Crown of Birth, Sword of Duty
Nobody ever asked me if I wanted to be king.  I didn’t have a choice in the matter.
If anyone had asked me, I would have refused.  Being a king sounds all well and good; you get almost anything you could want, so what’s not to like?  It didn’t seem that simple to me, though.  Merlin raised me and kept me from ever thinking that I was entitled to anything; I grew up knowing how rotten life was for the common man.  I saw people working hard in the fields, only to have their grain taken away by a baron’s men.  I saw men injured in raids sitting on the steps of a church, missing an arm or a leg or their eyes.  I saw orphans lurking in alleyways, rummaging through the garbage for some scrap to eat or something to where.  Merlin made sure I saw all of these things.
Merlin made sure that I knew what the people wanted, what they needed.  They didn’t need a spoiled prince to take their money and to grow fat and happy while they suffered and starved.  They needed a real ruler, a true king to keep them safe, to make sure that their needs were met.  Not a fool who would snatch food from their children’s mouth, but a king who would spend his time and money making sure they were safe and happy.  After seeing all of this, after learning at Merlin’s feet, I saw kingship as a burden of service, not an abundance of power.
Merlin was a crafty man.  He knew what my destiny was long before I did; he forged it for me, after all.  He didn’t just teach me, he made me want to learn, he made me want to know about the problems of the people.  He made sure I harbored a righteous indignation against the robber barons and useless lords, that I blamed the chaos and misery on their inability to rule;  before he ever made me crack open a book on how to rule, my heart was hardened against those men who held the reigns of Britain.
By the time I drew the sword from the stone, he had taught me how to be a king, and how to appear as one.  I knew how to look through the crowd and meet everyone’s eyes at once, how to stand tall and proud no matter how tired or hungry you were, how to nod your heard or raise your hand and make it seem to be as kind and as welcoming as a hug.
When I pulled the sword out of the stone, holding it above my hand to the assembled crowd, his training pushed me into making it appear as a moment of personal triumph.  That wasn’t how it felt, though; even if my armored outside was a grin and a rallying cry, inside I was afraid, inside I was picking up a burden.  A young boy picking up a heavy crown, lifting up a sword that sealed his fate away.
The rallying cry wasn’t for me, the smile wasn’t for me; it was for the crowd, the people who watched.  The weight of their gaze, of their hope, struck me like a knight’s lance; I smiled, and cheered, so that they could smile and cheer, so that they could feel hopeful and happy.  They needed to see me as someone in control, someone who would protect them, someone who cared about them; when I drew the sword, I presented it not to the nobles, but to the people, to the crowd.
Those same nobles who stood by as their people suffered couldn’t believe that I had drawn the sword.  They made me repeat the task. I pushed the sword back into the stone, and each of them tried to pull it out, only to find that the weapon would not yield.  When I stepped up and grasped the sword in hands made red by the Christmas cold, they sneered and made faces; the crowd, though, watched with awe as I pulled the blade out.
Oh, they were angry.  I was taking away their power, their prestige, and their place in the world.  When Uther had died, they had ruled without peer, without any sort of check on their power.  Like children who had never learned to share, they squabbled, and now I had snatched what they loved right out of their hands.
I didn’t pity them for a heart beat.  How could I, knowing who they were and what they had done?  They, who had land and security the likes of which the crowd could never imagine having, had profited from the chaos.  They had grown fat, like wild dogs that feast on the bodies of soldiers after a war.  They took from the people to make war on one another, seeking to expand their own inflated sense of self worth no matter the cost; they acted without thought, without compassion, without true nobility.
It was the crowd, the common people, who suffered; it was they who saw the darkness, who were made miserable by things lurking in the woods and men with black hearts.  In me, they saw an end to their suffering; in me, they saw hope, the possibility that the world could make sense again.  While the men in fine clothes argued about who I was and if I should rule, the children in rags looked at me.  They begged, they pleaded, with their eyes.  While the fat men dithered about my birth and my name, the lean and hungry lifted their hands.
It was their voice that roared for me when I lifted that sword up high.  It was their roar that silenced the nobles, that forced them to accept me; they could not have opposed me without turning a peaceful crowd into a mob of hundreds, and so they had to accept me for the time being.
It would be nice to say that they made me a king; but that is a lie.  A pretty lie, but a lie none the less.  They wished for a king, for an end to the civil chaos.  However, they could not make a man a king anymore than I could make the sky rain.
Their voices silenced the nobles dithering, but that didn’t make me their king.  Yes, I drew the sword from the stone, but that didn’t make me a king.  Yes, I have gone on to defend the kingdom, but that doesn’t make me a king.  I’ve fed and clothed the poor, protected the weak, taken up any challenge for the sake of my people; those things have not made me a king.  They might make me a good man, or a noble spirit, but they do not grant me the crown I wear.
The truth is, I am king because my father was king.  It was my birth that put me in Merlin’s hands, it was my birth that lets the other nobles accept me; there were witnesses of my birth, who recall that Merlin was given the son of the king to raise as a ward.  I look like my father, I have some of his mannerisms, and that is why I am king.  I was born into it.
My position has no innate light or justice to it.  I am not lifted up by my inner nobility; I am noble because to do otherwise in my position would be to become what I hate.  Drawing the sword from the stone did not check the light of my soul or the righteousness in my heart; the sword was set by Merlin for me to come and draw.  It did not determine who was worthy to be king.  All it did was show that I was indeed Arthur, son of Uther.
That is a painful weight.  A man might become a knight because of his skill at arms; a man might become a scholar because his love of learning.  A king is different, though.  It is not a trait that makes him to be a king.  Instead, he is king by his nature.  The good or ill that a king can do is not determined by how he becomes king, but instead by what kind of person he is deep inside.
The truth is, I have no obligation to the people I rule.  I am the king, with a cohort of knights and soldiers who do my bidding, regardless of what the people think.  I have power independent from their approval; and yet their hungry, tired eyes, their wounds, and their sorrows still stare at me, reminding me of my self imposed duty.
I have often wondered about the point of Merlin’s little ruse.  After all, had my birth not been a secret, there would always have been a king; there would have been a regent, to guide the nation.  True, things would not have been peaceful, but they would have been better than the chaos.  A few rebelling barons would have been easier on the nation than the dozens of grasping lords.
The answer is in the sword, and in the faces of the people who saw me draw it out.  Merlin didn’t make me a king, but he did make me a commoner for much of my life.  I lived on the same level as my people, saw the world as they did.  I learned about the suffering that can be caused by a terrible ruler.
In spiriting away, in making me just a boy who became a king when I drew the sword, he gave me a perspective that is far different than a petty lord’s.  I knew what it was like to be one of the faces in the crowd.  Now that I hold the sword that revealed me to be the king, I am unable to forget what greedy men have done to my people.  I am unable to be as selfish as they have been.
Merlin might not have been able to make me into a king, but he took a king and made them into a just person.  The sword revealed who I was, as the son of Uther, but how I used it reveals who I am as a person.
Cunning old git.