Saber (Fate)

Saber is is one of the three main heroines of Fate/stay night and the Servant of Shirou Emiya in the Fifth Holy Grail War.

Identity
Saber's true identity is Altria Pendragon (アルトリア・ペンドラゴン, also romanized as Arturia?), better known as Arthur Pendragon (アーサー・ペンドラゴン, ?) and King Arthur. In Fate/stay-night, the legendary King Arthur has been reimagined as a young woman rather than a man, and deeply burdened with the responsibility of upholding her ideals as what constitutes a rightful king.

Arturia is the daughter of the British King Uther Pendragon and Igraine, a former Duchess of Cornwall. At her nativity, Uther realizes his subjects will never accept a female as a legitimate ruler, and decides to not publicly announce Arturia's birth or gender. She is entrusted by Merlin to a loyal knight, Sir Ector, who raises her as a surrogate son. When Arturia is fifteen, King Uther dies, and with no known eligible heir to the throne, Britain enters a period of turmoil following the growing threat of invasion by the Saxons. Merlin soon approaches her, explaining that the British people will recognize her as a destined ruler if she draws Caliburn, a ceremonial sword embedded in a large slab of stone. However, pulling this sword is symbolic of accepting the hardships of a monarch, and Arturia will be responsible for preserving the welfare of her people. Without hesitation, and despite her gender, she draws Caliburn and shoulders Britain's mantle of leadership.

Arturia rules Britain from her stronghold in Camelot, and earns the reputation of a just, yet distant king. Under the guidance of Merlin and with the aid of her Knights of the Round Table, she guides Britain into an era of prosperity and tranquillity. Caliburn is destroyed, but Arturia soon acquires her holy sword, Excalibur, and Avalon, Excalibur's blessed sheath, from Vivian. While Avalon is in her possession, Arturia never ages and is immortal in battle.

Throughout her reign, Arturia is plagued by feelings of guilt and inferiority; she sacrifices her emotions for the good of Britain, yet many of her subjects become critical of her lack of humanity. Excalibur's scabbard is stolen while she repels an assault along her country's borders; when Arturia returns inland, she discovers Britain is being torn asunder by civil unrest. Despite her valiant efforts to placate the dissent, Arturia is mortally wounded by the traitorous knight Mordred during the Battle of Camlann. Her dying body is escorted to a holy isle by Sir Bedivere. Arturia orders a grieving Bedivere to dispose of Excalibur by throwing it back to Vivian; in her absence, she reflects on her personal failures, regretting her life as king. Before her last breath, she appeals to the world; in exchange for services as a Heroic Spirit, she asks to be given an opportunity to relive her life, where someone more suitable and effective would lead Britain in her stead.

Arturia is limited to the class of Saber, unlike many heroes that can be summoned into different classes, such as Hercules, who can be any class except Caster, and Cu Chulainn, who mentions that he could have been summoned as a Berserker instead of a Lancer.

Personality
Saber is a strong-willed young woman who always speaks resolutely. She is courageous, determined, and set on winning the Holy Grail. Throughout the story, Saber insists that she is a warrior first and that her gender is of little importance to her. Her stubborn personality is evident when she frequently explains her purpose to her Master, despite his objections: achieving the Holy Grail through any means. She is an exceptionally powerful fighter and is often downright merciless towards her opponents. Interestingly enough, she appears to become very uncomfortable whenever she is treated as a girl, likely because of her background as a knight. In spite of this, upon first seeing her, Shirou is instantly attracted to her feminine beauty. Saber can also be quiet and shy in social situations and unwilling to show emotions, as she has suppressed them so strongly and views herself as a knight foremost. Even though she attempts to hide them, her insecurities become more and more apparent. However, later on in the story, Saber begins to open up more and show her emotions more easily, especially to Shirou. A prominent theme in Fate/Stay Night is that Saber sacrificed what was most important to her when she became King Arthur: Her humanity. It is implied that during her life before becoming the King of Knights, Arturia was a dreamy, idealistic, innocent young girl.

Her developing relationship with Shiro is fundamental to the growth of her character, as he is the second person to view and treat Saber not as a weapon or a Servant, but as a girl (the first being Irisviel von Einsbern). A comedic aspect about her is that she is shown as having a humongous appetite, finishing large servings of rice within one minute.

Saber is loyal, independent, and reserved; she appears cold, but is actually suppressing her emotions to focus on her goals. She is bewildered by Shirou's "protective" tendencies, and believes his erratic and reckless behavior jeopardizes her chances of winning the Holy Grail War.

She is very cold and merciless to Ilya during most of Fate/stay night despite her being Irisviel's daughter. This is due to the fact that Irisviel never mentioned the name of her daughter, and when Saber sees Ilya during the war, she completely disregards the possibility that it could be the same child. She believes that Ilya is too young to be the girl she saw getting a piggy-back ride ten years before, and she believes that she would have become more mature like her mother by the time of the Fifth Holy Grail War. She reasons that Ilya is a new homunculus with similarities in her appearance due to the Einzbern homunculi looking alike after their creation.

Saber Alter
In the Heaven's Feel scenario, Saber is consumed by darkness by Angra Mainyu and turns into Dark Sakura's Servant, Saber Alter.

She also appears in Fate/kaleid liner PRISMA☆ILLYA but a black plate mask covers her eyes as class card.

Saber Lily
Saber Lily (セイバー・リリィ, ?) is an alternate version of Saber featured in Fate/unlimited codes as an unlockable alternate costume. She was designed by Takashi Takeuchi as another form of the King of Knights with an "emphasis on her girlishness." In contrast to the blackened Saber Alter, she is called the pure and sweet "Princess of Knights" who is shown to carry Caliburn rather than Excalibur. Her design was inspired by the dress Caster placed on Saber after she was captured during Unlimited Blade Works. The design was filled with the feminine qualities that Saber lacks, and "Lily" in her name refers to her skirt being designed to resemble the petals of a lily flower. She has no background information within unlimited codes or other side materials, but Nasu Kinoko and Gen Urobuchi joke about her being a version of Saber fully tamed by Caster during a discussion. She has appeared in a number of promotional images with Saber, Saber Alter, and Red Saber.

Saber Extra
Saber is one of the three playable Servants available to the Fate/Extra Protagonist in Fate/Extra.

Saber Lion
Saber Lion is a parody of Saber featured as a playable character in Fate/tiger colosseum and Fate/tiger colosseum Upper. She is a small version of Saber dressed in a lion costume, and she is only able to growl "Gao!" to speak. She wields either Excalibur or a chunk of meat on a bone as a weapon.

Fate/stay night
Saber destroyed the Holy Grail in the fourth Holy Grail War because Kiritsugu Emiya used a command seal in order to force her to act against her will. However, she only managed to destroy the Grail's physical form. Her only wish is to redo her life so that she would never become king. In the Fate scenario, Shirou convinces Saber that she should accept her life for what it is rather than wishing to change her life. Saber only survives in Unlimited Blade Works' good ending. In Fate and Unlimited Blade Works, she used Excalibur to destroy the Holy Grail and its contents once and for all. In the Heaven's Feel scenario, Saber is consumed by darkness by Angra Mainyu and turns into Sakura's Servant, Saber Alter. Saber Alter is later defeated and killed by Shirou with assistance from Rider.

Fate/hollow ataraxia
In Fate/hollow ataraxia, Saber continues to protect Shirou, though it seems their relationship has turned more towards Saber having the major control over the relationship with Shirou. She kills Archer when he attacks Shirou in one loop. In another loop, Saber is killed by Bazett's Fragarach when she tried to use Excalibur on Bazett. In the final loop of Fate/Hollow Ataraxia, Saber aided Shirou/Avenger in reaching the Grail by fending off the mysterious monsters (which were in fact leftover parts of Avenger wishing to continue the loop) with other Heroic Spirits.

Fate/unlimited codes
Saber has three different incarnations in Fate/unlimited codes. Her normal form is has the title Proud High Knight-King (誇り高き騎士王, ?). She also is selectable as Saber Alter, titled Dark-tainted Tyrant (闇に染まりし暴君, ?), and Saber Lily.

Other
Saber of Fate/Extra appears similar to Saber, but she is actually a different hero. She is reffered to as Red Saber and appears with Saber, Saber Alter, and Saber Lily in various promotional art. The Saber Class Card in Fate/kaleid liner PRISMA☆ILLYA generates Saber Alter. Saber as a MPromotional materials for the Fate/Zero anime asked which other Servant classes other than Saber that they would like to see her summoned under. The first response was to instead show her as a Master, followed by the Rider, Berserker, and Lancer classes. Takashi Takeuchi did an illustration of the Master version of Saber to go along with it.

Abilities
The Saber class is considered the "Most Outstanding", with excellent ratings in all categories. Because her master cannot effectively provide her with Mana, she minimizes her activity to preserve what she has. She has the capacity to qualify for the Caster class, but "magecraft is not the way of the King" and she lacks the patience to actually learn magecraft. Saber was born with the prana of a dragon, shown by the “Pendragon” name, as Uther ordered Merlin to grant his successor the factor of the dragon (竜の因子, ?). She is the holder of the Element of the Red Dragon who carries the blood of a phantasm in a human body, granting her a heart and unique Magic Circuits that transcend what can be achieved by normal humans and magi. Saber's Circuits are called a Magical Core, which is a fundamentally different from those of a normal magus. While a magus' body can be considered a machine which creates magical energy, hers acts as a factory which creates magical energy. It functions as an enormous prana core with tremendous capacity that generates energy independent from her body, but it will not function without the proper energy to act as a "starting key." When she is almost out of energy in Fate after using her Noble Phantasm, Excalibur, she has a great amount of undiluted magical energy within the core, but it is meaningless without enough energy to start it. It requires a "fire" to burn in order to activate it, and it doesn't matter how small it is, as it will resume activity once a path to send magical energy is connected. During Realta Nua, Shirou uses part of his own Circuits to start it, and encounters a dragon that takes form in Saber's unconsciousness. Shirou calls it "an absurd 'true nature' that is appropriate for the best Servant." Once reactivated, it shows its nature as a prismatic circuit as it glows with all the colors of the rainbow and burns with a golden fire as its circulation restarts. Due to the characteristics of Dragon, she has much trouble with existences such as Siegfried, who is associated with tales of culling Dragons and weapons with an anti-dragon attribute such as Arondight. Saber's dragon blood grants her a very strong Magic Resistance capable of resisting a Command Spell to a certain extent. It is possible that it will not function to its fullest extent if she is targeted by “Dragon-slaying Sorceries.”

Riding
Saber has a very high rank in Riding because knights are soldiers proficient in mounted warfare. Chariots and normal mounts can easily be ridden, but she is unable to control Pegasi, Griffons, Dragons, and other Magical Beast and Divine Beast ranked members of the Phantasmal Species. She can not handle such high level beings because her class isn't Rider, and due to the fact that she was a King in the Age of Man, she does not have the fortune of having “Legends of Riding Phantasmal Species.” She is able to control modern machinery like motorcycles and automobiles in a similar fashion to mounts. The Riding skill is applicable because they are treated as "modern mounts", but it is unclear if it is applicable to aircrafts. While the rank is B under both Shirou and Rin, it is elevated to A while having Kiritsugu as her Master. The ability allows her to completely understand the control of all ridden equipment both known and unknown to her. Even having never driven a car, she is able to make quick decisions that allow her to easily control it on her first time driving. She is confident in the prospect of piloting a passenger plane or any other mount by sitting on a saddle, seizing a bridle, and managing the rest with instinct. She does not have the opportunity to demonstrate her Riding ability in the Fifth Holy Grail War, but the battles might have developed differently if she were provided with an appropriate mount. She drives both Irisiviel's Mercedes-Benz 300SL Coupe and a Yamaha V-Max prepared by Kiritsugu during the Fourth Holy Grail War.

Yamaha V-Max
Kiritsugu has Maiya prepare a mechanical prop more fitting for guerrilla warfare than a car in the form of a Yamaha V-Max, a powerful motorcycle likened to a "steel lion", during the Fourth Holy Grail War. It has a ridiculously impractical and hypothetical design that ignores the limits of normal drivers. The motorcycle body, that of a Yamaha V-Max, is already the most powerful in the modern world, and the original 1200cc 140 Horsepower engine that could already work near its limits was strengthened again into a V-style four-cylinder 1400cc engine. The acceleration system is completely reinforced to make it a monstrous abnormality with an output equal to 250 Horsepower. The structure of the V-style propelling mechanism and its four-cylinder design allows it to immediately start to work as a two-cylinder design when the limit of engine rotation is reached and allows it to increase the amount of air sucked in to achieve an ultimate acceleration. It has surpassed the basic rule of a machine, the limit of "machines are tools of men." It can be thought of as an alien creation born through advanced modern technology which can only show its true worth by having an inhuman Servant rider. It is a design structure that would normally never be placed on a machine using two cylinders, but it is a "beast" that has completely surpassed the limits of a motorcycle. It can no longer function properly as a two-wheeled design because of the various extreme reinforcements. The wheels have too much torque, and they cannot generate enough friction with the road and only keep on turning. The front wheel jumps up whenever the brakes are applied, creating enough force to throw off the driver immediately. Its deepest hidden secret and most powerful trump card lies in a button on the steering wheel. It causes a valve inside the interior of the engine to switch to automatic mode and fill with oxide fuel. The nitrogenous oxide expands under the high temperature of three hundred degrees Celsius and reaches the boundaries of its limits to increase the V-Max's acceleration rapidly by twofold.

Saber, as a Servant, exists far beyond ordinary humans, so she is able to manage control over it with ease. Acting as her "steed", the speed it grants reminds her of riding a horse more than the Mercedes, and even though she is driving a creation of modern technology, riding it allows her spirit to return to the memorable battlefields of the past and regain the spirit of chivalry from a time when she had held her lance and charged towards the enemy formation. She becomes able to easily detect obstacles blocking her path through changes in the air flow, and even closing her eyes wouldn't hinder her ability to avoid collisions. She removes her armor because it would only hinder her riding, and because she is short in stature, she can only control the over three hundred kilogram, super heavily reinforced motorcycle in a precarious driving position. She is practically lying flat on top of the engine, which is covered by a plastic turbo pump, and is forced to bear the powerful vibrations of the large engine while holding onto the steering like a child desperately clinging onto the back of a beast.

She has no trouble controlling the physically uncontrollable steed perfectly at full speed from that position due to her prided battle skills and Prana Burst ability. She focuses the motorcycle's horsepower entirely on acceleration, and controls it with the enormous power of her prana bursts instead of breaking. As it was completely revamped to achieve the ultimate acceleration, it has no dexterity much like cars modified to compete in high-speed short and straight courses. Her superior skills allow her to overturn the common physical rule of "vehicles can’t turn corners at high speed", making it possible for her to open the throttle valves on tight turns to pour all of the excess torque into the back wheel. The intense acceleration would normally threaten to topple the vehicle sideways due to the front wheel starting to drift, but her explosive energy allows her to forcibly tilt it to the side in order to complete the turn. Rather than skill, it is more like using even more power to overwhelm and twist he direction of the vehicle.

Despite the machinery being extremely advanced, it is unable to cope with Saber's riding for very long. It easily reaches 6000 revolutions per minute from her breakneck pace, and on its own, it is able to reach over three hundred kilometers per hour. No mater how much of her prana she uses, the strength of its material composition and structure are limited to their original design. Before even catching up to Gordius Wheel, the machine has fully manifested all of its ability to its greatest capacity by that point, and the engine and acceleration system already show signs of breaking down. The ability to match something transcending normality like a Noble Phantasm requires to use both her armor and Invisible Air in conjunction to reinforce it and reduce the burden. Through intense psychokinesis, she is able to fuse her own armor with the bike following a concept similar to the armor that protected beloved horses on the battlefield to turn the motorcycle into a "magical beast" with a hard structure befitting its extraordinarily strong horsepower.

The capability of the entire bike is increased due to being wrapped in the flexible and strong sliver armor, and she constantly releases her prana to reinforce, cover, and protect various important parts that are able to ensure maximum speed of movement. It also increases her unity of riding by truly making it into her own limbs. The speed causes air friction that is close to approaching the force of water pressure, so she releases Invisible Air in the shape of an arrow around her to completely cover the body of the vehicle. She is able to entirely release it from air resistance by decreasing it to zero with the compression of the pneumatic umbrella. This allows it to easily reach over four hundred kilometers per hour, and due to the pressure released by the magecraft, the back wheel is firmly pressed against the cement even when making turns at full throttle. She has full control even at this speed, allowing her to easily dodge and weave through numerous obstacles while only on one wheel.

Contact
Saber made a pact with the World as she was dying; she would be allowed to try and obtain the Holy Grail to grant her wish. In exchange, if she succeeds, she will finish her life and become a Counter Guardian after her death, a sub-category of a Heroic Spirit at the service of the World. Because of this pact, she is in fact still alive and "frozen" in her dying state when she travels through time to obtain the Grail, and is summoned as a Servant in the Grail War. After each Holy Grail War, she goes back into her dying body, unless she wins or gives up, ready for the next Holy Grail War. Since Saber is not dead, she cannot dematerialize herself. This is also the reason she is able to retain her memories of the events of Fate/Zero, something a Servant should not be able to do (with the exception of Jeanne d'Arc). After giving up on obtaining the Grail and terminating her contract with the World, she goes to Avalon rather than being removed from the cycle of transmigration to be placed on the Throne of Heroes like other Heroic Spirits. She is still considered a person in the present among the English as the "Once and Future King."