Fate/Stay Night General Discussion SPOILERS AHEAD

I don’t like old stories. In particular, I don’t like other people’s old stories. Just what is so entertaining about having to listen to others brag about themselves? I’d rather swim with salmon if I had the time for that. No, I’m not saying I like salmon. If I have to swim, it is with a woman, and she better be a fine one at that. If all you want is to listen to me talk though, I will bear with it a bit. This is my attempt at what the poets do. With practice, it would be of use when wooing a woman who is not all there.

Five years; that was the age that we became family. Not my age, hers. I knew when I first laid eyes on her that her that she would be a beaut, but then my old man said to guide her as if she were my brother, and that’s how I decided to see her. I didn’t think there was any chance in hell it could be kept a secret though.

King Uther was a man above other men, but still a man in the end. He probably knew that he would lose to the Picts in the North and in the coming battle against Vortigern, to say nothing of the Saxons. So he came up with the idea of making the next king, not one who was merely above other men, but something that was no man. A hybrid between man and dragon. The incarnation of the king born in the mold of a human body. Merlin loved it. He must have been running throughout the castle with his hands up in the air. What, you want me to stop embellishing what I haven’t seen? I’m not guessing. I’m certain that’s what happened. You magi and your lot love the new, the foolhardy, the unimaginable.

Continuing on, the raw material of the king was made unbeknownst to all else, with King Uther’s blood, dragon blood, and the blood of a noble woman best suited for binding them together. There wasn’t a trace of romance in it. No exchange of letters, no secret rendezvous at night; just an act for leaving behind results. What, you think there was love in it? Are you daft man? It’s because you can’t even understand that that you’re inhuman.

And that was how Arto — King Arthur was born.

They call it conceptual fertilization in magery so I hear. Not making a dragon a man, but giving a man the functions of a dragon. She may have been a human being at first, but there’s something unnatural mixed inside.

“The King is not the incarnation of the dragon; his heart is a single dragon. His magical power is of a level beyond ours. I ask you not to seek the same values as ours from one possessing magic like the gods.”

That's what Agravain would regularly say to the knights, but I concur, not as much as he may have meant of course. No one under those conditions would grow up into being a proper human being. You wouldn’t expect it normally. Yet, that’s what wasn’t normal about her. Everything else about her was normal when she was a runt except for that. It is almost hard to believe now, but she had been no different from the other girls in town. She’d been disciplined by the old man and etiquette drilled into her bones, but once in town, she became just like her surroundings. She was a town girl, a simple town girl.

But her being a poor loser was a trait she was born with. Defeat to her wasn’t being sore over losing to someone other, it was being sore at her own weakness. Her pride may take a blow, but soon after she would bring her face up. She wasted no time consoling herself. Optimistic to the point of ludicrousness, but hurt easily. She must have been too serious to brush things off. The knights outside of the castle talk as if she has a heart of iron, but she was reed, not iron. She may be bruised, but not once has her heart broken. A girl like that was raised for ten years under the strict watch of my old man. So of course she would become an ideal king. It was nothing but trouble from me however. I wasn’t there to see her pull the sword. A part of me thought ‘just do as you will’. After all, why should I have to warn her, who had everything since she was born? I had no reason to stop her. She can sod off for all I care.

You should know more than me about what happened next. And you won’t have me talking of the days when we were training and adventuring after she took out the sword. I might find myself swinging a blade at you from years of pent-up grudges if I recollect all of the trouble you and her dragged me into.

When she finished her training and mastered Caliburn, she finally began calling herself the rightful king. She had humble beginnings. She started with saving a tribe and establishing a base of operations. The old man did teach her that laying groundwork was critical. If we were to defeat Vortigern, it was ideal to raise an army to match his while being as low profile as possible.

To date, there have been eleven pitched battles against the Saxons, but the Round Table at the very first of them consisted of only you and me I believe. From there, everything took off. She reorganized the lost cataphracts and literally raced across the battlefield freely, crushing Saxon footsoldiers and breaking through many a barricade. Gods, who would have thought she would adopt those tactics after seeing how much she loved taking care of the creatures. What? You’re saying that people were dying too? It’s fine if soldiers die. They were fighting to protect their families and their land. It was survival. But not for horses; they had nothing to do with the squabbles between men and other men. They don’t consider why they are running and even why they are dying. That is a different sin from the death of our men. For her it was at least.

It was when she emerged victorious from one of those battles that the name of King Arthur became known throughout the island. Ah, but somewhere along the way she fell into Morgan’s trap thanks to a certain someone’s womanizing and lost Caliburn. What? That was a necessary ritual for acquiring Excalibur? I don’t give a toss. I can remember how ridiculous she looked as she marched with us trying to conceal from everyone that she had lost her holy sword. Her face was paler than pale can be. I ended up once again having to make a wooden carving of a bird catching a salmon. And Morgan. How did such a fine lady become such a frightening thing? Just when it seemed as if she had the innocence of a fairy, she became as magnificent as a warrior maiden, and then suddenly possessed the brutality of a witch. If you ask me, it’s as if there were three women inside of her. Still, she is the proper daughter of King Uther. Morgan may have had similar circumstances as she had. She never let go of her hatred for Arthur since the building of Camelot, and come to think of it, I’ve not heard much of her lately.

But yes, let me get back to where I was.

Vortigern finally getting off his arse to settle things with King Arthur once and for all. That was when she took back the citadel that was Vortigern’s base. Though in this battle, the only one other than King Arthur who was of any use in the battle was Sir Gawain who had a holy sword just like her. And so King Arthur defeated Vortigern the Usurper and reclaimed the citadel. That would be this chalk castle, Camelot of the Round Table. Camelot Castle was completed, and the reign of King Arthur began at last.

Since then, ten years have gone by. There’d never been a dull moment, for both you and I. You fooled around with women while calling yourself the aid of the king, and I’d chase after a woman’s rump while performing my duties as one of the Round Table on the side. And King Arthur, she would bring and bind together a group of bickering lords and fight well against the Saxons.

So like Uther the previous King had wished for, the ideal king was born. Meanwhile I find that I’ve been worrying myself over nothing. I thought there would be at least one of us who would voice his thoughts, but even in this current state of affairs there is not a knight who would press further into what a lie that was. When it came down to it, no one truly accepted King Arthur. And who can blame them? She stopped aging through the power of her holy sword. She still looked as she did when she was fifteen, the age she pulled out the sword. There were many knights who were unsettled by her, but the majority hailed their liege’s immortality as a mystery. Deep down inside, they scoffed at the notion of a child being a king for much longer and readied themselves for the power struggles that would come when the king falls. King Arthur is not a king accepted by all. She was only a temporary king, only accepted when her reign was going well. So long as she performs as a king, the unsettling parts could be ignored. Even if there were one who discovered what the king truly was, they stayed quiet while she still proved to be a capable king. And when they realized that the ideals of the ideal king they so praised won’t save everyone, they pushed all the blame on her.

And look where it brought us. I imagine Mordred will raise troops against us when King Arthur returns from Rome. I’ve had enough of this foolish infighting. I’ll think of some reason to excuse myself from it all. Perhaps join up with that other fellow womanizer, Lancelot — I, no. That is the one thing I will never do. It’s fine, I’ll set off sail for some other land and spend my days there. With all that fortune I’ve amassed, I have no need to fight anymore. And you, you will be fleeing to Avalon are you not? Best to end this idle talk lest you have your head chopped off for being an opportunist.

What? You want to hear what I think of King Arthur?

…Yeah, there is one thing I wanted to ask you. Since she had been aware, she’d been trained by the old man and given a king’s education for the greater portion of the day. And the sole free time she had, the time she should be sleeping, she spent taking care of the needs of the horses and patrolling the village. In her life, she never personally experienced what it was she was trying to protect. Is there anything that make one shudder so much? I am a man who can cut off the head of a giant with my wit alone, but even I had to grimace when I was with her. When we were still living with my father, I couldn’t help but having to speak my mind, because of how eerie it was.

“Hey you, when are you sleeping?”
“Don’t worry, brother. I am asleep from dawn until the sun rises.”

She smiled when she said that. Dawn until the rise of the sun. That’s not even three hours. I was dismayed, but it served as a good opportunity for me to learn that a mundane person like I will never get anything good coming from being involved with this overly-serious fool.

But then the next time, I met you and learned something I did not want to know. That a magus, one who was an incubus, was teaching her how to be a king in even her dreams.

“You must be kidding me. In other words, she hadn’t even been sleeping.”

No one else knew though.

And so looking before the end of our kingdom, I find myself thinking,

“What bollocks. What was it that she wanted to do so much to have to go that far?”