Fate/Zero - Background

[fated_blade]

During her lifetime Saber was known as King Arthur, the wielder of the Holy Sword Excalibur. Daughter of Uther Pendragon, the young Arturia (as was her given name) was sent with Merlin to be raised in the house of her father’s friend Sir Ector. Raised as a boy, she learned all her skills in Ector’s house before the death of her father when she was 15.

Left without a king, the land of Britain fell in to war and chaos. The only ray of hope was the sword Caliburn. Left in a stone, it was the symbol of the next king, for whoever could remove it would prove themselves to be worthy of uniting the country. The young Arturia was the one to rise to this test. With a stern heart and resolve, the young girl removed her father’s sword to claim her throne and begin her rule as King Arthur.

During her reign, she did not age nor become wounded. The powers granted to her by her sword Excalibur and its sheath Avalon made it impossible for her to fall in battle. For almost a hundred years she kept the lands of her people safe, though her way of the king was a cold and stoic one. By distancing herself and putting her own needs after those of her people, Arturia believed she could rule justly. But her tendency to favor the logical and efficient way of attaining her objective and her seemingly emotionless nature eventually began to instill fear and doubt in the minds of her people. In an act of betrayal, the girl-king was slain in a fight to kill Mordred, a monster created from her own blood, after her scabbard of immortality was stolen.

Full of regret and sadness from her failures, the girl wishes with all the strength left in her to attain the power to change the past and erase her existence from history. So that another can rule in her stead and prevent the fall of her kingdom. Just before the moment of her death, her soul is transformed in a being known as a ‘Servant.’ Gaining the class title ‘Saber,’ she is summoned for the purpose of securing the means of her wish: the Holy Grail.

During the Holy Grail wars, seven Magus summon seven heroic spirits to become Servants. In an all out match, they must fight to attain the Grail to grant their wish. In the 4th grail war, Saber is summoned by a man named Emiya Kiritsugu. During the war, however, he assigns the Knight as his wife’s body guard.

She is constantly at odds with her Master, disapproving of his cowardly methods of killing. She is a Knight, and cooperating with a man that prefers snipping from the dark disgusts her. It is only through the continued efforts of Irisviel, Kiritsugu’s wife, which Saber even tries to understand her master a little.

Time and again she is challenged by her fellow King-Servants Rider and Archer. The true identity of Rider is known to her as Alexander the Great, and his criticisms of her cut deep even if she retorts by calling him a tyrant. Archer—whose identity is Gilgamesh of Uruk but she is unaware—has a very different reaction to the naive little Knight-King: he is infatuated with her. The attention merely disgusts her, but once she caught his eye, he had no intentions of letting her escape him.

During the course of the battles she is forced to kill her beloved friend Lancelot, the Servant Beserker. It weighs on her heart as another sin and failure that she must repent for. Again, her resolve to win the Grail is strengthened and she limps resolutely to the final battle ground to face the hated Golden Archer. However, she seems to be the only one taking it seriously. Instead of fighting her, Archer demands she become his wife. His ‘proposal’ is not one he will let her refuse, and her attempts are met with a very savage beating. Saber knows she cannot win, but the appearance of her master gives her some ray of hope. She truly believes with his help she can beat this foe…


But Kiritsugu has other ideas. Instead, he forces her to destroy the object of her desires. Her strong will at first fights against the power of his command seal, and he is forced to use a second to compel her to do his bidding. In range and despair, she charges and destroys what she had sought for so long with her Holy Blade. Unknowingly, she bathes her enemy, Archer, in the muck and corruption contained within it, and leaves him with a blessing and a curse.

Alone and broken she returns to the pinnacle of her failure. Surrounded by the corpses of her knights, she sobs and asks for forgiveness. Over and over, she apologizes for being useless and that she should have never become King. Still, her wish to undo her past does not waiver, and nothing can stop her from going after the Grail again.