BEHOLD. Someone Said, Probably More Than A Year Ago, That I Should Try My Hand At Making A Relationship

Listen to me LISTEN to me. Camelot was doomed from the start. It was doomed from the moment Artoria picked up the sword. It was doomed from the moment Uther decided to create the "perfect king." Because if there is such a thing as a perfect ruler it cannot be a human being, and forcing a person into that mold can only have disastrous consequences.

It's not a matter of "one single event kickstarted the fall of Camelot," it's a matter of "Artoria's entire life lead to her acting like this. There is no way she could have made any other choice based on what she has experienced until now. And I say Artoria but this also applies to Mordred, to Lancelot, even to Morgan."

Of course Tristan would part with angry words. He was hurt, and the King was here for him to lash out. Of course Lancelot would reach out to Guinevere; he loved the king, wanted to help the king, grew up valuing the individual over the country, he could not foresee his affections growing. Of course Aggravain would out the affair; his loyalty to the king is absolute, and he found that to be betrayal. Of course Artoria would forgive him, of course Artoria would reject Mordred, she knows no other way to be, knows not how to hold personal grudges or hold people close to her. Of course Mordred would respond to this with violence, they know no other way to be. And before all of that, of course Morgan would plot Camelot's downfall, she's a witch in a world being drained of its mystery she's pissed that she's getting evicted because the world decided it belonged to humans from now on.

They all had other options, yes. But with their life, the one they would pick was a given. Of course, hindsight is 10/10, but can you truly say you would have known better in their place?

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.

Note: I discuss details that suggest Morgan x Artoria in this post. Don't read if you're uncomfortable with the idea.

Artoria considers Kay her brother but she treats none of Morgan's children as her blood relatives. She calls none of her knights nieces or nephews let alone calling Mordred her son. Even as Morgan slapped Tristan with all the evil Gifts, she still calls her sister. In people's eyes, Lancelot is her most favorite knight/person. However when counting her inner thought, it's Morgan who she let get away with everything. Even when Mordred revealed the truth about her heritage, Artoria still acknowledged Morgan as her sister. She grew up with Kay, it's not difficult for her to call him brother. Arguably she wouldn't have known about Morgan until Merlin brought everyone's attention to Artoria. Morgan left when Camelot was built. Assuming they didn't meet in secret, Artoria spent less time with Morgan than with any of Morgan's children. Her wording to Mordred was specific. She could have used Morgan's name only or refers to her as the elder daughter of Uther Pendragon. She opted to call her sister. While Garden of Avalon described her as nothing more than a pebble in Artoria's path she at the same time couldn't injure Artoria's heart. Tristan left the Round table with harsh words to Artoria and that was enough to wound her heart. In Fate/Apocrypha, in the last conversation with her Master Mordred realized Artoria became king for 'the stones on the road side'. This calls back to Morgan being a pebble in Artoria's path, not that Mordred is aware of that comparison. The stones Mordred mentioned are the people of Britain and Artoria has a sense on obligatory duty to them. The pebble that is Morgan is one Artoria shows personal favoritism among all the ones she feel obligated to help and serve. Caster Artoria admitted to playing favoritism and that's not unique to her, all Artorias do that. While she is supposed to treasure all lives, she openly wants to kill Merlin. Either he finally crossed a line or he has messed with someone she plays favoritism toward. If one thinks Artoria is a merciless and inhuman king then everything Morgan did were of no consequenxe to Artoria. Taking into account of the mask she wears in front of everyone, nothing Morgan did made Artoria hates her. She blamed herself for Lancelot and Guinevere's affair, for Tristan's words, for her country's destruction. It's not out of her character to not fault Morgan for anything but that's only because she considers Morgan dear to her. To be fair, Morgan didn't force her into a similar situation with their uncle where either Artoria kills her or gets killed.

She has lines for Merlin, Gareth and Medb. Those lines of course hint at their appearance in LB6. At the same time, it suggests Caster Artoria spending time with Gareth before she went to become a knight. The other children of Morgan don't exist in LB6 or she didn't spend time with them. If the Round Table doesn't exist in LB6, why is she excited to see Gareth became a member? This could implicate that she spent time with Morgan for a good while in LB6.

She still says nothing about Morgan. Her profile mentions she hides her true feelings from everyone. She's quite open when we converse with her so the things she would want to hide would be very private and personal to her.

One detail stands out: the chocolate she claims to like. Would it even possible for chocolate to be there at that time period??? Before talking about chocolate, cacao plants don't grow in Britain. By normal means there's no chololate there. Artoria can't make it herself otherwise she would ask for ingredients rather than for the final product. Merlin can't make it since he doesn't have human sense of taste and she would have mentioned it was him who gave it to her. Semiramis turned her Hanging Garden into a chocolate factory once. She compared it to making poison. Her debut event had us helping her (chocolate self but identical to her in everyway) make chocolate. There were enough to nearly flood Chaldea. She also met MHA and got stumped by her attitude toward chocolate/sweet and poison although this is a minor detail. She is similar enough to Morgan for Mordred to refrain from outright badmouthing her at the end of Apocrypha event. It's highly likely Morgan gave chocolate to Artoria and if it's true, their relationship is good this time around. At the same time, if something happened and they are on the opposing sides again then it's a sad repeat of history.

Aside from Mordred, has anyone or her nieces or nephews actually called her aunt? To them, she's their king. Let's not forget the knights and Gawain - her nephew - tricked her into wearing that bunny outfit. That's another strange thing since as Ruler, not even Moriarty can fool Artoria. If I don't count the developers' intention, Artoria intentionally play the fool in a similar fashion to Nobu. As seen with X and XX however, her real mental process is different to others, taking even the silliest thing to be serious and that doesn't make sense to others not on the same wavelength as hers. Add to those is her willingness to believe those she trusts blindly. That could be viewed as her being fair and trying to listen to others. It's dubious at this point if any of them (except Mordred) views her as family seeing that Gawain doesn't spare her from his perversion. We also haven't gotten Morgan's POV yet.

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.

My favorite part about the Nasuverse is how it needlessly crams down the Arthurian mythos. Technically, there should be about 50 years of stuff, and Arthur should have reigned for between 20-30 years. Which gives time for several iterations of the Round Table, ending with the generation of Galahad.

(putting a cut)

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re: Lucius Tiberius & Artoria fighting, they did. Bedivere has a line for Lucius in his Mats profile which says that they fought and that he took "Lucius" as his Camelot alias because history recorded Lucius as killing him during their battle; even though Bedi actually survived, he was basically a walking dead man by Camelot anyway, so he called himself "Lucius" in reference to that.

Interesting! If Arthur fought Lucius defensively though, would the same apply to Artoria, or did she conquer Rome?

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.

The world deciding who’s gonna fuck up Camelot this time

Is it just me or does Fate's Mordred never receive any hate for starting her rebellion, which brought an end to Camelot? I know Artoria doesn't like her, but she's the only one. Gawain, who was literally killed by Mordred, is shown to love Mordred like a beloved sibling. I feel like Fate really ignores how guilty Mordred is for the loss of Camelot, and seems to blame Lancelot more due to his affair with Guinevere. What do you think?

I mean, yes. Fate never really makes an attempt to punish Mordred.

From a fan-perspective, there's not much room for hate because he's a solid character in regards to his villainy. He was one of the stronger parts of Apocrypha, and just like Nero served as a strong parallel to Artoria.

But from an in-fiction perspective, it's also that Mordred doesn't really... care. He doesn't care at all, really.

I think a common thing is that people assume that Mordred is a good person. He isn't. He isn't EVIL, but he isn't good either. He does what he wants, and follows just enough of a chivalric code that means that in most cases, he generally ends up doing the 'right' thing. He's a person driven by impulse, unlike the other KoTR that have a stricter moral code. He's one of the few characters that genuinely fits 'Chaotic Neutral'.

Mordred cares about one thing. Artoria. That's it. Not Camelot, not the citizens, not the other knights, just Artoria.

Camelot was a means to an end to take down Artoria- he talks big game about wanting to be king, but also doesn't have much remorse. 'Being king' as a wish was even just a way to lessen Artoria's burden, not to better the kingdom in any discernible way.

So, it's hard to put guilt on a character that is, by design... not that guilty about what they did. Mordred knows he's a traitor. He doesn't care.

Lancelot and Gawain, however, are drowning in guilt. Gawain's just keeping his head above water to stay a Saber, while Lancelot would rather just drown in madness because even lucidity is painful for him. That's because, unlike Mordred, Lancelot and Gawain are fundamentally good people who made horrible mistakes.

The narrative can't draw pain from the fall of Camelot for Mordred, because he doesn't give a shit.

However, a big part about how the knights current treat each other is the narrative of forgiveness. Artoria had the entirety of Stay Night and Zero. Gawain had EXTRA and the Camelot Singularity to genuinely forgive himself and Lancelot. Lancelot had Zero and Camelot Singularity. Tristan, Bedivere, and Agravain had the Camelot Singularity. Gareth will have a new interlude where she addresses her pain with Lancelot. The narrative of taking the second life that they're given as Servants, and appreciating it and their fellow knights.

And while Mordred is brought into the narrative due to being a knight, he isn't as central to it. Which puts him in his own bit of punished limbo- because while the other knights have openly forgiven each other, and him- Artoria hasn't.

And Artoria's the only one who really matters to Mordred.

Morgan le Fey’s Condensed Timeline

I drove myself up the wall working this out this morning, but this is how I assume Morgan could have possibly raised 6 children while Altria only lived to age 35. Please let me know if you see anything wrong, I’m doing my best!

@drunk-on-starlight​

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