King Uther Pendragon from 'Merlin'

When we think about kings, the image usually hearkens back to the Middle Ages.

Those times continue to fascinate. How else to explain theme restaurants where wenches serve mead in goblets, computer games of swordplay and the popularity of talking dragons? As NBC's Sunday drama series Merlin proves, kings rule.

Not everyone can carry off such a royal visage, but Anthony Head as King Uther Pendragon does.

"The good thing about this show is it easily could have been slightly two-dimensional," he says from Wales, where he's shooting the second season. "I fought very hard to keep it adult enough to interest adults. He has a range of reasons for doing what he does."

And that includes how he dresses.

"It was suggested early on, because I would wear chain mail as a warrior king, I would still prove myself," he says. "It is aluminum, not heavy but very containing. By the end of the day, you know you have worn it. It is just cumbersome to make, somehow."

No one knows that better than Charlotte Morris, the designer who pored over history and art books, then sewed costumes or hired specialty shops to craft them.

FBFX replicated chain mail from aluminum.

"It's just lighter and easier to move around," she says. "They didn't want everyone to be conscious of the costume. This fiberglass material is so much lighter, and they're able to move around. He wears a big arm piece and shoulder piece and all bespoke, all made to fit. It is quite complicated; it all has to be articulated, all attached and buckled together."

For purists -- granted, we are dealing with fictional accounts, but still -- the series plays loose with the centuries.

"We slightly bent the rules and sort of extended it," Morris says. "It is originally set in the 1200s and extended to the 1500s.

Capes are crucial, and with the proper swagger, a king's stride renders a cape fearsome. Morris sewed capes from materials from London's The Cloth Shop. She shopped at Alma Leather for leather trims.

She sewed wraparound trousers, often using mole cloth from the Cloth House. Gloves came from Chester Jeffries and Pamela Woods.

Head, whose mother, Helen Shingler, was an actress in BBC period pieces, took him on sets in France, and the family visited castles. "My parents built me an amazing chateau about 3 foot tall," he says. "Neither of my girls was remotely interested. The girls were not into knights at all, and it was a bit small for Barbie. My parents had been working on it, and they ran out of brown paint at one point and used instant coffee."

He chuckles at the memory, then adds, "I used to dress up as a knight."

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