Fate/Apocrypha

Truth of Fate/Apocrypha
Nasu: To summarise, there is a conspiracy in the finale of the story that intends to use the Holy Grail War framework for evil. As the Counter Force, the Servant Joan of Arc wishes to safeguard the framework of the Holy Grail War. Other Servants wish to protect their respective Master, but Joan wishes to protect the Holy Grail War. Although the development of the story may change depending on the Servant’s relationship with the Master, ultimately the story concludes with Joan activating her ultimate Noble Phantasm which she stubbornly withheld. The goal here is to create a world with a complete story, despite being an online game.

Shirou Kotomine [Servant]
The Servant summoned by the Einzberns in the Third Holy Grail War. His class is Ruler. His true name is Amakusa Shirou Tokisada. He is one of the masterminds in the story, and the true Last Boss. If ever the Third Holy Grail War were made into a Visual Novel, the ending would greatly differ depending on the choice of the Einzberns. Just as said until now, if they chose Avenger, events would follow the official history—that is, the “Fate/stay night” route, but if they chose Ruler, the story would follow this “Apocrypha” route.
After incarnating into a physical body in the Third Holy Grail War, he spent the next sixty years investigating all feasible documents and ley lines available and waiting for the day when the next Fuyuki Holy Grail War—that is, the “Fourth” Holy Grail war would occur.
Having already hypothesized the possibility of a Great Holy Grail War—a situation with seven Servants VS seven Servants occurring instead of a normal Holy Grail War, Shirou promptly joined the Red Camp as the dual mediator and Master sent by the Holy Church and quickly summoned Semiramis without delay. In such an abnormal situation with seven Servants VS seven Servants and where even the previous Ruler had summoned his own Servant, the Greater Grail automatically summoned the Ruler for this war, Jeanne d’Arc, but Shirou had included even that into his calculations as an event within his expectations.
There was only one thing that Shirou couldn’t predict. That was the event of a homunculus without even a name merely trying to fulfill his meager wish.
In truth, the facts concerning Amakusa Shirou Tokisada’s birth and life aren’t very clear. What’s certain is that he attained the position of being the person with the greatest responsibility and authority in the Shimabara Rebellion. Even if that is merely a palanquin—merely window dressing, this young boy was definitely the ringleader of the Shimabara Rebellion, the greatest uprising in the Edo Period.
In this work, he is the biggest and strongest problem child. The next one after him is Rider of Black. At first, Semiramis was the mastermind in the initial stages of the plot. However, all the characters including her who had already been released in “Complete Material” along with the original setting were deemed to have too weak of an impact as a mastermind. The idea of “doing something that would have been impossible in the original game setting” was one of the concepts of “Apocrypha” (I also came up with the idea of seven Servants VS seven Servants following that line of thought), and then “Makai Tenshou” (TL Note: Famous Japanese novel with several adaptations) served as an even further impetus that made me think, “How about bringing out Amakusa Shirou?”, from which everything started.
A young boy and a young girl. Both of their battles were heavily connected to flags. One who never became a saint, and one who did. Their points of commonality and difference were so clear and contrastive that I selected him as the last boss—it would have been fine if my thought process stopped there.
At that point, a demon whispered to me, “…Speaking of which, the name of the protagonist of the original Visual Novel is… and their age is almost the same too…”, and thus Shirou Kotomine was born. Not only readers, but even my friends often retorted, “Really?”, to me. Sorry, sorry. But this coincidence felt so much like destiny…!
His white hair and dark skin is compensation for his magecraft… or not. In truth, there were complex causes; his hair became white as compensation for when he forcefully incarnated and after that his skin changed color because he needed to conceal himself in the Middle East for nearly twenty years in order to search for catalysts for Semiramis. By the way, he received a catalyst for the empress from the Sophia-Ri family the moment it was decided that he would participate in the Great Holy Grail War, but it seems he secured three other catalysts on his own after searching for nearly twenty years as a precaution.
He hates humans, but he deeply loves humanity. In the Shimabara Rebellion, he witnessed just how strongly low, vulgar and cruel humans could become. They can become like this even towards those of the same race as them. If they encountered others who have a different skin color or different culture, just how much further would human cruelty increase?
These thoughts of Shirou hardened even further in the Third Holy Grail War and the Second World War which happened immediately after. In the end, he concluded that humanity could only be saved with the miracle of the Greater Grail—the Third Sorcery. He attached himself to the Assembly of the Eighth Sacrament and sometimes served as the mediator in some of the subspecies Holy Grail Wars. He had almost no interaction with the other members of the Assembly, and was viewed as a curiosity by his compatriots who wondered, “How long has this guy been here?”
As a Servant, he would be third-rate if he weren’t Ruler, just as he himself declares. It is actually quite novel for a Heroic Spirit and his Noble Phantasms to be of so little use, and he would have a very hard time winning a Holy Grail War. But on the other hand, as long as he is of the Ruler class, he can amass overwhelming advantages with the skills “True Name Discernment” and “Divine Judgement”.
He is the mastermind, but is a good and virtuous being. In the first place, it is a matter of argument whether or not Shirou’s actions are truly evil. Because you could say that he guided people through a slight shortcut to the place they would eventually reach someday. However, on the other hand, he is unmistakably evil. Because he tried to save not individual people, but only the human race itself.
 Having no hobbies or anything he likes, he lived sixty years for the sake of humanity’s salvation. Even if his plans were overturned in the end, the instant when he saw the rising sun as he lay on Semiramis’ lap—was a moment of supreme bliss for Shirou.

Discarded Servants [Other]
The Servants who experienced the bitterness of being discarded in the transition from the proto-version of “Apocrypha” featured in “Complete material IV” to the official light novels.
The one who disappeared first was Sakata Kintoki. As an enemy to the protagonist side, he’s a far too nice guy to fight, and as an ally, he’s very reliable. Furthermore, one aspect of the plot that was decided near the beginning was that “Frankenstein will use her Noble Phantasm and revive”, so Frankenstein had to take up the slot for the ally Berserker, causing Kintoki to be discarded. The next one to be cut was Musashibou Benkei. In his case, I briefly outlined him as a Servant who’s mentality was very complex which made him hard to act as a partner to a Master, but the Master-Servant pairs had already been decided and there was too little room for him to cut in. Most of all, there were three Lancers drafted in the first place, and the remaining two were Vlad III and Karna. The fact that he was a Japanese Servant also played a factor, so he was unfortunately retired from the running.
During this period of the plot creation, the following had already been basically decided: “Romanian stage. Vlad III’s big fame bonus. Central Servants are Jeanne and Astolfo, and the rival Servant is Amakusa Shirou Tokisada.” Therefore, the next one to be retired was Georgius. Since he would be the third saint in the story, he would have to be included in the ideological conflict between Jeanne and Amakusa, but I feared it would become too confusing. Also, considering the final outcome of the story, his value as a character dimmed further since his Noble Phantasm would cause the metamorphosis midway through the story, so he was discarded.
Now then, one of the two planned Riders has been discarded and left an empty Rider slot, so let’s think of possible choices. If possible, it should be someone really famous who wouldn’t be too intertwined with the main plot of the story… With that thinking, the candidate that came to mind was Achilles.
I want one more Servant suitable to act as a rival to Achilles on the opposing team from him. For example, how about his teacher Chiron? But in that case, one of the initially planned Archers would have to be discarded.
At this point, it was already decided that Atalanta would oppose Jeanne, so she had to be in the Red camp like Achilles. The remaining Archer was David. There was no problem with him as an ally character-wise, Vlad III was planned to be made the head of the Black camp. If there were another world-famous king on the same team as him, his relationship with Vlad would become complex… As such, David was the last one to be discarded.
This segment has already become very drawn-out, but, well, I have say to congratulations for them all getting to make a return in “Fate/Grand Order”…

Kairi Sisigou [Person's name]
One of the Masters of the Red Camp. However, he chose to act independently with his Servant without joining Shirou Kotomine’s group. His Servant is Saber of Red, Mordred. His fiendish appearance is just like that of an American outlaw. He isn’t a magus, but rather a magecraft user. Though he can’t match magi in terms of knowledge, he ranks equally in terms of battle experience with Darnic who has survived for a hundred years.
He normally wanders from battlefield to battlefield recovering the corpses of magi and plundering their Magic Crests. Fundamentally, he intentionally acts so as not to increase the number of casualties. This is because causalities are always appearing somewhere in the world every day and night even without him doing anything.
He habitually uses a sawed-off (meaning with a shortened barrel) shotgun as a Mystic Code, but he only uses it as medium for the Gandr spell and doesn’t use it in its original purpose as a gun. Also, he fundamentally uses things like hand grenades made out of hearts, animal eyeballs and monkey hands as part of his necromancy, so the majority of his Mystic Codes are in extreme bad taste.
He chose to participate in the Great Holy Grail War after receiving a request from the Association of Magi. Originally, he had planned to fight alongside the other Red Servants, but he chose to take independent action due to not being able to trust Shirou Kotomine and his Servant Semiramis. He and Saber engaged in skirmishes with the Black Servants and won against Berserker of Black, but then they noticed the scheme of the Red Master Shirou Kotomine and decided to put the war on hold.
However, they still fought to obtain the Holy Grail right till the very end, but they dropped out of the Great Holy Grail War when Mordred and Semiramis dealt mutually fatal strikes against each other. The actions that Shishigou took to save Mordred also backfired on him and caused him to die.
The sole thing decided about the two of them from the initial plotting stages was that they would “rampage around as they like without regretting anything and fight and fight until they die while smiling” as “this story’s Bonnie and Clyde”. Well, Bonnie and Clyde didn’t die while smiling, though.
In the past, Shishigou’s talent as a magus was first-rate, but is now second-rate. As a magecraft user, he is first-rate. As a Master, well, I suppose he gets a passing mark for having well managed Mo-san, who is quite tricky and difficult to deal with, without once antagonizing her.
He seems to have poured a lot of affection towards his stepdaughter whose name was never revealed in the story, and if you search the back pockets of his jacket, you can fight an old photo of the two of them together there. However, his appearance became fiendish after he began going out to battlefields, so his face in the photo is very much that of a serious scholar.
If Mordred ever saw that photo, she would first laugh for a while, but then she would understand the unpleasant truth about it and turn silent. In other words, she would realize his unbelievable despair of having chosen a wound-filled life that made the man into that photo turn into the person in front of her.
The wish that Shishigou had for the Holy Grail was actually something truly acute. Somewhere in his heart, he thought that the wish that he publicly spoke of wasn’t true, but that his real wish was simply to undo the death of his stepdaughter.
The moment he realized and accepted that, everything about Shishigou’s life as a magus reached its end.
Furthermore, in the initial plot, Shishigou Kairi was descended from the family that Darnic chased out. However, it created a contradiction chronologically and the plot wasn’t that entwined with Yggdmillennia in the first place, so it was easily discarded.

Saber of “Red” [Servant]
A Red Servant, but one that has actually gone over to the Black camp. In contrast to the way the Red camp was unified under Shirou Kotomine as the only Master, she alone formed a partnership with Shishigou Kairi as her Master, as done in a normal Holy Grail War.
Her true identity is Mordred, one of the Knights of the Round Table. She is the Knight of Rebellion who ended King Arthur’s legend. And she was also born as an inhuman being like King Arthur. After all, her father is King Arthur, and her mother is the mortal enemy of King Arthur, the witch Morgan.
Mordred’s true identity is that of an artificial life-form; in other words, a homunculus. Accordingly, her life-span was extremely short, and she was born expressly for the purpose of killing King Arthur.
Far from hating King Arthur, she came to feel only yearning and admiration for her father, but when she confessed to King Arthur that she was his legitimate child not knowing what else to do, the king declared that he wouldn’t acknowledge her as the next king, and this caused her longing to change completely into hatred.
And then, as if guided by a blood-stained destiny, Mordred fought against King Arthur on the Hill of Camlann. Though she was defeated, she managed to deal a fatal wound, and thus brought an end to King Arthur’s legend.
As a Servant, she is first-class. Though her overall specs are lower compared to her father Arthur, the King of Knights, she possesses power worthy of the Saber class. By combining her jet propulsion through “Prana Burst” and her sword “Clarent: Radiant Sword of the King”, her attacks can cut down most Servants in a single slash. Also, the defensive strength of her armor is also considerable aside from its abilities, so she was able to avoid a fatal blow despite being hit by a fully-powered attack from Berserker of Black that was strengthened by a Command Spell.
Her position in the story, rather than her actual character, is like that of Bonnie and Clyde, who lived by the motto “We have no tomorrow”. In the initial plot, it was decided that she would merely “rampage around and then exit the stage”.
Mordred’s story also progressed in the background of the main story. She thought over her past in the form of a dream, and the meetings she then had with various Servants—particularly the conversation she had with the homunculus like her and his Servant—served as a turning point for her.
As a result, Mordred finally understood what her father sought when he pulled the sword from the stone. In the end, it was because she didn’t understand that that Mordred continued to live in anguish. She did not feel fear towards the king like the other knights. After all, she herself was an inhuman being.
Even so, let’s suppose that she might happen to encounter her father in a Holy Grail War somewhere. She would immediately fight and try to slash her father apart. Believing she has managed to understand her father and passionately wanting to surpass her father are separate matters for her.
She hates being treated as a woman, but also feels dissatisfied with being treated as a man, making a very complicated, or rather bothersome, Servant. She chose her clothes herself, so she does not seem to have a problem with her appearance being seen as feminine by others.
Also, she is being supplied with plenty of prana, but she is the type to proactively eat food in order to enjoy the present age without caring about the necessity. Her food preferences lean somewhat towards junk food, and she loves carbonated drinks.
Perhaps due to being summoned with a vague catalyst like a splinter of the Round Table, she has miraculously good compatibility with her Master Shishigou. Though it was not mentioned in the story, she liked Shishigou from the start based on his clothing due to her overflowing rebellious spirit.

Caster of “Red” [Servant]
One of the Servants and masterminds of the Red camp. He has the lowest position among the masterminds. After all, the way he betrayed his Master after saying “Hmm, this Master seems still and uninteresting. Eh? Saving the entire world? My, that seems fun. I’ll help, I’ll help!” is essentially the impulsive and unpredictable action of a young man.
His true identity is the famous ultra-literary master, William Shakespeare. There’s no need to talk about the details about his background at this point; he’s one of the most well-known writers in the world, after all. Writer-type Servants are pretty much all idiosyncratic and hard to deal with, and naturally he’s also one of them. He has no fighting power, but he’s the best when it comes to powering up his Master. The more of a character that his Master is, the more his writing excels, or so he says. In other words, strengthening his Master and having him fight as an Assassin is Shakespeare’s style of fighting in a Holy Grail War. Naturally, no matter how much he strengthens his Master, the chances of them beating a Servant is extremely low—but it’s said that he managed to bring about that unlikely possibility just once in one of the subspecies Holy Grail Wars.
He loves the stories he writes beyond anything else, and he spares no love for his characters. On the other hand, he finds mediocrity unpleasant. By the way, his definition of “mediocre” is not based on someone’s abilities or appearance. The ones he calls mediocre are the people who don’t decide, the people who don’t choose, the people who defer and put things on hold, and the people who aren’t deeply moved by the miracle of living every day.
Though it’s repetitive to say, he has absolutely no fighting power. However, his fame has spread across almost the entire world, and the illusions created by the “theatrical troupe” are a form of magecraft that, though incapable of dealing direct damage, is perfect for wreaking chaos and confusion. Well, he also sometimes sends his own allies into disorder as well, though.
The final words he said at the moment of his death are one of the few true and honest words said by this man who normally glosses everything over with beautiful lines of literary. Shakespeare actively worked as an actor alongside his career as a playwright. So he probably couldn’t help but burn with the desire to act as the leading actor on the grand stage of the Great Holy Grail War.
Incidentally, in the prototype version of “Fate/Apocrypha”, his Noble Phantasm’s name was the same, but its role was greatly different. During the initial plot when Shakespeare was supposed to be an ally, there was a scenario where “just as the protagonist is about to die, his Servant Shakespeare activates his Noble Phantasm and somehow manages to find a way to survive”, but the idea was quickly discarded.

When the Curtain Rises, the Applause Shall Be As Ten Thousand Thunders [Noble Phantasm]
First Folio. The theater Noble Phantasm of Caster of Red, Shakespeare. In the initial storyboarding, it had the power to rewind time, but since that didn’t have much meaning in terms of the story’s development, the idea was discarded. (The fact that a sorcerer might make an appearance in a work after the prototype “Fate/Apocrypha” also played a big part in the decision.) Instead, what emerged was a graded-up version of “The Globe: Seat of the King”.
It is a Noble Phantasm that doesn’t deal any physical damage, but it is the worst possible thing to face for certain Heroic Spirits. There basically aren’t any heroes who don’t have some kind of guilty conscience. Shakespeare can expose the traumas that everyone holds inside themselves, and by ridiculing or censuring them he can completely break their hearts.
The probability of being drowned and trapped within this Noble Phantasm is greater the more someone is confident of their physical strength. The only ones who can overcome this Noble Phantasm are those who can declare that they have not a single dirty stain on their lives. There are very few who can believe in something and have no regrets at all. If it’s someone who can directly confront the trauma they hold, they might be able to somehow manage to overturn Shakespeare’s piercing words, though—
When a Servant has had their heart broken by this Noble Phantasm, they receive the bad status of “absentmindedness”. In this state, they are completely defenseless, and as long as they don’t have a Noble Phantasm which automatically responds to malice, they can’t deal with any attack.
This Noble Phantasm originates from the “first” book that was published as a collection of Shakespeare’s plays after his death. Therefore, Shakespeare himself did not directly participate in making it.