuff about nobles in mind, we must now analyze what he meant when he said that sorcerers were using their magic for evil and that the Purge was a necessary evil to curb their chaos. Maybe they were using their magic for evil - from the perspective of a frightened noble.
So here’s how I think it happened:
Peasants started noticing that with magic on their side, they could rise up against oppressive nobles. They could start claiming some power and land for themselves. Maybe Camelot saw itself on the verge of a political revolution.
Naturally, Uther and the other nobles started to sweat. What do we do about this? Well, if they’re using magic to educate and protect themselves, just take away the magic!
I don’t think it started with a snap-and-turn illegalization of magic. A dramatic law hammering the country in an instant like that would have seen a lot more criticism and resistance. But if it happened gradually, over time, then what begins as a few restrictive policies on magic use might eventually slippery-slope into wholesale genocide.
Some nobles have magic. But even they have a vested interest in this new campaign to restrict magic from the poor. Letting poor people use magic puts them on equal footing after all, and those magic-using nobles are still nobles after all. Best to keep magic with those who deserve it - that is to say, rich people.
Uther has their support now. He uses the help of nobles and their magic to enforce and subjugate poorer magic users. Maybe they use the Gean Canagh to steal magic from a few of their more outspoken rebels. Maybe they use magic restraints of some kind, but whether those canonically exist remains unknown.
First, a sales tax is imposed on all magic items and spellbooks, which gets more expensive with every passing month. Eventually, only the wealthy can afford them.
Then, magic-users need to put their name into a registry. Refusal to enter the registry will be met with punishment.
Next, anyone whose name is in the registry needs to pay a spell-casting tax. If you take your name off the registry, you no longer pay the tax - but casting spells while unregistered will result in banishment.
After that, only certain spells can be cast without a certain permit or license, which you need to be of noble descent.
Then, crimes involving magic face harshened punishments. Torture, banishment, having your magic taken by the Gean Canagh - and in the most extreme cases, execution.
Bit by bit, magic becomes more risky to use and less accessible to the lower class, enabling the nobility to consolidate their power over the kingdom. But it doesn’t end there.
He tells the dragonlords to keep their dragons under control. Convinces them to keep them in stables instead of letting them roam free, for the sake of protecting scared villagers. Feed them less. Dragons die due from starvation, restrictive enclosures, and depression.
Then it turns more sinister. Just kill a few of your dragons, only a few, Uther says - dragons require a lot of food and land to survive, and all these dragons flying around are gonna cause a food shortage. Just kill the old and sick ones, the runts, the wasted space. Don’t hatch quite so many eggs. Don’t hatch any eggs.
All the while, Uther started a propaganda campaign. To alert the non-magical masses to be wary of their magic-using friends. They may seem innocent now, but peasants don’t have the proper education or know-how to use magic without hurting others. If you use magic too much, the power will corrupt you. And those sorcerers whose magic we stripped away? They were conspiring against the crown. They were trying to destroy the kingdom.
Now non-magical peasants don’t trust their magical companions as much as they used to. People don’t trust magic like they used to. That rebel movement everyone was so fond of a month ago? Now that’s an extremist militia of power-hungry sorcerers.
But even that isn’t enough. Nobles and peasants is a good division, but how do you keep the peasants from uniting against the upper class? Simple. You turn the peasants against each other too. And you do this by turning types of magic-users against each other. You turn religious magic-users like druids and priestesses against the more secular ones. You turn naturally gifted ones like dragonlords and seers against those who had to study for their magic.
(This part, turning the naturals against the studyers, is probably what caused such a discrepancy between narratives. Gaius tells Merlin that magic is something to be learned, while Balinor is insistent that you either have it or you don’t. Boom, now we’ve got gatekeeping in the magic community.)
All this unrest and suspicion within the kingdom begins to reach a boiling point. The nobles point to this as further evidence that peasants can’t be trusted with magic, if they’re going to be so volatile about it.
Then Ygraine dies. Whether or not it’s intentional, her death is used to perpetuate the anti-magic movement, and Nimueh is hung up as a scapegoat.
By now, many dragons are dead, and those that aren’t already dead are weak and dying. Resources to help magic-users learn and study have been restricted, so a lot of them don’t know or can’t cast the higher level stuff. Most of the powerful and rebellious magic-users have either been executed or had their magic taken away. And the magic community is so distrustful and restless that no one trusts each other enough to unite under the cause of rebellion.
After years of gradually squeezing the magic community, they are now too weak and spread too thin to lead an effective uprising. They’ve been cut off from their magical resources and spellbooks. They’ve been divided and turned against each other. Not only that, but all magic-users are in a registry, meaning Uther knows exactly who to target first.
The magic-using nobles think they’ll be spared at first, that Uther would never betray them. But the king proves himself far more ruthless than predicted, and within a week the air is clouded with smoke from noble pyres.
That’s how I think it happened, anyway. Could be totally off tho!
