Tokiomi Tohsaka

Tokiomi Tohsaka (遠坂時臣) is the father of Rin Tohsaka and Sakura Matou, two of the heroines from Fate/stay night. As a member of the Tohsaka family, he entered the Fourth Holy Grail War as the Master of Archer. Kiritsugu Emiya identifies Tokiomi as the third of the three most threatening magi involved in the war after assessing all the Masters involved.

Background
Two centuries ago, the Tohsaka House, in collaboration with the estates of Makiri and von Einzbern, helped found the Fuyuki Holy Grail Wars. Although the other noble families forgotten their original intention. Tokiomi still follows his ancestor's desire to reach Akasha, or the root of all knowledge.

He and Risei Kotomine are close acquaintances; through Risei, Tokiomi meets the young Kirei Kotomine, Risei's son, whose command spells have appeared three years prior to the start of the Fourth Holy Grail War. The two men arrange for Kirei to be transferred from the Church into the Magi's Association as Tokiomi's pupil while leaving Kirei uninformed as to the true nature of the marks on his hand. They both intend to use Kirei to make sure that Tokiomi will obtain the Grail and that Kirei's role is to provide Tokiomi with additional Command Spells and another Servant. Like Risei, Tokiomi holds Kirei in high regard in terms of ability and character but has little understanding of how empty the young man feels.

He is married to Aoi Tohsaka, the childhood friend of Kariya Matou. As a father, Tokiomi seems to care little for his daughters; he leaves his estate in the hands of Rin, whom he intends to be his successor, and allows Zouken Matou to adopt Sakura because Tokiomi does not wish to train a second child as a magus, given that there is a traditional belief that training a second child would introduce competition. His sudden decision to give Sakura away comes as a shock to Aoi, though she does not openly oppose his decision.

Personality
Tokiomi is an archetypal magus who, as all magi strive to do, wishes to reach Akasha. Although he loves his wife and cares for his daughters, he bases everything on his and their lives as magi, foregoing their happiness as regular people and only thinking of their future lives as magi. He has a "perfect and coldhearted" aspect to him that can be called a negative trait to his otherwise seemingly outstanding self-image. It is such a strong trait that it would have guided Rin's life if she were to ever understand that aspect of him. While portrayed as a villain, he can be seen as a highly traditional person without a single thing wrong with him by personal standards. His "charm point" is his goatee, and he spends a long time grooming it daily.

Much to Tokiomi's displeasure, his arrogant and materialistic Servant Gilgamesh has difficulty acting covertly and obediently. In turn, Gilgamesh dislikes his Master, whom he considers boring, and is intrigued by his apprentice Kirei Kotomine's participation in the war.

Development
The design turned out completely different from Takashi Takeuchi's original image of the character, but he feels that he cannot picture Tokiomi any other way. Urobuchi was hesitant about killing him off because Rin inherits her kindness from him, so he sought to put Tokiomi in a villainous position. When Rin eventually receives the Azoth knife that killed him, Takeuchi feels that only those who can watch the story like gods can feel something akin to the sense of inconstancy in life.

Fate/Zero
When Kariya confronts Tokiomi regarding Sakura's adoption, Tokiomi only declares that he can think of nothing greater than for one daughter to be renowned as a legendary victor and her sister to be known as her formidable opponent. Towards the end of the war, during Tokiomi's visit to Rin, his true intention behind adopting away Sakura becomes apparent. Aware that both his daughters possessed exceeding rare sorcery traits: Rin possessed all five elements while Sakura, though lacking all five, possessed only Imaginary Numbers, Tokiomi knew that the daughter he did not train as the Tohsaka successor would be manipulated and used because of her unusual nature. In order for Sakura to fulfill her innate potential to become a powerful mage, Tokiomi wanted Sakura to learn the magecraft of the Matou family, despite knowing its true nature, so that she would be able to protect herself from others wishing to use her as a result of her lineage.



Considering him to be a loyal apprentice, Tokiomi gives Kirei an Azoth knife as a parting gift, only for Kirei to murder him by stabbing him in the back. This is the same knife that is passed onto his daughter, Rin. Because of his untimely death, he was unable to tell Rin about the original goal of the Holy Grail War to open a “hole” beyond the World.

Fate/stay night
In the Prologue, the clocks were set one hour fast by Tokiomi when Rin woke up, but she only remembered them being 30 minutes fast. Rin suspected it to be some trick of her late father’s, a bit of playfulness on his part, seeming to say “if she can’t even notice a slip-up as trivial and close to home as this, it’s too soon for her to fight in the Holy Grail War.”

Rin gives the Azoth knife to Shirou Emiya which he ironically uses to kill Kirei in the Fate Scenario.

Abilites
Tokiomi, as the head of the Tohsaka family, has mastered the principles behind their jewel based magecraft in conjunction with his own fire attribute to become an effective battle mage. Using a staff topped with

a jewel into which he has stored prana for many years, he can summon elemental spells in combat instead of the more simple jewel detonation used by Rin. He is also shown to be capable of manipulating air currents to land from a great height and despite the elemental difference, performed an ice based magecraft whilst teaching his daughter, Rin, how to use jewel magic.

Tokiomi does not seem to believe himself a man of particular talent, but at the same time has the pride of a magus and follows an unerring path of elegance in all things. To this end he rarely shows anything but a calm demeanour, showing no hint of worry when faced in battle by another magus.