
s legend has it, and contrary to our present production, Merlin the magician was originally in the service of King Vortigern of England, rather than Lord Uther Pendragon. It was King Vortigern who was besieged with the constant failure in building his castle fortress. And so, King Vortigern enlisted the help of his servant Merlin to remedy this dilemma. King Vortigern’s befuddled philosophers and soothsayers could not foretell the outcome of this problem. To appease their sovreign, these wise men’s only solution was to locate a fatherless male and have his blood spilled on the rocks of the castle’s foundations. This act according to these old sages would in turn prevent the tower from ever falling again. Merlin was the ideal candidate for this matter since he had no father. But a plea bargain resulted in securing Merlin’s freedom. It was because Merlin was psychic and could tell King Vortigern the reason behind his predicament. In a vision, Merlin was able to see beneath the foundations of the citadel. What he saw were two dragons fighting with each other. One dragon was white that represented Lord Uther Pendragon. The other was red that designated King Vortigern. When the grounds were finally unearthed, the two beasts emerged and continued their horrendous warfare in the sky. The white dragon eventually killed the red dragon. From this image, Merlin evoked a prophecy. This omen denoted the fact that Lord Uther Pendragon would soon destroy King Vortigern in battle, and in time Uther Pendragon would claim the crown of England. These events did come to pass in due course. And when they did, Merlin soon abandoned King Vortigern’s army and swore his allegiance to King Uther Pendragon. Because of limited time to tell this part of the story in our musical, this portion of the tale was rather modified in that Merlin already was in the service of Lord Uther Pendragon. This was done primarily in order to move the production along both dramatically and musically.