Title: Advisor To The King
Fandom: Merlin
Pairing: Arthur/Merlin, a smidgen of Merlin/Arthur/Gwen
Categories: Post-Canon, Romance
Length: Medium (~12,000 words)
Warnings: Brief mentions of character death

Author on LJ: copperbadge
Website: sam_storyteller

Summary: Arthur is king, and change is in the wind.

Review:
This is probably my favorite of Sam's Merlin fanfic- and for good reason. It is an excellently rendered portrait of how Arthur and Merlin's lives change as Uther dies and Arthur ascends the throne. Merlin is so charming and unexpectedly world-weary here, and I love how he takes the chance to implement change in Camelot when it comes. Arthur is very believable as a newly-appointed monarch and I just wanted to hug him at points in the story. The character arcs in the story manage to seamlessly and believably shape Arthur and Merlin in their more traditional roles as messianic king and wise sorcerer. Merlin as the court advisor is a fascinating read, because fanon tends to paint him as kind of oblivious, but the political savvy and good sense that he shows here is more in line with my head!canon (puts on tinfoil hat and busts out the lecture plus accompanying powerpoint presentation.) The fact that Merlin managed to hide his secret, forbidden-on-pain-of-burning magic in the most rhabdophobic court in all of Albion should tell you a lot about how savvy he is, even if he doesn't exactly show it. That would take smarts and a good understanding of people to not even trigger the alarm bells about magic. It's that, or the court of Camelot has the collective powers of observation of a moldy block of cheese.
Anyways, this is a really engaging and wonderful futurefic. If you have any fondness for King Arthur, then click on the link below. :)

Advisor To The King