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Fate Stay Night Question (SPOILER ALERT)




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jncalp



Joined: 14 Feb 2004
Posts: 32
Location: GUAM
PostPosted: Sat Feb 17, 2007 9:00 pm Reply with quote
Hey guys. First I would like to say very nice job on the site revamp. I haven't been here in a while. Anyways on to my question. In Fate Stay Night I was just wondering exactly where the creators got the idea of King Arthur being a woman. Thanks alot in advance everyone.
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Eruanna



Joined: 05 Sep 2006
Posts: 451
Location: Canada
PostPosted: Sat Feb 17, 2007 10:05 pm Reply with quote
Who knows.... I thought it was just random. Like, the creator went, "Hey, what if Arthur was a woman? Yeah, that sounds good!" as apposed to "Hey, this random legend here says Arthur may have been a woman!"
I could be wrong though, but I thought it was just made up.
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Nagisa
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Joined: 19 Aug 2003
Posts: 6128
Location: Atlanta-ish, Jawjuh
PostPosted: Sat Feb 17, 2007 10:25 pm Reply with quote
Well, I think the rationale behind it was to show the difference between "myth" and "reality." Myths change reality, so that when reality shows up, it can be drastically different from the myth's perception. Not to mention solid facts about the real King Arthur are very sparse and fragmented, so it might not be too much of a stretch to have him be a woman posing as a man (as with Fate/stay night's own "Arturia Pendragon").

Or, I could just be reading too much into it and Type-Moon did it for the hell of it, but that's always been the way I looked at it. And given how carefully Type-Moon combed over various myths for figures to use and managed to get quite specific with the individual details (Berserker being Heracles after going mad, Rider being Medusa before being turned into a snake-haired monster, Caster's (Medea's) affection toward Souichirou mirroring her affections to Jason in the myth, etc.), I have a hard time seeing them doing something like this frivolously.

Actually, now that I think of it, I've seen Type-Moon artbooks that have prototypal versions of Fate/stay night's cast, and Saber originally was intended to be a male King Arthur. It's quite possible that in an earlier draft of the game, Saber was male and Shirou was female (or there may have been a new protagonist entirely, maybe even Rin was the original protagonist), and that complications in writing the story that way prompted them to do a quick gender swap to make the story function better. Hard to say.
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jncalp



Joined: 14 Feb 2004
Posts: 32
Location: GUAM
PostPosted: Sat Feb 17, 2007 11:41 pm Reply with quote
Wow thanks alot both of you. I really appreciate it.
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Malintex Terek
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PostPosted: Sun Feb 18, 2007 2:09 am Reply with quote
The primary reason was that Nasu decided having a female protagonist with a male Servant wouldn't be all that interesting, given the attitudes of said Servant, who some fans call "Servant Saver" after a typo in the character manual.

Saver, the "male" King Arthur, had some of Archer's traits in that he was cocky and arrogant, but had Saber's sense of duty. In a man, we'd call what Saver had "honor", mayhaps "GAR" if you're familiar with the term; in a woman, the Japanese fanbase for TYPE-MOON would call it moé.

Nasu skillfully worked the "Arthur Pendragon = woman" device by making Saber a character unaffected by myth; see, Servants and Noble Phantasms are more than just "historical figures" and "magical weapons", they're incarnate legends. So, as "legends" seen as a whole by all of humanity, there are certain exaggerations that never happened to Servants that get seen when they are summoned as Servants, not limited to:

1. Heracles' abnormal size.
2. Gilgamesh's golden hair.
3. Gilgamesh's possession of all the Noble Phantasms in history (clearly anachronistic and not region appropriate at times).
4. Heracles' twelve lives (he thinks over this to himself in the game; he was never bested in the age of the gods).
5. Assassin's very existence (Sasaki Kojirou never existed; rather, it's a role being played by an 'actor').

Saber, who isn't an incarnate legend like the other Servants since she isn't an Epic Spirit yet, is unaffected by these exaggerations, which is why she wasn't turned into a man when Shirou summoned her.
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