('more than' sounds similar to his Celtic(?) name
"Myrddin" (pronounced 'MERE-then))
The name “|Merlin|” is built on ancient words that mean “a |Hill (a Dune)- or Fortress of the |Sea (Body of Water)” (Geoffrey of Monmouth based the character on legendary madman/prophet Myrddin Wyllt & -on military leader Ambrosius Aurelianus ... though I seem to remember Stephen R. Lawhead tracing the name from the name of a species of |Falcon or Small |Hawk (like maybe the bird that 'delivered his spirit to |Merlin|'s Mother' ... it's been so long since I read THE PENDRAGON CYCLE)).
Anyway; back to 'this morning's recollections': the pilot-episode of BBC's MERLIN shows us the boy Merlin whose mother has just sent him to King Uther's medicine-man Gaius (because Merlin's natural magic is becoming too much for his home-village to handle). Old Gaius messed with magic in his younger days, but King Uther has forbidden it (on pain of death); so Gaius has to help Merlin learn to control his abilities, as Merlin becomes the manservant of Crown Prince Arthur (yes, The Once & Future King).
'That title' is actually a bit of a "spoiler" as to 'the point of the story' ('the point' to me, anyway ... for now)—that Arthur was 'a type,' the kind of person that Merlin would make "king" in many reincarnations ... showing me that 'all the iterations of Merlin' (the old man who made the farmboy into a knight who became king, the wizard who disguised King Uther as a woman's husband to convince her to become impregnated by him, now the royal advisor protecting King Uther from a (Moorish) knight named Arthur, etc.-etc.) are THE SAME GUY! (and/or are 'the once & future Royal Magistrate').
Reminds me of the time I caught the PRIME VIDEO showing of The Real Merlin, a documentary which discussed the 'ancient legend' (alternatively the wizard who helped to father King Arthur, who put the fabled Sword in the Stone, helped unleash The Red Dragon of Wales, and/or cetera-etc.); and my mind started to race.
They found their 'child with no father' (Merlin's mother being impregnated by 'spirits'), and he convinced them not to sacrifice him by leading them to two dragons who served as prophecy of 'the Normans vs. the Saxons' (I don't know how that worked ... the dragons & Wales' use of them distracted me from the king's little tower-problem).My mind then continued to race (partly due to some proposals in The Real Merlin), thinking maybe–just like 'the Merlin who helped the British king fix the tower' & 'the Merlin who helped Arthur realize Camelot' were two different people–maybe many of the crucial figures throughout history have been "Merlin"s (or maybe Merlin was 'a reincarnation of one of them').
'That title' is actually a bit of a "spoiler" as to 'the point of the story' ('the point' to me, anyway ... for now)—that Arthur was 'a type,' the kind of person that Merlin would make "king" in many reincarnations ... showing me that 'all the iterations of Merlin' (the old man who made the farmboy into a knight who became king, the wizard who disguised King Uther as a woman's husband to convince her to become impregnated by him, now the royal advisor protecting King Uther from a (Moorish) knight named Arthur, etc.-etc.) are THE SAME GUY! (and/or are 'the once & future Royal Magistrate').
Reminds me of the time I caught the PRIME VIDEO showing of The Real Merlin, a documentary which discussed the 'ancient legend' (alternatively the wizard who helped to father King Arthur, who put the fabled Sword in the Stone, helped unleash The Red Dragon of Wales, and/or cetera-etc.); and my mind started to race.
It first 'raced' through my memories of the places I'd "met" Merlin before: as the sage old wizard (much like Tolkien's Gandalf & Saruman) who counseled Arthur in Disney's The Sword in the Stone, then (years later) as the son of an Atlantis-Princess in Stephen R. Lawhead's PENDRAGON CYCLE, then as King Arthur's wise assistant in The BBC's Merlin ... and lots of random history-specials etc., including the 'epic' Excalibur and another movie titled Arthur & Merlin (which I remember because neither of those characters' names actually were 'Merlin' or 'Arthur,' but rather "Myrddin" & "Arthful" 🙄).
I guess 'what started my trek through my memories' was the news-to-me that Merlin (like Jesus) 'had no father'—something that was important in the original story by Geoffrey of Monmouth, because the story tells how an early British king needed 'the blood of a child who had no father' to mix into the mortar to keep his tower from crumbling.
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