Saber was an interesting young lady. With her knights’ armor coating her body and her brilliant golden hair tied humbly back, she could not be so easily defined by the word “beautiful.” And yet, the instant Shirou set eyes on her, he was not mesmerized by her cold confidence and imposing stature, but rather, by the softness that dwelled just beneath the surface, forced into slumber.
However, there was much more to this young lady’s story than a bittersweet tale of love between a man and a spirit. She was once a warrior that fought valiantly for her country, who was determined to lay her life on the life to defend the lives of strangers…but even so, the innocence that remained within her never faded away.
As we learn in the first route of Type-Moon’s widely acclaimed visual novel, Saber’s true identity is none other than the mighty King of Knights. However, as we also learn, there was much more to this girl’s story than the wars that she fought and the lives that she saved. At her core, Saber was little more than a girl: in fact, one could even call her one of the most feminine members of the cast (though I’m saying this before completing HF). Despite her cold exterior, Saber harboured a wish, a sincere desire, that she could never reveal to the world. She was the legendary King Arthur, and yet she was also only a human being.
In the beginning, Saber was effectively forced into her position as king. While I don’t believe she was ever unwilling to step forward and take responsibility for her people, the circumstance was forced upon her just as it was forced upon the rest of the country. She was, after all, a woman. How could a woman ever become king? The citizens would never accept such a travesty. However, the sword had spoken, and the truth was already determined: Arturia would don the armor of the King, and live out the rest of her days as a male.
As she continued to fight for her country, she gained as much respect as she attracted attention. Surely such a brave yet cold-hearted knight could never exist? And yet, there she was, as human as the rest of them: the very picture of what a king should be. She slayed her enemies without hesitation, and she created a period in history for her people that never would have been possible otherwise. She made a name for herself – the legendary King Arthur – and that name would be passed down from generation to generation.
But there was one simple truth that neither her country nor her future peers could see: that she was a woman, not a man. And more importantly, that she was a human being, not a God.
Images like this make people like me fanboys squeal, but realistically speaking, wouldn’t all of the viewers have looked at Saber very differently if she dressed like this?
Shirou was, arguably, the first and only person to see through her shell. She appeared cold and defensive at first, taking her role as Servant as seriously as she took her duty as king. She vowed to fight for Shirou, to defend him, and to assure that they win the war and attain the Holy Grail. She was even so preoccupied about her goals that she failed to see herself as a woman. Rare is the anime that lets a male walk in on a female in the shower and not conclude with a loud scream and/or physical attack. Saber did not see her body as that of a woman: she saw herself as a warrior, almost as an object, whose sole purpose of existence was to find the Holy Grail and redo history.
Even in the present, Saber’s will remained with her people. Having suffered defeat at the hands of her own country, she must have been ashamed at the fact that a legendary knight was slain by the people she defended – ashamed, and ultimately regretful, because she was the king that allowed such a terrifying tragedy to occur. Was she not strong enough? Was there something that she did wrong? At the end of the day, the sword must have made a mistake; there was no way a weak king like her could have been suited to governing the country. Her people would have been better off if a different knight were chosen as king – if history were to change, then perhaps those deaths would have never occurred.
What matters most in this story, however, is the fact that Saber was as much of a human being as Shirou. He realized this from the moment he saw her, and it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that he was attracted to her from the very beginning. He was awed, certainly, but I believe that he was also attracted. That is why his instincts kicked in, allowing him to jump in front of her to defend her from Berserker’s attack: because he couldn’t allow a girl to get hurt. It didn’t matter if she was a knight or if she was a Servant. She was a girl, he was a man, and he believed it to be his duty to protect that innocent blond-haired goddess from evil. It’s sexist when stated directly and romantic when sugarcoated, but the truth remains constant nonetheless: Saber was a human being, and Shirou saw her first as a human and second as a warrior.
It was this discrepancy between their perceptions that served as the foundation of their relationship, and as the dangers escalated and Shirou began training to defend her, she must have realized, too, that she was a woman before she was a knight.
Saber, as she firmly denies Shirou’s idealistic notions. They were both stubborn, but maybe that was why they worked so well together.
Looking back, what do we know about Saber? She often takes things seriously but doesn’t like to be embarrassed, and she wouldn’t hesitate to chastise if it meant avoiding an awkward moment. She prides herself in her strength and understands the importance of physical combat, but somewhere inside, she must have wished for someone to understand her, too. Didn’t she deny Shirou whenever he called her beautiful? Didn’t she stubbornly insist that her body existed to fight, and that it was not meant to be attractive? In some ways, Saber followed the classic tsundere formula in saying the opposite of what she meant: because if she really didn’t want to be seen as a woman, then she would have never opened up to Shirou in the first place.
And let’s not forget her favourite plushie: that cute little tiger. It was supposed to be such a ferocious animal, coldly killing and devouring the organisms around it without a second thought, but when portrayed as a stuffed toy, it suddenly became adorable. I couldn’t help but smile when I saw the resemblance between Saber and the lion that made its way into Type-Moon fandom; they were both so cold, so cruel on the outside, but when looked at from a different perspective, they became the most innocent things on the planet.
Lion Saber probably wasn’t meant to be taken seriously, but she always brings a smile to my face nonetheless.
The innocence of our heroine is where I got the cheesy pun in the post title, and that’s where I believe Saber’s truth lies: in her innocence. Ultimately, she possesses the same innocence as countless other visual novel girls, except it’s portrayed realistically and hidden beneath her shell. As a woman who lived her most important years as a man, she had begun to see herself more as a sword than a human; an object that should not have feelings, and should instead be used to protect those with feelings. In convincing herself of this “truth,” she was able to cast aside everything that made her human and become the perfect king.
But that king – that hero – was not perfect. Because Arturia was never happy, and it wasn’t until a certain young man helped her become a human again that she realized everything she had been missing out on in life.
Fate/stay night impressed me tremendously with its characterization. I was familiar with the characters before hand, but none of them made much of an impression on me in the anime, and I couldn’t help but see them by their archetypes – the silent girl, the tsundere, the childhood friend, the loli. As a matter of fact, Shirou annoyed me tremendously at first due to his childish ideals, but I came to love him after accepting him as a genuine character that was not necessarily right. I loved him in the same way that I loved Shinji Ikari.
But I digress: having completed Fate route, I realized that the characters of the story contain a significant amount of depth, and that instead of focusing on the overall plot (which has been covered countless times over), I decided to focus on the development of the characters. The story is skillfully written, the plot cleverly woven, and it didn’t take much to convert Saber from the silent warrior girl that I wasn’t interested in to a tragic heroine who wanted nothing more than to become human.
And that, in a nutshell, is what Saber is. She was a brave warrior, an excellent knight, but in the end, she had sacrificed her emotions as a human being. It wasn’t until Shirou stubbornly denied her way of life, until he forced his own seemingly idiotic ideals onto her that she realized everything she had been missing. She came to understand that she was as much of a woman as she was a knight, that she was beautiful enough for a man to love her – and at the end of the day, she realized that a king destroyed by his kingdom was far less cruel than a kingdom destroyed by its king. Much like Tsukihime’s Arcueid, Saber was able to shatter the shell that protected her from her emotions and retrieve the innocence beneath, and she decided to die in peace knowing that she had lived her life to the fullest.
Now that’s what I call a hero.
~ ETERNAL
つづく
