Fate/Zero S1E11: “Discussing the Grail” (continued)
Okay. So.
Arturia gives a little speech extolling the rightness of her approach; just laws, enforced by just leaders, that bind and protect king and commoner alike in their respective roles. Alexander continues to find this...outrageous? Perhaps even offensive? His expression and tone of voice almost sound like he's responding to a threat. Which I suppose it is, indirectly, but...well, I'll get back to that point in just a minute.
Alexander declares that being slave to an ideology is no way for any person, king or otherwise, to live. When Arturia shrugs and says that a ruler must give up some of the freedom of behavior that a normal person should have, Alexander says that no one can ever really understand or respect a martyr. No one wants to be like that. No one can really look up to that.
...
You really can tell which of these people is from pre-Christian times and which one isn't. If "no one" can respect a martyr, Alexander had best have an explanation for where the people refereeing this Grail War are getting all their institutional power.
...
The king, Alexander says, must be infinitely greedy. He must be larger than life in all ways, embodying the extreme of all things, good and evil alike. He must laugh harder, rage longer, give more in his generosity, and inflict more at his displeasure. He must be respected, feared, and - most importantly - envied by all those beneath him, so that they too will aspire to reach his heights. Meanwhile, Arturia might have saved her people, but what happened to them once she fell? Her ideals caused her to abandon them in the end, and since she had never truly LED them, never given them an inspiration to live up to, it all fell apart.
Thus, she is no king at all. Just a child enamored with the nonsensical image of a king who serves others but not themselves.
I'm not entirely sure what Alexander was getting at, with her choosing her ideals over her people in the end. There are a few different versions of King Arthur's death, and I don't know which of those (if any) the Fate Moon Type goes with. But the rest of his speech, well...Arturia's response says it all.
First, she objects to him of all people trying to call her a child. He died young, after a mere decade of kingship, and he barely even spent any of that time ruling. He can talk a big game about inspiring his men, but his empire was in a near constant state of revolt when he wasn't pacifying it with plunder sent back from his current campaigns, and his own men who he talks up the loyalty of so much tried to assassinate him multiple times (maybe wanting your people to "envy" you isn't such a great idea after all, huh?). He's not even a king at all, in her book. Just a general. But really, she says, getting into the meat of his argument, the problems are much more foundational.
The king can do anything he wants? Then why all this talk of how the king MUST be larger than life, MUST be impressive, MUST constantly act like a god among men? If Arturia was a slave to her ideals, than Alexander was ten times as much a slave to his image. If we're to talk about the freedom of the king to act as he pleases, then consider; what would have happened to either of them had they chosen to stop committing themselves to their chosen roles? Without her commitment to law and justice, Arturia could have still been king. If Alexander let his image slip for even a second, stopped buying the loyalty of his governors with new plunder after just one failed conquest, he'd have been done.
But even that, Arturia says with a pained expression, is giving his argument too much credit. When he said he wanted to talk about who should get the Grail, she hadn't realized he'd be trying to do so by challenging each others' concepts of kingship. Because in that case, Alexander lost the argument just by the act of participating in it, even moreso PROPOSING it. Persuading others that they should allow you to lead them through reasoned discourse? Recognizing that there is no king without a people who choose to lend him their own strength? That's not at all the philosophy that Alexander's been pushing, it's the one she's been pushing. On that topic, why is Alexander getting so angry about this? Why is he taking her position so personally? Is it because, just as he showed when he called this meeting, in his deepest of hearts he knows that she's right?
...just kidding. Actually, Arturia doesn't say anything at all. She just freezes up with a horrified expression and babbles as if her mind has been shattered by some horrible cosmic truth.
It's hard for me to believe that this is what happens, given the massive logical holes and contradictions in Alexander's speech. It's not like Arturia hasn't encountered sentiments like his in the past; she brought an island full of feuding warlords to heel, surely some of them would have made similar arguments. I hope that at least a few of them made better arguments in favor of warlordism, because even in defense of such a philosophically vapid position you could make much stronger cases than the one Alexander did. How could she POSSIBLY not have anything to say to that?
That's without even mentioning that Alexander's attack on her own personal track record (though again, I admittedly don't know what version of it this story is assuming) makes his own, much spottier, one open to the same criticisms and then some. She has everything she needs to turn him into a whimpering emotional wreck. So, how is it that he's turned her into one?
...
Don't get me wrong, I love FZ Alexander to death. He's still my favorite character in the show. But that doesn't mean he should be winning philosophical debates, or that I think his attitudes toward power and rulership should ever be framed as having merit (his attitudes toward friendship, on the other hand, are sometimes downright heartwarming, but that's a very different subject). I love him because he's ridiculous. Because he's just doing his own whacky thing, fangirling over the modern world, and bouncing off of Waver in amusing ways in the middle of this Grail War that everyone else is taking super seriously.
So, what the hell just happened in this scene? It's possible that Arturia's embarrassing failure here is because of some Nasuverse arcana about her history that isn't suggested by the source mythology, but it doesn't feel like that. What it does feel like is one of two things.
1. The author is hilariously, childishly, spectacularly bad at civics. He's having Arturia freeze up in response to Alexander's speech because he himself doesn't have a good answer to it. Which in turn either means that this scene was written during a third consecutive all-nighter just barely enabled by caffeine and loud music, or that any given high school debate club member is better read than him on political theory.
2. The author does have an answer for this, but chose to not let Arturia give it, because she's an idealistic woman going up against a cynical man and therefore can't be allowed to win. Even in a case where the woman in question SHOULD be able to answer this, and it beggars the imagination how she might have gone through the life she's had without said ability. Because sexism-disguised-as-edginess is more important than verisimilitude when one is writing a story.
Okay, it's not actually a question. You and I both know perfectly well that it's 2. The "Rin's Big Adventure" storyline would have made me unsure, but being informed as I now am that this was changed in the anime adaptation to have pretty much the opposite ending of what the book's author gave it...yeah.
Disappointing, but eh, it's Joss Whedon, what was I expecting?
...
This painfully bad viewing experience is saved at the last moment by Hassan, who arrives with his army just as Gilgamesh is starting to emphasize the point with some skeevy misogynistic taunting. Shukran jazilan, Hassan.
Not sure why he had them all appear in standing formation in the courtyard like that instead of striking without warning from the shadows, but the particularities of his summoning ability and the Einzburn castle's wards could explain it I guess.
Waver infers that the Assassin has multiple personalities, and is able to divide himself into a different avatar for each. Erm...maybe? I haven't read anything about Hassan-i Sabbah having DID, so until some sort of confirmation I'm going to stick with my own initial reading. Waver doesn't know who this Assassin is after all, so without more information his guess would be a reasonable one. Alexander asks Gilgamesh if he had anything to do with this ambush, and Gilgamesh just sighs, shakes his head, and starts shittalking Goatee in front of the others.
So, now Iri, Arturia, Waver, and Alexander all know that Goatee and Kirei are conspiring together after all. Unless they decide that Gilgamesh is making things up to confuse them, of course, but I doubt they'll jump to that conclusion.
Alexander tries inviting Hassan and his army to sit, drink, and discuss with them, but the assassins aren't interested (maybe they would be, if Kirei hadn't used that Command Seal, but there's no way to tell at this point).
As Arturia shields Iri and Gilgamesh and Waver just kinda sit there, Alexander gets to his feet and tells them to brace themselves. The assassins, meanwhile, just stand there not doing shit. As a mighty wind starts blowing around Alexander, he asks Arturia if a king should stand alone against their enemies. Arturia responds that yes, that is what a king must do.
Um.
What?
I don't even know what Arturia's philosophy is supposed to be, at this point.
If anything, Gilgamesh is the one who should be giving that kind of answer. Not just because his myth emphasizes individual superheroics over group tactics, but even purely based on the character that's been presented in Fate/Zero. He sees himself as being on a level above any and all others, with individual power that inherently justifies his dominion. Out of the three of them, he's the one who should be saying that a true king needs no help in dealing with adversaries.
And that's before you factor in that when it comes to hero myths, King Arthur's is one of the most heavily bound to the hero's allies and enforcers. The very first thing most people think of after hearing "King Arthur" is "the Knights of the Round Table." Arthur is virtually ALWAYS visualized, in prose or art, in battle or in peacetime, in the company of his knights. What is even going on in this scene?
Alexander does a thing, and suddenly they're all in a desert. Apparently a recreation of a battlefield Alexander remembers from his lifetime. Iri explains that they're in a "reality marble," a pocket dimension sustained by magic, but that it shouldn't be possible for Alexander to just create one out of nowhere and pull them all into it like that. As the assassins continue to stand around not attacking, a phantom reconstruction of the Macedonian army appears over the dunes.
O...kay, I guess Alexander also has an army-summoning ability, and it's better than Hassan's. Despite that being Hassan's entire shtick. So this is the trump card that Kirei and Goatee were whispering about. And that they knew about somehow.
On the bright side, Alexander has a cute moment when he's reunited with the ghost of his horse.
Alexander continues to lecture Arturia about how the will of a true king is equal to that of all of his followers. Right, because that supports his argument rather than hers, sure.
The assassins recoil, but there's nowhere for them to retreat to, and I guess Hassan's ward-evasion skills don't let him escape whatever bullshit pocket dimension Alexander just created. And, as Alexander gleefully points out, facing a more numerous enemy on open ground with no cover is exactly where assassins are weakest.
Where assassins are STRONGEST, of course, is when they can sneak up on their unsuspecting targets far away from the battlefield and kill them in a surprise attack before they can retaliate. Too bad Hassan never got a chance to engage them in that kind of situation amirite?
...
The closest I can come to justifying this is inferring that Hassan has lost patience with his master and regrets responding to the summons. So, when Kirei used the command seal to make him fight until either the enemy is eliminated or he is, he saw that as a perfect opportunity to GTFO.
...
So, the ghost-Macedonians slaughter the ghost-Hassassins while everyone else just kind of sits around waiting.
Afterward, the others are returned to the Einzburn courtyard, where Alexander informs them that the meeting is adjourned. Clearly, there's no more progress to be made here. He summons the Gordian Chariot, ushers Waver aboard, and shittalks Arturia over his shoulder before driving off. This was meant to be a concordance of kings, and he no longer regards her as such.
No word on whether or not he regards Gilgamesh the actual twelve year old as one or not at this point, given that the latter didn't contribute any more to the fight than she did. But Gilgamesh is male enough and edgy enough to get a pass no matter how useless and childish he is. Also, no one asks him about what he said before, about his own master and the Assassin's having some shady stuff going on. Presumably because that would ruin the plot.
Speaking of Gilgamesh, he tells Arturia not to abandon her stupid philosophy no matter what Alexander says. He loves how weak and stupid it makes her, and the look of suffering when she gets confronted with that is heavenly.
He remarks, once again, that she reminds him of the virgins he used to rape on their wedding nights, with that lovely miserable face of hers. Never change.
...
On one hand, this is totally in-character for a pre-Epic version of Gilgamesh. Primae noctis was one of the dastardly practices that the early part of the story condemns him for in particular.
On the other, the choice to have him make an allusion to that here and now, and to put Arturia in a (highly illogical) situation where she's made vulnerable to it is completely, 100% the author's creepiness rather than the character's.
...
Gilgamesh teleports away too, leaving Arturia and Iri alone in the garden.
Iri asks Arturia if she's okay. Arturia dejectedly thinks aloud about the one knight who abandoned the Round Table and told her that she could never understand normal people. She wonders if perhaps, secretly, all the others felt the same way.
Unlike Alexander's lieutenants, who never chafed under his leadership or plotted against him.
End episode.
On reflection, the exchange between Arturia and Alexander kind of works in light of my interpretation of what the Servants are. Waver wants people to like him and believe in him. Gray has a bit of a messiah complex, and he definitely holds people at arm's length when he really shouldn't. As a dialogue between Gray's self-destructive aspirational ideal and Waver's much healthier one, I can buy this. But the servants aren't just that. Not to mention that when Arturia's idealism, specifically, is what's getting stomped on both by outside parties AND by Gray himself, it starts to look less like an internal conflict he's dealing badly with and more like a (really, really dumb) author soapbox.
Honestly, my biggest problem with this isn't even what it does to Arturia. It's what it does to Alexander. And that pisses me off, because - like I said earlier - he is or at least was my favorite character in this show.
Tell me if you heard this before. A new character is introduced. They are inexplicably better and more powerful than the others, even in areas where those others are supposed to be the best. They strike up a rapport with the preexisting protagonist and/or flagship character, and then use that rapport to completely steal their thunder and overshadow them. The supporting cast and antagonists act in nonsensical ways in order to give this character better opportunities to show off their competence and power. The story is framed in such a way that the superiority of this new character is the emphasis, and an inordinate amount of screentime is devoted to rubbing in how they (and, by extension, the writer who introduced them to the preexisting work) are better than their counterpart(s).
There is a name for this type of character, and I really, really don't like that it fits Alexander. It does, though.
This episode is a bad fanfic of Fate Zero with an insufferable Mary Sue mutation of Alexander. It got off to a strong start, but since that start mostly ended up just being setup for a truly shit-tastic payoff, I can't even give it credit for that anymore.
Easily and by far the worst episode of Fate/Zero so far. I hope this was an aberration, because if the show keeps being like this the supply of goodwill I've built up for it is going to run dry fast.
