My Favorite Part About The Nasuverse Is How It Needlessly Crams Down The Arthurian Mythos. Technically,

If I can throw my hat into the ring regarding Morgan’s FGO design, because I definietely have… thoughts. I don’t hate her design, and I’m interested in her character, but visually she does fall a little flat for me. Slight spoiler warning for LB6. Long rambling post ahead.

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You know whole Morgan having three different personalities probably worked a bit bitter if it was more like Morgan the witch, Vivian, and Morgan the sister to Artoria were originally one person but something happened to her to split into three people that now lead different lives that played a hand in fate’s arthurian mythos

Sorry, but I seriously don’t agree. If you're just going to split them into three different people, keep them as three separate people in the first place. The issue of 'Morgan being Vivian' wasn't 'Morgan and Vivian can't exist in separate places and live different lives', it's that:

'Morgan being Vivian, combined with the condensed timespan of Fate's Arthurian mythos, opens up more questions than answers due to the established ages of the characters'

I was fine with Morgan having Vivian's authority, because characters borrow the 'authority' of some other character every other moment. But having Morgan actually be Vivian, therefore being Lancelot's adoptive mother, and ALSO being arbitrarily written to be Artoria's FULL sister rather than a partial sibling from an earlier relationship- it just makes things messy for no good reason.

And Morgan COULD have been 'The Lady of the Lake'. That's not a new concept- but it was a concept that worked when Morgan was... you know, allowed to be considerably older than Arthur in order for that to feasibly work. Especially considering all the pre-Arthur stuff that generally happened regarding Merlin, Vortigern, Uther, etc.

The Arthurian mythos, despite the name, didn't just... start with King Arthur. It's a story that requires setup, and Nasu wrote it so that the 'setup' is just a murky pit that requires logical jumps and purely ignoring other things in order to make it work. 

Nasu wants to have his cake and eat it to with every Arthurian character being both 'cool and young' and also having lived the full lives that encapsulated their stories, and it just makes things into a muddy mess once you look past the glamour of 'this sounds cool'. He wants to have the moral ambiguity of Morgan le Fay, but he didn’t give himself a proper setting to do so.

If I were to nitpick at every weird thing Fate does with Arthurian legend, I’d be writing all night, but there is something the Fate series changes that really bugs me, and it has to do with Morgan le Fay.

Fate!Morgan is actually a composite character, derived from two characters from Arthurian legend; Legend!Morgan le Fay, from whom she gains her magical abilities, and Morgause, from whom she largely takes her role in story, as mother of the Orkney siblings (Gawain, Agravain, Gaheris, Gareth, and Mordred) and part of the reason for the fall of Camelot. Fate!Morgan being made up of those two characters doesn’t bug me. I think it’s actually not a bad idea to combine those two characters to make things a bit simpler than having them both around.

That’s not what bugs me.

What does bug me is the way they changed her relationship to Arthur/Artoria.

In Fate, Morgan is a legitimate daughter of Uther Pendragon. My search on the type-moon wiki doesn’t specify who her mother was, but it’s probably safe to assume her mother was Igraine, making her Artoria’s full sister. The reason for her antagonism towards Artoria is that she saw their father as loving her more, and placing his hopes in his younger daughter, even though both Morgan and Artoria were of equal status. This favoritism, whether true of perceived, led Morgan to resent Artoria and want to destroy her.

Now, in most versions of Arthurian legend, Morgan and Morgause are NOT the daughters of Uther. Instead, they are the daughters of Igraine and Gorlois, the Duke of Cornwall (the very south-western most part of Britain). Uther fell in love with Igraine, and went to war with Gorlois to steal her from him. On the very same night that Uther’s forces storm the castle Gorlois is staying in and kill him, Uther has Merlin use magic to disguise him as Gorlois, so he can sneak into the castle Igraine is in and rape her, conceiving Arthur. Igraine later learns the truth about what happened, and is coerced into marrying Uther. Her daughters, Elaine, Morgause, and Morgan, are then married to Uther’s allies.

From my point of view, Morgan and Morgause have a much more compelling reason to hate Arthur in the legend than Morgan does in Fate. The sisters see Arthur as the son of the person who murdered their father, raped their mother, and married them off to secure his own political alliances. Arthur presents himself as the rightful king of Britain and a just ruler, but this is predicated on being the legitimate heir of Uther Pendragon. For Morgan and Morgause, this means that Arthur, Camelot, and every ideal of honor and chivalry they stand for are built upon such an act of cruelty and barbarism that it renders everything a colossal monument to hypocrisy. How could they not want to see it all collapse in on itself?

All in all, I just think trading all of that in for “Dad loved you more than me so I hate you” is just wasted potential.

thanks for the tl;dr. While I don't agree with all your opinions, I get where you're coming from. Highkey, if you don't mind, what do think of Urobuchi as a writer? I frankly can't stand the man's writings, not only in regards to his "DeCoNsTrUcTiOn" of the magical girl genre with Madoka, but also Fate/Zero and his work on Kamen Rider Gaim.

It's......really hard for me to not blame Urobutcher himself for how Madoka basically killed the entire magical girl genre by causing it to be flooded with edgy tryhard tortureporn.

Like from an objective and analytical standpoint, Madoka is an incredible and meticulously crafted story. ...but subjectively, i fucking hate it, and then on top of that also hate it for what it (again, indirectly) did the genre and really just mainstreem anime in general to a certain, albeit obviously much lesser, degree. I feel like that's an entirely different discussion though, and really it just boils down to a case of "it's good" and "I don't like it" are not mutually exclusive. That's my read anyways.

Fate/Zero i love when watched bit by bit but dont like as a coherent story for much the same subjective reasons I'm personally not a fan of Madoka. For all my negativity I don't actually like nihilistic or cruel stories. Fate/Zero is actually what made me realize that, being the first time I had to as aforementioned go "it's good....but I don't like it." I love pretty much everything that doesn't involve Kerry, which is an issue when the whole story revolves around Kerry.

It's by no means without some serious issues though. Urobutcher wrote Artoria as a completely different character and it causes some serious inconsistencies that had harmful long-term repercussions, the banquet scene is a great setup that as I've discussed before falls completely flat in retrospect because nothing talked about was delivered on, and characters like Abs Hassan and Kariya got beyond wasted, just to name some of my issues with Zero.

But unlike with a LOT of Nasu's writing, actually just FGO writing in general frankly, those flaws don't contradict the ethos of the story. They come across less as contradictions that the writer couldnt be asked to rectify, as much as they do human error and an inability to make everything perfectly coherent and loop back around to the an overarching point. None of the things i've mentioned really detract from the message Fate Zero wants to give. They detract from the quality and consistency of the storytelling, absolutely, but not from the intended purpose of that storytelling. That sort of thing is HUGELY different than something like FGO just making up alternate history to suit it's narrative despite said narrative supposedly being about unity through our shared real world history.

I suppose what it really comes down to is that I don't feel malice or narrow mindedness from Urobutcher's works the way I do from Nasu. Kirei is the best example of this - i'd go so far as to argue Kirei's character didn't have ANY of the depth people now attribute to it before Urobutcher got involved. That's not even a dig at Nasu, that's just how much Urobutcher clearly GETS the kind of character Kirei is [now] meant to be. Same goes for Gilles and Kerry, those are characters that were perfect for someone like Urobutcher to execute (in multiple senses).

Again, Urobutcher is not a flawless writer by any stretch, no one is, and his style is by no means for everyone, because no style SHOULD be universally appealing...but I feel like he very much gives a shit. I feel like whether its all the way back with Fate Zero or his relatively more recent return for Lostbelt 3, Urobutcher gave a shit and did everything with as much purpose as he could. On that ground alone, I'm willing to be a lot more sympathetic to the parts of his writing i don't like, since I can at least convince myself those things (be it intentional choices or simple mistakes) were done in good faith.

What's the difference between Proto Morgan Le Fay and her Fate counterpart? It sounds like Proto Morgan is Chaotic Neutral while Fate's version is straight up evil. Is it because Artoria being a woman who gets to be the King made Fate Morgan even more morally depraved while Arthur being a man means Proto Morgan can't really argue against that fact and it isn't as bad to the point that it could drastically alter her morals? (That being said, they're both still a little loopy in the head.)

So, you’re right. Proto Morgan Le Fey was basically Chaotic Neutral. She’s...not mentally sound in the slightest, but I think that Artoria’s appearance DID push her over the edge. While Arthur looks nothing like Uther, That more helped her hatred not pass to him so much, and she did sometimes help, though she resented that Arthur seemed to just get everything and was the cause of their mother’s death. Still, it’s the law of succession, and she was, while originally hostile, at least willing to eventually judge Arthur for himself. Though...some news about him is why she softens and starts being a little more helpful.

For Fate Morgan, the fact that Artoria was a woman...made it just not fair. Why was SHE the one who was given everything, power, love, success, and even the crown, while Morgan had been forced to watch her happy, loving family get ripped to shreds because of the lust of one man, lost her father, lost her mother, was married off because she was inconvenient, and now she has to watch as some woman who looks so much like her is given a life she longed for at the hands of Merlin, who helped Uther. 

Honestly, I think half the reason Artoria never really went after Fate Morgan is that she couldn’t bring herself to hate the woman, regardless of the trouble she caused.

If I can throw my hat into the ring regarding Morgan’s FGO design, because I definietely have… thoughts. I don’t hate her design, and I’m interested in her character, but visually she does fall a little flat for me. Slight spoiler warning for LB6. Long rambling post ahead.

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Gonna ramble for a bit.

Galahad’s portrayal in FGO kinda sucks for like, several reasons, but the main thing is how they underuse his connection with Mash. Like, it was one thing when the theory was ‘Galahad refuses to actively participate in anything relating to Chaldea’, but that got muddled in event after event where he imposes his will onto Mash exclusively to dunk on his father, and that’s it.

Like… Galahad’s whole thing was that he was this incredibly pure, uber-devout knight that constantly spent his time healing people and banishing evil spirits, and they do… ABSOLUTELY NOTHING with that. Mash is defensive sure, and her skills may express that, but like… we fight so many ghosts and evil spirits, and yet there’s no mention of that aspect of Galahad at all.

Galahad’s personality only manifests around Lancelot? And purely to make Mash say rude things to him? For no reason? Which seems notably out of character for both of them, especially since a pretty large teaching in Christianity is ‘turning the other cheek’, which Mash!Galahad doesn’t do in the slightest- which is even weirder because Lancelot isn’t even at FAULT in the relationship, Galahad’s mother is.

Galahad’s relationship with Lancelot wasn’t even that canonically bad. Most of the ‘conflict’ between Lancelot and Galahad came from Galahad TANGENTALLY proving he was better than Lancelot by doing more good deeds and acting more knightly. When Galahad actually fought and beat Lancelot, Lancelot was so impressed that he was the one who ended up knighting him in the first place.

But like… why not have parts of Galahad’s personality manifest in other ways? Why not have Mash find herself drawn towards incredibly religious Christian Servants like Martha and Jeanne? Or have interesting conversations with David or Amakusa? Why not have her feel pity towards Caster Gilles, and maybe a obligation to bring him back to the ‘right path’?

Why not have Mash feel uncomfortable around the Roman Servants (especially Nero), considering Rome was

One of Camelot/Britain’s biggest enemies

Persecuted a ton of Christians, and…

Like, FAMOUSLY KILLED JESUS.

Actually, why don’t any of the Christian Servants express even the slightest bit of ‘eeeehhh…’ around Nero and the other Romans? Outside of the fact that it’s impossible for them to paint Nero and Rome in a slightly negative light. Wait, no. That’s it. That’s the reason.

And these are just a few possibilities, but there are SO many Servants in Chaldea that Mash could interact in a more meaningful way with due to sharing a body with Galahad.

Galahad just feels so stupidly underused during Part 1 and events, and maybe they’re saving some of the more intricate stuff for if he actually shows up as a Servant, but at the same time it feels like they’ll be doing the bare minimum with him.

If Lancelot ran away after killing Agravain then coming back to kill Gareth to rescue Gwen, there was not enough time for a manhunt between the escape and the rescue. She did go to war with Lancelot at Gawain's behest. She turned back to Britain because a rebel broke out, not that she publicly made peace with Lancelot. When exactly did they have time to talk and for Artoria to say he wasn't at fault? Either Lancelot was referring to another incidence, he confused it with another time when the murder of the Orkney siblings hadn't happened or Fate being ambiguously confusing on purpose.

BEHOLD. Someone said, probably more than a year ago, that I should try my hand at making a relationship chart for our favorite Arthuriana characters in Fate. I didn't feel like doing it then, but I felt like doing it now, and then while doing it remembered why I didn't feel like doing it then.

This is literally just the 'Saber' part.

This is a (somewhat) simplified version of the Saber part. I tried formatting this so many ways and this was the one that made me want to scream the least.

NOTES:

Explaining why 'Pendragon' is in quotes: 'Pendragon' was more of a title than an actual surname, literally meaning 'Head Dragon' in Welsh, and was mostly an authoritative title used in regards to Uther. Over time, people added the title to Arthur's name as a pseudo-surname as well, before it became treated as an actual surname for the figure. However, this does mean that Mordred most likely wouldn't be 'Mordred Pendragon' unless he acquired the same societal status as Uther and Arthur via becoming king. Still, Fate is one of the many works that treats 'Pendragon' as a true surname rather than a title.

Similarly to 'Pendragon', 'Vortigern' may also be a title that became a name later on, with historians arguing that it may have meant something like 'Supreme Lord'. It wasn't until later interpretations that 'Vortigern' went from a nebulous, violent ruler of the Britons to Arthur's uncle and Uther's brother.

In terms of legends, Morgan is often the step-daughter of Uther after his marriage of Igraine. In Fate, Morgan is Uther's biological daughter and was simply falsely presented as Uther's step-daughter. This is probably a result of fusing Morgan with Uther's daughter Morgause.

Arthur and Morgan have two obscure siblings that will probably never be relevant: Queen Elaine of Garlot, and Madoc.

Gawain, Gareth, Gaheris, and Agravain all had wives. Gareth was married to Lady Lyonesse, Gaheris was married to Lady Lynette (the sister to Lady Lyonesse), Agravain was married to Lady Laurel (Lyonesse and Lynette's niece), and Gawain was… complicated.

See, Gawain had a lot of romances going on. A decent amount of stories had him start single, fall in love, ride off into the sunset… and then come the next tale he'd be single again, rinse and repeat. I'm guessing Ragnell is his canonical spouse since that's the most well-known story and the one with a solid romantic moral in it, but a name has not been dropped and Fate Gawain seems to have no qualms about being 'single again' so honestly we may never know. Which is honestly fitting characterization if you take his 'episodic romances' literally.

I almost forgot Ywain was canonized via Summer Ruler Artoria. He's also here.

Gray and Add are representing Sir Kay because he doesn't have any clear artwork yet.

So reddit got more PHH Morgan lore. First of all, she's actually Artoria's full blooded sister. When she was born, Gaia made her "the Child of Britain" who would inherit the island's mystery. The result was that she got three different split personalities like Kay mentioned: Morgan the human(Warrior), the fairy(Fairy), and the personification of Britain(Witch). Note: her Fairy self is named VIVIAN yes, LADY OF THE LAKE Vivian. According to Lancelot, Nimue, his mom, was an alias for Vivian so...

-Me: "So Nasu, which is it? Is Morgan Igraine's kid or Uther's kid?' Nasu: "... Yes."

-So basically Morgan's three bitches in PHH. I would have thought it was a gradual process from one to another but of course Nasu takes the fucking craziest and most metaphysical route possible just to clock me in the face.

-Well that explains the whole 'Evil Vivian' thing.

... Also-

Arturia: *at Gawain* You're Morgan's kid.

Arturia: *at Agravain* You're Morgan's kid. (Wish I wasn't)

Arturia: *at Gareth* You're Morgan's kid!

Arturia: *at Gaheris* You're Morgan's kid! (How'd I get here?!)

Arturia: *at Mordred* You're Morgan's AND my kid. (...Can you say that again?)

Arturia: IS THERE ANY MORE CHILDREN OF MORGAN IN MY COURT?!

Lancelot: ... Well...not biologically...but...

Arturia: ....

The Orkney Siblings: ...

Mordred: ... I'm not extending my family tree any further.

Also also-

Lancelot: My own mother tried to rape me...

Mordred: At least she gave a shit about you.