Fate/Zero S1E11: “Discussing the Grail”

Continuing another old liveblog, we're getting back on the Fate train! Where we left off almost a year ago, Team Lancer had just come under new management with Sola usurping her jackass husband's position, Team Sabre is picking up the pieces - both physically and emotionally - after the former's failed attack, Team Berserker reminded us that it exists, Team Rider is still prancing around being silly without changing the status quo much, and everyone else is sort of lurking around being edgy in the background.

Tiny babby Rin Tohsaka also got to show up for an episode and be her BAMF self, over Urobuchi's objections, so that's cool too.

Let's see what this episode brings!


Irisviel walks through the halls of the Einzberns' Japanese castle of questionable neccessity, morosely surveying the halls that are still damaged and half-collapsed from her husband's battle with Archie. I guess fixing it either takes more mana than they can spare at the moment, or they just haven't had time. As she walks, she suddenly senses another intrusion on the castle's bounded field. A moment later, lightning flashes and thunder crashes outside, announcing the arrival of the Gordian Chariot driven by Alexander.

Probably not an attack; Team Rider are pretty much the only ones following the damned truce. Most likely they're either tracking recent Gilles sightings, or coming to compare notes about Assassin activity after their recent encounter. They should probably announce themselves if they're coming in peace, but, well, Alexander.

Iri is stunned by the feedback from the forceful field entry, causing Arturia to run over to her in alarm. Gray is out of the house at present, which naturally leads them to conclude that someone is using this opportunity to launch a cheap attack. Goddamnit, Alex.

Arturia figures it's Alexander. The lightning and high speed, high visibility entry kinda give it away. Roll OP. I forgot how much I liked this OP! Afterward, Arturia comes down to the foyer in full armor, sword at the ready, with Iri standing behind her with support spells prepped. Alexander, who is wearing that stupid T-shirt he bought, asks Arturia why she's all kited up, and why the castle is in such sorry shape. He and Waver are probably literally the only ones to have not gotten the memo yet, lol. When asked why he has come himself, Alexander hoists a keg and says pretty much what I thought he might say.

If you've seen this show and he isn't your favorite character, we can't be friends.

Cut to the Einzburns' courtyard garden. Alex and Arturia are seated on the floor sipping beer out of a ladle while their respective not-quite-masters hang back and watch from opposite sides. It turns out that the subject Alexander is here to discuss isn't the Assassin or the Caster, though. Rather, he's here to talk about the Grail, the struggle over it, and how maybe they've been going about this the wrong way.

The Grail is supposedly fated to end up in the hands of the one most worthy to hold it. But, while he might be all for fighty stuff in general, Alexander doesn't really think that trial by combat is the best way to determine worthiness in this particular instance.

I think he's genuine in this. Nothing has happened so far that would reasonably have shaken his confidence in his ability to win this war the old fashioned way. His conflicts with the other spirits have so far favored him on pretty much every occasion, after all. Surprising, given what we know of his worldview, but maybe he's decided that he likes some of the other spirits enough that he'd really rather rule alongside them and thus wants to avoid having to return them to the afterlife.

So, he and Arturia are going to talk about power, kingship, and philosophy. And they're going to drink while they do it, because nobody has a serious philosophical debate sober. Maybe if one of them can win in the arena of words and get the others to admit defeat, the Grail will recognize that as a conclusive battle and appear to the acknowledged victor. Interesting. I wonder if anyone's tried that before in the previous three Grail Wars? Knowing wizard culture, probably not!

Before they start though, there's a golden flash of light and Gilgamesh materializes near them, immediately whining about how depressing and gloomy this place is and not fit for a divine being like himself yadda yadda. Apparently, Alexander just happened to run into Gilgamesh while he and Waver were riding around chasing Giles, and decided to invite him because of course.

Well, this is certainly going to be a productive, good-faith discussion. :/

As Gilgamesh whines and bitches his way over to the central court, Waver and Iri both recoil away from him as if in fear or pain. In Iri's case I'd have assumed this was just a response to him breaking through the bounded field (using a teleport ability apparently? Maybe he can use his "treasury" as a travel method, in addition to summoning things from it?), but Waver's reaction is even stronger than hers. It actually knocks him over.

Gilgamesh has some sort of fear or intimidation power, then. Other spirits are immune, but mortal wizards aren't.

Alexander ignores Gilgamesh's whining and bitching about the setting, and just offers him some beer. The latter reluctantly takes the ladle, ingests a tiny taste of it, and promptly begins whining and bitching about how the drink isn't good enough. When Alexander protests that it was the best he could procure in reasonable quantities from the local "marketplace," Gilgamesh declares that that's because Alexander isn't proper royalty and wouldn't know quality if it hit him in the face. He then summons a golden vase and cups from his hammerspace and serves them each one before sitting his anachronistically plate-armored self down and deigning to join them.

So he keeps booze in there as well as swords. That's probably the least irritating thing we've learned about Gilgamesh thus far. Arturia and Alexander are both forced to agree, after tasting whatever drink he just gave them, that it is far superior to the stuff Alexander brought.

On a minor character note, it's worth pointing out that Alexander was going to have everyone share a drinking-ladle, and stood the keg up where everyone can reach. Gilgamesh gave everyone their own cup, and also (implicitly at least) puts them in a position where they'll have to ask him for refills. While I don't think the former is accurate to the character of the historical Alexander the Great, it fits with how his ghostly MoonFate counterpart has acted so far. He might be an egotist and a tyrant, but he recognizes that he's still ultimately just another person, and is willing to engage with others as such when he's not on the battlefield. For Gilgamesh, self-aggrandizement and ego are his entire personality.

...

Hmm. Going back to my reading in previous episodes, about how rather than being 1:1 resurrections of the historical figures, these heroic spirits take something from their summoners as well. Thinking about it more, I wonder if the key to understanding this is in the concept of the "hero" itself. The spirits all embody aspects or interpretations of their original selves that the summoner finds aspirational. Consciously or otherwise.

Waver wants to be seen as manly and dominant, but he also wants people to like and accept him. So, his version of Alexander focuses on the martial strength and self-aggrandizement, but also has very good social skills and is able to form real connections with others based on mutual respect. Gray is all about duty and responsibility, but also has a guilty conscience about the stuff he's done and isn't nearly as confident as he pretends to be that it was all justified. The Arturia he summoned leans on the traits of hers that embody what he feels like he should be, and that's what pisses him off about her. Uwu and Giles, of course, fit this model perfectly. We haven't seen enough of Hassan or the Berserker's personalities to know how well they map to their masters (and the Berserker, at least, has been tampered with during the summoning by Darth Matou's modified invocation, so it might not matter in their case), and we haven't seen enough of Archie's internal world to know how the Diarmuid he summoned might reflect his ideals.

Now. Looking at Goatee Tohsaka, and looking at the version of Gilgamesh he summoned, does this hold up?

I think it does.

...

After the other two acknowledge that Gilgamesh's drink was better, he tells them that the sheer quality and quantity of his possessions should be a convincing argument in and of themselves of his worthiness to take the Grail. Alexander rolls his eyes and laughs that off with a comment about how the Grail isn't a drinking cup, so having nice wine to put in it isn't all that relevant. Okay, that was a great line right there. It had me actually laughing. So, Gilgamesh's next argument is that the Grail already belongs to him. It used to be part of his treasury. All the treasures in the world belonged to him at some point in the past.

When asked why the hell he hadn't already used it then before it got inexplicably lost to him, Gilgamesh does a Twitter-worthy attempt at ass covering.

Uh huh. You had the Grail once, you just never noticed it until long after you lost it. Sure. That happened. Right. All treasures came from your vaults once. Uh huh. Even the ones that weren't created yet in your lifetime. Makes sense.

Arturia, who had been silent until now, finally speaks up to call bullshit on this. If Gilgamesh actually thinks that anyone is going to believe that, much less be swayed by the claim it supposedly gives him even if they did, he's as crazy as Gilles. Alexander tries to point out that if Gilgamesh is really so perfect and awesome and already owns everything and rules everything, what does he even want to use the Grail for? Gilgamesh replies that he doesn't; he just knows that it's his, which means that he refuses to let anyone else use it.

...

This fucking guy.

...

Alexander counters, as I'd expect him to, that part of being a king is using force to claim your perceived due. Having owned something once before doesn't mean diddly squat, since kings take things by conquest from one another all the time. If that's Gilgamesh's best line, then there's no point in having this conversation since it's just going to come down to violence anyway (and to be fair, Gilgamesh himself acknowledges that he doesn't think this conversation will be productive, nor does he even think the Grail would recognize a rhetorical victory; why he bothered showing up at all, I'm not sure).

For now, they have another round of Gilgamesh's apparently bestest booze ever. After a moment, Arturia asks Alexander what he plans to use the Grail for, should he get it. He surprises them, but not really the audience at this point, by saying that he'd wish to be alive and mortal again.

Hearing this, Waver comes running in from the sidelines demanding to know why Alexander lied to him by saying he'd wish to conquer the world.

Alexander knocks him back out of the way with a single backhand, as is customary, and explains. What he told Waver before is that he wants to conquer the world. The act of conquest itself, the raising of armies and victories in battle, are what he lives for. And, befitting his weirdly egalitarian streak, he doesn't want to use any unfair advantages like innate magic powers or heroic spirit toughness to do it. By wishing to be resurrected as his mortal self, he'll have a second shot at conquering the world fair and square like he always wanted to.

Neither Artoria nor Gilgamesh are all that impressed with Alexander's wish. The former because it's selfish and petty. The latter because it's just petty. He declares that the wish for a mere human body to walk around in again is so insultingly banal and trivial, in fact, that he plans to make a point of killing Alexander himself in the coming battles just because it annoys him so much.

I mean...this is probably the first time so far that Gilgamesh has said something that I didn't find bog-stupid, so progress I guess.

Gilgamesh and Alexander make blustery threats at each other for a bit, until finally Arturia cuts in again and tells them that neither of their...erm..."philosophies" of rulership are impressing her. Alexander asks her to speak her own piece then, and she says that she would wish for her kingdom to be saved.

Oof. Sorry Arturia, but I don't think even the power of the Holy Grail can make the EU take you back at this point.

With that, we suddenly cut to Goatee having of his magic phonograph conversations with Kirei. One of Hassan's assassins has a bead on them (right, the Assassin powerset includes a limited ability to slip through bounded fields undetected), and Kirei is providing Goatee with live garden party intel. Kirei is continually bemused and frustrated by the Servants' irrepressible desire to do college freshman stuff like dating drama and bad drunk philosophy debates instead of fighting, but he seems to have grudgingly accepted it at this point. He's most surprised by the fact that Gilgamesh, his own Servant, is participating in this frivolity, but he supposes Gilgamesh might see it as befitting his image to always be present at important-ish meetings, or just to keep tabs on what the enemies are up to.

On that note, Goatee wants to know what Kirei's assessment of Alexander and Gilgamesh's relative strength. Kirei says that it's hard to tell, as Rider may have a trump card in his hand that surpasses even the power of his highly dangerous Noble Phantasm.

Wonder what that's referring to? The power of friendship? The beard? The T-shirt? Definitely the T-shirt.

In any case, Goatee deems that with Alexander drunk and distracted, and his extremely squishy Master right out in the open nearby, this would be a great opportunity to eliminate one of the most dangerous opponents from the board. He orders Kirei to rally Hassan's ghost army and attack in force. Arturia is already handicapped by that injured hand of hers, so she can probably be dealt with later; for now, concentrate fire on Alexander or (even better) Waver and try to take him out, even if it means he takes a lot of ghosts with him.

Hmm. Are the Assassins really that stealthy? Slipping one or two of them through the Einzburn wards I could see, but the entire order? Hmm. Maybe if Hassan himself slips in, he can then summon all the others on the spot, thereby letting them bypass a potentially much more detectible entry. That could make sense.

Even if this attack fails, Goatee says, the tactical intel they gather through it should be worth it.

Can Hassan re-summon assassins who have already been destroyed once, like Gilles with his tentacle monsters? If so, this strategy makes plenty of sense. If not, then less so.

Also, does Gilgamesh know about this? If not, will he figure out what's going on and play along, will he think Kirei has betrayed them and play along unknowingly, or will he take this as a signal to strike while his ally has his enemies at the disadvantage and help the assassins wipe out Arturia and Alexander? This really could go any number of ways depending on what Gilgamesh does. And, I suppose, on whether or not Hassan manages to cheap-shot Waver before his presence can be noticed, which would banish Alexander without a fight and leave himself and Gilgamesh to trivially overwhelm Arturia and Iri. They'd need to make sure they got Iri too, though; they can't have any witnesses to them working together.

Then Kirei says that it will take "roughly ten minutes" for Hassan to summon his entire force onsite. O...kay. That brings me back to the stealth question. Gradually summoning that many spirits, even if they're all stealthy assassins, seems like it should trip those wards.

Goatee also instructs Kirei to use one of his command seals to give Hassan the order "Be victorious, no matter what the cost." Erm...okay bro, if you think that'll help lol.

Back in the Einzburns' garden, Alexander asks Arturia to clarify what she just said. Would she really go back and change history? Cause the timeline that they all exist in at this moment to be supplanted? Yes, she answers. She lost her kingdom, and she wants it back.

Gilgamesh chuckles, earning him dirty looks, but Alexander seems more blown away by Arturia's answer than he is by Gilgamesh's immaturity. Alexander asks her to clarify; it was during her reign that Britain fell, was it not? She replies that yes, it did. She sees it as her own failure, and the Grail as her chance to undo it. Gilgamesh laughs even harder at that, provoking her to ask him what's so funny (and, implicitly, what a certified cringelord like himself would be doing laughing at literally any other person). Gilgamesh responds with this utterly galaxy-brained take:

How can Arturia possibly call herself a king if she's capable of experiencing the emotion of regret?

...

Holy shit. I never thought the day would come that I'd meet another, but:

Kimblee, Mottom, I found a new friend to add to your philosophy club. You two are gonna love him.

...

Alexander isn't even paying attention to the cackling idiot anymore, because Arturia's sentiment is apparently REALLY grinding his gears. Is she really saying, he asks, that she would erase her own mark on history? Undo her own legend? What would that even do to the entity partly defined by its heroic mythology that she now calls herself? Arturia says that she doesn't care. Britain gave her everything she had. Her throne, her sword, her family, everything, and she is willing to give everything she has back in return. In response to this, Alexander finds himself not just ignoring Gilgamesh, but actually being forced to agree with him. Arturia's philosophy is completely inimical to everything he himself has ever believed in.

To Alexander, no matter how willing he is to break bread and develop real friendships with those he sees as his subjects, it is the kingdom that exists for the benefit of the king. That's the whole point. Why even want to be a ruler if that isn't how it works?

The Machiavellian, Divine Right, and Social Contract theories of government. All are in opposition, but the first two are much closer to each other than they are to the third. And hey, for all that I've been griping about this show's portrayal of some of the mythic characters, I think that this actually does match up to at least the traditional understanding of these three. Alexander the Great was all about glory and struggle, even if he could also be a fairly magnanimous overlord to those he conquered. Gilgamesh, at least early in the Epic before he had his character arc, was completely assured in his rightful supremacy by virtue of birth as the son of a god. King Arthur - at least in the dominant cultural narratives about him, regardless of whether or not he actually existed - was defined by adherence to chivalry and noblesse oblige.

It's also a little refreshing to see the debate include tyrants from times and places where tyranny was an unquestioned fact of life. Nowadays, people like Gilgamesh and Alexander have to hide behind justifications and excuses and twists of logic in order to stay competitive. These two are totally open and honest about what they are, because they never had to defend themselves as such (well, that might not be entirely true in Alexander's case. Democracy and noble duty as concepts existed in his world. But still, "might makes right" warlordism being right and proper was a fairly accepted worldview).

Arturia points out that Alexander also lost his kingdom when he died in battle. Just like her, his empire fractured and fell to chaos when he fell, and he didn't even live especially long. He counters that he mourns this fact, but he doesn't regret it; to regret it would be to demean not only his own legacy, but also those of the warriors who fought and died at his side to get as far as they did. That's why he'd rather conquer a new empire than get his old one back. Arturia's response is that this respect for his subjects' legacy only seems to extend to a small subset of his subjects who accompanied him on campaign; a true king is a (wo)man of the entire people, peasant and knight alike, with a responsibility to ALL of those under their law.

Splitting the review here. I'm going to have a lot more to say after this point, and we're only halfway through the runtime.

Unfortunately, one of the reasons I have much more to say is that the quality of this debate - and consequently of the episode that contains it - is about to take a sharp nosedive.