Saber of Red


 * This page is about the Fate/Apocrypha Servant. For the nickname of the Fate/Extra Servant, see Saber.

Red Saber (赤のセイバー) is the Saber-class Servant on the Red Side in the Holy Grail War of Fate/Apocrypha. The Servant is a new addition to the project as one of the two replacing Sakata Kintoki and Musashibo Benkei.

Identity
Saber's identity is Mordred, the "son" of King Arthur, but she is actually female despite being raised as the secret male heir to the throne. She was conceived between Altria and her sister,, through unorthodox circumstances. Altria, normally female, was a pseudo-male at the time due to Merlin's magecraft, so Morgan enchanted her with a spell to extract sperm from her. Morgan developed it within her own ovary, and made the child into a homunculus clone of Altria. Due to her status as a homunculus, she was given a much faster growth period than a regular human being, and her life span was far shorter. She was raised in secret and told to hide her status and obey the king.

Told that it is her right to inherit the throne, Morgan bid her to one day defeat the King and take "his" place. She did bare that same obsession as her mother, but before all that was her adoration for King Arthur. She felt ashamed of her twisted birth, unconsciously acting jealous of normal people, and, with the special innocence that children possess, she worshipped the "perfect king." Given a helmet she was told never to remove in front of other people, she was eventually sent to Camelot under Morgan's recommendation, and through a presentation of her own superb swordsmanship, became one of the. She was given her sword despite her unknown origins because of her abilities and straightforward mental chivalry.

She protected the way of the knights much like that which could only be found in picture books, working hard daily in being the ideal knight, all while hiding her dislike of others. In the end, even that innocence was shattered by Morgan, who revealed the secrets of her birth. She learned of her parentage and was told that the King didn't know either. Morgan tried to instill that the King would never accept such a filthy child, but she was, while shocked, wrapped in joy. While not a proper human being, sharing the same blood as the King, being the "son" of a superior king, she was proud of the fact that she was not human. She felt that in name, reality, mind, and body that she was fit to be the true successor of the King.

She went without having the slightest feelings of rebellion, spurred on by the truth, and approached the King with delight. Raised without a father, the King was the very form of a godlike "father" to her, but Altria rejected her very clearly. She said that, while Mordred is certainly born from her and her sister's plotting, that she will not recognize Mordred as her "son" or give her the throne. Mordred believed that it was all due to the King's hatred for Morgan, that it would be impossible for her "son" to be accepted. Thinking that was the reason her title was the weakest, believing that no matter how hard she tried, even if she excelled over everyone, that the King would forever view her as a dirtied child from the moment she was born from Morgan, her great love for the king up until then made her hatred burn.

Resulting from that, the distrust of the Round Table towards the King spread, and the reigns of power in Camelot were seized once the King departed for the Rome expedition. Mordred became the leader of the rebellion, representing the national discontent towards Arthur. After the King finally returned from a long and tiresome battle, Mordred raged, claiming that she hated the King and that only she was fit for the throne. The truth of the matter was that she only wanted to be accepted by Altria and wanted to be called "son" by her. The conflict eventually lead towards a final fight, where both armies were dying in heated battle.

The two faced each other on a hill of swords, where Mordred pointed out that the country had ended and that the victor no longer mattered because everything was gone. Blaming the situation on the King for not giving her the crown, she asked if the King hated the "son of Morgan" that much. Altria emotionlessly replied, "Not once did I despise you. There was only one reason I would not give you the throne. You didn't have the capacity of a King." Mordred charged forward while driven on by passion, and was eventually defeated in single combat, collapsing while still impaled by a spear. Freed of the mask forced upon her, with a face identical to her "father", she said "....Fa-ther", all while reaching out to touch the King with blood-soaked hands at least once, but was not even granted that wish as she fell.

Fate/stay night
Mordred was briefly mentioned during flashbacks to Saber's past in Fate/stay night, and received a brief scene in the anime adaptation. She received an entry in the Character material booklet.