Another of Those Foibles

This is Steven Petrick Posting.

I have been watching Merlin on TV. I am not saying it is a great show, but so far I have been willing to keep watching it. However, they did something recently that managed to once more elicit a groan about the failed continuity, i.e., the failure to treat things as if there is a future.

The Knights of Camelot are, for the purposes of the show, all hand selected by Prince Arthur, and the final test to become a knight is to stand in mock battle against the prince for at least five minutes. All well and good, and we see a prospective knight fail the test and get sent home.

Now, Knights are very much the strength of a Kingdom in this era we are supposedly seeing. Keeping good Knights on hand is like keeping a good armored division handy. Men at arms are all well and good for stiffening the peasant levy, but to win the battle you need to have Knights to break the enemy line and defeat the enemy knights.

So, Arthur is sent out by King Uther will all of his Knights to fight a Gryphon.

Only Arthur survived.

You would think that there would be serious discussions about the weakness of Camelot versus its various surrounding Kingdoms since it now lacks Knights. This little scene the writers created was a MAJOR DISASTER for the Kingdom, yet it has absolutely no effect on anything.

They could have given Arthur a loyal troop of mere Sergeants at Arms (since they did all of their fighting dismounted in any case) and at least avoided the issue (losing trained troops would still be bad, but it is not the same thing as having your corps of Knights wiped out).

But this was really annoying.