Characters / Fate/Apocrypha - Red Faction

This page lists the Red Faction characters of Fate/Apocrypha. To head back to the main character index, go here.

Red Faction Servants

Saber

Mordred

Voiced by: Miyuki Sawashiro (Japanese), Erica Lindbeck (English)^{Other Languages} Danann Galván (Latin American Spanish), Rocío Pereiras (European Spanish), Colette Sodoyez (French), Cristiana Rossi (Italian), Ilena Gwisdalla (German), Amanda Moreira (Brazilian Portuguese)

A homunculus mothered by Morgan le Fay using sperm taken from a temporarily gender-bent Artoria Pendragon, the Saber-class Servant of the Fourth and Fifth Holy Grail Wars in an Alternate Universe. She is summoned by Kairi Shishigou of the Red Faction via a splinter of the Round Table.

Her Noble Phantasms include her helmet "Secret of Pedigree: Helmet That Conceals Infidelity", which obscures her face and stats, "Clarent: The Radiant And Brilliant Royal Sword", her sword stolen from the vaults of Camelot upon her temporarily taking up rulership and finally, "Clarent Blood Arthur: Rebellion Against My Beautiful Father", which twists Clarent into a demonic blade that releases a massive beam of blood-colored lightning.

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• Adaptational Curves: Downplayed. She's slightly bustier in the anime than in the light novel, but it's not by much and it's only readily visible in her civilian clothing.
• Adaptational Heroism: She's a rude and insulting Blood Knight with some serious anger and daddy issues, but contrary to "real-life" Arthurian legends where "she" loses almost all her noble qualities after learning the truth of her heritage, here she was excited to learn she was Arturia's son and went to her hoping to earn her love and acceptance, only turned to rage and evil after being seemingly rejected as both child and heir, and is shown to still have noble qualities under her issues. Her true wish was to free Arturia from the loneliness of being King.
• Ain't Too Proud to Beg: Her last memory from when she was alive involved her tearfully asking to be embraced by her father before she expired.
• And Then What?: Her wish is to use the Grail to have a chance to challenge the Sword In The Stone and prove her birthright as Britain's king...but that's about as far as she's actually thought it through, as she admits to Kairi. After that, it's just a vague desire to be a "good king" and potentially surpass Arturia, with no idea on how she's actually going to go about doing that. That's because what she truly wanted wasn't necessarily to be a better king than Arturia, but simply to ease the burden of her kingship and let her live more like a human, akin to a child who wants to take on their parent's burden.
• Armor-Piercing Response: When Sieg asks her if she believes humans are worth protecting or not, Mordred calmly replies there's really no right or wrong answer to that question and it depends on the person.
• Arrow Catch: At the end of their first fight, she catches one of Chiron's arrows.
• Artificial Family Member: The "son" of Artoria Pendragon and Morgan le Fay. While she was born out of Morgan's womb, she's actually a homunculus created from Artoria's sperm.
• Ascended Extra: Goes from having a mention in the original Fate/stay night and a cameo in the anime to actually starring in a series.
• Attention Whore: She is semi-obsessed with earning praise and approval from her master, as she was with her "father" Arturia.
• Badass Adorable: While she'd probably kick in the teeth of anyone who'd call her "cute", she has her "father's" face and build and is far more open with her emotions than her, such as rolling around on the ground complaining about her boredom. She's also a bloodthirsty warrior who can casually punch a giant golem about three times her size to pieces and throw another one with enough force to break the one she's targeting. She also holds the record of never actually losing a fight during the Great Holy Grail War; the closest she gets is managing a draw with Chiron and getting a Mutual Kill with Semiramis, and had Kairi not been fatally injured as well she likely could have bounced back from that too.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: She wanted to duel her father. She got her wish sans much of a fight.
• Berserk Button:
  • Only comes up once, but do not call her a woman. Even being her Master won't stop her from killing you if you do. The only reason she even lets Kairi live when he first does it is because he was ignorant, which she takes as a valid excuse but lets him off with a warning to never do it again.
  • Do NOT talk about her father or mention the Round Table. When Kairi told her he used a splinter of the Round Table as the catalyst to summon her (he could have potentially gotten any of the other Knights of the Round Table instead of Mordred), her violent destruction of the valuable splinter immediately clues Kairi in to the only knight who would react like that.
  • Mordred despises abusive Masters, especially those like Celenike who abuse kids and homunculi, due in large part to her own abuse at the hands of Morgan Le Fay.
• Big Damn Heroes:
  • She kills Celenike before she can complete her order to Rider Astolfo to kill Sieg.
  • Shows up just in the nick of time to save Ruler and Archer of Black from Avicebron's golems after he betrays them to the Red Faction.
  • She does it again by ramming her plane into Semiramis to prevent her from killing an unconscious Astolfo, who just finished blowing up the Hanging Gardens' air defenses.
• Big Eater: Just like her father. She admits that eating is her hobby and spends a good portion of episode 6 eating something.
• Blatant Lies: Upon being summoned, she claimed that she is the only knight to have surpassed her father. Her fight with Artoria lasted less than a minute and she lost it, only managing a "draw" because of a curse Morgana had put on her that caused her to lash out in her dying moments to fatally injure Artoria.
• Blood Knight: She enjoys fighting so much she could qualify for the Berserker class on this fact alone.
• Blood Magic: The Noble Phantasm Clarent Blood Arthur is basically Excalibur with blood instead of light.
• Cain and Abel: She managed to be the Cain to FOUR Abels, and personally killed Gawain, the last remaining Orkney sibling and her only surviving brother.
• Calling the Old Man Out: Her mutiny in Camelot is basically her anger and sorrow at being coldly dismissed/ignored by the father she admired.
• Can't Kill You, Still Need You: Even after she teams up with what's left of the Black Faction, she makes it clear she still wants to kill Sieg and Astolfo to finish their fight. It's just that doing that while the Red Faction has its full might to bear is incredibly stupid and self-defeating, so she's willing to wait until after that's over to collect.
• Cast from Hit Points: Using Clarent Blood Arthur causes her incredible pain.
• Chaotic Neutral: Her In-Universe alignment.
• Clone Angst: Realizing she was different from other children, she nursed a hatred for normal humans from early on. When Artoria refused to acknowledge her as her legitimate heir, due to being a secretly created clone, that hatred was unleashed on the entire kingdom.
• Collapsible Helmet: It folds back, like a Decepticon. This is how she can take her helmet off in the heat of combat without it impacting her performance. Specifically, it merges with her armor.
• Combat Pragmatist: Unlike the other Knights of the Round Table, Mordred has no problem punching, kicking or even biting if it is necessary. During her fight with Caster's golems, she throws her sword into one of them, and then starts punching several other ones to pieces with her bare hands and throwing them into other ones.
• Cool Helmet: Her Secret of Pedigree: Helm of Hidden Infidelity. It effectively hides her identity even in her civvies. For bonus points, it collapses into her armor when she takes it off.
• Cool Sword: Her sword, Clarent, was originally a blade of royal authority on par with the likes of Caliburn that was meant to be passed along as per the proper succession of kingship, providing bonuses to Charisma and one's parameters in the process. However, since Mordred stole it, it lost its treasured status and suffered a rank down, but she can still forcibly twist it into a powerful demonic sword with her own hatred and its tendency towards amplification makes it perfectly suited for handling her Mana Burst skill without breaking and utilizing Clarent Blood Arthur.
• Corrupt the Cutie: Was a victim of this at the hands of her own mother. While she was rough around the edges at first, she genuinely believed that following her father would make the world a better place and was happy in her role as a knight of Camelot. However, once Morgan began instilling Mordred with feelings of self-entitlement and grandeur from Mordred's status as the "son" of the King of Knights, everything went downhill.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: On the giving and receiving ends.
  • Her battle with Artoria ended almost instantly with her getting Impaled with Extreme Prejudice and the mortal wound she famously inflicted on her father wasn't even done by her consciously, but occurred because Morgan had placed a curse on her body that would cause it to lash out once it expired. The best she could do was disarm Artoria of Excalibur, but Artoria simply summoned Rhongomyniad and used it to do the deed instead.
  • Her and her Master's fight against Yggdmillennia's golems and hommunculi ends in a decisive victory for them, annihilating the entire force with no injuries to their names.
  • Her fight with Astolfo, Frankenstein's Monster, and Sieg has her easily blocking the paladin's lance strikes and overpowering him while not even wearing her armor. Even though Astolfo had only just come out of surviving being attacked by Assassin of Red, the only reason the fight even lasts as long as it does is because Mordred is more interested in learning where Saber of Black is than actually fighting Astolfo. Frankenstein puts up a better fight, but she's easily disposed of once Mordred finally stops holding back and it takes the use of her Blasted Tree Noble Phantasm before Mordred actually takes any significant damage. Sieg can't even fight her under normal circumstances, only manages one strike with Astolfo's sword while she's not paying attention, gets stabbed through the heart for his troubles, and only once he unlocks Siegfried's power can he finally fight her on equal footing, but even then he's ultimately defeated.
• Curb Stomp Cushion: Her disarming of Artoria makes their "fight" a little less embarrassing for her in the anime. In the original story as well as the Apocrypha novel, Artoria has already lost Excalibur and was wielding Rhongomyniad when they met. Mordred was impaled before she realized Artoria had moved.
• Cute Little Fangs: In the anime, has a single incisor frequently visible. Her "father" was part dragon, after all, and this lends a fierce cuteness to her grins.
• Cutting the Knot: When fighting Jack the Ripper and finding herself unable to hit and barely locate her enemy while they were within Jack's mist, she solves the problem by releasing Clarent's power and unleashing a surge of energy that burns the fog away, leaving Jack visible and shocked.
• Decoy Protagonist: Downplayed. She's important to the plot, is The Rival to the male MC, has high billing in the advertising and the very first scene has her and Saber of Black duking it out in The War Sequence, but she's not as important to the plot as Ruler/Jeanne, the true female protagonist. She's the Tritagonist at best.
• Defeat Equals Explosion: A variant; her armor exploded off of her after Artoria struck her with a mortal blow.
• Determinator: She has Battle Continuation Rank B, and while it won't let her shrug off instantly fatal wounds it makes actually killing her a very hard task as she can quickly bounce back from injuries. With their Masters' Command Seal boosts effectively canceling each other out, she survives the power of Frankenstein's Blasted Tree at point-blank range and is still capable of taking the fight to the transformed Sieg afterwards. The rank comes from despite having been fatally injured by Artoria, she still managed to deliver a fatal blow in turn.
• Dramatic Unmask: For whatever reason, when her father killed her during their final duel, her helmet (and only her helmet) exploded so that the last expression Artoria saw on her face was one of utter despair.
• Drives Like Crazy: She has the same B rank Riding skill that makes Artoria a Badass Biker in Fate/Zero, but she drives so recklessly that Kairi commented that nothing short of a tank could survive her driving, and indeed the car in question is covered in dents and looks ready to fall apart by the time she finally gets out (by kicking out the driver door, no less). She nearly slams into Astolfo on the battlefield with it and he only barely gets out of the way in time.
• Due to the Dead: After she impales Sieg, she resolves to remember his name rather than simply as an unnamed homunculus due to his conviction and having actually injured her with Astolfo's sword. Granted, he doesn't die, but everyone thought he did.
• Dumb Muscle: She's not dumb, but it's noted she was the least intelligent member of the Round Table. She compensates for her lack of brainpower and complete lack of swordsmanship with incredible raw physical capability, powerful magic resistance, and a tendency to use rather unorthodox fighting styles to match the other, incredibly skilled and disciplined Knights of the Round as well as Siegfried, whose swordsmanship was stated to have surpassed mankind itself.
• Early Installment Character-Design Difference: In her brief appearances before Apocrypha, Mordred looked exactly like her father. In addition her armor (and even Clarent) has a simpler design.^note For reference, see her cameo in the first ending credits◊ of Fate/Zero.
• Expy: A "Saberclone" who's actually a literal clone of the original Saber.
• Flipping the Bird: Does this after she and Sieg work together to defeat Adam. Averted in the anime, where she turns a thumbs up into a thumbs down instead.
• Go Out with a Smile: Dies content alongside her Master near the end of the War, sharing a few cigarettes together and grinning as they finally pass on.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Even without her Berserk Buttons being pushed, she has a temper problem.
• Historical Gender Flip: In "real-life" Arthurian Legend, Mordred was male.
• I Am Who?: Morgan did not tell her she was King Arthur's "son" until some time after she had become a Knight of the Round Table.
• Inferiority Superiority Complex: Repeatedly talks about how she is superior to her father. Oftentimes unprompted.
• Irony: She doesn't like to be called a girl, yet she wears one of the skimpiest outfits in the cast. Somewhat justified by the fact that the clothes were cheap and Kairi wouldn't buy her anything more expensive, and it's shown that under her armor she wears something just as, if not skimpier. Also despite being the(in)famous "Knight of Treachery". She is probably the most loyal Servant during the war. Forming a nearly "father-daughter" bond with her Master, the thing he always wanted from Artoria.
• It's All About Me: Her wish is to be given the chance to draw the sword in the stone and become king. Whether not she'll even succeed doesn't even cross her mind, as according to herself she is already the perfect king, so of course she'll be able to draw it. This actually overlaps with "Well Done, Daughter!" Girl, as she believes this is the only way Arturia would ever truly recognize her and it's secretly just a way to try and relieve her father's burdens.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Repeatedly shown to be rude, insulting and extremely aggressive. At the same time she has some noble inclinations, such as when she refuses to sacrifice the uninvolved civilians of the town, either as collateral damage or to replenish prana. In addition of this, the sight of a super abusive Master like Celenike will piss Mordred off that she'll immediately move in for the kill, never mind if she doesn't even kill the Servant too while she's at it, thus missing out the chance to gain an advantage in war. If one can manage her Berserk Buttons and get past her more jerkish behaviors, as her Master can attest to, she's a very loyal and fun-loving warrior.
• Kick the Dog: This event highlights her jerk-ish behavior. Note that it takes place when she is still part of the (antagonistic) Red Faction. Precisely, her response shows just how different she is from her "father". When Astolfo tells her that Siegfried sacrificed his life to save the homunculus later named Sieg, she laughs and says Siegfried was a fool to do that. Astolfo gets pissed about her mocking his comrade's noble act.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: Her decapitation of Celenike after the later used two Command Spells to try and make Astolfo kill Sieg was totally called for. Shishigou did chide her for exposing herself for too long to do the deed when they're supposed to not stick in one place for too long, but Mordred reasons that the existence of a pathetic Master like Celenike near her simply pissed her off so she just had to do the decapitation, to which Shishigou agreed with her reasoning.
• Kind Hearted Cat Lover: In the anime, she plays with the local cats of the neighborhood and even gets down on all fours to start tussling with one while Kairi received a message from Lord El-Melloi II. While she has done a lot of morally questionable things, she is still a noble knight deep down and won't hurt anyone who isn't involved in the fight, and thus a Heroic Spirit to the core. Also, it runs in the family, given her "father's" fascination with lions.
• Knight in Shining Armor: Before she became jaded by Arturia's rejection, she was a literal knight who fought to ensure peace in her lord's kingdom.
• Leitmotif: The Knight of Rebellion which plays when she is first summoned and everytime after that she appears on screen.
• Lightning Bruiser: As befitting a member of the Saber class, and particularly when she starts using Prana Burst to up her speed and striking power significantly (which, given how it looks like lightning is charging off of her, would also make her a Lightning Bruiser in the literal sense). She's strong enough to tear giant golems apart with her fists alone and fast enough to appear as a silvery blur while doing it. Fully cemented during her battle with Siegfried, himself a Lightning Bruiser, where she's able to keep place and even overpower him at multiple points and even the revelation that it's actually Sieg/Homunculus taking his form and being unused to the power still doesn't completely take away from the feat, as Siegfried is considered The Ace of the Black Faction whose swordsmanship "has long surpassed mankind".
• Major Injury Underreaction: Sieg manages to pierce her armor and stab her in the back, drawing blood. She gives no reaction of pain before calmly attacking him. Sabers are tough.
• Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy: Her crudeness and tomboy demeanor contrast Astolfo's cheer and being mistaken for a girl by several people. Her desire to fight Sieg/Siegfried means she interacts often with Astolfo.
• Ms. Fanservice: Her civilian and battle outfits are very Stripperiffic and therefore show off her very toned body.
• Muscles Are Meaningless: Her figure could best be described as that of a bundle of twigs, yet most of her power comes from her raw strength and Prana Burst skill.
• Mutual Kill: She fatally wounds Semiramis, but takes heavy damage herself and Kairi is fatally wounded from saving her from Semramis's poison and using his last Command Seal.
• Never My Fault: She blamed the destruction of Camelot on Arturia not giving her the crown, instead of, you know, her rebelling against Artoria.
• Noble Demon: The most infamous wicked knight in myth who is quite unrepentant of her familicidal actions. As a Servant, she can be a highly reliable warrior and paradoxically loyal if her Master meets her standards.
• The Nose Knows: From across a room, she notes that Semiramis' scent is similar to her mother Morgan.
• Not Worth Killing: Considers Homunculus/Sieg this at first even when he draws a sword on her and ignores him while fighting Astolfo and Frankenstein's Monster, and only when he stabs her in the back with Astolfo's sword does she finally change her mind and run him through. Once he transforms into Siegfried, however, that refusal goes out the window since he's actually capable of hurting her now.
• One-Handed Zweihänder: It's repeatedly mentioned that she usually wields Clarent with just one hand, which allows her to punch, grab and throw her enemies with her free one. When Chiron breaks one of her arms, her fighting style is completely unaffected and she returns the favor by slashing him across the chest.
• One Last Smoke: After she leaves Semiramis on death's door, at the cost of her Master Kairi also being fatally injured, she refuses to go make a contract with Fiore or Caules and choses to stay with him. She asks to share his last cigarettes because she's never had one before, and they're both about to die. She coughs at how disgusting it tastes, but she still fades grinning all the while.
• Opposite-Sex Clone: Technically—her template, Artoria, is normally female, but was male when the genetic material was taken. For a long time the fandom thought she was a male clone of the female Artoria until Nasu stated otherwise.
• Our Homunculi Are Different: She's a Homunculus clone of Artoria, and ages considerably faster than normal humans. In this case, she is also a heroic spirit, which makes her different from Homunculus.
• The Power of Hate: The specifics of her using Clarent Blood Arthur has her using Mana Burst to convert her hatred for her father into magical energy and then using Clarent to redirect it as an attack.
• Pretender Diss: She mocks Sieg as a cheap knock-off of Siegfried.
• Ramming Always Works: When the final battle between Jeanne and Shirou's sides begins, Mordred makes her grand entrance into the fray by ramming the plane she and her Master Kairi took to the Hanging Gardens right at Semiramis, who barely gets a magic shield up in time.
• Red Baron: The Knight of Treachery.
• Red Is Heroic: A Heroic Spirit whose signature color is red, but the "heroic" part is zig-zagged given her past deeds and merciless nature to her enemies, but she ultimately does have some semblance of honor and is genuinely friendly and loyal to those on her side.
• Replacement Goldfish: She more-or-less becomes Kairi's surrogate daughter for the duration of the war, possibly projecting his dead step-daughter onto her.
• The Rival: After their great battle, she really wants to fight Sieg and Astolfo again.
• Rivals Team Up: Teams up with Sieg to take down Avicebron's golem.
• Royal Bastard: She's a homunculus created by Artoria's sister Morgan, making her King Arthur's illegitimate child. After being rapidly raised to adulthood over a few years, Mordred is excited to learn that she is the child of the King of Knights, only to be badly rebuffed when she reveals this to her "father" and denied the love and acceptance she craved. Mordred's rage at being denied at what she thought was rightfully hers leads her to start the rebellion that upends Camelot and ends in both Arthur's and Mordred's deaths.
• Scary Impractical Armor: Her armor wouldn't look out of place in a Dark Fantasy setting such as Warhammer.
• Shock and Awe: A variant; while she can't shoot conventional lightning bolts, she releases red lightning from her body and weapon whenever she uses her Prana Burst skill.
• Single-Stroke Battle: Subverted. She managed to disarm her father of Excalibur after their first clash, but Artoria just brought out her lance and killed her with that.
• Smoking Is Cool: Humorously subverted. She gets a cigarette from Kairi and takes a long draft...and then starts hacking her lungs out.
• Spell Blade: Similar to her father's Alter form, Mordred can charge her blade with her Prana to increase her range and striking power. She does this against Spartacus's giant form to slice down the top half of his body, doing enough damage to finally trigger his suicidal explosion.
• Stripperiffic: Her civilian outfit is a pair of Daisy Dukes, a tube top, and an open red jacket. In the light novel and manga she isn't happy about it until Kairi explains it was cheap.
• Super-Toughness: She has Endurance A-Rank and when combined with her armor, Magical Resistance and Battle Continuation she can take a lot of punishment before going down. In the anime, Frankenstein's boosted Noble Phantasm isn't enough to kill her due to her Master spending one Command Seal of his own to assist her, basically causing the two boosts to cancel each other out. She's only moderately injured and is back in fighting shape quickly. Her later fight with Sieg also show this as after surviving the backlash of Balmung and Clarent Blood Arthur colliding, both of which are A+ Ranked Anti-Army Noble Phantasms, she's still raring to go and again in a later fight against Spartacus in his monster form where he punches her into the air and she barely seems winded afterwards. Unlike Siegfried, Karna and Achilles, though, she has no super defensive Noble Phantasm, she's just that tough.
• Sword and Fist: If she can't kill something with her sword, she'll happily use her fist to do the job instead.
• Sword Beam: In addition to her A+ Rank Noble Phantasm Clarent Blood Arthur, she can charge and fire a weaker energy blast from her sword, which she showcases during her battle with Berserker of Black, which heavily wounds said Berserker.
• There Can Only Be One: After she's summoned, she destroys her catalyst to make sure none of her fellow knights can be manifested with it in future Grail wars.
• Tranquil Fury: She was surprisingly calm while beheading Celenike. After watching her use her Command Spells to force Astolfo to attempt murder on Sieg, Mordred must've been at her angriest at that point.
• Throwing Your Sword Always Works: She throws her sword at a golem during a fight and beats up some others with brute strength. This is lampshaded by an incredulous Kairi.
• Tomboy: A straighter example than her father, who was more of a Tomboy with a Girly Streak. She loves fighting, has a brash and extroverted personality, and refuses to associate herself with femininity.
• Tomboyish Ponytail: Wears her hair in a ponytail, and she hates being associated with anything feminine.
• Tsundere: Acts as one toward her master Kairi Shishigou.
• Undying Loyalty: When Kairi is mortally wounded, he asks her to make a new contract with Fiore or Caules so she can live on and possibly still win the Grail. She instead sits down and says her place is with him, content to fade away as he dies.
• Unskilled, but Strong: Having little to no actual sword skills, her strategy boils down to wildly attacking with all tools at her disposal until whatever is in her way is dead. She makes it work beautifully, utterly demolishing the Yggdmillennia golems sent to assassinate her and Kairi and matching the godly skill of servants as powerful as Siegfried in the opening scene. That said, her recklessness gets her a broken arm and an injured shoulder when she tries to bull rush Chiron.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: As shown in a flashback in episode 6, she used to be idealistic and joined the Knights of the Round Table because she believed in Arturia and wanted to help make the world a better place. Then her mother Morgan told her that Artoria was her "father" and it all came crashing down, as Artoria's refusal to acknowledge her as her child and heir set Mordred on her path to becoming the Knight of Treachery.
• Waif-Fu: She has the same body size as her "father", which is to say about as thin as a bundle of sticks, yet can casually tear apart half a dozen golems nearly three times her size through a combination of swordsmanship, punches, kicks, and a good throwing arm.
• "Well Done, Daughter!" Girl: Was obsessed with earning Artoria's approval, but Artoria was less than thrilled about the whole "secret clone created by my evil sister" thing. Even then, she still has some traces of this. Her very wish is to prove her claim to become king in a way that Artoria would approve, by pulling the sword in the stone out. She refuses to use the Grail to directly to do it because she believes Arturia would never recognize her otherwise. In the end, she admits that what she wanted wasn't the throne, but simply to alleviate Artoria's suffering as an emotionless king and see her live like a human, akin to a child who wants to see their parent smile.
• Wild Hair: In complete contrast to her father's Prim and Proper Bun or her rarer smooth Tomboyish Ponytail, Mordred's hair looks like she woke up on the wrong side of the bed and pulled it into a rough ponytail to get ready. She's suitably much more aggressive and short-tempered than Artoria even on her worse days.
• Womanchild: She's very childish, has basically no patience and is bored by pretty much anything short of fighting. This is because she's mentally a child, and her accelerated growth gives her the physical appearance of an adult. The anime has Kairi outright asking her if she's a child after watching her throw a temper tantrum where she's rolling on the ground complaining about how going outside without him is boring.
• Yellow Lightning, Blue Lightning: Averted. The lightning-like beam released with the activation of Clarent Blood Arthur is blood red, averting the usual yellows and blues associated with lightning, albeit because of the fact that the lightning is her prana arcing off from her sword and dyed by her hatred of her father.
• Younger than She Looks: Because she's a Homunculus, her growth-rate is accelerated.
• You Don't Look Like You: In her non-canon appearance in the Fate/stay night DEEN anime, Mordred was very much◊ a spitting image◊ of Artoria. For her redesign in Apocrypha, she was given sharper eyes and a wilder hairstyle, so she doesn't look as identical to her father as before. On a related note, she's also been recast in both languages^note voiced in the above appearance by Houko Kuwashima and Julie Ann Taylor, a rarity in Japanese media, effectively signalling this is pretty much a completely new character from the ground up.

Archer

Atalanta / Atlanta Alter

Voiced by: Saori Hayami (Japanese), Allegra Clark (English)^{Other Languages}Analiz Sánchez (Latin American Spanish), Susana Sampedro (European Spanish), Ilaria Egitto (Italian) Janina Dietz (German), Bruna Nogueira (Brazilian Portuguese)

The huntress from Greek mythology summoned as a Servant of the Archer class. Her objective for seeking the Grail is to create a world where every child can be raised with love.

Her Noble Phantasm is "Phoebus Catastrophe: The Complaint Message On The Arrow", with which Atalanta lets forth a message on an arrow into the sky, requesting the aid of Artemis and Apollo. Seconds later, a rain of arrows strikes all enemies nearby. Her second Noble Phantasm is "Agrius Metamorphosis: Boar of Divine Punishment", which causes her to take on the monstrous aspects of the Calydonian Boar, thus changing her class into a Berserker servant, Atlanta Alter.

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• Abusive Parents: Hoo boy. Atalanta's father first left her to die in the wild simply because he wanted a boy, and then after reuniting with her, he forced her to marry someone instead of acknowledging her hunting prowess, eventually leading to Atalanta getting turned into a lion. This is a factor why she preferred the company of children...
• Antiquated Linguistics: More apparent in Japanese than in other languages. Her legend is quite old, after all. Even older than that of Achilles.
• Alas, Poor Villain: After developing a grudge against Jeanne, Atalanta has marked herself as a villain who's obviously on the wrong side of common morality, constantly talking down on Jeanne and refusing to listen to reason. But, when she actually died thanks to Achilles, she reverted to her old cool self and a several tearful dialogue about her unattainable dream and her actual opinion about it.
• Bears Are Bad News: As a huntress, Atalanta has a general bear motif, such as the paw print on her tunic and her antequated Survival of the fittest thoughts about stealing food.
• Black-and-White Morality: A variation. Due to her past, Atalanta operates on a very clear idea of morality; children are good and so anyone who is helping children also is good, while anyone who harms a child, regardless of the situation, is evil. She falls into Black-and-White Insanity when dealing with Jack the Ripper, as she is near completely Mind Raped by the illusion created when Jack dies, and than calls Ruler evil for purifying the souls in front of her. She later confronts Achilles about his beliefs regarding protecting children, to which he gives a brutally honest answer that it isn't possible to protect all children all the time, causing her to react with disgust.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: It's implied that Atalanta became a victim of this by Jack the Ripper post-mortem, which is shown with the black aura that was stuck on her arm. The anime glossed this over, but the Light Novel delves into this more: It contains souls of particularly vengeful children from Jack that continued to demand retribution, and while Atalanta was more than capable to exorcise it, she chose not to, since she considered her inability to save the children a sin worth being punished with such brainwashing, leading her to become an avatar of hate and rage against Jeanne later. Also exclusively in the Light Novel, when Achilles delivered a fatal blow on her, he also yelled at the spirit to stop disturbing her, and she regained her old self shortly after.
• The Cameo: Briefly mentioned in Fate/EXTRA. The manga adaptation has her cameo and features the same design.
• Cat Girl: Has cat ears and tail, though she does not behave like a typical cutesy Cat Girl. She's all business. This is a reference to her fate in mythology, getting turned into a lion for being unable to keep it in her pants after a lifetime of being a Celibate Hero and going at it hard with her husband in either Zeus or Aphrodite's temple on their wedding night. In front of the statue (which were considered extensions of whoever the statue depicted, be it god or man). She doesn't seem to mind the after-effect, according to her profile.
• Charged Attack: She can increase the power of her arrows by channeling her Prana into them before firing, which is shown by them gaining a green aura. When she goes One-Winged Angel, her arrows become permanently shrouded in black magical energy.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Left to die in the wild during infancy because her dad doesn't like her gender? Check. Getting bullied by her peers because she's a woman to the point that one of the few men she actually respected died? Check. Being used by her father who just wanted to use her as his own ego-boosting tool despite yearning for an unconditional love from her family? Check. Trapped in a loveless marriage and then turned into a lion because of the above? Check. Atalanta's past life is 100% shit.
• Death from Above: Her Phoebus Catastrophe, which calls forth a literal hail of arrows. Upon using Agrius Metamorphosis she loses the ability to activate Phoebus Catastrophe, but she can use her augmented power and arrows to unleash a similar rain of black arrows powerful enough to injure Jeanne.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: On introduction, Atalanta was a self-assured, no-nonsense cool-headed Servant that coldly rejected Achilles' advances and even readily abandoned her old Master since he showed a sign of weakness which caused him to fall into Amakusa's scheme. One trek to madness later and getting relieved from that by Achilles' sacrifice, she managed to show her warm side to Achilles before perishing.
• Despair Event Horizon: She crossed this in Episode 18, in combination of being subjected into a Mind Rape where she's shown that the world she dreamed for is impossible to reach with the state of children abused everywhere, her pleas to Jeanne to save the children since she couldn't do it herself (since the only way she knows are fighting or hunting, none of that would save the children) outright ignored and then the children chose to be exorcised, basically like those that she wanted to save giving her a middle finger. After all these, it's little wonder that the only way Atalanta could cope was to give in to rage and madness and hating Jeanne.
• Died in Your Arms Tonight: Dies in Achilles' arms after he fatally wounds her and brings her back to her senses.
• Does Not Like Men: According to her backstory, despite being surrounded by men, Atalanta usually disliked how barbarous they could get, especially considering their backgrounds in Ancient Greece, in addition of her own chastity vow and these men also constantly belittled her accomplishments because she's a woman. Not to mention, her father was the one who left her to die, because he wanted a boy. The only exceptions to this were Achilles' father Peleus, who's noted to be at least courteous to her, and Meleager, who fell in love with Atalanta and gave her the Calydonian Boar's hide for being the first to hurt it despite himself having been the one who actually killed it, but even then, Atalanta only gave them small levels of respect. By the end of her life, she finally had one man that she considered an extraordinary exception: Achilles.
• Dying as Yourself: Regains her sanity shortly before dying and having a tearful last few moments with Achilles.
• Fatal Flaw: Turns out, her love for children became her greatest flaw because one of her opponents was a child, and an abused and neglected child at that. Long story short, it was a logic bomb, and it sent her into madness.
• Fragile Speedster: Endurance Rank E plus Agility Rank A means she's gonna run rings around her enemies but be in a big bind if they actually get a good hit on her. She even has a skill that lets her overtake an enemy's action against her while it's happening so she can avoid it and potentially counterattack. She becomes a Lightning Bruiser upon going One-Winged Angel.
• Friend to All Children: Because she received mercy as a child, Atalanta was very fond of children during her life, but felt alienated that she's an adult surrounded by children, so the least she can do is hope to build a better future for the children. This, unfortunately, includes the children forming Jack the Ripper, and eventually proves that even a noble trait can lead someone into madness.
• Gendercide: Downplayed, localized example - her Complaint Message on the Arrow Noble Phantasm randomly calls on either Apollo or Artemis to rain down arrows to kill all women (Artemis) or all men (Apollo) in the area, in reference to how the two gods in question killed Niobe's daughters and sons respectively when she mocked Leto for "only" having two children, and twins at that. This feature was removed after her Retool and now affects all enemies regardless of gender.
• Glass Cannon: Endurance Rank E basically means she's gonna drop in one or two solid hits, but her arrows are strong enough to injure Siegfried. She turns into a Lightning Bruiser with her One-Winged Angel form.
• Go Mad from the Revelation: Absolutely breaks down when Jeanne exorcises the resentful spirits of the children that make up Jack the Ripper, and the fact that the children chose Jeanne's methods instead of her idea, in addition of realizing what kind of world she's in, spurred her into a path of madness out of grief.
• Go Out with a Smile: A heart-to-heart with Achilles as she dies brings her peace.
• Green and Mean: Played with, as she's pretty decent as a person but her alignment is Neutral Evil. Unless she's pissed off...then she goes chaotic evil.
• Humanizing Tears: When she cried after Jack the Ripper's death, it was meant to be unnerving and marking her fall to madness. In the anime, when she was in the middle of dying as herself? It showed a vulnerable side of the otherwise unflappable Atalanta. It was the other way around with the Light Novel, since Achilles was the one who cried and that still managed to bring the peace within her.
• I Am Not Left-Handed: Her Aesthetics of the Last Spurt skill allows her to let her opponent take initiative, then confirm his actions in order to overtake them, as she did in the footraces of her legend.
  "Go ahead. I shall pass in front of you afterward like a squall."
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Jeanne stabs her with her standard through one of her wings created by Agrius Metamorphosis. She just rips the standard out in a burst of blood and keeps fighting. Achilles later runs her through the stomach with his spear to stop her madness-fueled rampage.
• It's Personal: To say that she holds a grudge against Jeanne after the events of Episode 18 would be putting it lightly. The light novel implied that making it personal with Jeanne was the only way she could cope with her overwhelming despair and grief; she needed someone to blame.
• Little Bit Beastly: Possibly as a shoutout to her original legend, Atalanta has the ears and tail of a lion. She also wears gauntlets shaped like lion paws.
• Man Bites Man: At one point, she chomps down on Jeanne's shoulder after using Agrius Metamorphosis.
• Master Archer: Already a renowned archer from Greek myth, Atalanta demonstrates several impressive shots throughout the story.
• Mind Rape: Her weakness towards children causes her to let her guard down when Jack The Ripper's death unleashes an illusion upon her surroundings, causing Atalanta's mind to be near-possessed by the street urchins of London's will to live. This, combined with her own desire to protect children, causes her to plunge way far off the deep end.
• Mutual Kill: Is fatally impaled by Achilles, but her arrows fatally injure him in turn.
• My God, What Have I Done?: After Achilles fatally injured her to bring her back to her senses, she ended up wondering what she should have done otherwise about her unattainable dream instead of clinging to dream all the time, falling into madness and using something she usually disliked, her Agrius Metamorphosis. All the while, she cries her eyes out. This would carry over to her appearance in Fate/Grand Order, where she's regretful about this particular fall to madness.
• Named Weapons: Even though it is not a Noble Phantasm, her bow still has a name: Tauropolos, The Celestial Bow.
• Nature Hero: She was raised by bears, has animal ears and a tail, and has an animalistic mindset of stealing and hunting for food for survival. She also dislikes Berserker of Black because Frankenstein is manmade and "reeks of mechanical oil and machinery."
• Neutral Evil: Her In-Universe alignment. The story eventually shows a good reason for it: She clung to her dream of a world where children were loved so much, that she didn't even want to listen to reasons like the children being beyond saving in the first place and that letting the children live would end up letting evil spread.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: During the great battle of Volume 2, she decides to use her Complaint Message on the Arrow Noble Phantasm on Spartacus, condensed in an area just around him. Not only does it not kill him, but the amount of prana he gains from it causes him to grow dragon heads on his shoulders, three extra sets of arms, more legs and grew exponentially in size, before violently exploding.
• One-Winged Angel: Agrius Metamorphosis, which grants her the power of the Calydonian Boar she helped slay in her legend. For the record, this was a giant beast sent by Artemis that all the heroes of the current time period with the exception of Heracles came together to hunt. It gives her a power boost equal to that of Mad Enhancement Rank A, with the unstableness that comes with the package. She usually wouldn't use this, but she ends up doing so to fight against Jeanne, who she can't defeat otherwise.
• Paint It Black: Agrius Metamorphosis turns her clothing black upon activation, the same color as the Calydonian Boar's hide. For extra measure, she's actually wearing its hide.
• Primal Stance: Once she activates Agrius Metamorphosis, she assumes this stance for the rest of the fight with Jeanne and Achilles, highlighting the savagery of the form and the total loss of her reason.
• Principles Zealot: Her opposition to Jeanne in Episode 18 borders on this. Being a Friend to All Children, Atalanta wants to save the children under Jack's thrall, even when Jeanne tells her those children died long ago and they will only find peace if they pass into the afterlife. Even when Jeanne gives them the Lord's blessing, Atalanta flips out and attacks her.
• Punch-Clock Villain: Not really "evil", despite what her alignment might suggest, but just doing what she feels is required of her being loyal to her Master and what must be done to win. She just so happens to be on the side of the Big Bad. After episode 18, she stops being that, since she finds a personal beef against Jeanne.
• Pure Is Not Good: Her wish for the Holy Grail was very simple and pure: A world where children were loved. It was so pure that it drove her into madness to chase that wish.
• Rain of Arrows: Phoebus Catastrophe fires a single arrow into the sky that rains down as hundreds if not thousands more that she can spread across an entire battlefield or concentrate into a single area. After using Agrius Metamorphosis, she can do this at any time by calling Tauropoios' name, forcing Jeanne to use her own Noble Phantasm until Achilles intervened.
• Raised by Wolves: Well, bears actually, though the anime shows her personally being scooped off the forest floor by Artemis^note Bears being one of the animals sacred to Artemis, this may have been a metaphor, however. Because of this, she has the same egotism and view on life and death as an animal, for example considering stealing food from others a natural action to survive.
• Red Baron: The Chaste Huntress.
• Showgirl Skirt: Her skirt is patterned like one, though without any transparency in the front, but it is just short enough that it gives a loving view of her racewinning thighs from the side by way of her Grade A Zettai Ryouiki.
• Sanity Slippage: After episode 18, Atalanta starts down a path to become a lot more mentally unhinged, slowly transforming from a calm huntress into a single-minded, enraged avenger that only cares about killing Jeanne.
• Say My Name: "RULEEERRR!!!"
• Shapeshifting: Agrius Metamorphosis gives her a limited version of this, as shown when she grows a pair of black wings during her fight with Jeanne.
• Super-Speed: As she was the fastest mortal in Greek myth, she possesses incredible speed exceeding that of almost any other Servant.
• This Is Unforgivable!: Her reaction to Ruler killing Jack the Ripper once she realizes Jack's true nature is become wholly focused on killing Jeanne for it..
• Tragic Dream: Her dream was simple enough: A world where children are loved. When she was summoned and eventually encountered with Jack the Ripper, she realized that her dream was WAY too far out of reach, because she's in a world where children were abused without mercy, and then it got even worse when Jeanne performs what is essentially an exorcism on Jack the Ripper to prevent her evils from spreading and to release the tormented souls, but in Atalanta's eyes, that translated to 'some children just can't be loved or saved', an affront to her dream. Then Achilles accidentally gave a blunt statement that it's realistically impossible to save all children. Despite so, she still clung to the dream and fell into madness because of it.
• Tragic Hero: While she is on the villain's side, Atalanta's very own positive trait of loving children and her Tragic Dream ended up being her Fatal Flaw that sent her straight to her downfall. As expected from someone taken from the Greek Mythology.
• Tragic Monster: Becomes one upon using the Agrius Metamorphosis and being completely consumed by hatred for Jeane and grief for the children of Jack The Ripper she killed. It takes Rider of Red to put her down to make her come to her senses.
• Unintentional Backup Plan: She is sent to back up Spartacus after Shakespeare goads him into attacking the Black Faction headquarters.
• Unusual Ears: Possesses animal ears as part of her 'raised by bears' motif.
• Unstoppable Rage: She is consumed by fury towards Jeanne after their confrontation in episode 18 because Jeanne comitted an unforgive sin in her eyes.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Deconstructed. Despite what her father did to her as an infant, Atalanta still somewhat yearned for an unconditional love from a parent to their own child from that father. Unfortunately, she's in the Greek Mythology whereas women emancipation wasn't that big and her being 'the token girl' amoungst Greek Heroes wasn't enough to alleviate that within the culture, so her father still saw her as a tool to boost his own ego. He told her to marry against her will, leading her to get turned into a lion. In the end, Atalanta really never got the unconditional love from parents she yearned for, and only hoped that other children won't meet the same fate.
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: Agrius Metamorphosis grants her a power boost equal to that of Mad Enhancement Rank A, but also gives her the madness associated with that rank as well, to the point she can have a hard time recognizing her own Master. It's for this reason she doesn't use it normally, but against Jeanne she decides it's worth the risk, although by that time, she has become unhinged and obsessed with vengeance that she doesn't even care about the reason why she didn't want to use it in the first place.

Lancer

Karna

Voiced by: Koji Yusa (Japanese), Chris Niosi (English)^{Other Languages}Carlo Vázquez (Latin American Spanish), Suso Álvarez (European Spanish), Sébastien Hebrant (French), Massimiliano Lotti (Italian), Karim El Kammouchi (German), Fernando Ferraz (Brazilian Portuguese)

The older brother to the Pandava siblings born of their shared mother Kunti and the god of the sun Surya, an invincible Anti-Villain from the Mahabharata. Karna is summoned as a Lancer-class Servant, although he is also eligible for the Rider and Archer classes for being a master bowman and chariot warrior.

His Noble Phantasms are "Kavacha and Kundala: O Surya, Become Armor", his birthright armor and earrings made of solidified sunlight forged for him in the crib by his father; "Brahmastra Kundala: O Brahma, Curse Me", an Anti-Army/Anti-Country projectile said to have firepower equal to that of nuclear weaponry; and "Vasavi Shakti: O Sun, Abide to Death", where Karna gives his Kavacha and Kundala to Indra, lightning deity and King of the Gods as alms, and is in return allowed a single usage of an Anti-God javelin of unfathomable power that Indra did not even trust himself or his son with.

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• Adaptational Badass: He seems to be lacking his infamous three curses, which led to his demise at the hands of Arjuna in the original myth. The first it that the very ground itself will slow him down and not help him when it is the most needed, which led to his chariot being stuck in the mud. The second is he would forget all his knowledge in battle at the most pivotal moment against an equal enemy, which made him forget how to even shoot an arrow. The third is that he will be killed while distracted in the middle of combat, in which Arjuna kills him while he was busy removing his chariot wheel from the mud.
• Affably Evil: He is pitifully nice, but he is under the direct commands of Shirou Kotomine and he serves without complaint.
• Agent Peacock: He's both the strongest Servant in the war and the one with the most striking appearance, with Word of God pointing out that he basically looks like a particularly fabulous Visual Kei artist.
• Always Accurate Attack: His Brahmastra Kundala is an Anti-Country Noble Phantasm that can never miss.
• Anti-Magic: Rank C, making him immune to Magecraft with less than two verses of invocation. However, due to his immortal armor, the effective rank is far higher than that, since all magic is reduced to 1/10th of it's original strength before it afflicts him.
• Armor of Invincibility: Kavacha and Kundala, a coat of armor and earrings made of solidified sunlight that is stated to be "difficult to destroy even for the gods." They reduce all damage he takes by 9/10th's of its value before taking into account his natural defense, rendering him all but invulnerable in combat.
• Arrow Catch: Catches Atalanta's arrow aimed for Semiramis' head after she and Achilles take issue with Shirou Kotomine taking the Command Spells of their Masters, surprising both Servants in the process.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • He may be powerful, but he requires a ruinous mana upkeep to fight at full strength. Even when holding back, he fights at such a level that he will paralyze an ordinary Master through sheer upkeep alone. Vlad takes note of this during their battle, stating the power of his armor, lance and flames are so high that he (Vlad) could potentially win simply by out lasting Karna's Master.
  • His ultimate Noble Phantasm Vasavi Shakti. It's an EX-ranked attack that can kill even gods but, besides being complete overkill against most opponents, using it not only requires him to sacrifice Kavacha and Kundala; It's something that he can only use once and its usage weakens him to the point he's basically left a sitting duck afterwards.
• Badass Boast: Claims that there is little difference between fighting Siegfried and Ruler one by one, or at the same time. Later he repeats and enhances this boast by telling Vlad that he's completely unfazed of the idea of taking on both him, the rightful king, and his entire country. Considering what he's shown to be capable of later, this might even be an understatement of his power on his part.
• Badass Cape: One made of the fire of the sun no less.
• Badass Creed: His invocation of Vasavi Shakti certainly counts. He is being merciful by killing you instantly.

  Karna: "Know the mercy of the King of the Gods. With this single strike, I shall bestow upon you annihilation. Be reduced to cinders! VASAVI SHAKTI!"

• Baritone of Strength: More prominent in the English Dub, where Chris Niosi gives him a fairly deep timber despite looking like a Pretty Boy which further highlights him as one of the most dangerous opponents to face up against.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Despite being one of the kindest people in the Nasuverse (not that this is easy to tell), he's still a nigh-unstoppable warrior armed with the first Anti-Country Noble Phantasms seen in the series.
• BFS: His spear is far taller than he is, with a giant needle-shaped head, described lovingly in it's craftmanship as a divine work of art. When it is transformed into Vasavi Shakti, it becomes a behemoth of a weapon with a gigantic black and pink spearhead.
• Bilingual Bonus: Kavacha and Kundala is Sanskrit for "Armor" and "Earrings" respectively, referring to how he was born with his immortalizing golden armor-skin and earrings.
• Blood from the Mouth: After being fatally impaled by Sieg, he coughs blood which especially stands out against his white skin.
• Blood Knight: His excitement at fighting someone as strong as Siegfried is described as "a passion like a blazing inferno". Because he has no real wish of his own, his entire motivation is based on fighting powerful foes to his heart's content while living up to his virtuous principles. Even great injuries and his own imminent demise after having his heart pierced seem to please him more than anything else.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: He separates himself completely from morality since he accepts all ways of life as functional and natural. When ordered to kill the supervisor of the War, who is supposed to not be targeted by any participant, he doesn't even question the order, though he does find it a strange thing to do.
• Body Horror: He has weird golden growths on his chest along with a gemstone and some sickly veins. This is because his "armor" is actually part of his skin. If concept art◊ is to be trusted, the spiky parts of his armor actually dig into his flesh. He also suffers this when Vlad impales him from the inside out with Kazikli Bei, although it does negligible damage.
• Born Unlucky: Even though Karna was a warrior god on the battlefield, his life was awful, unfair and dishonorable to the point of him being a Cosmic Plaything. This is lampshaded by his Luck rank being D.
• Breakout Character: Despite being mostly a secondary antagonist throughout Apocrypha and his myth being lesser known to a Japanese audience, Karna's popularity caught on quickly, and made him easily one of the most popular Servants introduced in the novels. He ended up being a playable character in Fate/Extella and one of the most prominent Servants in Fate/Grand Order not introduced in the game itself.
• Brutal Honesty: Since he has the ability to read someone's proper self and see through their lies, he often ends up saying things he really shouldn't. While this makes him come across as callous to his peers, there is no ill will behind his words and he's merely trying to make things better by critiquing the things around him... not that anyone would get that at a glance.
• Cast from Hit Points: Using Vasavi Shakti decimates his body completely, to the degree where Siegfried can strike him down with one decisive blow afterwards.
• Creepy Blue Eyes: His stare is intimidating to the extreme. Jeanne even compares its piercing sharpness to a blade.
• Deadpan Snarker: According to a line from the Mahabharata, "His teeth are like arrows and swords, and his tongue a spear". This trait manages to piss off Gordes and Vlad at the speed of a freight train.
• Drama-Preserving Handicap: He consumes extraordinary amounts of Prana so he cannot go all-out in a fight without risking death by Prana starvation. Due to how obscenely powerful he is, it hasn't make much of a difference so far even when faced with the strongest of the Black Servants, who at best can only stalemate him. It took three servants and one master working together to bring him down.
• The Dreaded: Jeanne's revelation warns her that Karna is "dangerous beyond compare", and Siegfried feels genuine fear when he realizes that Karna is powerful enough to damage him.
• Died Standing Up: Very likely because he was too badass to fall over, though downplayed as he's leaning on his spear somewhat.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: Weaponised. In life, the credit for several of Karna's great deeds were usurped by others, so unless his true identity is revealed, all his statistics appear to be half of what they really are to onlooking Masters, making him dangerously easy to underestimate.
• Excellent Judge of Character: Karna's eyes instantly see through deception and he has a natural insight for the secrets and insecurities of those around him. This is not a good thing; his lack of tact and inability to fully understand the subtle nuances of human emotion just cause him to come across as a jerk constantly prodding at the most sensitive places of everyone around him, even when from his perspective he's just offering well-meaning constructive criticism.
• Extreme Doormat: He may speak in an apathetic tone, but he is among the most obedient Servants in the war.
• Eye Beams: From his right eye he can fire his Brahmastras, and at Anti-Army strength they're pretty much as destructive as most other Servant's strongest Noble Phantasms.
  "Weapons are but the opening act. A true hero kills with a stare!"
• Fantastic Nuke: Brahmastra Kundala. The Noble Phantasm is described as an Anti-Country Noble Phantasm that is said to be "comparable to nuclear weapons". Even its weaker version, a regular Brahmastra, is an Anti-Army Noble Phantasm at its lowest setting. Then there's Vasavi Shakti, a weapon so powerful that it is able to destroy virtually anything, be they a Servant, Divine Beast, Dragon, or a Divine Spirit (read: a god) it's thrown at. The latter takes a shield forged by Hephaestus, the Greek god of blacksmiths, that creates a miniature world to block, and even then the shield is destroyed and its wielder, Astolfo, is horribly damaged.
• Fatal Flaw: Karna's lack of understanding of the subtleties of human emotions, combined with his tragically perceptive insight into those around him. Because he criticizes people's actions and motives in an earnest attempt to help them develop, he frequently pisses people off without really trying to.
• Flight: By focusing flames into his feet like thrusters, he can fly in the air.
• Flying Brick: As listed below under Lightning Bruiser, Karna is a ridiculously strong and durable Servant while also possessing an excellent A-Rank in agility. His ability to fly puts him squarely in this trope, as none of the other Servants of the war are able to take flight without using a mount.
• Gold Makes Everything Shiny: While his armor heavily invokes this trope, it is not actually gold, and instead crystallized sunlight forged by his father Surya.
• The Good King: Massively averted, though the circumstances were completely out of his hands. His home myth involves a great deal of things going to shit because he was not allowed to be this outside of the city state his friend Duryodhana gave him. Though the eldest of Kunti's children, he was born out of wedlock because she wanted to test if the Mantra she got from a sage that would allow her to procreate with any god she invoked even worked, a year before she was officially married to the king. As having a child out of wedlock was punishable by death, she sent him down the river in a basket, and he was instead adopted by a family of charioteers, invalidating his claim to the throne due to being part of the lower caste. Though his lineage was unknown to anyone besides his mother and Krishna, several characters throughout the Mahabharata mention that the only way to solve the conflict at hand peacefully would be making Karna king and exiling his younger brothers. As you might figure, this didn't happen, and tragedy unfolded.
• Go Out with a Smile: He feels satisfied with his titanic clash with Sieg even if it resulted in his defeat, passes away looking up at the sky, his smile partially obscured by all the blood he's covered in.
• Graceful Loser: It took three servants (Siegfried-through-Sieg), Astolfo, and Achilles (by way of loaning his shield to Astolfo) plus one master (Sieg's Command Seals) to defeat him. Sieg apologizes for this, since their fight was supposed to stay one-on-one. Karna is totally cool with this; he wanted Sieg to fight him with his full power, and, as Sieg's servant, Astolfo is rightfully part of said power.
• Guyliner: A dark red to match his cape.
• Hard Light: His impenetrable armor-skin is made of solid sunlight.
• Heroic Willpower: The narration mentions that despite being blessed with a great number of powerful weapons in his lifetime, the strongest weapon in his arsenal is by far his willpower. Considering Vasavi Shakti, this says a lot. He displays this willpower by doing such things as completely ignoring the pain of being impaled from the inside out by Vlad three times over so he could counterattack him and forcing himself to stay alive through fatal wounds to talk to Sieg about the nature of heroism.
• Honor Before Reason: Very, very much so a positive example of this. He asks Caules to save his and his teammates' old Masters despite having no obligation or reason to do so, simple because not saving the innocent would be a blow to his pride as a Kshatriya.
• Humble Hero: He's called the Hero of Charity or Saint of Generosity interchangeably, and it really shows why. Even as he dies, he claims he didn't really get to do anything Servant-like at all, despite having the most intense battles in the entire war and saving the old Masters of him and his fellow Red Servants despite having no obligation to do so.
• I Am Not Left-Handed: Due to his mana issues, he has to keep a lower profile most of the time, though he is still extremely powerful even then. When he finally goes all out in Volume 5, Sieg can barely even defend against him at all, despite having exceeded the original Siegfried in power.
• I Am the Noun: When asked by Shirou Kotomine as to what his wish is, Karna responds that he doesn't have one, because "I am just a spear". Everyone present is thoroughly shocked that his only thing even resembling a desire is to rematch with Siegfried.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: He's killed when Sieg runs Astolfo's sword through his chest, a weakness that was only made possible by Karna sacrificing his Armor of Invincibility to use Vasavi Shakti.
• Implacable Man: Absolutely nothing short of having his innards impaled by Vlad's stakes from the inside out has done anything but mildly inconvenience him.
• Implausible Fencing Powers: To the point where his skill alone is said to step into the realm of the gods. In the original novel when he faces Siegfried, who is definitely also this trope, Karna manages to strike him a total of 72 times in vital areas before realizing a Noble Phantasm is the reason why his opponent isn't dead or dying already.
• Impossibly Cool Weapon: Vasavi Shakti◊, the almighty weapon of the Thunder God Indra which he is allowed to use once because Indra felt guilty about exploiting his endless kindness by asking for his armor and earrings.
• Incendiary Exponent: His Prana Burst (Flames) skill imbues all of his weapons with flames.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: An interesting example in that while Karna is a saintly All-Loving Hero to the very core, as he never learned the subtleties of human emotion, he comes off as a blunt dick who pricks and prods at the hidden feelings, emotions and secrets of all those he meets.
• The Juggernaut: He's everything short of completely invincible and confirmed to be the strongest Servant in the entire war, able to easily defeat Vlad III on his own. Shirou Kotomine reasons that no Servant in the war besides Achilles holds even a candle to him. And by God was he proven right when Karna shows us just what he can really do against Siegfried.
• Just Toying with Them: Completely averted. While he might hold back in a fight, it's because he doesn't want to burden his Master with the ruinous upkeep his power demands anymore than necessary, not because he looks down on his foes. When Jeanne stops on the highway to confront him, Karna dive-bombs her almost as soon as the civilian driver that brought her there is out of sight. When fighting Siegfried and Vlad III he only uses slightly more than the necessary power to counter their attacks, saving his more impressive displays for when he's in a bad spot.
• Kill It with Fire: His standard procedure if things go south is lots of fire. The first time Vlad has him at a disadvantage, he seemingly detonates a miniature sun around himself to obliterate his opponent's stakes, and the second time, he summons a sky-high pillar of fire to both burn away the stakes in himself, send the ones going right at him flying away, and heal his wounds.
• Kill the God: His Vasavi Shakti Noble Phantasm is a single-use spear of lightning powerful enough to be considered of "Anti-God" power.
• Lawful Good: His In-Universe alignment. Even Jeanne recognizes him as one of impeccably pure and noble character. In the original video game draft, he was planned as Chaotic Evil on paper but actually Lawful Good due to his Undying Loyalty resulting in him ending up on the wrong side.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: If he starts invoking the name of a Hindu god, run.

"O Agni." Cue massive explosion.

• Lightning Bruiser: Karna is incredibly fast, nearly immortal and strikes with enough force to dent Siegfried's immortal body.
• Living Lie Detector: Karna physically cannot be deceived and can see through the personality and thoughts of everyone around him by body language, eyeline and breathing rhythm alone to gather the full extent of everything they say.
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: Occasionally uses his levitating shoulderpads as improvised shields, though given that he can shrug off Balmung with them, it's probably not improvised.
• Major Injury Underreaction: Karna may actually have reached a whole new level of this. During his fight with Vlad, he notices at one point that his stomach begins to churn. Not two pages later, wooden stakes start impaling him from the inside out. His response is to look slightly annoyed before burning the stakes away.
• Misunderstood Loner with a Heart of Gold: This is actually a superpower of his: he was so isolated from society that he learned to read the personality and thoughts of others.
• Moses in the Bullrushes: Part of his mythological background, since he was a princess' son born out of wedlock.
• Muscles Are Meaningless: Incredibly thin, but still has the strength to pierce Siegfried's Armor of Fafnir through a combination of strength, inhuman skill and the power of his weapon.
• Nigh-Invulnerability: Kavacha and Kundala reduces all damages Karna takes, magical, physical or even conceptual, to one tenth of its original value. This, in combination with the ridiculous toughness of the Kavacha and Kundala, makes him all but immortal. Best displayed when one of Vlad's stakes catches him and shoots him into the air, only for the razor-sharp spike to bend 90 degrees from continuously pushing into his skin.
• Noble Demon: He takes commands from Shirou Kotomine and does so with Undying Loyalty. He's also a really nice guy, bordering on All-Loving Hero status.
• No-Sell: Due to his borderline immortality, he ends up doing this a lot. Even Sieg hitting him with Balmung doesn't make him do much more than put up his spear or shoulderpads as shields and walking away completely untouched.
• No Social Skills: See Jerk with a Heart of Gold. Because he grew up without the love and care of his mother, he never learned the subtle parts of human emotion. In combination with his ability to read people's inner self and see through their lies, he exposes people's secrets and prods at the emotions they want to hide away. Because of this, he was forced to fight a lot of people in life that saw him as "a man who denies and hates everything" when in fact the opposite is true.
• Older Than Dirt: Later Nasuverse lore would pinpoint the Kurukshetra War as happening in 5000BC, making Karna this by default and explaining how he's so outlandishly different in appearance to the culture that lauded him for millenia.
• Only Friend: Similarly to Gilgamesh, he only had one real friend during life, Duryodhana, who stood up for him when the Pandavas bombarded him with insults and made him king of a city state under his family's control to make sure no one would slight him so casually ever again. Karna's mythological basis is arguably the Ur-Example of Positive Friend Influence and Toxic Friend Influence, as well as Undying Loyalty that went both ways; Duryodhana once caught Karna more or less straddling his wife and her pearl necklace scattered all over the floor;^note For context: Duryodhana's wife had gotten up to greet her husband as she heard his footsteps approaching, and Karna, thinking she was running away from a board game she wasn't doing so good in, gently pulled her hand and fell with her when he saw her move away from the table]. There genuinely was zero ill intent, and Karna was unique in being a borderline Celibate Hero who only had a single wife who he slept with for procreation and nothing else compared to the polyamorous Hindu nobility of the time. And instead of assuming anything asked if his wife would like him to just pick up said pearls, or if he should string them while he was at it.
  Karna: “I owe Duryodhana a debt. For some reason, that impudent and timid man seems so bright to me. It may be blasphemy against my father but, occasionally, I feel that that sweet light is the warmth of the sun.”
• Person of Mass Destruction: His ultimate battle with Sieg shows him to truly be this, capable of a destructive output superior to any non-Gilgamesh Servant ever, raining lightning, fire and atomic explosions upon Sieg, who only barely stays alive through it by spamming Balmung over and over before being bailed out by Astolfo using Achilles' shield. Simply the activation of his ultimate Noble Phantasm, Vasavi Shakti, creates an apocalyptic scenery where the sky turns red and the ground hundreds of meters away from him melts, erupts and explodes over and over again.
• Playing with Fire: He possesses A-Rank Mana Burst (Flames), which he can use to breathe fire and create enormous pillars of fire around himself to stop attacks. This ability is so strong that he almost incinerates Dracula with it, having the vampire weakened on his knees before Shirou cuts off the mana flow to the Red Servants.
• Power Gives You Wings: He is able to grow giant wings of fire for a few seconds at a time, only limited from having them permanently due to a lack of prana. In the anime this is changed to have him use flames as thrusters through his feet.
• The Power of the Sun: His armor is made of solid sunlight, making it completely impervious to damage. His fire-based Brahmastra Kundala and Prana Burst (Flames) also ignite the weapon he holds with the flames of the sun. He can also eject gouts of sunfire from the golden parts of his armor at will.
• Pretty Boy: Jeanne even notes that every part of him, from his unkempt hair to his golden armor, is beautiful in its own right, but becomes scary when combined with his demeanor.
• Punch-Clock Villain: He's evil because he's on the Big Bad's team and is loyal to his superiors no matter what. That's it.
• Pyrrhic Victory: He inflicts this. Vlad temporarily overwhelms him after several back-and-forth fights, but only after being turned into Dracula against his will and sunlight-powered flames still hurt him like hell, and he dies to Shirou shortly after. Sieg burns up literally everything he has left in the tank save his Frankenstein-induced Taking You with Me attack to defeat him and costs him and Astolfo the incredibly powerful Noble Phantasm lent to them by Achilles.. In his home myth, out of millions upon millions of combatants, only twelve people walked away alive from the Kurukshetra War, he wasn't one of them, and all of them wished they had never joined up for it to begin with
• Readings Are Off the Scale: His Noble Phantasm statistic is EX, which indicates that one of his Noble Phantasms (later revealed to be Vasavi Shakti) is so powerful that no other rank can do it justice.
• Red Baron: "Son of the Sun God". Less intimidatingly, he is also referred to as the "Saint of Generosity."
• Semi-Divine: As written above, he is the son of Surya and became one with him as a god after his death, so he has an A rank in Divinity.
• Shock and Awe: In addition to his Mana Burst (Flames), he's capable of summoning weapons (presumably Astras) made of pure red lightning.
• Shoulders of Doom: Giant floating sun-shaped shoulders that holds his Badass Cape of fire in place.
• The Stoic: Karna rarely shows any emotion simply because he perceives things as "normal" and therefore has no reason to be emotive, but in reality he is a gentle man who is always deep in thought.
• Story-Breaker Power: While Karna is weaker than he was in the legends about him, he is still so ridiculously powerful that not even Siegfried and Vlad III can do any significant damage to him outside of a stalemate. The revelation that he has still not fought at his full potential is horrifying to say the least, and when he finally does so in Volume 5, not even Sieg, who by this point has surpassed even the original Siegfried in strength and is possibly the strongest Servant remaining, can't do much more than stay alive against him.
• Superpower Lottery: The jackpot winner of this, without a doubt. He's born with borderline immortality, is both unreasonably strong and fast, skilled with the use of every kind of weapon to the point where he has a skill on the basis that other Age of Gods era demigods stole the credit for his deeds because they couldn't match them, and can unleash blasts of sunfire with a strength equal to some Noble Phantasms with what seems to be the same amount of effort it takes a normal person to breathe. Sounds good right? Well, it gets better. In addition to this, he's armed with the Brahmastra, a weapon blamed to this day in superstition for an abnormal amount of radiation in the Indian Peninsula, which he can fire with enough power behind it that he considered it a "finishing move" on Siegfried despite knowing of his invincibility. And to top it all off, he can sacrifice his invulnerability for a weapon that can slay Divine Spirits with ease which's mere invocation turns his surroundings into a hellscape beyond description.
• Super-Strength: Siegfried reasons that his strength is nothing short of absurd, given that it combined with his godlike skill can pierce his Armor of Fafnir. Though Dracula sends him flying with a blow later on, Karna is able to stop the incredibly strong vampire's full-on charge by digging his heels in.
• Too Awesome to Use: Karna's Vasavi Shakti is a javelin so powerful it can even kill gods, but Karna has to give up the armor that protects him to activate it and It Only Works Once. In addition, it also weakens him greatly upon usage, to the point that it was the only reason Sieg was able to beat him. Fittingly, his legend notes that Karna has never actually used the spear while he was alive.
• Undying Loyalty: His home-epic was big on the interstice between Honor Before Reason and To Be Lawful or Good, so this is in big time effect which even other Servants on his team finds rather odd. He serves without question anyone with authority over him because that is how a subordinate should be. Even if they are undoubtedly evil and have him commit horrible crimes, he will follow them to the depths of hell itself. In the past this bit him in the ass when he chose his life-long friend who would never abandon him, Duryodhana, over returning to the family that had cast him aside and treated him unfairly when given the chance by Krishna and his mother, Kunti.
  Karna, to his mother: "I understand your words. To join hands with my five brothers and return to my proper place. That would be a story filled with light, without a single fault. But I wish for you to answer one thing. Do you not feel that those words of yours were too late? If you do not feel that this is a shame, then please answer. You, who declare yourself my mother, if you yourself have done no wrong, then accept the past without feeling ashamed of yourself."
  • However, this is interestingly played with in regards to relationship with Shiro. When at first Shiro is relaying his Master's commands to Karna (albeit commands influenced by Shiro in the first place), Karna follows them regardless of any personal doubts. However, once Shiro takes full command of the Red Faction, Karna makes it clear that he doesn't approve and the only reason he's not joining up with Atalanta and Achilles in challenging him is because he wants to fairly hear Shiro's reasons out first. After that, he agrees to follow Shiro...but with the condition that he gets to fight Saber of Black again. Once the final fight begins, despite being ordered to finish off Ruler, he intentionally goes after Sieg first to have his fight, even going so far as to tell Caules where the former Red Masters are to get them to safety.
• Warrior Prince: He is the first-born son of Kunti, one of the two wives of king Pandu, but as he was born before Kunti could consummate the marriage, he was technically born out of wedlock, and so to preserve his life, Kunti sent him down the river like Moses. Through the later actions of Duryodhana, he became The Good King of the city state of Anga.
• Weapon of Mass Destruction: Vasavi Shakti is an Rank EX Noble Phantasm that's so powerful the simple release of the weapon alone is enough to create a Sphere of Destruction around Karna that emits enough heat to destroy the landscape around him and turn the stone to lava. When fired, even a Command Seal-boosted Balmung, already a Rank A+ NP, can only slow its passage and it takes a Noble Phantasm capable of creating a miniature world to contain the blast (and said NP is ultimately destroyed in the process as well).
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: It's somewhat In the Blood. Karna always does the honorable thing in part because he's a virtuous person, but also because he doesn't want to bring shame upon his divine father and his mortal foster father's names.
• White Hair, Black Heart: Subverted. Karna is the embodiment of All-Loving Hero, Undying Loyalty and Lawful Good.
• World's Strongest Man: Considered one of the strongest Heroic Spirits that can be summoned by a Magus. He's the unquestionably most powerful Heroic Spirit in the entire story, with no one except his ally Achilles being able to give him serious competition. Even Ruler, buffed to be a much stronger Servant than she'd normally be, is terrified of his power.
• Worthy Opponent: He considers Siegfried a great warrior and wishes to fight him again. He gets his wish when Sieg challenges him during the climax of the War.

Rider

Achilles

Voiced by: Makoto Furukawa (Japanese), Joe Zieja (English)^{Other Languages}Irwin Daayán (Latin American Spanish), Damian Cortés (European Spanish), Olivier Premel (French), Matteo Zanotti (Italian), Benedikt Gutjan (German), Roberto Rodrigues (Brazilian Portuguese)

The hero of The Iliad and Chiron (Archer of Black)'s pupil in life.

His Noble Phantasms are "Troias Tragoidia: Tempestuous Immortal Chariot", his flying chariot drawn by three Divine horses that can execute a charge attack similar in fashion to a lawnmower; "Dromeus Komētēs: Comet Form", an ability he has as the fastest hero when he is not on his chariot that makes him so fast that he is basically teleporting, yet also forces him to expose his Achilles' Heel; "Andreias Amarantos: Amaranth of the Brave", which reduces damage from enemies lacking Divinity on par with his own (and entirely nullifies damage from the non-divine) if they strike anywhere other than said Achilles' Heel and "Diatrekhōn Astēr Lonkhē: The Spearhead of the Star Traversing the Sky", which recreates a sealed dimension within which Achilles and his target of choice must duke it out with their bare hands, with no divine intervention or outside help being able to intervene. His final Noble Phantasm is "Akhilleus Kosmos: The Miniature World Enclosed by the Azure Sky", which is the mythical Shield of Achilles that represents the entire world, and can protect him or anyone else from outside harm by phasing into the world depicted on the shield.

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• Achilles' Heel: He represents the Trope Namer, so of course his heel is his main weak point. However, sufficiently divine beings can harm him on other body parts, and he is able to kick Chiron in the face, heel-first, without suffering injury. He does intentionally dodge an arrow-shot aimed at his heel when he is knocked off his feet during a fight. Turns out, being hit in the heel actually deactivates Andreas Amarantos and reduces his speed, leaving him vulnerable, but still perfectly capable of kicking ass.
• Adaptational Heroism: Played with. He's set as a Red Servant, the antagonistic faction, but a lot of his questionably jerkish moments during the Trojan War in history are never mentioned, given a heroic light or just put in a backstory, which is usually just mentioned once in the Light Novel, not available to anime viewers (the desecration of Hektor's corpse was played like Achilles consumed with grief on the loss of Patroclus than him being a vengeful and petty douche). He's instead an overall friendly Punch-Clock Villain. Supplemental materials suggest a lot of his rage is contained in his Berserker incarnation, a class he qualifies for.
• Affectionate Nickname: He calls Atalanta "Missy" in the English dub.
• Arrow Catch: He's able to catch Archer of Black's arrows a few times.
• The Atoner: More emphasized in the light novel, but a lot of Achilles' actions in the later can be chalked up to be this trope. He dismissed Atalanta's concerns about saving children because of getting too excited with the prospect of a most awaited big duel with Chiron, when he realized that Atalanta has gone mad and obsessed in killing Jeanne before they're deployed, Achilles was shocked and eventually realized he's been neglectful at her concerns and decided to save her from madness. This has a double meaning because he was in the same place as her: On hearing the death of his bromance partner Patroclus, Achilles was taken over with rage and grief so he went after the killer, Hektor, defeated him and then desecrated his corpse. It's not something he's proud of in the end, so he wanted to ensure that won't happen to Atalanta.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Although he isn't as terrible as Karna, Achilles' mana upkeep is still incredibly intense, particularly when utilizing his chariot. It's said that the mana used to power it is enough to summon another Servant. As a result he rarely uses it, instead using his spear as if he was a Lancer.
• Badass Boast: Towards Siegfried and Frankenstein:
  Achilles: "I'm the Rider of the Red. Oh, you don't need to worry - I didn't already lose my steed before the war has even started. It's just such a waste to bring it out against just two opponents. I'd much rather ride out against all seven at once."
  Achilles: "Come... I'll let you feel what a true warrior is."
• Blade Spam: He likes doing this with his spear, with the effect visually appearing as green slashes that appear before bodies fall in pieces or projectiles explode in mid-air.
• Blood Knight: To the point where he is excited that someone can actually hurt him. He also refuses to spar with Karna in Volume 3, since he believes anything short of a battle to the death would be an insult to both their prides. During his brief fight with Siegfried and Frankenstein, he was disappointed when the former was forced to cancel using his Noble Phantasm and retreat. In the last quarter, this is deconstructed. This tendency made him fail to look after Atalanta at her worst and this led to their own deaths.
• Blood Upgrade: When Chiron first shoots him in the shoulder and draws blood, he gets extremely happy, seeming to look at his immortality as something that makes his battles boring instead of a blessing.
• Boisterous Bruiser: He's loud-mouthed, very much in it for the thrill, and frequently uses archaic but ultimately badass boasts. After he kills Chiron, however, he loses a lot of his former cheer, adopting a calmer, melancholy attitude as he goes to his death fighting Atalanta.
• Cape Snag: Chiron manages to slam his foot down on Achilles' scarf during their final duel after landing a powerful disorienting blow to his face, preventing Achilles from being able to get away as he unleashes a vicious No-Holds-Barred Beatdown.
• Chivalrous Pervert: He's told to be the kind of "charming man that could get even a virtuous housewife flustered with but a greeting". He also flirts with Atalanta, as discussed by Semiramis:
  Assassin of Red: "He went after Archer, it seems... As expected of our Rider, I suppose. Archer and he hail from the same lands, after all - almost certainly, he is making advances at her even as they pursue him."
• Cool Horses: His chariot is pulled by three Divine horses, Balius, Xanthius and Pedasos.
• Cradling Your Kill: Holds Atalanta in his arms as they're both dying.
• Deadpan Snarker: Not Achilles himself, but one of his horses actually displays this trait in Volume 4.
• Delayed "Oh, Crap!": He was taking his sweet time listening to Chiron's last words, until he realized too late that Chiron set him up to be sniped on the heel with his Noble Phantasm.
• Dogged Nice Guy: As much as he hits on Atalanta, she usually treats him with disinterest. He's also getting concerned with Atalanta slipping into madness after her encounter with Jeanne and Jack, and in the end, even after saving Atalanta, while she's grateful, he still couldn't break her chaste attitude.
• Dying Curse: In the Light Novel, which was cut from the anime, Achilles became a victim of this by Penthesilea. Because of having regrets of killing someone beautiful, which pissed Penthesilea off, she gave a curse that one day Achilles would use his spear to impale a beloved person. He ended up impaling Atalanta to death with it.
• Everyone Has Standards: As much of a Blood Knight as he is, he is very loyal to his Master and those he considers his friends. Unfortunately his loyalty works against him, as he initially can't bring himself to fight Chiron since they used to be friends before the war, and later he fights for Shirou after he explains he peacefully removed Achilles' Master's Command Seals.
• Fanboy: He loves meeting other legendary Greek heroes, looking up to Heracles and Atalanta when he was a child as they were heroes of the generation before him. Because of this, he calls Atalanta "nee-san" out of respect and admiration.
• Fatal Flaw: Chiron points out that he has a hard time fighting people he was once friendly with. During the great battle between the Red and Black Factions for the Grail, Achilles goes from swinging his spear and excited at the prospect of finally challenging the Archer that could hurt him to halting his assault and being downright shocked that it's Chiron and gets a kick to the face in his moment of surprise. Achilles was eventually able to get over it when he eventually fought Atalanta, his friend, giving his all and resulting both of them dead, but at least he saved her from madness.
• Feet of Clay: His love of battle and flying chariot make him superficially similar to Iskandar, who idolized him, but Achilles is much more callow and feeble in his resolve than the King of Conquerors he inspired, resulting in him being easily manipulated by Amakusa for much of the story.
• Friendly Enemy: With Chiron, his teacher.
• Game-Breaking Injury: Being injured in the heel causes him to permanently lose access to Andreias Amarantos, leaving him mortal once again. However, he still has absurdly high stats regardless and can fight with the best. It just simply makes him go from unkillable, to barely killable.
• Go Out with a Smile:After Atalanta dies, Achilles is left kneeling and pierced by a dozen or so arrows. However, he dies with a gentle smile because he saved Atalanta from falling into her hatred and tainting her legend.
• Heel–Face Turn: After defeating Chiron, he fulfills his teacher's request by handing out Akhilleus Kosmos into Astolfo, and then lets Jeanne pass through in order to set Atalanta back to the path of good, ending up in a Mutual Kill.
• Hero-Worshipper: Basically why he hangs around and flirts with Atalanta. His father, Peleus, participated in the Argonaut's quest for the Golden Fleece and the hunt for Calydonian Boar, all of which Atalanta participated and became famous for. Peleus would tell stories of Atalanta to the young Achilles, to the point he idolized and considered her his childhood crush. This also becomes part of his reason to personally stop Atalanta's madness: He wanted to preserve her heroic image that inspired him, rather than seeing it crushed by her own madness.
• Heroic Sacrifice: He went from unkillable into killable thanks to Chiron disabling his immortality. He knows this, yet he still handed down one of his Noble Phantasms that can protect him to an enemy, and then delivers a Mutual Kill to save Atalanta from madness, all of which he could withstand if he still had that Noble Phantasm or immortality.
• Hot-Blooded: He treats war as something to be enjoyed, is ecstatic when confronted with a real challenge and eagerly wants to do battle with Chiron after he gets over his softness towards people he recognizes as friends.
• I Can Still Fight!: As he possesses A-ranked Battle Continuation, he is entirely capable of this, even if his heel or heart is pierced. It's how he outlasts Atalanta's arrows punching through his body long enough to deal the fatal blow.
• In the Back: After stabbing Atalanta, her remaining arrows home around and stab him through the back, fatally injuring him as well.
• Javelin Thrower: He can throw his spear as a javelin and call it back to his hand when necessary. He did so to disperse an oncoming arrow barrage from Atalanta after she went mad from grief and using Agrius Metamorphosis.
• Kick the Morality Pet: Accidentally does this to Atalanta after she suffers a Despair Event Horizon. She questions Achilles if her dream of a world where no child suffers is actually achievable and he ends up pressing her Trauma Button when he bluntly tells her it's unrealistic. This is anime-only, however, since in the Light Novel, Atalanta spoke with Shakespeare, not him.
• Kryptonite Factor: Andreias Amarantos can be bypassed by "friendly" acts. As a vampire bite is a friendly act by being an invitation to the vampire's clan, this nearly gets him vampirized by Dracula.
• Let's Fight Like Gentlemen: His Diatrekhōn Astēr Lonkhē was a thing he specifically made so that he could guarantee a fair fight with Hector, who was unwilling to pick a fight he would lose no matter what due to Achilles' invincibility.
• Lightning Bruiser: B+ Strength, A Endurance, and A+ Agility.
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: Akhilleus Kosmos, which can protect him from any attack short of an Anti-World Noble Phantasm. He bequeaths the shield to Astolfo to protect Sieg from Karna's Vasavi Shakti, but the attack still horribly mangles Astolfo and the shield is destroyed in the process.
• Manly Tears: In the light novel, instead of Atalanta crying before their deaths, it was Achilles who cried over how she kept chasing for her unrewarding dream which was worth supporting. Such display of emotion gave Atalanta peace, knowing that at least someone supported her.
• Mercy Kill: He couldn't bear to see Atalanta falling into madness so he decided to 'set her straight', and by that it means killing her since there's no other way.
• Momma's Boy: His wish is to fulfill a promise he made to his mother; To live and die like a proper God. One of his Skills, Affection of the Goddess, gives him a rank up in all Parameters except Luck and Mana through the blessings of his mother.
• Minor Injury Overreaction: Played with. When Chiron snipes him, he shows extreme excitement that someone can actually hurt him, and laughs aloud, calling their eventual battle fated. Averted later, when Chiron sniped him from space (via constellation and his Noble Phantasm) in the same spot, causing Achilles to scream in pain as loud as he could.
• Multi-Melee Master: Given his teacher's penchant for Pankration moves, it shouldn't come as a surprise that Achilles is a monster in combat both with and without a weapon, which he demonstrates by tossing his spear into the air to confuse Chiron while he closes in with a kick using his vulnerable heel, before finally catching his spear mid-air and nearly impaling Chiron on it. In addition to this, he also carries a sword that he uses for wiping out crowds like the Homunculi by dual-wielding it with his spear.
• Mutual Disadvantage: During his brief battle with Siegfried, Achilles is unable to injure his foe thanks to his normal attacks not possessing the necessary strength to pierce the Armor of Fafnir, but Siegfried in turn is unable to harm him thanks to lacking the Divinity necessary to hurt Achilles, creating an impasse. Luckily for Achilles, Atalanta's arrows can hurt Siegfried at full power.
• Mutual Kill: Kills the maddened Atalanta, but takes fatal damage himself in the process.
• My God, What Have I Done?: In-life, his killing of the Amazon Queen Penthesilea with Diatrekhōn Astēr Lonkhē during the Trojan War caused him so much regret that he refuses to invoke the true power of the spear against any female opponent.
• Nigh-Invulnerability: His immortal body, with the exception of his heel, cannot be harmed by anyone lacking a Divinity rank or a Divine Construct for a weapon (and even those who do deal significantly reduced damage unless their Divinity rank is high enough) regardless of how powerful the attack is. This is as absurd as it sounds.
• The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: His attitude towards Chiron. He also insists on fighting the maddened Atalanta alone, despite knowing that without his immortality or his shield there's a very good chance he will die in the effort.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: When fighting Atalanta, Achilles did two things out of his usual characteristic to show his seriousness in this whole thing: First, he's not bringing any of his excitement and bravado for battle, opting for a more melancholic, but serious attitude. Second, eventually he referred her as "Atalanta" instead of "Ane-san".
• Popularity Power: In-universe. Like all Heroic Spirits, Rider's power is increased by how famous he is. As Achilles, he is absurdly strong in this regard. The narration refers to him as one of the ten most famous heroes in the world, with likely only two or three of those matching him in fame.
• Punch-Clock Villain: Blood Knight tendencies aside, he's a fairly good guy, treats the Grail War more like a competition and doesn't hold any real ill-will towards his opponents, in a similar vein to Cu Chulainn. He just so happens to be on the team with the Big Bad.
• Say My Name: He stopped calling Atalanta with "Ane-san" and yelled her name just before dealing the fatal blow to her. This pretty much shows that he's done playing around.
• Scarf of Asskicking: He has a billowing red sash that flutters behind him as he charges around on foot or in his chariot, and he's an overall kickass guy. In an ironically hilarious way, Chiron used that for a Cape Snag to beat the crap out of him, so the scarf was at one point used to kick his ass.
• Screw Destiny: His goal in the Holy Grail War, as he explains to Chiron:
  Achilles: I’m tired of having my path decided by the gods. This time, it doesn’t matter whether my side is right or not. I’m fighting because I want to fight.
• Semi-Divine: His mother is a minor Greek goddess while his father was one of the Argonauts.
• Shield Bash: One of the applications of Akhilleus Kosmos that goes unused in the novel is using the activated shield to smash his opponents flat by ramming them with an entire miniature world.
• Simple, yet Awesome: His design is remarkably grounded compared to other Greek heroes like Heracles and Atalanta, and his spear is noted to be specifically designed to be a simple killing stick unlike Karna's weapon, which crushes the opponent through it's enormous weight. This does not stop him from being awesome and ruthlessly effective.
• Slasher Smile: When Chiron shoots him from a far distance, causing him to show excitement that someone can actually hurt him◊.
• Spanner in the Works: Giving Astolfo his shield Noble Phantasm Akhilleus Kosmos ends up being the key to victory against Karna, spelling the defeat of Shirou in the end.
• Speaks Fluent Animal: The manga adaptation shows he can talk to his horses.
• Story-Breaker Power: He has impeccably high stats, multiple powerful skills and FIVE Noble Phantasms. He is also said to be the only Servant of the Great Holy Grail War capable of matching Karna in single combat, and can easily go toe-to-toe with both Fran and Siegfried at the same time with minimal help from Atlanta. He is without question the second strongest Servant on his team, and potentially in the entire story. Even when he uses Diatrekhōn Astēr Lonkhē to make the fight between himself and Chiron fairer, Chiron has to give it his all, including his life, just to get Achilles weakened enough so he can hit him in the heel and remove his immortality.
• Super-Speed: His Dromeus Cometes ability makes him so fast that he is pretty much teleporting during his third duel with Chiron. On his chariot he becomes a sky-twirling beam of green light from sheer speed.
• Super-Strength: When Chiron makes a passenger plane spin and almost slam into him, Achilles throws out his hands and is strong enough to not just stop the plane's movement, but start pushing its bulk away from him. He's also strong enough to kick Chiron through another plane's metal hull while they're fighting inside of it, and ultimately kills Chiron by punching him so hard in the chest his fist partially goes through and hits his heart.
• Super-Toughness: Even though he gets pummeled something fierce for most of his final fight with Chiron, he handles the damage much, much better than his teacher and avoids taking any critical damage by protecting his heel and eyes, allowing him to effectively dodge Chiron's seemingly final blow and counterattack.
• Surpassed the Teacher: Kills Chiron during their final duel, but Chiron manages to shoot him in the heel and remove his invulnerability.
• Time Stands Still: His Noble Phantasm Diatrekhōn Astēr Lonkhē stops time altogether except for him and his chosen opponent, in addition of debuffing them into nothing but just their default physical strength for a Duel to the Death.
• This Is Something He's Got to Do Himself: He insists that he's the one to defeat Atalanta, in order to preserve her heroic image. He succeeded, allowing her to die with her old self that he admired, he follows shortly after.
• Tragic Hero: Much like his origins, Achilles becomes this in the last quarters of the series. His excitement for battle caused him to neglect Atalanta, pushing her further to madness and forced Achilles to Mercy Kill her, also killing him as a result. If Achilles has kept his battle lust in check, he might have lived longer, albeit just without his immortality.
• Underestimating Badassery: Disregards just how dangerous Darnic-Dracula is and rushes in to strike him down. He gets a rude awakening when his foe shrugs off the spear in his body to then physically overpower him and, had Chiron not been there for the save, would have turned him into a vampire minion since a vampire bite doesn't count as a "hostile" action for his divine protection to save him from.
• Vague Age: He appears to be on the cusp of manhood as Semiramis considers him to be a mere "boy" despite appearing to be a young adult.
• Worthy Opponent: He can invoke this with his Diatrekhōn Astēr Lonkhē Noble Phantasm by requesting that they only do combat with him in a certain manner inside the Duel Field it creates. The enemy has the full right to refuse these rules, of course, but Achilles would never use it on someone so boorish to begin with.
• You Are Not Alone: He's willing to die together with Atalanta just so she wouldn't be lonely in the afterlife and also told her that he's also willing to support her beautiful dream. Thanks to this, Atalanta was so touched that she could Go Out with a Smile.

Caster

Shakespeare

Voiced by: Tetsu Inada (Japanese), Keith Silverstein (English)^{Other Languages}Raul Anaya (Latin American Spanish), Juan Carballido (European Spanish), Franck Daquin (French), Thomas Albus (German), Renan Villela (Brazilian Portuguese)

The world famous playwright summoned into the Caster Class. A master of story writing, Shakespeare's main desire is to witness a grand tale of unparalleled beauty. Since he never was an actual magic-user of any type, he has very little ability in direct combat; however, he can effectively power up his Master, and his skills and Noble Phantasm can be deadly if used properly.

His Noble Phantasm is "First Folio: When the Curtain Rises, the Applause Shall Be As Ten Thousand Thunders", a book that can alter any event within his sight provided he is not outscaled in every single stat by the persons involved. Before the Retool, he also had "The Globe: Seat of the King," an ability to flawlessly impersonate any other person's likeness and behavior, which he would use for social engineering.

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• Affably Evil: He's a gentleman to the core, of course, but he's also quite obviously up to no good.
• Antiquated Linguistics: Speaks in an archaic manner, and uses the archaic first-person pronoun "wagahai" to refer to himself.
• Badass Boast: Makes a pretty good one right before he entraps Ruler in his Noble Phantasm, by riffing on his own material, no less.
  Caster: All the world's my stage, and you merely a player!
• Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: When Archer and Rider volunteer to vanguard the Red Faction's attack against the Black Faction, Caster asks if they'd like him to write a love story in their honor. Achilles accepts, while Atalanta declines; Shakespeare combines their requests and decides to write a tragic story of unrequited love, which actually isn't too far off from what happens to them both.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: He directly addresses the audience in the post-credits scene of Episode 18.
• Co-Dragons: He works closely with Shirou alongside Semiramis in the Red Faction's Home Base instead of going to fight, and uses his abilities to assist Shirou's actions.
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: After he insisted on Shirou reading the scripts for all of his plays, Shirou uses one of his Command Spells to force him not to write his own story as a tragedy. Considering he excels at writing them, Caster isn't happy to receive such a command.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Despite being the weakest Servant of the Red Faction, especially next to a powerhouse like Karna, it's ultimately Shakespeare who ends up being the biggest threat Ruler faces when he catches her in his First Folio.
• Drama-Preserving Handicap: Gets this twice. His First Folio lets him effortlessly defeat anyone with lower stats than him, but his stats are terribly low. His general weakness and support-only magic balances out Semiramis having two classes, one of them being Caster as well.
• Genre Savvy: Due to his grasp of narrative structure, Shakespeare is obsessed with finding the 'Protagonist' of the story. He also recognizes modern literary concepts such as "Death-Flagging."
• Gentleman Wizard: He's a playwright, but he's a Caster and acts the part of a gentleman.
• Go Out with a Smile: He is completely satisfied with all the amazing things he witnessed during the war, and barely manages to finish his new story before his Master Shirou's death causes him to disappear.
• Historical Villain Upgrade: In real life, Shakespeare's actual personality isn't that known in public. However, most of the famous stories he penned ended with tragic endings. And thus, in here, he stands among the most amoral Servants in the game where he doesn't really care about sufferings brought about by his power, as long as it makes for an interesting story material that he'd like to witness. Additionally, he also wrote a story that portrayed Jeanne as a villainous character...
• I Fight for the Strongest Side!: He's only willing to work for whoever he considers the "Protagonist", which is why he abandoned his original Master for Shirou.
• I Just Want to Be Special: His final scene has him lament that he's always wanted to be the "Protagonist" despite him knowing that he lacks the character and remarkability to be one.
• Incoming Ham: His first appearance involves slamming open a door while quoting his works and gesturing wildly.
• Inept Mage: Not much of a mage despite the years where he went under the radar, but luckily Semiramis more than makes up for his magical ineptitude.
• It's All About Me: He quotes himself in casual conversation and bought a collection of his works from a store. He even declares in front of the other Red Faction Servants that he intends to stay out of the fight and survive to the end of the Holy Grail War just to witness a dramatic story, which leaves Archer and Rider unsure of whether to be amazed or angry.
• Large Ham: He's a self-absorbed playwright who has discovered how famous he remains centuries after his death. Of course, he is going to hugely expressive.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Being a theatrical stagewriter who uses his power to trap people within constructed stories, he does this a fair deal. Notably in Episode 18 when he comments on the possible love triangle between Sieg, Jeanne and Astolfo, and in the final episode, where he wishes he could have been the main character of this grand story that he has witnessed.
• Lethal Joke Character: Shakespeare has abysmal stats and zero combat abilities, but clever use of his skills and Noble Phantasms means he can effectively save scum his way to victory.
• Manipulative Bastard: Shakespeare totally didn't goad Spartacus into charging the Yggdmillennia Fortress for no reason other than seeing the drama of it. Not at all.
• Man of Wealth and Taste: Has one of the sassiest looks of any Servant in the entire franchise.
• Master of Disguise: Back when this was planned to be an online game, Shakespeare had another Noble Phantasm that enabled him to assume the appearance of another individual and interact with people who knew that person without arousing suspicion.
• Master of Illusion: First Folio's major effect against those it can't just erase out of existence allows Shakespeare to create a "drama" of sorts that traps the target in a recreation of their past that he narrates over, which allows him to strike directly at their spirits by narrating their faults and weaknesses over images of their past. How life-like the illusion and effect of the Noble Phantasm is varies depending on how much power he has on hand to strengthen it.
• Milking the Giant Cow: The man can't say anything without punctuating it with a grand sweep of his arms.
• Mind Rape: Essentially the effect of his Noble Phantasm, First Folio. He constructs what is essentially a theatrical performance from the target's memories with the specific purpose of completely breaking the target mentally. It's especially effective on other Servants since very few heroes died a happy death. This is usually done by making the people the target knows from these memories act out of character in the most horrifying way they can when it comes to the target, such as making Victor Frankenstein suddenly grow affectionate towards the Monster he created and hated or Gilles de Rais presenting Jeanne with Sieg's head and giving her a Breaking Speech creeping closer and closer to his Caster form in the process.
• Ninja Log: The way his Self-Preservation skill is shown in the manga is like this. When a frustrated Atalanta starts pushing Shakespeare at a wall hard enough to make it start to crack, he suddenly gets replaced with a doll while he himself appears behind her.
• Non-Action Guy: Shamelessly admits to the Red Faction that his fighting and magecraft skills are all but nonexistent. He makes up for this with his skills and Noble Phantasms.
• Omniscient Morality License: All the world's a stage to him, and he'll lie, cheat, and manipulate his way to create magnificent stories. Although not as necessarily vicious as the Casters in Fate/Zero and Fate/stay night, the sheer scale that Shakespeare operates on and his lack of empathy for the "characters" in his tales makes him in many ways just as horrific as they were.
• Rewriting Reality: Shakespeare has a limited form of this via his Noble Phantasm, First Folio, which allows Shakespeare to alter or falsify the outcome of any event occurring within his sight. However, it can only be used a limited number of times and only when the people involved are weaker than him.
• Red Baron: The Playwright.
• Shakespeare in Fiction: The famous playwright reincarnated as a Caster-type servant.
• Small Name, Big Ego: While he is pretty famous, he always expects his name to carry a lot a weight, and gets annoyed whenever people haven't heard of him. To his shock, the other Servants did not receive knowledge of him and his works from the Holy Grail when it gave them knowledge of the modern world.
• Story-Breaker Power: In theory. He can not only delete people from existence with First Folio as long as they don't outscale him in every single stat, but can also create Noble Phantasm-tier weaponry from mundane objects.
• Super-Empowering: His Enchant skill, which he can use to enhance almost anything. He uses this to enhance a Katana Shirou Kotomine recovered from Japan, making it as strong as a C-Rank Noble Phantasm.
• Tactical Withdrawal: Is capable of making a flawless retreat at any time as long as his Master is safe.
• True Neutral: His In-Universe alignment.
• Victory Is Boring: Shirou has to use a Command Seal to order Shakespeare not to sabotage his plans and turn the story into a tragedy because of the fact that Shakespeare operates this way with his works. If someone has a clean-cut victory, then what is the point of everything? Since the world is his stage, drama is more important to him, forcing Shirou to counter it.
• Villainous Friendship: He's good friends with Shirou and calls him Master, and is his Co-Dragons together with Semiramis.
• Villain Takes an Interest: He's the one most excited to see Sieg take on Siegfried's form, simply because it's an event so utterly unlikely to happen that he can't help but want to know how it'll end up for good or ill.
• Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe: But of course this Elisabethian era Playwright speaketh in old timee words. It is how his character spoke, and his characters are his legend.

Berserker

Spartacus

Voiced by: Satoshi Tsuruoka (Japanese), Joshua Tomar (English)^{Other Languages}Dan Osorio (Latin American Spanish), Tomás Salvadores (European Spanish), Peppino Capotondi (French), Pietro Ubaldi (Italian), Alexander Wohnhaas (German), Gustavo Vergani (Brazilian Portuguese)

The Thracian gladiator who led Roman slaves in the Third Servile War over two thousand years ago. Spartacus is summoned as a Berserker.

His Noble Phantasm is "Crying Warmonger: The Howl of the Wounded Beast", which converts the damage he takes into Prana, making him more and more powerful the more wounded he is.

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• Ax-Crazy: A given considering his Class, but also downplayed compared to most other Berserkers. Outside of Fate/Grand Order, he's one of the extremely few Berserkers who still retains a semblance of intelligence. Keyword: Semblance. He can speak coherently, which is itself a small miracle, but he's still for the most part completely mindless. His constant ranting of crushing all oppressors comes off like a broken record more than anything else.
• The Berserker: As befits his class he mindlessly charges into danger and combat, heedless of the damage he takes. After all, what does not kill him makes him stronger.
• Black-and-White Insanity: Spartacus' sole priority is "to revolt against the oppressor and to protect the oppressed", where oppressors are any sort of master, any sort of ruler, irrespective of their individual dispositions. It's said that he will immediately kill his own Master in a Holy Grail War if they behave in any way like an oppressor according to how Spartacus sees it. Oddly, according to All There in the Manual, he would get along quite well with Shirou Emiya.
• Blood Knight: Extends to much more than just his penchant for hardships and injury. He laughs in joy at all injuries, shrugs them off, and then retaliates with glee, as seen when he kicks Atalanta with a force of a freight train after she shoots him in several vital spots from behind.
• Body Horror: As he takes more and more hits and gains more and more prana, Spartacus begins growing into a gigantic monster version of himself with eight arms, legs and dragon heads growing out of his shoulders. Before he finally self-destructs, his body looks like a collection of giant glowing tumors.
• Brainwashed: Avicebron reprograms his mind to fight for the Black Team.
• Can't Kill You, Still Need You: In spite of his madness and the fact he understandably hates slavery and servitude, he understands that if his Master were to die, he would disappear. He says he has a responsibility to live as long as possible so that he can keep fighting against oppressors. When he is captured by the Black team and Caster of Black becomes his new Master, this is the explanation he gives for why he doesn't just kill Caster of Black on the spot.
• Character Death: Uses his suicidal explosion to try and kill Jeanne, but her magical banner blocks it.
• Charged Attack: Some of the damage dealt to Spartacus is converted into prana for him to use; almost killing him is the worst possible thing for an opponent to do.
• Combat Sadomasochist: Spartacus accumulates more prana the more he gets hurt, thus getting a power boost from it. In the latter stages, he literally seems to be getting off on the damage he takes.
• Fan of the Underdog: His ideal master is someone who fights oppressors and those far more powerful than they are. This is why he would get along with Shirou Emiya, as he is always fighting those who oppress innocent people and are more powerful than himself.
• Feed It with Fire: The more he is hurt, the stronger he gets. He's at his absolute strongest when he's at death's door.
• Gonk: Notably, he and Gordes Yggdmillennia are the only two male characters that aren't either rugged handsome or Pretty Boys.
• Hazy-Feel Turn: The Black Team reprogram him into working for them, although it is only partial as he is still insane. He's still fighting "oppressors" but has been convinced that these are the Red Faction and Clock Tower instead of the Black Faction and Yggdmillennia.
• Heroic Resolve: To the extent that Spartacus cannot fight at full power unless he has sustained injuries. Powering through adversity through his desire to fight oppressors makes him stronger.
• Heroic Second Wind: Spartacus's Noble Phantasm, Crying Warmonger. Whenever Spartacus is injured part of the damage is converted into Prana, raising his physical abilities.
• Hidden Depths: He believes no one should have the Grail because the Grail is so powerful it would allow someone dominance over the world.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: By Lancer of Black when he tries storming the Black HQ.
• Irrevocable Order: Defied vehemently. Because of his rejection of authority, Spartacus is one of the few Servants that a Command Seal doesn't have this effect on. He demands an equal partnership, and should his Master ignore this and try to use a Command Seal without his explicit consent, Spartacus will immediately abandon all reason and kill the violator.
• Irony: Dies trying to kill the Ruler-class Servant Jeanne, who would probably be the one person on his side for stopping someone evil from winning the war.
• Large Ham: Has a tendency to get boisterous and dramatic when the battle gets going, which doesn't quite fit with the usual Berserker-class lack of communication.
  Spartacus: "O oppressors, your time is nigh! Your pride shall be vanquished, your conceits of superiority routed!"
• Laughing Mad: Boisterous and unhinged laughter is his default mood. It comes complete with Slasher Smile.
• Martyr Without a Cause: Spartacus is utterly obsessed with "making the hard choices" and believes that oppression gives the oppressed the strength to eventually rise up. Therefore, he doesn't have a wish to make with the Holy Grail. It's later revealed that by recklessly attacking anyone near, he is deliberately trying to sabotage the Holy Grail War.
• Mighty Glacier: Like Frankenstein and unlike either of their predecessors from past Fate instalments, Spartacus is not a Lightning Bruiser. This is somewhat to his benefit as he gets stronger the more he is hit.
• Nigh-Invulnerability: Servants are of course already tough and generally able to survive injuries that are fatal to humans, such as a slit throat or destroyed organs. Spartacus laughs off, among other things, getting squashed by golems and impaled with a number of stakes, arrows to his spine and neck, nearly getting decapitated by Atalanta followed up by a huge barrage of arrows from her Phoebus Catastrophe that cuts all his limbs off. In his giant form, Mordred charges a Spell Blade powerful enough to nearly bisect him vertically, and he still doesn't die. It takes all that accumulated damage piling up to finally kill him via suicide explosion due to his body no longer able to hold itself together.
• Not Worth Killing: When he goes to attack the Black Faction by himself, he scares a deer away, which makes a hunter threaten him with his gun. He looks the hunter up and down, then smirks and goes around him, likely because he was no threat (Servants cannot be harmed by non-magical weapons).
• Person of Mass Destruction: His suicidal explosion ends up destroying two thirds of the Yggdmillennia Fortress, the entire battlefield where the Servants have been fighting and all the Homunculi and Dragon Tooth Warriors still on said field. Jeanne, Astolfo and Sieg only survive by Jeanne using her Noble Phantasm to block it.
• Red Baron: The Gladiator.
• Slasher Smile: He's a berserker so he's always got this battle-happy grin going.
• Smarter Than You Look: Just as deranged, violent and unhinged as any Berserker Servant, but he has a surprisingly nuanced and negative vision of the Holy Grail, making it very clear that in his mind any magical item that can overwrite reality is nothing more than a tool for oppression tyrants could use to their advantage and it's revealed that he spent most of the Grail War trying to intentionally sabotage it because he believed no one should have the power of the grail at all. This actually makes him one of the very few Servants in the whole Verse who has a truly nuanced vision of The Holy Grail War.
• Stripperiffic: He's dressed like a BDSM participant.
• Super-Toughness: He has EX Rank Endurance and displays it when he survives a beatdown at the hands of Lancer of Black, then getting impaled with 5 giant pikes from Kazikli Bey. His reaction? Grinning violently at Lancer while he gets trapped by Caster's Golems. Vlad needs to slam one or two more pikes through his neck to finally knock him out. A direct hit from Atalanta's Phoebus Catastrophe, an Anti-Army Noble Phantasm, tears most of his limbs off and still doesn't kill him, and Mordred charging up her blade and slicing him top-down doesn't inconvenience him either. It takes his own body being unable to take and convert all the damage he's taken into energy that finally does him in.
• Sword and Fist: He generally just swings his sword around, but as shown by his penchant of using wrestling moves on golems and kicking Atalanta, he isn't adverse to just mauling the hell out of people with his huge mass and strength.
• Taking You with Me: Spartacus can release all the Prana accumulated in his body in one massive blast right before he dies. As he hits his maximum capacity of mana, he explodes violently, destroying all the Dragon Tooth Warriors, Homunculi and two-thirds of the Yggdmillennia Fortress, but ultimately not killing any Servants.
• Talkative Loon: The first Berserker shown in the series to be fully capable of speech, as opposed to roars and broken sentence fragments... not that this makes him intelligible, as all he can say is meaningless drivel about tearing down the establishment and crushing oppressors. Like all Berserkers (before the release of Fate/Grand Order, anyway), communication with Spartacus is impossible.
• True Neutral: His In-Universe alignment. All oppressors, regardless of their own alignment, will die at his hands.
• Unwitting Pawn: Shakespeare totally didn't goad him into singlehandedly charging the Yggdmillennia Fortress.
• Wrestler in All of Us: Suplexes five golems at once.
• You Can Talk?: A few characters like Astolfo are amazed that he's able to talk in complete sentences despite being a Berserker. He's still as crazy as any other Berserker though, which becomes apparent to anyone who hears more than a sentence coming out of his mouth.
• Zerg Rush: Suffers this from Caster of Black's golems once his been impaled by Lancer of Black's spikes, who then melt themselves on top of him, trapping him.

Assassin

Semiramis

Voiced by: Kei Shindō (Japanese), Allegra Clark (English)^{Other Languages}Carla Castañeda (Latin American Spanish), Maxo Barjas (European Spanish), Sophie Landresse (French), Cinzia Massironi (Italian), Anke Kortemeier (German), Mariana Pozatto (Brazilian Portuguese)

A legendary queen who ruled over the ancient Assyrian Empire. Although she also qualifies for the Caster class, she is summoned as an Assassin-class Servant and uses poison as her main weapon.

Her Noble Phantasm is the "Hanging Gardens of Babylon: Aerial Garden of Vanity", a huge, floating fortress the Red Faction uses as its base of operations. She has a second Noble Phantasm by the name of "Sikera Ušum: Arrogant King's Alcohol", which makes her immune to all poison and lets her conjure all forms of poison as long as she remains in the Hanging Garden's throne room.

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• The Archmage: Within the Hanging Gardens, she has magical powers grand enough that they step into the realm of True Magic.
• Awesome, but Impractical: The Hanging Gardens is a powerful mobile fortress that allows her to use some of the most powerful magical feats seen in any of the Fate series, along with various advantages like being able to create Dragon Tooth Warriors as mooks, and is protected by several powerful barriers that require absurdly high anti-magic skills to counter, on top of being treated as a separate location and thus robbing the Black Faction of any territory buffs they receive normally. It also requires an obscene amount of time to prepare and create, and once she creates it, her parameters drop to the point where she only can fight inside the Gardens. The only reason such a thing even is practical at all in anyway, is because Shirou made sure to get the materials for it by rummaging Baghdad for bits and pieces of the Garden decades before he summoned Semiramis, so that it could be created in time for the war.
• Barrier Warrior: Can conjure powerful magic shields for defense.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: Ultimately, the reason why she fell in love with and remained unfailingly loyal to Shirou was simply because he treated her as an equal whom he wished to fight side-by-side with in pursuit of his goals. He did not, like others in her life, desire her love or her body; just acceptance to be his ally.
• Black Magic: Qualifies as a Caster, and even as an Assassin most of her skillset still revolves around magic because she is an exceedingly rare "Double Summon". The kind of magic? Mostly poison.
• Blood Is the New Black: She shows up in Episode 24 with her left side drenched in her own blood from where Mordred carved her sword down into her heart to destroy her spiritual core. She is on death's door at this point.
• Cannon Fodder: Her Dragon Tooth Warriors lack strength and skill, but make up for it with numbers.
• Chain Pain: One of her favorite spells is to fire magic chains at her enemies to simultaneously strike them for damage and bind them so they can't fight back.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: In her original legend, she is notorious for betrayal. Several times she gets accused of planning to do this to Shirou, but the truth couldn't be any further from that. In fact, by the end of it she's the only Red Faction Servant who's actually fighting for Shiro's sake over all else.
• Co-Dragons: She works closely with Shirou Kotomine in their Home Base, alongside Shakespeare. She knows the full details of his plans because her Noble Phantasm is essential for it.
• Combat Stilettos: She has some rather wicked-looking heels as part of her empress ensemble. It's not like she's going into melee, after all.
• Crippling Overspecialization: As a result of the Hanging Gardens not being her proper Noble Phantasm, it weakens her to the point where she's nearly useless outside of it when it is complete. She makes up for this by having easy access to very powerful magic spells.
• Cute and Psycho: She's quite sociable and incredibly beautiful, but lets off "a degenerate atmosphere".
• Death by Irony:
  • The Master Poisoner is fatally wounded by an opponent using an antidote made from a deadly poison to survive hers.
  • The Chronic Backstabbing Disorder Queen, often called the world's first master poisoner for this reason, is defeated by Mordred, whose moniker is the Traitor Knight. Both of them were faultlessly loyal to their masters to boot.
• Didn't See That Coming: She uses hydra poison on Mordred and gloats about how this agonizing poison killed Chiron in life, but little did she realize that Mordred's Master Kairi not only overheard all of this with his eyeball familiar, he so happens to possess an antidote for hydra poison that he made with the preserved juvenile hydra he got from the Association. Whoops.
• Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: Pale skin, dark hair, overall very beautiful but also carrying a sense of danger about her.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Even she thinks Shakespeare is a bit of a nutcase, and she takes measures to ensure he does not betray Shirou.
• Everyone Can See It: By Volume 4, it is hilariously obvious to the entire Red faction that she's head-over-heels for Shirou. Lancer and Caster don't even hesitate to call her out on it..
  Semiramis: Do you really think I would not betray him?
  Karna: That's ridiculous. Are you a paranoid woman who kills those you love?
  Semiramis: W-w-w-what?!
• Eye Scream: Subverted. After Mordred slices through her in Episode 23, a shot of Semiramis screaming in pain shows her left eye obscured by the blood splatter, initially appearing as if it had been struck as well. When she shows up again in Episode 24, it's still shut and caked over in blood, but in Episode 25 she has it open despite that side of face still covered in her blood, indicating she was simply too exhausted to keep it open.
• Go Out with a Smile: Fades away after sharing her Last Kiss with Shiro.
• Foil: To Mordred. Both of them are women of royal blood that have legends stained with treachery, yet at the same time have Undying Loyalty to the Masters that summoned them and die by their sides. It's also noticeable in their fighting styles: Mordred is a tomboy knight who fights up-close-and-personal with wild swordsmanship, and Semiramis is a feminine sorceress who fights at a distance with highly-spammable magic.
• Familiar: She uses doves as scouts.
• God Save Us from the Queen!: Perhaps the very first example of this, but in practice, actually played around in this story. Semiramis certainly lives up to the title of an evil queen with her dominating aura and supply of poison for gruesome deaths, but she's decent and unfailingly loyal to Shirou despite her legends stating her to be treacherous.
• Gravity Master: On top of being a flying castle, The Hanging Gardens of Babylon's anti-gravity field can be extended and reversed, allowing Semiramis to scoop the Greater Grail right out under the feet of Yggdmillennia. This is what forces Darnic and Vlad to attack the Gardens even though it would disadvantageous for them.
• Half-Human Hybrid: Her mother was the mermaid goddess Atargatis, and her father was a human man.
• Hidden Depths: Caster forces her to admit that, despite her affection towards Shirou, part of her wants to see his plan fail. That said, a far larger part of her legitimately wants to see the world he will create.
• Home Field Advantage: Inside the Hanging Gardens, Semiramis is ludicrously powerful, able to cast Greater Rituals with a flick of her wrist and create thousands of Dragon Tooth Warriors within minutes. As a tradeoff, her abilities are pretty subpar outside of it. She's even stronger in her throne room, as it's only there she can activate her secondary Noble Phantasm to conjure forth dangerous poisons.
• Hot Witch: In the same way as Medea from Fate/stay night, Semiramis is a very attractive magic-user, what with her large breasts, Raven Hair, Ivory Skin and long hair.
• Instant Armor: She can use her magic to form an armor of fish scales over her body for protection, which is powerful enough to take a spear thrust from Achilles head-on, albeit breaking shortly afterward.
• Lady of Black Magic: A beautiful and dangerous Servant that qualifies as a Caster-type who, while within the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, can fire magic chains and cast spells great enough to be in the realm of True Magic.
• Lap Pillow: Gives this to Shirou twice. The first time is before the Hanging Gardens is activated and Shiro is just relaxing while remembering his past in the main garden area. The second time is when he's fatally injured after his fight with Sieg and Semiramis brings him there so they can both have a few final moments of peace together.
• Last Kiss: She kisses Shiro at the end of the war when they are both fatally injured. She wanted to express her love before they both succummbed.
• Lawful Evil: Her In-Universe alignment, as an evil queen.
• Load-Bearing Boss: As the Hanging Gardens is her Noble Phantasm, when she dies the flying fortress will collapse with her. As her fatal injury from Mordred finally catches up to her, the Gardens begin to break apart, and once she fades away the collapse escalates in earnest.
• Master Poisoner: She is the Ur-Example of killing someone by poison in mythology. Her Sikera Ušum Noble Phantasm allows her to fill the air and even the mana in it with poison, gives all her Magecraft the "poison" attribute, and allows her to change the poison's composition at will. Against Mordred, she gives a demonstration by inflicting her with the poison of the Hydra. Unfortunately for her, she didn't know Kairi just so happened to have hydra poison that he made into a weapon and subsequent antidote.
• Mutual Kill: Mordred fatally wounds her, but she managed to do heavy damage to Mordred in turn. Even if that didn't kill her, Semiramis also fatally wounded Kairi and forced him to use his last Command Seal.
• Nonindicative Name: Her magic being far more useful than her assassination skills (and Shakespeare's own Caster abilities being average at best), she is in effect the Red faction's Caster servant.
• Normally, I Would Be Dead Now: Mordred destroys her spiritual core at the climax of their fight, but she forces herself to stay alive through willpower and her connection to Shiro, who's directly jacked into the Grail. She only passes away after Shiro himself does.
• Oh, Crap!: Her face when Mordred kills her strongest summoned basmu and is about to plant her sword through her just screams this.
• Ominous Floating Castle: The Hanging Gardens of Babylon, her Noble Phantasm, is a floating fortress containing such a garden.
• One-Woman Army: Within the Hanging Gardens, she's the equivalent of a flying WMD that can also make an army within minutes.
• Pimped-Out Dress: As befits an empress, she wears a luxurious ankle-length gown of black with lots of gold highlighting, tasels, and a black feather collar.
• Pointy Ears: A sign of her non-human heritage are her long and pointed, elf-like, ears.
• Poison Is Evil: She is infamous as a poisoner as well as a traitor. In the material book, there's a sketch where she is shown to be able to make a rain of poison, ouch...She also delights in the agony it causes her victims.
• Red and Black and Evil All Over: Black and red are two colors of her dress, and she's one of the main antagonists, as well as an infamous traitor.
• Red Baron: The Wise Queen of Assyria.
• Required Secondary Powers: The Invisibility Flicker usually caused by attacking while using Presence Concealment gives Semiramis a specific exception when poisoning people.
• Sadly Mythtaken: It's noted In-Universe that Semiramis is not the true creator of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, which is why she needs materials and a ritual to recreate it as her Noble Phantasm.
• Semi-Divine: Her mother was divine, her father wasn't.
• Slouch of Villainy: She spends most of her fight with Mordred just sitting on her throne while spamming the crap out of lasers, chains, barriers, and magical poisonous beasts at her opponent. It's justified in that she's at her most powerful in her throne room and even with that Mordred can tear her apart in close combat. She only gets off that throne when she's confident she's got the fight won with her poison, and is left shitting herself when Mordred finally tears through her defenses and lands a hit.
• Square Race, Round Class: While she is summoned as an Assassin, she only qualifies because of her methods and status as the Ur-Example of a poisoner; her skills and abilities are closer to the Caster class. As a result, she possesses the unique Double Summon skill that allows her to functionally use the skills of the Caster and Assassin classes despite being only an Assassin. Given how weak the team's Caster is, it seems to be done to offset their largest weakness.
• Squishy Wizard: An incredibly powerful Magus with access to all manner of deadly spells, but with only D rank Endurance she'll crumple like paper with a good enough hit. Mordred only needs to land one good shot to fatally wound her, and the only reason she survived it was because Shirou was now more powerful then before, and had direct access to the Grail's power.
• Stealth Expert: She has the Assassin-class Presence Concealment skill at Rank C+. It's so effective that Mordred can't even notice her from across a table, and the plus refers to her Required Secondary Powers. That being said, she is not as effective as Assassin of Black in this regard, so her stealth powers are very much Downplayed.
• Summon Magic: She uses the amplified powers that The Hanging Gardens give her to create three thousand Dragon Tooth Warriors, similar to those of the Caster from Fate/stay night. She can also summon Divine Beasts like the basmu using her Noble Phantasm, as they have anecdotes connecting them to poison.
• Superpower Lottery: Semiramis is an extremely rare "Double Summon", possessing the abilities of both a Caster and an Assassin. She also has access to an Anti-World Noble Phantasm that is essentially Homefield Advantage weaponized.
• Undying Loyalty: Ironically, despite her reputation in myth as a traitorous queen, she's the only Servant of the Red Faction who actually follows Shiro to the end for the sake of his dream; the others either betray him (Mordred, Spartacus and Achilles), ultimately prioritize fighting members of the Black Faction (Karna, Atalanta, and Achilles again), or are just in it for the spectacle (Shakespeare).
• Unobtainium: To create the Hanging Gardens, Semiramis requires a large amount of rock and dirt and other pieces of nature from her homeland Assyria, now modern Baghdad, Iraq. Only the fact she can utilize Shirou's connections to the Church and Association to get those materials makes building it even possible.
• Ur-Example: Of murder by poisoning. As the Nasuverse runs on Older Is Better, she is a master of poisons.
• Villainous Friendship: She is so friendly with Shirou that she allows him to sleep on her lap, and he isn't afraid she'll kill while he sleeps. It ultimately leads to Unholy Matrimony.
• Wave-Motion Gun: She blasts Astolfo out of the sky when he tries assaulting the Hanging Gardens on his mount with a magical blast so powerful that it not only disables his Hippogryph from use for a while, but actually overwhelms Astolfo's A-rank Magic Resistance from his book Noble Phantasm, clocking out as an EX-rank attack.
• We Can Rule Together: After poisoning Mordred with hydra venom, Semiramis offers Mordred a chance to live by killing Kairi and "becoming her knight" in order to have her wish granted. Mordred tells her the only thing she wants right now is her neck.
• You Remind Me of X: Apparently she's similar to Mordred's mother, Morgan Le Fay, another vile royal woman who was also a traitor.

Red Faction Masters

The "Red" Faction in General

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• The Alliance: The Red Team is actually an alliance of six Master-less Servants who are contracted with Shirou Kotomine, who is a Servant himself. At least two of those Servants are not very fond of Shirou.
• Badass Crew: They are some of the greatest bounty hunter Magi in the world.
• Keystone Army: Shirou is the master of every servant in Red Faction except Mordred (who eventually defected to Black Faction along with her master, Kairi) meaning if he is killed Red Faction dies with him. However, that is easier said than done, as he is a Ruler-class Servant reborn into living flesh. It's telling that when it came down to it, Shirou was the last of his faction to go down fighting.
• Neccesary Evil: The Association, who have provided the catalysts and funding for the Red team, is filled with douchebags, stuck-up nobles and Smug Supers, and actually achieving powerful magecraft without their consent is considered enough for them to either trap them to do research in the tower for life or have them executed; but without it, there would be a lot more crazy, unhinged magi on the loose than there currently is.
• The Order: They are The Magus Association.
• One-Man Army: With the exception of Saber of Red, Shirou is the master of all the Red Faction's Servants.
• Order Versus Chaos: The Order side of things given that they regulate magus society and recognize the dangers that an independent organization like Yggdmillennia could inflict on the world. However, they are definitely not the good guys for doing this. Clock Tower sent a "punishment squad" to kill Yggdmillennia as soon as it declared its independence, and its own ranks are filled with magus just as cruel and/or immoral as any in Yggdmillennia.
• Quantity vs. Quality: Quality, to Yggdmillennia's Quantity. Kairi has worked with everyone but Feend and Shirou and claims that they are absolute monsters who destroy their opposition ruthlessly. Kairi himself is a well-known mercenary personally chosen by a high-ranking Association member, Shirou is a member of the Assembly of the Eighth Sacrament (just like Kirei was), and Feend is presumably an extremely powerful Magus to be entrusted with this mission along with these mercenaries and to have possession of a catalyst capable of summoning a Servant of Karna's capabilities. Too bad all save Kairi are peacefully disposed of by Shirou.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: Due to only having 2 months to prepare, the Clock Tower decided to send in 4 mercenaries, a Church official and a first-class instructor as their Masters, as getting the Japanese Grail Families involved would take mountains of paperwork and therefore they wouldn't be ready in time.
• Screw This, We're Outta Here: Kairi and Mordred have semi-defected from the Red Team because they don't trust Shirou Kotomine. Any trope referring to "The Red Team" only revolves around Shiro and the six Red Servants.
• Slipping a Mickey: Shirou gives the other Masters (except Kairi Shishigou) black tea laced with a Charm Person spell to convince them to give him their Command Spells.
• We ARE Struggling Together: Red Faction had problems from the beginning, with Spartacus's misbehavior and attempts of internal sabotage, but when Shirou reveals that he stole the command seals of the nearly all of the remaining masters, Kairi and Mordred defect to the other team. Among the remaining Servants, Karna, Achilles, and Atalanta all have vocal protests about the situation. Atalanta fears she'll be used and discarded like her master, Achilles feels the situation is unheroic and underhanded, and Karna feels obligated to protect the interests and well-being of his orginal master. By the end of it, it became their undoing. During the final battle against the Black Faction, their three frontliners were fighting to settle a personal score rather than truly defending Shirou: Karna wanted to have his final battle against Siegfried (so he immediately dropped his defensive position of the Hanging Gardens once he spotted Sieg turn into Siegfried), Atalanta has gone mad and wanted to kill Jeanne, Achilles was too eager to have his awaited duel with Chiron... and eventually not only handed down his Noble Phantasm to Astolfo, which doomed Karna to defeat, he also pulled a Mutual Kill to Atalanta, depriving the Red Faction of all their frontline fighters. In addition, Shakespeare stayed true to his conviction that he's just interested in participating in the greatest epic instead of being committed to Shirou's defense; which leaves only Semiramis (his original Servant) as the only one truly loyal to him and fighting for his sake.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: Gene, Rottweil, Feend and the Pentel Brothers have all been "peacefully removed" according to Shirou. This involves him convincing them all that the war is basically done already, and that they are winning by a landslide. El-Melloi II finds out about this by Volume 3, but said Masters are unable to be rescued until Karna directs Caules to their location in the Hanging Gardens to get them out.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: The same subject but different outcomes based on the light novel or anime.
  • The light novel version: Shirou peacefully obtained all the Red Team Servants from their masters. This involves brainwashing them and sending them back with the sum of money they were promised, taken straight from the Holy Church's funds.
  • The anime version: All masters are alive, but still hypnotized and under lock and key in order to provide the Servants of Red with prana and command them (as ordered by Shirou, of course). This is only until Shirou finally takes full possession of their Command Spells, after which he just leaves them still hypnotized and under lock and key. Karna makes a deal with Caules to free them, who then appears to teleport them somewhere. They are not seen or heard from after that.

Kairi Sisigou

Kairi Sisigou

Voiced by: Kenji Nomura (Japanese), Patrick Seitz (English)^{Other Languages}Dafnis Fernández (Latin American Spanish), Matías Brea (European Spanish), Jean-Marc Delhausse (French), Cesare Rasini (Italian), Thomas Wenke (German), Ênio Vivona (Brazilian Portuguese)

Saber of Red's Master. A freelance magus hired by Rocco Berufeban and sent by the Magus Association.

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• Abnormal Ammo: Sisigou doesn't use bullets; He uses enchanted human fingers.
• Baritone of Strength: He's got a really deep voice, and he's probably the most combat-capable Master in the War that isn't a Servant.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: Calls Saber of Red's rebellion against her father, King Arthur, "a courageous act". He specifically notes that it doesn't matter whether it was right or wrong, but the fact she was willing to fight one of the greatest kings in legend was no small feat.
• Car Fu: Hits Fiore with a car in an effort to get the drop on her. It works before Caules shows up to stop him.
• Combat Pragmatist: He approves of his Servant's unorthodox fighting style, saying winning matters in a fight...though he admits that throwing a sword is a little much.
• Comically Missing the Point: When Mordred complains about them having to live in a crypt to use the leylines (To no avail because of Lancer's Demonic Defender of The State), Kairi tells her she can have the better sleeping bag.
• Dark Is Not Evil: This is the guy who looks like a biker gang member and uses human hearts as grenades and fingers as bullets, and he's actually a fairly good guy.
• Deal with the Devil: Kairi's family, a European mage line that trekked to Japan, made a deal with something in Japan to save their Magus blood from dying out and give them the power of necromancy somewhere in the distant past, but in return, somewhere down the line the family would die out, which manifests in Kairi being sterile and his Magic Crest generating poison in anyone it's implanted into to kill them. His stated reason for wanting the Grail is to undo the curse and have descendants, though it's not necessarily his real reason.
• Dying Alone: Subverted. He was prepared to do this and even told Mordred to seek out the Black Faction siblings and make a pact with one of them but Mordred refused to leave him.
• Everyone Has Standards: Defects from the Red Faction after seeing just how far Shirou was going to achieve his goals, and how he no longer is fighting for the original goals they had starting the war.
• Face of a Thug: He mentions constantly getting pulled over by the police and security because of how he looks and students run from him in terror. He doesn't seem too bad, and it's shown in a picture when his stepdaughter was still alive that he was actually quite handsome in a rugged way before he got his scars and let his hair grow out.
• Fights Like a Normal: Fights mages using magecraft-enhanced weapons.
• Foreshadowing: By creating a dagger out of a hydra's corpse, Kairi has unknowingly recreated the thing that killed Chiron in life, more specifically hydra poison. However, it's not used on Chiron at all. The antidote he also created as a precaution with the dagger gets used against Semiramis, who can make any poison she wants and uses hydra poison against Mordred in their battle.
• Go Out with a Smile: Dies content alongside Mordred near the end of the War, sharing a few cigarettes together and grinning as they finally pass on.
• Guest-Star Party Member: He also appears in the anime adaptation of Lord El-Melloi II Case Files, a series which has a tradition of bringing in characters from other Type-Moon works for its story arcs.
• Hell-Bent for Leather: Wears a sweet, studded leather jacket that looks straight out of a biker gang.
• Homing Projectile: His finger bullets automatically seek out his opponent's hearts.
• Hunk: Huge, muscular and manly.
• Human Resources: Uses chalk made from Magi bones and blood, human fingers as Abnormal Ammo, and human hearts filled with teeth and nails as grenades.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: Averted. He points out that he literally just has to pull the trigger on his shotgun to sent out a swarm of heat-seeking projectiles, requiring little to no actual skill.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He's money-grubbing, brunt, somewhat dickish and practices a rather morbid type of Magecraft, but there are no hints that he's really evil. He claims his wish is simply to improve the abilities and standing of his clan, but in reality he just wants to bring his stepdaughter back to life, who died due to rejecting his Magical Crest after it was discovered that he was sterile and whose passing was key to him abandoning the traditional path of the Magus.
• The Lost Lenore: The reason he abandoned the Clock Tower and became a mercenary was because his stepdaughter, who he loved dearly, died from rejecting the transplant of his Magical Crest after it was discovered he was sterile. This event led him to cutting ties with Clock Tower and his parents, having decided that the line would die with him. His true wish for the Holy Grail is simply to bring her back, though he's pragmatic enough to note there's a good chance it might not happen even if he survives to get the artifact.
• Mage Marksman: He's a mage who uses a shotgun and grenades as his main weapons.
• Magitek: His shotgun is treated with a variety of thaumaturgic rituals.
• Necromancer: And quite a skilled one, at that. He makes daggers from hydra necks, heart-seeking bullets from human fingers, grenades made of human hearts filled with teeth and nails that decompose their targets' flesh, and an owl's eye which he uses as an Eye Spy.
• One Last Smoke: Is fatally injured helping Mordred fight and kill Semiramis and she refuses to abandon him, but doesn't let it keep him and her sharing a smoke together before passing on, grinning all the while.
• Poisoned Weapons: Creates a poisonous dagger from a couple of the juvenile hydra's heads.
• Properly Paranoid: He doubts Shirou enough to work independently from him and the other Red Masters. It turns out Shirou drugged the other Red Masters in order to acquire control of their Servants.
• The Scrooge: When Red Saber asks for clothes, he buys her the cheapest he can find.
• Shotguns Are Just Better: He has a shotgun that fires Abnormal Ammo.
• Spell My Name With An S: His surname is officially transliterated as "Sisigou" instead of "Shishigou".
• Spotting the Thread: Could immediately tell that dealing with Shirou Kotomine would mean bad things. He ends up being right and defects to the Black Faction.
• Sunglasses at Night: He never takes them off, no matter what!

Shirou Kotomine (MAJOR SPOILERS)

Shirou Kotomine / Ruler / Amakusa Shirou Tokisada

Voiced by: Kōki Uchiyama (Japanese), Max Mittelman (English)^{Other Languages}Enzo Fortuny (Latin American Spanish), Sergio Rodríguez-Guisán (European Spanish), Alexis Flamant (French), Massimo Di Benedetto (Italian), Johannes Wolko (German), Renan Alonso (Brazilian Portuguese)

Warning: Due to the sheer number of spoilers associated with this character, all spoilers are left un-marked. New viewers beware.

Assassin of Red's Master. A mysterious magus that was sent from the Church, a member of the Assembly of the Eighth Sacrament. Resembles Shirou Emiya and Archer from Fate/stay night greatly.

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• Ambiguously Brown: Fate/Apocrypha material mentions that he got the tan from twenty years of digging around Iraq for Semiramis' catalyst. The anime itself shows him in a flashback back in the Fuyuki Grail War where he had a normal skin tone and hair color for a Japanese man.
• Antagonist Title: He's the Apocryphal Saint, making the apocrypha in the title a reference to him.
• Affably Evil: He's lighthearted and friendly, but absolutely ruthless. Several times characters question how much of his personality is real and how much is a show.
• All-Loving Hero: All Loving anti-villain might be more appropriate, but that sounds weird, doesn't it? His goal is the salvation of all humans everywhere, even his enemies. He has reached the point where he doesn't even hate the people who originally killed him, having let go of such feelings. Even after Sieg has become a thorn in his side, he states that he has no quarrel with Sieg. Even Ruler is tempted to side with him for this reason.
• Alternate Timeline: His existence is the split between this timeline and the Fate/stay night timeline. The Einzbern family summoned him as Ruler instead of summoning Angra Mainyu as Avenger in the Third Holy Grail War. This means that the Holy Grail is not corrupted by Angra Mainyu in this timeline.
• Anime Hair: Just look at how spiky it is! It was that way even back during the Fuyuki Grail War, though he trades it out for the traditional Samurai Ponytail once he assumes his true appearance.
• Anti-Villain: Though to what extent remains mysterious. His wish is seemingly benevolent, but his means are ruthless and unsympathetic.
• Badass Cape: It's a Holy Shroud of his own creation and only a few levels of coolness below Karna's.
• Badass Preacher: An apocryphal Saint who kicks ass in the name of The Lord, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
• Big Bad: After killing off Darnic and Vlad on his own, Shirou becomes the main antagonist. While his goals are much more noble than his rival, the consequences they will have on humanity and the method he intends to use are such that the more heroic participants of the war cannot let him have his way.
• Brought Down to Badass: As an incarnated Servant, Shirou is actually weaker than he would normally be. With that said he still retains superhuman abilities to keep up with Frankenstein's Monster in a fight and even spar with Achilles (though he notes he'd never stand a chance in anything other than a spar with Achilles). It's only when he connects with the Greater Grail that his abilities as a Servant fully return to him.
• The Chessmaster: Just like Darnic, Shiro has been manipulating events since the last Holy Grail War (which happened at least seventy years ago), having spent 20 of those years digging in Iraq to get Semiramis' catalyst. He wins out and kills Darnic thanks to the fact Shiro knew well that Darnic had the Grail and was making his own plans to use it while planning accordingly, while Darnic never realized somebody else from the Fuyuki Grail War was still around until Shiro flat-out revealed himself before killing him.
• Church Militant: A member of the Assembly of the Eight Sacrament, just like Kirei. And then it turns out he's not. He actually is a Japanese Christian Saint who survived the Third Holy Grail War, where he was summoned as a Ruler.
• Consummate Liar: He can flawlessly convince the other Red masters that they are winning by a landslide, making them abandon the war and leaving it all to Shirou. Granted, he had Semiramis's drug to partially thank for it.
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: To Angra Mainyu from Fate/stay night; Angra Mainyu was (at least as portrayed in FSN) an incomprehensible physical manifestation of pure evil that was too powerful to fight directly, forcing the heroes to keep it from being unsealed from the Holy Grail in the first place. Shirou is, after being manifested, physically human, an All Loving Villain whose plan is to erase the evil Angra Mainyu represented by going into the Grail, forcing the heroes to fight him directly to stop him from sealing himself.
• Covered in Scars: Many scars are revealed in his Shirtless Scene inside the Greater Grail in Volume 4. He died in battle, after all.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Effortlessly kills off Dracula with his Baptismal Sacrament, though this was only possible due to Dracula's extreme vulnerability to holy miracles.
• The Cynic: Before he found his goal of saving all of humanity, he hated everything in the world, until he "cut out his heart full of hatred", according to himself.
• Death by Irony: He briefly fights Frankenstein's Monster before breaking off the fight to race off. Frankenstein would later go on to die in a failed attempt to kill Mordred, but inadvertently reviving Sieg from his fatal wound courtesy of Mordred in the process. Sieg would go on to aid Jeanne and Mordred against him, killing Karna, and then finally killing him with a weakened version of Blasted Tree, the very same Noble Phantasm that belonged to Frankenstein. In other words, by failing to kill Frankenstein himself, Shirou sets up his own failure and death.
  • Incidentally, he went down into that fight as a test to see if God approved of his plan (thinking he would be killed if that wasn't the case). Clearly, he didn't account for a difference in timetables.
• Didn't See That Coming: Gets defeated by Sieg, the only person whose involvement in the war he didn't predict.
• Died in Your Arms Tonight: Passes away in Semiramis's embrace peacefully.
• Dissonant Serenity: His smile is extremely unnerving, according to Kairi.
• Evil Plan: Though evil is stretching it, as he wants to annihilate the concept of Angra Mainyu: All The World's Evil and bring salvation to all human souls that have ever existed. To do this, he, with the help of Shakespeare's First Folio and his own Miracle arms, goes inside the Greater Grail and begins to rework it's innards so that it will use the true Third Magic, the physical manifestation of the immortal soul, upon every soul that has passed through the Akashic Records.
• Excellent Judge of Character: Shirou could tell his adopted brother Kirei was suffering and didn't quite have his head straight, but also that Shirou himself would probably be in danger in some way if Kirei ever figured himself out, so even though he loved and was compassionate to Kirei, he ultimately kept him at arm's length. Considering what sorts of twisted things Kirei got up to in the timeline where he ''did'' figure himself out, this was all probably for the best.
• Go Out with a Smile: Dies content despite his loss after kissing Semiramis.
• Handicapped Badass: Despite cutting off his own hand against Jeanne, he still fights evenly with Sieg in a test of swordsmanship despite Sieg utilizing Frankenstein's power to even the odds. In fact, Shiro impales Sieg right through the chest and it's only Sieg's use of Blasted Tree that prevents Shiro from winning.
• Heroic Self-Deprecation: Or in his case, Anti-Villainous Self-Deprecation. By enacting his plan, he admits to Jeanne that he has lost all right to call himself a Saint or a Heroic Spirit. The only thing that keeps him moving forward is his love for mankind.
• Hidden Depths: He has a lighthearted and friendly facade, but can be ruthless when the situation calls for it. It should be noted that Shirou does not try to hide this at all, and he makes it outright clear that he is willing to do anything for the sake of his wish.
• Historical Domain Character: He's actually Shiro Tokisada Amakusa, the apocryphal Catholic saint hailing from Japan.
• Historical Villain Upgrade: He's an apocryphal Catholic saint and he wants to bring salvation to mankind, but it's doubtful the real Shiro would have taken that goal to the extremes he does here (even if his portrayal here is actually tame compared to how he usually ends up in Japanese media).
• Holy Hand Grenade: His Baptismal Sacrament destroys Vlad after Vlad was transformed into a vampire so fast that their encounter cannot even be called a fight.
• Humans Are Bastards: His whole plans rests on the assumption that humanity is hopelessly corrupt and the only way to save it is to wipe out all evil and create a World of Silence.
• Hypocrite: For someone who claims to have gotten rid of all his anger, he gets rather angry near the end of his battle with Sieg.
• Imperfect Ritual: Invoked. Amakusa's original Einzbern Master was too weak to summon a proper Ruler, so they purposely fudged the method to force a weaker Servant to be summoned into the Ruler class. Amakusa's original class was supposed to be Caster, and he would be far weaker without the benefits of the Ruler class.
• Katanas Are Just Better: Has had Shakespeare boost a Katana he had acquired to the level of a C-rank Noble Phantasm, which he uses to great effect to go even with Frankenstein. The katana itself is Miike Tenta Mitsuyo, favorite blade of a "certain one-eyed master swordsman".
• Last Kiss: Semiramis kisses moments before they both die, and he thanks her.
• The Leader: He plans the strategy for the Red Faction because he is the only master besides Kairi.
• Life-or-Limb Decision: Sacrifices his right hand to survive Jeanne's La Pucelle and fights Sieg using his remaining hand to hold his katana.
• Long-Haired Pretty Boy: When he takes his true form in episode 24, his ponytail is at least to his knees, which adds a certain elegance that his short and spiky hair lacked.
• Long-Lived: According to the prologue of Volume of the light novel, it was one of Amakusa's Noble Phantasms that prevented his incarnate body from aging, hence him able to wait between the third Holy Grail War and the Great Holy Grail War.
• Manipulative Bastard: He tries to coerce Jeanne into joining him via Shakespeare messing with her with his Noble Phantasm.
• Mr. Fanservice: He is a very handsome youth and he removes his clothes in episode 20 of the anime revealing exceptional muscle definition. He is also shirtless here and here
• Not So Stoic: After spending most of the story perpetually calm, he starts to crack when Jeanne unleashes La Pucelle at him. However, it's only when Sieg starts fighting him and actually equals him as a result of Fran's power working overtime does he start shouting in a rage and becomes as determined to kill Sieg as Sieg is to kill him.
• Odd Friendship: Did you honestly expect that an Assyrian queen, an English playwright and a apocryphal Catholic saint from Japan to get along?
• Older Than They Look: Though he looks like a teenager, it's later revealed that Shirou has actually been around for over sixty years and is in fact an incarnated Servant. Normally he would have aged as a result of his incarnation, but thanks to his Noble Phantasm Left Hand - Xanadu Matrix, he managed to retain his youthful appearance.
• The Paragon Always Rebels: Rulers are chosen based on the fact that they are Heroic Spirits who have no real wish for the power of the Grail and can thus preside over the conflict fairly. While Shirou didn't start his stint as a Ruler with such a desire, seeing the potential of the Grail eventually caused a jealous desire for it to fester in his heart, leading him to scheme for years to make its powers his own.
• Patron Saint: Of all Japanese Catholics, even though he's still not regarded as such by the Church.
• Perpetual Smiler: Often seen smiling regardless of the situation, which highlights his friendly exterior. It crumbles during his final battle with Jeanne and Sieg, as they come closer and closer to destroying that which he worked towards since the Third War, finally capped off with him roaring at Sieg in a rage as they try to kill each other.
• Pop-Cultural Osmosis Failure: He had never heard of William Shakespeare and is unfamiliar with his works. Annoyed by this, Shakespeare hands him a book of his works and asks him to read it.
• Red Herring: His name and appearance invoke the idea of an Alternate Timeline where Shirou Emiya was adopted by the Church instead of Kiritsugu after the Fourth Fuyuki Grail War. Of course, there wasn't a fourth war at all in this timeline... He is officially an adopted Kotomine, but he's actually using his own given name, and his original name was Amakusa Shirou.
• The Red Mage: His two Noble Phantasms, Left Hand - Xanadu Matrix and Right Hand - Evil Eater, allow him to use practically any magecraft, even those he shouldn't know. While he would most likely lose to an actual first-rate Magus like Medea even if he was summoned as a Caster, it is still good enough for him to take control of the Greater Grail.
• Religion is Magic: His brand of magic comes from the Catholic Church, specifically the Assembly of the Eighth Sacrament. This is standard in the Nasuverse. He specializes in Baptismal Scriptures.
• The Reveal: Shirou is actually Amakusa Shirou Tokisada, a Japanese Christian Saint who was summoned as Ruler for the Third Holy Grail War. He is also in direct command of 6 of the Red Team Servants, having peacefully removed their masters, and intends to wish for "The Salvation of Humanity".
• Samurai: In Episode 24, he emerges from the Grail taking his true appearance, which consists of samurai clothes with a few Western touches (most notably, a cravat).
• Samurai Ponytail: In Episode 24, to complete his samurai look, his short an spiky hair becomes long and drawn back into a ponytail.
• Ship Tease: With Semiramis, his Servant, he enjoys such tender moments as Lap Pillow.
• Shrouded in Myth: Even the Yggdmillennia mole in the Catholic church could not discover any information on Shirou, implying that he's either of a supremely high rank or possibly something far worse. This is because he's not actually from the Holy Church, he's a Servant.
• Significant White Hair, Dark Skin: His tanned skin and white hair deliberately evoke Archer from Fate/stay night, though this ends up being a Double Subversion. Despite his name and appearance, he doesn't have any relation to Shirou Emiya, but his Mystical White Hair is indicative of the fact that he is not just a mundane human but an incarnated Servant. His true identity is Amakusa Shirou Tokisada, and his dark skin is said to be the result of deep tanning from years digging in the desert for artifacts.
• Sissy Villain: He has traits of being effeminate yet also masculine. He has a young, innocent and boyish appearance, he’s a small guy since his weight is rather light and his height rather short. He has soft spoken somewhat effeminate and delicate mannerisms, and in the past he had constant angst about humanity. He prefers having his subordinates do his work for him rather than dirty his hands personally. However, he is ruthless, murderous and will go out of his way to ensure that his goals succeed no matter what.
• Sleep Cute: He does this on Semiramis' lap◊ while she smiles affectionately. He does it again at the end of the War, though in context it's him taking the final rest as Semiramis comforts him.
• Soul Jar: His existence, even incarnated in flesh-and-blood with his Master long gone, is tied to the Greater Grail. Should the Grail somehow be removed from the equation, so will he.
• Superpower Lottery: After being summoned into the Ruler class by an intentionally Imperfect Ritual, and then making direct contact with the Greater Grail and becoming incarnated, Shirou became a Stray Servant that long outlived his Master. The Grail itself is both his anchor to the world and source of mana, and he possesses a Noble Phantasm that makes him The Ageless, giving him both stopping power and longevity that most Servants could only dream of. He can even summon a Servant of his own despite being one himself thanks to his incarnation. He is only hemmed in because he is not a proper Ruler Servant which makes him weaker than he could've been, and that the Greater Grail itself serves as a weakpoint, both things Sieg takes advantage of.
• Superior Successor: His method of incarnating is a mirror of Gilgamesh's from Fate/stay night: making contact with the empowered Holy Grail. Unlike Gilgamesh however, Shirou did it with a Holy Grail that wasn't corrupted by Angra Mainyu. Whereas Gilgamesh still had to forage for sources of mana and had to fight Angra Mainyu's influence over the course of 10 years, Shirou had none of these drawbacks and could act freely without penalty for 70 years.
• Super-Speed: He can easily run at a speed of 60 MPH when fleeing from Frankenstein's Monster.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: He's basically Archer in Kirei's clothing. In practice, he's basically a Lighter and Softer Kirei who isn't as murderous or deranged, but is capable of treachery rivaling his surrogate brother which isn't helped by the fact that unlike Kirei, he's genuinely affable.
• Teen Genius: He died at the ripe age of seventeen, which is why his incredible talents are so amazing to others, them not knowing he is a Servant.
• Throwing Your Sword Always Works: He is very skilled in the use of Black Keys.
• Title Drop: Shirou's true identity is that of Amakusa Shiro Tokisada, A Japanese Christian Apocryphal Saint.
• Unrealistic Black Hole: With sufficient enough energy source like the Greater Grail, he can combine the powers of both of his hands to use Twin Arm - Big Crunch, which creates a miniature black hole which swallows everything around it. He uses it to counter Jeanne's La Pucelle flames.
• Villainous Breakdown: He completely loses it once Sieg starts besting him. He's made all the more furious by the idea that with Sieg fighting using the power of both of Siegfried and Frankenstein the two of them are his final opponent despite their deaths early in the war.
  Shirou: Siegfried... and now Frankenstein! The Servants who were supposedly dead are my final enemy? What kind of karma is this?!
• Villainous Friendship: With Semiramis and Shakespeare he has a great relationship but this is surprisingly averted with the rest of the Red Servants. Achilles and Atalanta have a distaste for Shirou and while Karna has not stated his opinion on Shirou, he is worried about his true, original, Master.
• Walking Spoiler: Nothing about this man is as it initially seems.
• We Can Rule Together: Offers Black Team and the Ruler Faction to surrender to his cause in the beginning of Volume 3. Caster of Black decides to take the opportunity.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Shirou's wish is the salvation of mankind which involves using the Greater Grail to activate Third Magic and to materialize the souls of humans so that they will stop fighting over selfish reasons. The Extremist parts comes in that he will eliminate anyone who insists on getting in his way despite his kindness, even if they present flaws on his plans.
• White Hair, Black Heart: Played With heavily; he is ruthless and will do anything for his wish, but while he is the main antagonist of the series, he does not come off as truly evil. Also, he used to have black hair, but it apparently changed colors when he got his tan while he was digging in Iraq for twenty years for Semiramis's catalyst.
• With Us or Against Us: What pushes him into villainy is that he's so dead-set on his wish and his way of doing it that if someone decides to stand against him (or he has reason to believe they'll stand against him), that person has got to go. He removes all the other Red Faction Masters save Kairi in order to acquire their Servants and ensure they can't plot against him, and then decides to preemptively kill Jeanne before she even knows about him on the admittedly justified chance she won't join him, which doesn't do him any favors when they finally do confront each other. Not even Shakespeare is safe from this mindset, as Shirou orders Shakespeare by Command Seal not to turn his plan into a tragedy like so many of the playwright's other scripts.
• You Are in Command Now: He's the leader of the Red faction, and has authority over most of the Masters (Kairi Shishigou being the exception). He used unscrupulous, but peaceful means to acquire the 5 other Red team Servants.

Other

Rottweil Bersinsky

Former Master of Archer of Red.

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• Good Thing You Can Heal: He participated in one of the smaller Subcategory Holy Grail Wars, though it went to pot almost immediately after everybody summoned their Servants only to execute them instantly, since the true purpose was to generate a Grail filled with magical energy. Bersinsky himself killed his boss and everyone else, but this destabilized the bootleg Grail. He barely survived the blast, though he mentions having to regenerate his entire skin at least twice to heal most of the damage.
• Red Baron: "The Silver Lizard"

Jean Rum

Former Master of Caster of Red. A mercenary who wants to use the Grail to find Ivan the Terrible's lost library.

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• Bookworm: Noted to be an avid bibliophile.
• Irony: She had actually wanted to summon a character from one of Shakespeare's works, but got the author instead.
• Noodle Incident: She has worked with Kairi at least once before the war.
• Red Baron: "Storm Treads"
• The Smurfette Principle: The only female Master on the Red Team.

Pentel Brothers

Former Masters of Rider and Berserker of Red.

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• Sibling Team: Their profession together as mercenaries.

Feend vor Sembren

Former Master of Lancer of Red.

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• Badass Teacher: One of the greatest instructors in the Association. The fact he's chosen to take part alongside five highly-skilled mercenaries and a member of the Church's Eight Sacrament, as well as possess a catalyst for a Servant as strong as Karna only cements his credentials.
• One Degree of Separation: He's an old friend of Kayneth, and his son is a student of Waver.