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Uther frowned as he studied himself in the mirror, his crown resting in the hands of his slightly nervous manservant who was waiting warily for the king to allow him to place the adornment on his head. Uther wasn't quite ready to put it on quite yet, though – something had caught his eye. Or rather, lack of something.
And that lack of something did not please him.
He self-consciously ran a leather gloved hand over his head and through his thinning hair, a few short, grayish strands sticking to the black leather. Grimacing, the king of Camelot dusted off his hands and spun on his servant, who jumped and nearly dropped the crown . Normally Uther would have been irritated at the man's incompetence, but today there was something weighing heavily on his mind.
"My hairline is receding, isn't it?" Uther snapped at the already cowering servant. The servant – his name was Daniel, if Uther remembered correctly, and although he had been working for Uther for over a month, he was still rather skittish – looked a bit confused, lowered his eyes, and muttered, "Of course not, my liege."
Uther smiled, relieved, before narrowing his eyes at the poor man. "You're just saying that to make me feel better, aren't you?"
Daniel didn't answer right away because he was remembering having the same exact conversation with his wife a few hours earlier before he had left for work, except she hadn't asked him if she was going bald, but if her dress made her look fat. Caught up in his reverie, Daniel found himself accidentally intoning what he had grown accustomed to answering his self-conscious wife. "No dear, you are not fat." He snapped back to reality as soon as the words came out of his mouth and he thought Uther was going to strangle him then and there.
It didn't seem Uther was paying attention, though, because he was gazing in the mirror again. He waved a dismissive hand at Daniel the mortified servant and said, "Very good, Damien, you may go – leave the crown on the table."
Not believing his good luck after that horrid slip-up, Daniel all but flew out of the room after putting the crown on the table.
Meanwhile, Uther stared at his reflection. It was true. He could see it in that servant's eyes even as his trembling lips said no. Uther felt fear bubble up inside of him at the thought of actually having to relive one of his worst nightmares – from natural, not goblin-induced, curable causes this time. He didn't know if he could handle the stress.
He remembered the vulnerability, the shame, the glances he would get when people thought he wasn't looking, the slaps to the skull as Gaius the Goblin patted his hairless head down. He knew for a fact that of all the remedies in the world, there was none for baldness.
It just wasn't fair.
He had once had a luscious, beautiful head of hair, wavy and full, when he had first become king. And then, shortly after Arthur's birth and the terrible circumstances that surrounded it, the first gray hair appeared. And then another… and another… and suddenly his head had been completely colonized by the gray. It hadn't been too bad, though – it made him dignified. Impressive.
But this… to lose the hair on top of his head when he had all the power in the kingdom at his fingertips?
Needless to say, King Uther Pendragon was not happy with this development.