Fate/Zero/Headscratchers

Saber struggling with her right hand that cannot heal. Kiritsugu has Avalon. We know Avalon can undo Gae Buidhe's curse. Why didn't Kiritsugu just return Avalon to Saber, even if only for a short moment, to remove her handicap? It's not a hard guess that Avalon's ability as a healing noble phantasm exceeds Gae Buidhe's ability as a spear to cause wounds that cannot heal. Fate/stay night's Berserker was unable to fight skillfully due to his madness (which is about the only weakness he had), so why is the Black Knight's skill seemingly unhampered by the Mad Enhancement? Is there any reason for this other than the fact that the Knight isn't an unkillable demigod and thus, plot-wise, needed his skills to be a credible threat?
 * He's the Combat Pragmatist incarnate. Saber is powerful enough to survive even with the wound, and if she dies he can still technically win the war. If he gives it back to her, even for a little, someone else (Kotomine probably) could attack and take him out (even though nobody else knows about it, Kiritsugu is not the type to take chances, no matter how slim - it explicitly states that he's the hitman-style of killer because he's a coward). Besides, Avalon's healing ability vs effects (like curses) is unknown (Shirou was captured by Illya's mystic eyes, for example) - in the middle of a war is not the place to test it.
 * Where does it say that Avalon can heal Gae Buidhe? Gae Buidhe is supposed to be a curse on the soul (pretty much like Void Avesta's effect). How was it described...? "Instead of doing damage, it lowers the maximum HP." Even when Saber told Irisviel to heal the gaping hole in her hand, Iri couldn't, because "she was already at full health."
 * There's also that it was being used to keep Iri from becoming a drooling grail cup, and it's pretty much easy to see that Kiritsugu likes Iri a lot more than Saber. There's also the "Servant-is-just-a-tool" thing, and that Kiritsugu's plan was to just take out the Masters in the first place. To him, Saber was easily expendable, even though she was a valuable commodity.
 * Yes, the Black Knight possesses an ability called "Immortal Arms Mastery" which allows him to make full use of his combat techniques no matter what kind of mental restriction he is under. The explanation being that he trained his abilities to such a peak that they became natural instincts to him. As for why he can automatically use any weapon as his noble phantasm... that ability is his noble phantasm. Anyway, Nasuverse is all about having rules and then subverting the crap out of them for the most ridiculous Game Breaker advantages you can get.
 * Also, his Mad Enhancement is a lower rank the FSN's Berserker. He has more of his mind in him as it is.
 * On top of that, Berserker was also being driven mad manually by Ilya for most of it.
 * Kind of a minor thing, but...why does Rider have a beard? He lacks one in every historical depiction, and he's supposed to have issued in the custom of being clean-shaven.
 * Why is King Arthur a woman?
 * For the same reason that he is ten feet tall and rides around in a cart driven by the bulls of heaven.
 * Something weird happened during the summoning to cause him and Gilgamesh to switch bodies without noticing? I guess I could sort of imagine a blonde Alexander...
 * You've got historical representations, and how a legend actually was (if it even was at all). It's pretty much up to random which one will be matched with a Heroic Spirit. Which is to say, in the Nasuverse, rules are rules until they aren't.
 * Which actually makes sense in a way. When you read a story it usually isn't to see an average person. So I suspect that outside of the events of Fate/Stay Night, Fate/Zero, Tsukihime, etc.. the vast majority of the world obeys the rules. We're just looking at the few who can break them.
 * Adding to the list of 'minor things that Just Bug Tropers about Nasuverse hero appearances,' they couldn't at least give Fionn the hair that gave him his nickname? Granted, it's not a universal myth - some versions don't mention it - but seriously. If they wanted to avoid making him look too old with white/silver hair they could have just gone with blond.
 * An equally trivial question: why is Rider called "Iskander", the Arabic rendition of his name? Why not "Alexandros", or even Alexander?
 * They call him by both names. It's stated in the novel that his people called him according to their own language.
 * Why didn't Lancer simply use Gae Dearg on Gae Buidhe to remove Saber's hand injury without losing his Noble Phantasm?
 * Because that's not how the spear works. It doesn't override curses. Same reason the contract between Servant and Master doesn't break if he stabs a Serant with Gae Dearg.
 * That interlude about Kiritsugu's backstory. I get the point of making sacrifices to ensure there will be no risk of further losses of life, but still, wasn't what he did a little too much? He had time to prepare, the plane would've taken an hour or so until it arrived. He could have called the police and told them a lie or something. Or hired mercenaries. Or hell, just rig the landing pad with remote-controlled explosives, then wait until Natalia was out and then blow the plane to hell. Besides, even if there were 300 of them, they were still just The Dead, i.e. Nasuverse zombies. MEODP nonwithstanding, two teenagers with knives could cut through them like a whirlwind. Even in a weakened state, Arcueid could annihilate them in seconds. Even alone, a fully-armed Kiritsugu shouldn't have THAT many problems with these zombies, especially with them not having many exits since they'd be on a plane. Normally, I wouldn't be bothered by this too much, but with someone like Kiritsugu who gives so much attention to detail and strategy, it just seems glaring.
 * The Dead are fully capable of things such as breaking through concrete so they could probably smash their way out of the plane given enough time. Arcuied at full power is one of the strongest beings in the setting so her annihilating them ina weakened state doesn't say much. If by two teenagers with knifes your refering to the Kara no Kyoukai reaniated corpses Shiki Ryougi needed her eyes to deal with them since they could continue after taking damge that would normally killa human. The Dead are the same but with the advantage that they probably have part of the curse of Restoration (a.k.a. vampire regenetation). The MEODP are the only reason Shiki Tohno was able to kill them so effectively, sure mundane means can kill tehm but it would take a lot more time. Also Kiritsugu knows that the church and magic association both seem to react to vampire outbreaks with purge everything he saw it first hand as a result of his fathers own experiments into vampirism. So if they think even a single Dead escaped and it's in an area they care about theres a possibility the town could wind up missing. Finally this was probably the act that drove him to become "someone who gives so much attention to detail and stratagy" it was over a decade before the holy grail war after all.
 * Arcueid in her weakened state was incapable of fighting off a rape attempt from Shiki, and was thrashing a bunch of Dead a moment before. Just sayin'.
 * She probably wasn't resisting Shiki with as much force as she'd fight off the Dead. I always had the feeling that she didn't want to end up injuring him, so she kept a lid on her own power in that situation and was waiting for him to "calm down".
 * There is also the fact that none of your proposed "Alternatives" work. Call the police? And tell them what, precisely? That zombies have taken over the plane? Assuming that they don't dismiss it as a prank call, they are unlikely to send enough people down there to contain The Dead until they've lost at least a couple of dozen guys. Even if they do take it at face level, because of magic or some such, the Masquerade would have been blown wide open, in which case the Mage's association is liable to declare exterminatus on the entire airport. Hiring mercenaries? From where? Using what? Even if he did manage to get an army of mercenaries on the tarmac before the plane lands, it's still going to end up breaking the masquerade, and result in the exact same scenario happening, only this time you have a bunch of trigger happy killing machines running around shooting at everything. It'd be lucky if this doesn't end up being an international incident in that case. Also, "just rig the landing pad with remote-controlled explosives, then wait until Natalia was out and then blow the plane to hell"" At that point in time, Natalia is stuck inside a narrow, pressurized tube together with 300 super-fast, super strong zombies and a Dead ancestor in close quarters. She'd be lucky to survive for more than 10 minutes in that kind of situation, nevermind 60 of them.
 * The bigger problem is actually the bees, which are capable of quite easily converting humans into The Dead without the influence of their master Vorak. Natalia didn't botch the actual KILL, she didn't make sure that she cleaned up. Open the plane for a moment's time and those things come swarming out en masse, and now the problem is much bigger than it was before. Kiritsugu knew that the only way to stop this right then and there was to turn the entire plane - bees, Dead and Natalia all - into a fireball in the sky. Imagine the devastation that would have been wreaked by a swarm of bees flooding out into New York. Kiritsugu had accepted that he had to sacrifice one to save a city, perhaps a whole continent. By his current math, he did so, and it was an intelligent choice. Not every choice is easy.
 * Kiritsugu's treatment of El-Melloi bothers me; not killing him and his wife, the whole loophole thing was just smart playing, but refusing to finish Kayneth off. I get that the contract disallowed him from harming Kayneth (or Sola, who was dead at that point), but Maiya couldn't have fired again? Or just kept shooting until both her targets were dead? Kayneth was a dick but allowing him to expire suffused in mind-boggling pain (and despair, let's not forget that) seemed needlessly cruel. After Saber's What the Hell Hero! I couldn't help but agree. I get that's part of the character, but are they actively trying to make us dislike Kiritsugu?
 * It could be he really couldn't even order Maya to shot again. Think about it, if the contract didn't disallowed him from consciously doing indirect harm, it would be meaningless. He could have ordered Maya to kill Kayneth before hand because the contract wasn't accepted by that time, however.
 * One assumes his order - yes, before the contract was made - ran more along the lines of "Kill them" rather than "Shoot to wound." Unless Maiya is literally incapable of taking any actions without Kiritsugu (or Iri) making it an order, at the very least you'd think she'd have kept shooting until her targets were dead since there was no benefit to keeping them alive/allowing either of them to live. It seemed that scene played out the way it did expressly to illustrate Kiritsugu's personality.
 * Kayneth was already fatally wounded. He had at most 10 seconds to live. Maiya had already fulfilled her task.
 * Plus, it is highly unlikely that she can actually tell hat Kayneth is still alive at that point. The only indication that he is still alive would be his plea for death, which she probably can't hear from that range. As far as she can tell, he was dead at that point.
 * In the 2nd episode of the anime, in the scene when Caster is summoned, it is clearly night (looking outside the window, it's dark and lights are on in neighboring houses), but when, the front door has a bright light shining in as if it's light and sunny out (the angle and intensity of the light seems to be unfitting for any streetlight or porchlight IMO). And when the scene goes back into the room, it clearly still night.
 * Caster is a spellcaster. A little sunlight outside the door is child's play. He probably just did it to be even more of a sick son of a bitch. Besides. It's the little details that make the end result even greater.
 * Just what exactly was Sola's issue with Kayneth's strategy? Even if Masters usually show up alongside their Servants, that's clearly not a rule; zero has Assassin roaming freerange as Kotomine scrys, and Servants in Fate/Stay show up alone so often that part of the plot is figuring out who their Masters are. If Kayneth had actually been present like Iri and Waver, he'd probably have been sniped; at the very least, he'd have been Magic Bullet'd to death a good deal prior to his actually biting it. If Kiritsugu had played by Magus rules Kayneth would have been a serious contender for the Grail, particularly if the Fourth Heaven's Feel hadn't been a Foregone Conclusion. Or was she just interfering because Kayneth was reading Lancer the riot act and everyone knows that Sola's hot for Lancer's pretty, pretty face?
 * A bit of the last reason, but also because while Kayneth actually loves Sola, she can't stand him and is resentful of their arranged marriage. Even if Lancer wasn't in the picture Sola would probably try to find some way to get out of their arrangement and if it means offing him, she'd just be one more person shedding no tears over it.
 * Have to disagree there; though Sola sure as hell wasn't happy about it, she seemed resigned to it or at least had dealt with it the same way she dealt with the rest of her life as a political tool, by shutting off her emotions. Given what's presented in the book, it seems more likely that she just ignored him most of the time. According to the LN and Sola's internal monologue, she only began to feel like a woman once she met Lancer and saw how brave and whatever he was. This may be Unfortunate Implications since her womanly feelings eventually lead to Sola becoming a mutilating Stalker With a Crush, and we should probably be glad she didn't just try to "fix" Lancer's loyalty in a more straightforward way.
 * You're saying Sola was trying to shame Kayneth into fighting openly in the hopes of getting him killed? Sola did come off a bit icy, but that's a whole new level of hardcore. Then again, given what we see of her, she does seem the type.
 * Why does Lancer have such respect for Grainne's decision to run away with him? He goes on about her abandoning her future for love and all that, but if we're going by Sola the girl was probably crazy with love at that point and not thinking of much besides "OMG DIARMUID~" Granted, she probably didn't regret anything that happened, but that was probably because she'd been brainwashed by his Mystic Face. I'm pretty sure the virtuous thing to do would have been to think about how this'll effect a guy who - at least in this universe - places literally nothing above his duty as a knight; essentially kidnapping him and making him a traitor plus a murderer of his former comrades/allies is the opposite. Of course, this is assuming everything happened Fate-style rather than according to the original legend (or versions thereof), where Grainne was checking out every guy at the wedding-feast as potential escape-routes before Diarmuid's love-spot came into play.
 * Places "literally nothing above his duty as a knight"? Really? It's precisely because he's so god-awful terrible at actually being loyal and CONSTANTLY places his own selfish wants, desires, and motivations before those of his Master that Kayneth doesn't fair MUCH better in the war. If Lancer was loyal and obedient as a knight should be, rather than constantly eschewing not only Kayneth's desires but little things like strategy and logic, Saber would have been dead 2 or 3 times before the point that Kayneth takes the origin bullet to his nervous system.
 * I object! The big problem is that Lancer really is trying to be the perfect ideal of the knight. There's a lot more to being a knight than simply obeying his lord. It means holding himself to certain codes of conduct when in battle. The big problem lies in the fact that while Lancer and Kayneth have the same goal, their personalities don't mesh because Lancer is a devoted knight whose idea of fulfilling his duty is to win the grail for his Master while following the rules of honor and fair play. On the other hand, Kayneth is a selfish prick who can't actually conceive of someone competing in a battle for the Holy Grail without some kind of selfish desire for the Grail itself automatically refuses to believe Lancer's reasons. Kayneth is incapable of understanding that the act of competing in the Grail War as Kayneth's Servant was Lancer's wish itself and assumes Lancer has a hidden agenda. This leads him to distrust Lancer and so the two of them are unable to properly cooperate.
 * Lancer should have said as much, since given what we're given Lancer's half of the contract was literally just the agreement to serve and win the Grail for Kayneth. If Lancer had actually said "... going by these antiquated rules which are the stereotypical and Romanticized ideals of knighthood and chivalry," Kayneth would have been expecting Lancer's behavior and thus wouldn't be chewing him out after the scene at the harbor as if he were surprised by Lancer's actions. Miscommunication really does kill, it seems.  Besides which, everyone is competing for a selfish desire: Regardless of the specifics, whether they want Akasha like Tokiomi or want to "save" their kingdom like Saber, their goal can only be achieved by pushing aside everyone else's respective wishes. Lancer, in attempting to recover his 'honor' and assuage his own feelings about what happened in his life - everyone else is dead now, it doesn't matter to anyone besides Diarmuid - is no less selfish than Kayneth, who's in it for magely duels/hopefully impressing Sola a little, maybe. That doesn't make either of them any less selfish or any more selfish than people like Waver, who participated to spite Kayneth and prove his theory correct, or Alexander, who intends to re-conquer a world that probably wouldn't be too happy about it despite him being Broskander. Also, the above doesn't seem to have responded to the actual question, which could probably be answered with: "Because Nasuverse Diarmuid is the kind of person who holds no grudges, whether it's against the girl who magically ruined his life or against the man who let him die."
 * Judging from his last words, he learned. A depressing thought if your theory of him not holding grudges is correct.
 * Notable in that the novel at least doesn't implicate Lancer's actual Masters in any way: Upon seeing Kiritsugu show up with an unconscious Sola and a defeated Kayneth, despite clearly having been ordered to kill himself via Command Seal (which thus means either Kayneth or Sola gave the order), Lancer curses the world that engineered his death and Saber and Saber's Master specifically. He gives no implication of blaming either Kayneth or Sola, so his rage is not at dying but at the "dishonorable" way that Kiritsugu (and therefore Saber) ended the Lancer/Kayneth/Sola team's run. Incidentally, Nasuverse Diarmuid not holding grudges is canon: He makes it plain that he blames neither Fionn nor Grainne when most people would, and as noted he never displays resentment against his current Masters despite Kayneth's berating and Sola's clear if unwitting insult to his honor (by insinuating he'd jump Masters despite swearing himself to Kayneth). Lancer's final words were not him suddenly gaining a tendency for grudges so much as it was a Dying Curse against those who screwed over his chance at redemption; grudges are resentments bottled up and held over time, Lancer's last words seemed more a spur-of-the-moment outpouring of despair given that his prior thoughts were less "Eff the world" and more "If I defeat Saber here my honor will be restored."
 * So... Why didn't Kayneth use a Command Seal to summon Lancer and prevent Sola from carrying out her threat to break/remove anything else? Did he really not want to burn those Command Seals? Was he still in shock and/or just not thinking clearly? I'd hoped the anime episode would clear that up a bit, but...
 * I assumed it was the shock and pain of the woman he loves going completely yandere on him.
 * Assuming she hadn't already done so (which I doubt--The Corruption couldn't be that bad if only one Servant had died)...if Iri needed to cut off senses to boost her magical control, why didn't she turn off something less necessary than touch, like smell or taste?
 * Rule of Drama.
 * Why doesn't Caster have a beard? Its in the friggin' title by which he is remembered!
 * Why is King Arthur a woman?
 * Her canonical name is explained as actually being Arturia, and her covering up of her gender is a plot point. Bluebeard, however, is known in-story as having been Bluebeard, but no explanation is given for his bare chin or why he might fool people about it.
 * Gilles de Rais is the inspiration for the story of Bluebeard. He wasn't famous for having a beard while alive. Caster just went by the name because he understood that was how people remembered him.


 * Was it really ? It just doesn't feel probable that wasn't aware of.
 * Interesting question. With the answer of yes. And no. Like how Dark Sakura isn't Sakura but also is.
 * While we're on the topic of homunculi: While the curse of, it also doesn't sound reasonable that Kiritsugu, with a lifetime's worth of training in using non-magical methods in countering Magecraft or bypassing bounded fields, was not, for five years, . Even assuming the curse also negated said training, someone like Kiritsugu must have already had this in foresight way before the Holy Grail War began, and prepared countermeasures for it (like, say,.
 * His skill with bounded fields was all magic. Why would he leave a record for Ilya in case of failure? He wasn't planning to fail by destroying the Grail.
 * Slight ambiguity aside on Kiritsugu's plans, he would've known that destroying the Grail would've pissed the Einsberns off, especially given how their sole objective in winning the Grail War was to achieve the Third True Magic, Heaven's Feel, something only achievable by fully manifesting the Grail (whether or not , i.e., by hook or by crook). Given that, Kiritsugu must've had the foresight on handling the aftermath of destroying the Grail in a way where he still keeps Ilya. Poor girl.
 * Destroying the Grail was never part of the plan. That was Kiritsugu's alternate wish where he gives up the Grail and just leaves. Again, none of his plans accounted for his circuits being destroyed.
 * Why did Kiritsugu not want Saber to know about Avalon existing, let alone the fact that it was ?
 * So Saber wouldn't want it back. They don't trust each other.
 * If a Heroic Spirit dies in a Holy Grail War, what stops them from being summoned once more to the next one? It just bugs this troper, what with the What If plot implications of, say, Diarmuid being summoned in Fate Stay Night in Cu Chulainn's place as Lancer; and so on.
 * I don't think anything stops them, but returning to the Throne of Heroes resets their memories of the Grail Wars anyway. Saber is a special case because.
 * Nothing stops them from being summoned again. They wouldn't have memories of the previous War since each summoning is from the base template. It's just hard to get artifacts. Waver tried to participate in the 5th War, but the Grail didn't provide him with Command Spells and Master status.
 * Yeah, on that note: This is less a question, and more a wish: I hope Type-Moon makes a behind-the-scenes story or something for Fate/Stay Night working in whatever loose ends have been left in Fate/Zero, and/or just to further develop the character of the others.
 * I'm a little confused as to how For Someone's Glory works. According to the source material, Lancelot would have been able to masquerade as other heroes. Does that mean that he would have been able to go as far as imitating their abilities and weapons? Or is it appearance only?
 * Appearance only. It is born from his legend of disguising himself to gain fame and/or glory.
 * Wait, so what was the point of that scene where Kayneth's Mystic Code shows up out of nowhere at a construction site (and presumably kills everyone)?
 * ...dude, that was the remains of the hotel. It shows how Kayneth survived having ten floors drop on his head.
 * Thanks. I might've not been paying attention but the anime played it rather vaguely.