Fuyuki Holy Grail War

The , also called ,TYPE-MOON Staffs' diary - 2005/10/19 is a Holy Grail War ritual established in the 1800s in Fuyuki City, Japan, and a central element of the Fate series since its first installment, Fate/stay night. Established by the Three Founding Families of Tohsaka, Matou, and Einzbern, the magical community at large knows it as a competition to win a Holy Grail. Seven Magi are chosen by the Grail as Masters and, with support from the Grail, allowed to summon seven Servants to do battle. The winning pair, supposedly, will claim the Holy Grail and use it to grant their wish or wishes.
The ritual's true purpose is to use the combined energy of seven fallen Servants to burn a hole in reality, a gate to reach Akasha. However, the ritual's very premise is flawed: only a spiritual body like a Servant, not a flesh-and-blood Master, is capable of grasping the Grail and completing the ritual. As such, the final Master, instead of sacrificing their own Servant to perfect the Grail and reach the Root, must keep their Servant alive to claim an energy source that is much weaker, but still capable of granting far-reaching wishes to the final Master/Servant pair.
Even given the above, there has yet to be one real victory across all five wars. The first two attempts revealed significant magical and logistical issues that prevented the completion of the ritual, then the first fully-formed Grail War, the third, saw the summoning of Avenger Angra Mainyu. This event caused the Grail to become tainted by All the World's Evils, and any wishes made on it will manifest in the most destructive manner possible.
Overall, the Fuyuki Holy Grail War is a minor event in the World of Magecraft. As a conflict between Magi, the wars' preparation and decision-making are controlled by the Mage's Association. To avoid conflicts of interest, the Associate invites the Holy Church as Arbiters to onboard new Masters and neutrally enforce rules, although they only participate to assert their dominion over Christian relics and hope to confiscate the "Holy Grail" at the right opportunity.
==Origin==
The original purpose of the ritual was to recover the Third Magic lost by the Einzberns, the "Cup of Heaven." Around 1790s, Justeaze Lizrich von Einzbern, Nagato Tohsaka, and Zolgen Makiri created the system in order to create a gate leading to Akasha. At that time, the Mage's Association and the Church were locked in a battle to the death, so a land in the Far East, where the Church could not monitor, was chosen. The Einzberns provided the alchemy to create it and prepared the vessel for the Grail, the Tohsaka provided the necessary land and called forth the Servants, and the Makiri assembled the Magecraft to stabilize the starting materials and designed the Command Spells to command the Servants. Back when the Tohsaka were developing the ritual of the Heaven's Feel along with the Makiri and the Einzbern, Nagato's daughter played a greater role in the completion of the Holy Grail War system than her father.
The Holy Grail War itself was devised by Justeaze, and she was to become the key of the ritual. The Greater Holy Grail of Fuyuki was created through forming a large circuit from many multi-layered Crests carved onto a bare rock over fifty meters in diameter. It was covered in multiple layers of circuits, while its many geometric figures turned in place. Justeaze stood in the center of the it, and became the key to reenacting the Third Magic. The Greater Grail would have only been just a Holy Grail without her, as her will was required to enact Heaven's Feel. Kischur Zelretch Schweinorg acted as a witness to the event.
Currently, only the Tohsakas want to reach Akasha, while the Einzberns and Makiri only want the completion of the Grail, that is, the revival of the Third Magic. However, both Zouken Matou and Shirou Emiya note these agendas are apparently impossible, as there was never a victor for the past four Heaven's Feels and the Grail became corrupted by Angra Mainyu after the Third War.
==Procedure==
The Great Grail requires sixty years in order to amass enough Mana to summon Servants, making the planning period span over generations.Fate/stay night- Heaven's Feel route - Day 15: limited. - Truth - Antihero Angra Manyu If the Grail is unable to utilize its energy, that which is leftover can reduce the time to as little as a decade, such as in the case of the period between the Fourth and Fifth Wars.
The Grail selects potential Masters anywhere from years in advance to right before the start of the Holy Grail War. It favors those from the Three Founding FamiliesFate/stay night - Heaven's Feel route - Day 4: Avenger - Holy Grail War, the beginning and then picks out suitable Magi through a mostly unknown process. There can be more than seven potential Masters, but only the first seven who manage to summon Servants gain Command Spells and the right to act as a Master. It is possible for other unchosen people to gain the right to act as Masters by contracting with Masterless Servants.
The Servants can be summoned in advance as well, but more than two months, such as in Berserker's case, is an anomaly. They can be summoned far away from the site of the ritual, allowing them to be initially summoned in Europe and then brought to Fuyuki. While played off as only a battle royal where the winner is granted a wish, the real point is to fill the vessel of the Grail with the souls of all seven Servants. Defeated Servants revert to being pure energy and, while they would normally disappear from the timeline by returning to the Throne of Heroes as information for the true Heroic Spirits, the Grail halts that process temporarily and collects them.
It is possible to make a wish upon it with only the power of five Servants, allowing it to grant most wishes. It is still incomplete, and will take at least six to bring it into form. Its true purpose, opening a hole to the Root, requires all seven Servants. Once the vessel is filled, the energy of the Heroic Spirits returning to the "Throne" is used by the Great Grail in a ritual to open a "hole" leading to Akasha. Due to the corruption of the ritual, most wishes will require great destruction. Kiritsugu Emiya realized the Holy Grail had been corrupted when it presented him a revelation of how it would grant his wish; instead of saving humanity, it showed him a utopia would exterminate all of humankind besides him, his wife, and his daughter. As a result, Kiritsugu rejected the Grail and attempted to destroy it. Within a decade his adopted son, Shirou, would complete this mission and ensure the malice within the tainted artifact would never threaten the planet again.
Though the maximum number of Servants is seven, there is an auxiliary reserve system within the Greater Grail to distribute Command Spells again to allow the summoning for seven more Servants. This was developed for the highly improbable situation that all seven Servants were to cooperate, but it would likely exhaust the Leyline of Fuyuki. It is to be used only as an emergency measure to have seven more Servants to oppose those that have joined up.Fate/Apocrypha Volume 1: Apocrypha: Great Holy Grail War - Chapter 1
==Supervision==
The First and Second Wars went unsupervised, but the chaotic Second Holy Grail War caused them to rethink the position. Japan had been in its period of civilizing at the time, so the possibility of witnesses spreading the serious damage occurring needed to be controlled, even in such a remote area. It is a conflict between Magi, so no one in the Mage's Association can act as a mediator because of the political implications. The three families instead sought out the Church, enemies to the Magi, an external authority. Because the Fuyuki Holy Grail Wars utilize the name "Holy Grail", one of the Church's most sacred artifacts, the Church was forced to involve itself.
The Church acts under the pretense that they cannot ignore the possibility that the Fuyuki Holy Grail is the cup that received the blood of Christ, even though they know this is untrue. The Church still sends a supervisor because the Greater Grail is too powerful to ignore, and because they don't want someone to use the Grail for their own selfish desires. They are not concerned with Magi reaching the Root, but the possibility of a wish that affects the real world is too large a threat. The Church instead wishes to guide a Magus seeking the Root towards victory to keep such a possibility from happening. The Association also expresses a measure of interest in the ritual, so they dispatch Bazett Fraga McRemitz to participate in the Fifth Holy Grail War.
The Holy Grail War is unknown to the general populace. The Church is responsible for the cover up work, in which they manipulate information by modifying the memories of victims and covering up the battle damage while the Mage's Association handles the media. The Association has the Einzberns cover the cost of any collateral damage. They will punish the landowner should it get too out of hand, such as in the Heaven's Feel scenario. The damage it causes in society and the assassination of Bazett are blamed on Kirei Kotomine, but the activation of the path to the Root gets Rin Tohsaka into a great deal of trouble. Such rituals are only supposed to be done under their supervision, but she also heard they wished to truly execute her because the path was closed even though they succeeded.
==Wars==
===Fate/stay night world===
====First Holy Grail War====
The took place in 1810, but it was not meant to be anything like the future Holy Grail Wars. It was not named as such, only meant to be a ritual for the families to reach Akasha. It took ten years from its establishment to gather the necessary energy to manifest, but the Three Families originally planning to utilize it realized that the system could only allow for one person to utilize it. Though they had the same goals, their opinions on how to reach them were different, so the incomplete nature of the ritual caused them to break off their alliance. Instead, the families create the Heaven's Feel system to summon the Grail, and then fight for it amongst themselves. 
Due to requiring seven Heroic Spirits to complete the ritual and seven Masters to summon them, the families had brought in four outside Magi with the call of "We've succeeded in manifesting the Grail. If you'd like to witness this miracle, join us and become Masters." Though the outsider Magi had only sought to learn about the ritual of activating the Grail, they used the internal quarrel as an opportunity to grant their own desires. Though the Three Families held the rights to the Grail, winning the conflict would allow them to obtain a wish regardless of the ancestry.
It was not a major conflict in the end, and can only be called a "small quarrel of sorts". From the point of view of the Einzberns, the first Holy Grail War ended before the completion. The evocation site of the Grail was held at Ryuudou temple on Mount Enzou.
====Second Holy Grail War====
The was held sometime around the 1860's, and it was then that the Heaven's Feel ritual took on the name of the "Holy Grail War." Developing into a war for the second time, it pointed out shortcomings in the rules due to the war devolving into a murder spree in which nobody survived. It ended with no victor, and the Three Families took it as a lesson to create more precise rules such as bringing in a third party like the Church. The evocation of the Grail was held at Tohsaka mansion.
====Third Holy Grail War====
The took place in 1939, on the eve of . The fourth evocation site was confirmed and established, later becoming the center of the developing residential area of Shinto, the Fuyuki City Hall. Jubstacheit von Einzbern prepared the Einzbern Forest and Castle as the family's headquarters. The Tohsaka and the Edelfelt families were participants. The Edelfelts had two Masters, each with the same Saber-class Servant due to their unique Thaumaturgical Attribute.Fate/hollow ataraxia - Heaven's Feel - 1/ Heaven Feel's Backnight I The Einzberns, tired of losing out on reclaiming the Third Magic, subverted the usual system. Instead of summoning a Berserker, they attempted to summon the god as an Avenger.
The Church first interfered with the ritual in Fuyuki during the Third Holy Grail War, sending the then-young Risei Kotomine and charging him with the role of supervisor. While there, he became friends with the then-current head of the Tohsaka family (Tokiomi's father) and has maintained deep ties with the Tohsaka ever since.
During the course of the war, the Lesser Grail was targeted by the Imperial Japanese Army and the Nazis as well, and the fighting unfolded in the Imperial Capital. Avenger, an exceptionally weak Servant with no special abilities, was lost early during the conflict. While the supremacy of the Saber class helped at least one Edelfelt to persist to the end of the war, they were ultimately defeated by the Tohsaka. The elder Edelfelt left Japan, vowing never to return, while the younger sister's fate is unknown.Fate/hollow ataraxia - Night - Emiya's - In London The Lesser Grail was destroyed during the battles before the victor could be decided, so the ritual became meaningless and failed. The evocation site of the Grail was set to be at the Fuyuki Church.
There was a meeting held at a suitable time that appointed Risei as the supervisor for the next Holy Grail War. The ritual ended in failure, but Avenger, Angra Mainyu, was absorbed and the Greater Grail was contaminated. Up until that point, only true Heroic Spirits were summoned, but that contamination allowed for "something other than a Heroic Spirit" (anti-heroes, villains, monsters, etc.) to be summoned during later Holy Grail Wars.Fate/stay night - Unlimited Blade Works route - Day 13: VS berserker - Interlude 13-1: PrincessFate/Zero Volume 4: Flames of Purgatory - Act 14 Part 4 -36:38:09
====Fourth Holy Grail War====
Fourth Holy Grail War Masters.png|Kiritsugu and the other Masters of the Fourth War
Fourth Holy Grail War Servants.png|Artoria and the Servants of the Fourth War.
The took place in 1994, 10 years before the events of Fate/stay night; supervised by Risei Kotomine. The corruption of Angra Mainyu took effect, allowing for the summoning of improper Servants like Caster Gilles de Rais. The destruction of the Lesser Grail during the previous war led Jubstacheit von Einzbern to place it inside the body of a Homunculus, leading to the creation of Irisviel von Einzbern. The intention was to make sure the Lesser Grail would actually last until enough Servants were killed to begin the evocation of the Greater Grail. In previous wars, the Lesser Grail was stored as an inanimate object, and was fought over by the Masters. When the Greater Grail manifested Kiritsugu Emiya realized that it could not grant his wish, and betrayed his Einzbern patrons by destroying it. The cursed contents of the Grail spilled out onto Shinto and began a massive fire, the Great Fire of Fuyuki, killing 500 people and destroying 134 buildings. The only surviving participants were Emiya Kiritsugu, Kirei Kotomine, and Waver Velvet. Gilgamesh also survived, fully reincarnating into his second life as a result of the cursed contents of the Greater Grail being dumped on his head.
Due to the inconclusive nature of the Fourth War, the Grail's failure to grant a wish to the selected victor, Kiritsugu, and the victor's subsequent destruction of the Grail. The Fifth Holy Grail war occured 50 years ahead of schedule, in 2004 instead of 2054. The unexpended thaumaturgical energy accumulated through the elimination of Servants was recycled due to the destruction of the Lesser Grail before the Greater Grail could direct the accumulated Mana to establish its pathway, thus trapping some of the unused Mana within the Grail.
Kiritsugu had planned to demolish the ritual as of the proper scheduled time of the Fifth Heaven's Feel by arranging for the physical collapse of the Great Grail System before the originally estimated date. The process involved utilizing stocked dynamite and the manipulation of Ley-lines to ensure a severe localized earthquake in the targeted area within thirty to forty years of the Fourth War.Fate/Zero Volume 4: Flames of Purgatory - Epilogue: Five Years Later The premature occurrence of the Fifth Holy Grail War and the subsequent destruction of the ritual means that it no longer has a purpose.
====Fifth Holy Grail War====
The took place in 2004. Kirei Kotomine maintained his contract with Archer from the previous war, and though he was supposed to act as the impartial mediator from the Church, he mortally wounded Bazett Fraga McRemitz and took her Servant, Lancer Cú Chulainn. The role of the Lesser Grail was to be performed by Irisviel's daughter, Illyasviel von Einzbern. While there were various possible scenarios, in Fate/stay night, Shirou Emiya (as shown in Fate), Rin Tohsaka (as shown in Unlimited Blade Works), or Sakura Matou (as shown in Heaven's Feel) emerged as the victor and helped in destroying the Grail rather than activating it.Fate/stay night - Fate route - Day 15: Utopia - Gold separationFate/stay night - Unlimited Blade Works route - Day 16: EDEN - Holy Grail breakdown The manifestation of Angra Mainyu seeking to grant a wish entangled Bazett in the events of Fate/hollow ataraxia. A corrupted version of the Fifth Holy Grail War in which the human population (including all the Masters) vanished and Fuyuki was all but destroyed manifested in the world of Fate/Grand Order as Singularity F.Fate/Grand Order - Fuyuki: The Contaminated City in Flames - Section 6: Shadow Servant
Yatagarasu speculates that, had the Fifth Holy Grail War gone badly, it could have become one of the "ends" that the hermits of the Atlas Temple speak of.Fate/strange Fake Volume 6 - Chapter 18: "As Dream and Reality are Both Illusion I"
====Dismantlement of the Holy Grail====
The Holy Grail was dismantled ten years after the Fifth Holy Grail War in 2014. Lord El-Melloi II, a previous Master in the Fourth Holy Grail War, arrived in Fuyuki with Rin Tohsaka to set out to completely dismantle the Greater Grail.Fate/Grand Order - Fate/Accel Zero Order, ACT-3: Second Owner This development was against the Mage's Association's plan of reestablishing it, so the two sides were opposed. It caused great turmoil of the same magnitude as a Holy Grail War, the , but the end result was the Greater Grail's dismantlement. This was the 'true end' of Fuyuki's Grail Wars and the Heaven's Feel system in the "Fate/stay night" timeline.
While the Greater Grail is broken down after the events of the Heaven's Feel route, they would still seek to completely render the Holy Grail War impossible to restart. Differing from the dismantling of the Greater Grail in the routes where it remains intact, it would be more akin to demolishing it due to its broken state.
===Fate/Apocrypha world===
====Third Holy Grail War (Apocrypha)====
The Third Holy Grail War in the Apocrypha world differs from the version in the stay night world. Rather than Avenger Angra Mainyu, the Einzberns summoned Ruler Amakusa Shirou Tokisada. This ritual failed due to the Lesser Grail being destroyed.
Afterward, Darnic Prestone Yggdmillennia, a Nazi-allied Magus, found the location of the Greater Holy Grail of Fuyuki in the caverns underneath Mount Enzou, and had it removed with aid from the Nazis. The Three Families and the Japanese Imperial Army fought to thwart the theft, but they were still exhausted from the fighting of the Third Holy Grail War. After the successful extraction, Darnic then betrayed the Nazis and took the Greater Grail to Romania, so that he could prepare for his own Holy Grail War in 60 years' time.
===Fate/KOHA-ACE world===
====Third Holy Grail War====
The Third Holy Grail War of Fuyuki in Fate/KOHA-ACE is different from the Third Holy Grail War of other timelines, and it does not directly reflect the happenings of other worlds.
===Fate/Grand Order world===
====First Holy Grail War====
In the Fate/Grand Order timeline, the 2004 Holy Grail War ended up being the first and only Holy Grail War held in Fuyuki.Fate/Grand Order - Fate/Accel Zero Order Prelude The winners were Marisbury Animusphere and his Caster Servant Solomon, who used the Greater Grail to fulfill their desires after having defeated all the other Masters and Servants.
===Fate/kaleid liner PRISMA☆ILLYA world===
====Illya's World====
The Fuyuki Holy Grail War of "Illya's World" was stopped before the ritual could be established in Fate/kaleid liner PRISMA☆ILLYA. In this timeline, the Fourth Holy Grail War was to happen later, and while Irisveil von Einzbern exists, Illyasviel von Einzbern was still born for the purpose of acting as the Holy Grail, albeit born later. Due to this change, Irisviel and Kiritsugu Emiya were able to establish a proper relationship and family, and to protect their daughter, they decided to seal her memories meant for the war and destroy the ritual before it began.
After the Class Cards appear in Fuyuki, it is first thought to be remnants of the Holy Grail War, but Irisviel points out that only the names of the classes match the ritual. The Grail War of Illya's World would have used proper Servants, and the Class Cards do not match the planned ritual and are beyond anything that the Magi families could create. They are actually part of a ritual of a parallel world brought forth into the world of Fuyuki alongside part of the other world.
====Miyu's World====
===Fate/school life===
====Most Powerful Great Figures Chapter====
The is a Holy Grail War detailed in the short animated segment Fate/Grand Order x Himuro's Universe: Seven Most Powerful Great Figures Chapter. Set in Fuyuki using the Fate/school life characters and Servants, it is a story fabricated by Friedrich Nietzsche's abilities.
==Participants==
The events of the Fuyuki Holy Grail Wars are detailed in several stories. Some details of the Third Holy Grail War are mentioned in Fate/hollow ataraxia. The events of the Fourth Holy Grail War are described in Fate/Zero. The events of the Fifth Holy Grail War are detailed in Fate/stay night and Fate/hollow ataraxia.
==Notes==
==References==
it:Guerra del Santo Graal di Fuyuki
vi:Cuộc Chiến Chén Thánh Fuyuki
pl:Wojna Świętego Graala w Fuyuki
Category:Holy Grail Wars
Category:Terminology in Fate/stay night
Category:Terminology in Lord El-Melloi II
Category:Terminology in Fate/Grand Order
Category:Terminology in Fate/Zero
Category:Terminology in Fate/Apocrypha
Category:Terminology in Fate/kaleid liner PRISMA☆ILLYA
Category:Terminology in Koha-Ace
Category:Terminology in Fate/strange Fake
Category:Terminology in Fate/type Redline
Category:Fuyuki City