Has anyone considered the weeks, the months, the Years that immediately followed the Great Purge? I always found it pretty weird that Uther decided to kill every living sorcerer because of Nimueh. But what if it happened in levels?
At first, after Nimueh, he decided that no one deserves that kind of terrible power, and killed the High Priests and Priestesses of the Old Religion. After that, those who were most loyal, or closest to them came after Uther, seeking revenge and justice, and targetted Arthur? He would’ve been a mere toddler at best. Then those followers were persecuted. So on and so forth. Until Uther decided that anyone with magic was a threat. Anyone with the power to do so could and WOULD came after his son or his kingdom. I think that makes a lot more sense.
In a world where magic was usually accepted, where it was the norm, there would’ve been threats to royalty in the past also. That couldn’t have been the reason. Even loss at the hands of a sorcerer wouldn’t have been rare. So the bad actions of one priestess wouldn’t have lead to a full eradication.
And can you imagine Arthur growing up like that? A threat against the young prince’s life every other week, from a sorcerer looking for revenge? Imagine the Paranoia both father and son felt, with Arthur facing threats from people who he didn’t know, being scared enough that he’d been convinced to start training to kill, practically since birth. And Uther, having to deal with vengeful sorcerers threatening the only family he had left; slowly going from punishing powerful sorcerers to those who simply had magic, convinced that they were trying to ruin him, to kill his son. With how paranoid we see Uther in the show, I’m honestly not surprised that he became the way he did. Imagine having to protect your child for over 20 years, thinking anyone could betray him, as Nimueh once did. That anyone with magic was capable of killing his family, and he’d be damned if they took away the one thing he had left
