Saber (Fate/stay night)

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), 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.

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.

Promotional 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.

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.

Contract
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."