Over the centuries the story has been told and retold and told again, often with a widely varying cast of characters. knights, priests and priestesses, kings and queens, and various users of magic come and go, but always there is arthur, the sun around which all else revolves, his faithless wife (guinevere), his equally-faithless best friend (lancelot), the illegitimate son (mordred) who becomes his bane—and merlin. whatever his role, merlin is always there, and it is always clear that arthur could not have existed, survived, or become king without him.