You know, sometimes Type-Moon frustrates me. They make decent characters and plot-lines, and while I've never been able to play their games, I've always enjoyed the Fate Universe. That said, Type-Moon really just doesn't know when to quit.
You see, this all started back during the release of the Visual Novel known as Fate/Stay Night. During the story, we are experiencing what is known as the Holy Grail War, a war where 7 mages each summon a heroic spirit either from history or legends to aide them in battle. In that Visual Novel, there are so far seven standard classes, and since then we've also seen the release of 3 non-standard classes. However, for the purposes of this discussion, I'm mostly going to be talking about one class in particular because this one is the one that drives me crazy the most: namely, the Saber class.
Now, back when the visual novel was first released, and you are introduced to Saber, a blonde woman who happens to be really skilled with a sword, if you were like me, you would've assumed she was Jeanne D'Arc or Joan of Arc because, well, what other women in history have fit the description of this character?
As it turns out, though, the Saber we are introduced to actually goes by the name of Artoria Pendragon. For those of you who don't know who that is or why that's such a big deal, Artoria is actually a gender-bent version of the boy who drew the sword from the stone and wielded the holy sword Excalibur, named King Arthur. And this move was absolutely genius because it was not only simple but it also played to the strengths of the original story.
For those of you who have not read the King Arthur story, it is said that whoever is capable of pulling the sword from the stone would become the King of England. However, the way Fate/Stay Night interpreted that was, "Whoever draws the sword becomes King, regardless of gender." This works because now, not only does it give us a strong female character as a servant, but it also allowed them to subvert expectations in a way that makes full use of the ambiguity of the sword in the stone's rules. And if that were the end of it, I'd be perfectly fine with that. But, it isn't.
Since the release of Fate/Stay Night and the release of other installments in the Fate franchise and the Nasuverse in general, we've seen more Saber class servants. Attila the Hun, who is now female, The offspring of Artoria, Mordred, is now Female, Soji Okita of the Shinsengumi is now Female, and Emperor Nero is now female.
Type-Moon have set a precedent for themselves that, if a character is introduced as a Saber, they must be female. One of the few exceptions I could find to that rule was Julius Caesar and, he's not a female, he's just fat. Every other Saber that is Male was introduced as a different class. Diarmuid was introduced as a Lancer, Lancelot was introduced as a Berserker, and Gilles De Reyes was introduced as a Caster. And, just as an aside, all of them were introduced in Fate/Zero.
Almost every other female from every other class was either introduced as a gender-bent Saber (Such as Artoria who, in Fate/Grand Order, can also be a Lancer) or is female in their original stories, like Medusa, who is a Rider class servant, Medea, who is a Caster, Joan of Arc, who is a Ruler, and you get the idea from there. So far, the only class other than Saber that introduces a character as gender-bent is the Lancer with Enkidu and, even in that case, I haven't read the Epic of Gilgamesh, so I'm not actually certain about that one. Every other character from every other class is introduced as the proper gender.
That has always bugged me because, yes, the gender-bent King Arthur thing worked but it was also something that, if used too much, could get played out far too quickly. Another thing that's bothered me is how Fate/Grand Order has been handling the Avenger Class.
For those of you who haven't read the original Visual Novel, outside of the seven standard classes, there were only two non-standard classes. The first was the Ruler, which was the class that served the purpose of maintaining the rules of the Holy Grail War for the Grail itself, rather than keeping humans sane the way the Catholic Church does in the actual story. The other non-standard class was the Avenger class, which was the class that was created in the original war exclusively for the spirit of the grail, that being All The World's Evil Angra Mainyu.
The problem I see with Fate/Grand Order in this instance is that that smart phone game has been giving the Avenger class title to other spirits that are not Angra Mainyu. Now, it's worth mentioning that, prior to Fate/Grand Order, there was also only one Ruler, who happened to be the Joan of Arc woman I mentioned earlier. However, in the case of the Ruler class, the only established rule for qualifying for it was that the spirit must not desire the grail or, to put it another way, the spirit must not have any wishes that they want satisfied. In this respect, the Ruler class has only ever been used by a single entity but it could be argued that others could as well.
The Avenger class doesn't have that same ambiguity. The Avenger class was stated, in Fate/Stay Night's Heaven's Feel Route, and again in Fate/Hollow Ataraxia to be exclusively for the spirit of the grail, who had been established to be Angra Mainyu. This is a precedent that was set in Fate/Stay Night and has not been defied in all the years the Fate series has been alive until Fate/Grand Order.
Fate/Grand Order does have what-if characters, like Shirou Kotomine, who falls under the Ruler class, and Kiritsugu Emiya as an Assassin class servant, and Fate/Grand Order also introduces you to the Shielder class as your starting servant, likely because they didn't really want to or know how to give you a free servant without just having a general freebie for one servant of any of the standard classes within the 1-2 star ranks. And, just as well, it could be that the longer Fate/Grand Order goes on, we may see more non-standard classes, and the same with other Fate story lines. However, even the non-standard classes we don't know about could still exist because there's no precedent defying them, especially not anymore since the Shielder class was made.
The Avenger class, however, did have a precedent for who could be of that class and why, and the rule was so strict that really only one person could inhabit it. Now, to be fair, I might be missing something. However, as it stands, the only way a character other than the initial Angra Mainyu could have been an Avenger would be if someone claims the grail and becomes the new spirit of the grail and claims the title of Angra Mainyu for themselves. And, I don't know about any of the other story lines but, at least in Fate/Zero, the one guy who won the grail and could've adopted its power chose to defy it because it was far too evil. And considering this was a guy who'd drop a skyscraper on two people and their servant to disable their traps, that's saying something.
Thanks for reading, and I'll try to have my next post be about something other than corporate behavior for a change.
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