Why Morgan Being Uther's Daughter Annoys Me

If I can throw my hat into the ring regarding Morgan’s FGO design, because I definietely have… thoughts. I don’t hate her design, and I’m interested in her character, but visually she does fall a little flat for me. Slight spoiler warning for LB6. Long rambling post ahead.

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Fate’s “black magic of the British Isles”

A collection of quotes referring to this mysterious light-eating black magic native to Britain, as well as its known wielders Morgan le Fay, Vortigern, and Artoria Alter. Chances are good that this will be important in Lostbelt 6.

Long post warning!

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Is it just me or does Fate's Mordred never receive any hate for starting her rebellion, which brought an end to Camelot? I know Artoria doesn't like her, but she's the only one. Gawain, who was literally killed by Mordred, is shown to love Mordred like a beloved sibling. I feel like Fate really ignores how guilty Mordred is for the loss of Camelot, and seems to blame Lancelot more due to his affair with Guinevere. What do you think?

I mean, yes. Fate never really makes an attempt to punish Mordred.

From a fan-perspective, there's not much room for hate because he's a solid character in regards to his villainy. He was one of the stronger parts of Apocrypha, and just like Nero served as a strong parallel to Artoria.

But from an in-fiction perspective, it's also that Mordred doesn't really... care. He doesn't care at all, really.

I think a common thing is that people assume that Mordred is a good person. He isn't. He isn't EVIL, but he isn't good either. He does what he wants, and follows just enough of a chivalric code that means that in most cases, he generally ends up doing the 'right' thing. He's a person driven by impulse, unlike the other KoTR that have a stricter moral code. He's one of the few characters that genuinely fits 'Chaotic Neutral'.

Mordred cares about one thing. Artoria. That's it. Not Camelot, not the citizens, not the other knights, just Artoria.

Camelot was a means to an end to take down Artoria- he talks big game about wanting to be king, but also doesn't have much remorse. 'Being king' as a wish was even just a way to lessen Artoria's burden, not to better the kingdom in any discernible way.

So, it's hard to put guilt on a character that is, by design... not that guilty about what they did. Mordred knows he's a traitor. He doesn't care.

Lancelot and Gawain, however, are drowning in guilt. Gawain's just keeping his head above water to stay a Saber, while Lancelot would rather just drown in madness because even lucidity is painful for him. That's because, unlike Mordred, Lancelot and Gawain are fundamentally good people who made horrible mistakes.

The narrative can't draw pain from the fall of Camelot for Mordred, because he doesn't give a shit.

However, a big part about how the knights current treat each other is the narrative of forgiveness. Artoria had the entirety of Stay Night and Zero. Gawain had EXTRA and the Camelot Singularity to genuinely forgive himself and Lancelot. Lancelot had Zero and Camelot Singularity. Tristan, Bedivere, and Agravain had the Camelot Singularity. Gareth will have a new interlude where she addresses her pain with Lancelot. The narrative of taking the second life that they're given as Servants, and appreciating it and their fellow knights.

And while Mordred is brought into the narrative due to being a knight, he isn't as central to it. Which puts him in his own bit of punished limbo- because while the other knights have openly forgiven each other, and him- Artoria hasn't.

And Artoria's the only one who really matters to Mordred.

So reddit got more PHH Morgan lore. First of all, she's actually Artoria's full blooded sister. When she was born, Gaia made her "the Child of Britain" who would inherit the island's mystery. The result was that she got three different split personalities like Kay mentioned: Morgan the human(Warrior), the fairy(Fairy), and the personification of Britain(Witch). Note: her Fairy self is named VIVIAN yes, LADY OF THE LAKE Vivian. According to Lancelot, Nimue, his mom, was an alias for Vivian so...

-Me: "So Nasu, which is it? Is Morgan Igraine's kid or Uther's kid?' Nasu: "... Yes."

-So basically Morgan's three bitches in PHH. I would have thought it was a gradual process from one to another but of course Nasu takes the fucking craziest and most metaphysical route possible just to clock me in the face.

-Well that explains the whole 'Evil Vivian' thing.

... Also-

Arturia: *at Gawain* You're Morgan's kid.

Arturia: *at Agravain* You're Morgan's kid. (Wish I wasn't)

Arturia: *at Gareth* You're Morgan's kid!

Arturia: *at Gaheris* You're Morgan's kid! (How'd I get here?!)

Arturia: *at Mordred* You're Morgan's AND my kid. (...Can you say that again?)

Arturia: IS THERE ANY MORE CHILDREN OF MORGAN IN MY COURT?!

Lancelot: ... Well...not biologically...but...

Arturia: ....

The Orkney Siblings: ...

Mordred: ... I'm not extending my family tree any further.

Also also-

Lancelot: My own mother tried to rape me...

Mordred: At least she gave a shit about you.

You know whole Morgan having three different personalities probably worked a bit bitter if it was more like Morgan the witch, Vivian, and Morgan the sister to Artoria were originally one person but something happened to her to split into three people that now lead different lives that played a hand in fate’s arthurian mythos

Sorry, but I seriously don’t agree. If you're just going to split them into three different people, keep them as three separate people in the first place. The issue of 'Morgan being Vivian' wasn't 'Morgan and Vivian can't exist in separate places and live different lives', it's that:

'Morgan being Vivian, combined with the condensed timespan of Fate's Arthurian mythos, opens up more questions than answers due to the established ages of the characters'

I was fine with Morgan having Vivian's authority, because characters borrow the 'authority' of some other character every other moment. But having Morgan actually be Vivian, therefore being Lancelot's adoptive mother, and ALSO being arbitrarily written to be Artoria's FULL sister rather than a partial sibling from an earlier relationship- it just makes things messy for no good reason.

And Morgan COULD have been 'The Lady of the Lake'. That's not a new concept- but it was a concept that worked when Morgan was... you know, allowed to be considerably older than Arthur in order for that to feasibly work. Especially considering all the pre-Arthur stuff that generally happened regarding Merlin, Vortigern, Uther, etc.

The Arthurian mythos, despite the name, didn't just... start with King Arthur. It's a story that requires setup, and Nasu wrote it so that the 'setup' is just a murky pit that requires logical jumps and purely ignoring other things in order to make it work. 

Nasu wants to have his cake and eat it to with every Arthurian character being both 'cool and young' and also having lived the full lives that encapsulated their stories, and it just makes things into a muddy mess once you look past the glamour of 'this sounds cool'. He wants to have the moral ambiguity of Morgan le Fay, but he didn’t give himself a proper setting to do so.

My favorite part about the Nasuverse is how it needlessly crams down the Arthurian mythos. Technically, there should be about 50 years of stuff, and Arthur should have reigned for between 20-30 years. Which gives time for several iterations of the Round Table, ending with the generation of Galahad.

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Both thoughts on Morgan please ! :D

Morgan in folklore is a fascinating character. Mostly because no matter what, her first presence as "Morgan the Healer" never seems to go away. She always is, in the end, the one who takes Arthur to Avalon, the reason that maybe he'll be able to come back, while also being one of the key factors that leads to the end of Camelot. no matter how much people try, she's outside of being defined completely. What's more, she's got an incredibly personal and touching motive when you look at it. This isn't just some story about power and how far someone is willing to go to take it, it's about love, and how a horrific act in the past can have echoes that affect the innocent. This isn't to say I like her as a 'hero' but I like her as character.

So, to me Fate!Morgan feels a little like wasted potential. Her motives are a little clearer with new stuff, but honestly pretty much everything I said earlier still stands about why I hate her as Uther's 'true and recognized daughter' even if apparently she's now some fae that spawned into existence too. Her motive of 'you took away my destiny', sort of erases her nuance as a character, and it more just seems like she's a bad person from the start who doesn't accept that she's a bad person. What's more, Nasu tends to use her to project things like the Lady of the Lake's bad behavior on. And, more importantly, it erases Uther's being a creep. Like, I like that we've got a face and more to her, but I guess I feel that if we're going to overcomplicate the reason Artoria became king as having to do with Vortigern and the White Dragon and a plot between Uther and Merlin to save the country, we can have Morgan have a little more complicated motives. In the LB, I'm...pretty sure we're going to get some Midsummer Night's Dream payoff with her though.

Do ya ever think that if Uther shows up, and he, the Artorias, and Morgan interact, Chaldea is just gonna have a collective epiphany of "So parental issues have always been a thing in this family, hasn't it?"

I’ll be honest I try very hard not to think about Uther because idk if it’s explained in fsn or whatever but my knowledge of Artoria’s backstory prior to being king is cruelly lacking

Like, is she Uther’s daughter? Is she a farmer’s daughter? Why does she sound like she was raised among commoners, why was Merlin the one to raise her? Why did Merlin present her to the Sword of Selection considering he doesn’t actually see the future? Or is it that he’s not able to anymore? Why is the Caliburn used to designate the next king, didn’t Uther have any other recognized heirs? What’s the fucking deal with Morgan? Did she grow up with Artoria? Do these two even like. Interacted? Why would Morgan want the fall of King Arthur? Is it a personal grudge? Is it a general “fuck you Britain”? Why did Merlin give Artoria a dragon heart?

Like none of them really matter when it comes to Artoria as a character, since from my understanding she’s supposed to represent “shoving who you are as a person under a rug in favor of a vague ideal you don’t really understand” (like Shirou and Rin) so the exact reason why “Artoria the farmer girl” exists and became “Artoria the King” doesn’t really matter, so I’m fine with that usually, but that means thinking about Artoria’s extended family feels a bit like that one time I tried to write a fic about a show but the canon was so inconsistent I had to rewrite the entire worldbuilding when the point was originally just to make a cute soulmate au for my otp.

thanks for the tl;dr. While I don't agree with all your opinions, I get where you're coming from. Highkey, if you don't mind, what do think of Urobuchi as a writer? I frankly can't stand the man's writings, not only in regards to his "DeCoNsTrUcTiOn" of the magical girl genre with Madoka, but also Fate/Zero and his work on Kamen Rider Gaim.

It's......really hard for me to not blame Urobutcher himself for how Madoka basically killed the entire magical girl genre by causing it to be flooded with edgy tryhard tortureporn.

Like from an objective and analytical standpoint, Madoka is an incredible and meticulously crafted story. ...but subjectively, i fucking hate it, and then on top of that also hate it for what it (again, indirectly) did the genre and really just mainstreem anime in general to a certain, albeit obviously much lesser, degree. I feel like that's an entirely different discussion though, and really it just boils down to a case of "it's good" and "I don't like it" are not mutually exclusive. That's my read anyways.

Fate/Zero i love when watched bit by bit but dont like as a coherent story for much the same subjective reasons I'm personally not a fan of Madoka. For all my negativity I don't actually like nihilistic or cruel stories. Fate/Zero is actually what made me realize that, being the first time I had to as aforementioned go "it's good....but I don't like it." I love pretty much everything that doesn't involve Kerry, which is an issue when the whole story revolves around Kerry.

It's by no means without some serious issues though. Urobutcher wrote Artoria as a completely different character and it causes some serious inconsistencies that had harmful long-term repercussions, the banquet scene is a great setup that as I've discussed before falls completely flat in retrospect because nothing talked about was delivered on, and characters like Abs Hassan and Kariya got beyond wasted, just to name some of my issues with Zero.

But unlike with a LOT of Nasu's writing, actually just FGO writing in general frankly, those flaws don't contradict the ethos of the story. They come across less as contradictions that the writer couldnt be asked to rectify, as much as they do human error and an inability to make everything perfectly coherent and loop back around to the an overarching point. None of the things i've mentioned really detract from the message Fate Zero wants to give. They detract from the quality and consistency of the storytelling, absolutely, but not from the intended purpose of that storytelling. That sort of thing is HUGELY different than something like FGO just making up alternate history to suit it's narrative despite said narrative supposedly being about unity through our shared real world history.

I suppose what it really comes down to is that I don't feel malice or narrow mindedness from Urobutcher's works the way I do from Nasu. Kirei is the best example of this - i'd go so far as to argue Kirei's character didn't have ANY of the depth people now attribute to it before Urobutcher got involved. That's not even a dig at Nasu, that's just how much Urobutcher clearly GETS the kind of character Kirei is [now] meant to be. Same goes for Gilles and Kerry, those are characters that were perfect for someone like Urobutcher to execute (in multiple senses).

Again, Urobutcher is not a flawless writer by any stretch, no one is, and his style is by no means for everyone, because no style SHOULD be universally appealing...but I feel like he very much gives a shit. I feel like whether its all the way back with Fate Zero or his relatively more recent return for Lostbelt 3, Urobutcher gave a shit and did everything with as much purpose as he could. On that ground alone, I'm willing to be a lot more sympathetic to the parts of his writing i don't like, since I can at least convince myself those things (be it intentional choices or simple mistakes) were done in good faith.

Yeah but like, don't you have to be chosen by the planet and be 'worthy' to use Excalibur or something like that??

I do not for the life of me remember how the fuck Excalibur works in fate beyond that Bedi not returning it was what resulted in The Lion King. It's also so subsumed with Caliburn in popular culture that I do not remember where one stops and the other starts most of the time.

The fact that they can shoot beams with it, doesn't that make all of Chaldea sabers?

The 'worthiness' thing is Caliburn, which Fate establishes as a different sword in its canon (which is a familiar take in some versions of Arthuriana, the Caliburn/Excalibur thing is historically kinda muddy).

Excalibur is just an incredibly juiced-up Divine Construct that needs a ton of mana and shoots super lasers that automatically scale in strength depending on how much of a 'threat to humanity' something is. And because of how powerful it is, and how much mana it consumes, will kill people who aren't properly built for using it- like Bedivere. Which is why handing Excalibur to Ritsuka and saying 'use it' would be the fastest way to get a Dead End, because they'd probably die instantly after firing it off.

Luckily, Artoria is built different (Dragon Core), and can use it without dying instantly. She'll just get really tired instead.

So, again, it's a fair weapon to stick on to your massive flying magical super ship, if not pretty energy consuming, so you need to make sure it works when you do fire it off.