Management: This essay is meant to be less of a review and more of analysis of the show being examined. It contains plot spoilers for both the Fate/Zero and The Case Files of Lord El Melloi II: Rail Zeppelin Grace Notes anime.

If there’s one thing that Fate fans and others who’ve watched Fate/Zero can seem to agree on, it’s that Waver Velvet is a good character. Some Fate verse fans have been annoyed by kinds of expectations Fate/Zero has set up to newcomers to their beloved franchise, particularly Fate/stay night. In many ways, with the exception of Heaven’s Feel route, Fate/Zero is a big stylistic and tonal departure from the original VN narrative. Non-fate fans who’ve watched Fate/Zero accuse it of being too edgy or pretentious for its own good. Fate/Zero has gruesomely distressing scenes, is brutally unfair to its sympathetic characters, and just dunks and dumps on its paragons with relentless waves of cynical philosophizing and worldbuilding. Waver may be Fate/Zero original, but his propensity for being awkward and earnest is a familiar and welcome sight to Fate fans. Those same qualities endear the non-Fate ones, who see his goofiness and kindliness as a break from and counter to the oppressiveness of Fate/Zero’s gloom and doom. In the end, violence forces Waver to part with his partner Iskandar (aka Alexander the Great, his heroic spirit during the last Holy Grail War, and his king). Hope remains though that Waver is able to emerge from his coming-of-age character arc a more mature and still compassionate person.

In some respects, Waver has become more mature as he’s taken temporary mantle of Lord El Melloi II; however, as the Lord El Melloi II anime reveals, his parting with Iskandar has left him with regrets. These regrets make him feel like a faker, which makes the Faker that appears later more than a coincidence. Or maybe it’s just self-projection, since he’s the one who came up with the name? They’re each other’s character foils. Like the person he’s dubbed the rather crudely direct Faker, Waver is perhaps giving himself less credit than he deserves. In chasing the shadow of his king, he’s downplaying the shadow he’s cast on others.

The full title of the show’s first season is The Case Files of Lord El Melloi II: Rail Zeppelin Grace Notes. Outside of establishing the strong detective mystery element of the anime, the title suggests that the season will be principally dedicated to some arc involving a “Rail Zeppelin”. Somewhat despite this suggestion, the anime begins with several episodes only loosely related to the Rail Zeppelin Arc that takes place in the first season’s latter half. One of the reasons for this structure is to illustrate grown-up Waver’s reputation. Not only a Lord of the Clock Tower, but also an instructor, people clearly respect, admire, and like him. His intelligence as a magus and his skills as a detective are impressive. One student strikes a deal with him to be her tutor, and another is constantly tries to get into his pants as his mistress specifically (and not his wife)

Grown-up Waver’s still insecure though, and there are a few things about him that drive that complex. For one, his “Lord El Melloi” title is on loan. The previous person to hold that title, Waver’s mentor Kayneth El Melloi, spends the family fortune securing a position in the Holy Grail War. He later dies horribly during it and leaves his family in a precarious position, with an under-aged sibling heir and a mountain of debt. Having been both mentored by Kayneth and achieving what Kayneth could not, surviving, Waver is seen by Kayneth’s surviving sister Reines as an acceptable enough to be incorporated into the El Melloi household as a caretaker and regent. Waver would be granted the title of “Lord El Melloi” temporarily until Reines comes of age. Waver may enjoy the privileges and prestige that comes with it in the meantime, but he has to also give up certain collateral and honor certain duties — one being servicing the El Melloi’s debt. Already, there’s a half-baked quality that’s qualified Waver’s rise to stardom. To compound Waver’s semi-rawness and debtor hell problems, his current position as professor and head of Modern Magecraft Theory at the elite and premier Clock Tower magus school is a position he bought out using cash he borrowed from an associate. He’s responsible for so much debt that it’s one of the show’s running gags.

Speaking of debts, Waver also feels like he owes a couple of intangible ones. The most formative moments of Waver’s life were his participation in the Holy Grail War and his partnership with Iskandar. The Holy Grail War is a once-in-a-generation event that admits only so many people, and how many people can claim to be pals with Alexander the Great? The circumstances surrounding both have only given Waver half-satisfaction in his later years, and he’s dwelt more often on his half-shame during them. He stole his Holy Grail War entrance token from Kayneth, the person he was so desperate to prove himself worthy to. He couldn’t contribute to the fight with Iskandar like the other Masters with their Servants, a person who practically amounted to little more than a spectating Pokemon trainer. Kayneth, a far better magus, and Iskandar, a far better man, died instead of him. He, the mediocre boy mage, lived.

But he’s not the only one who thinks he’s half-assed; so does the Faker. With dark wavy hair, familiarly-styled battle vestments, and a stature smaller and slimmer (but perhaps no less impressive) than Iskandar’s, she first introduces herself in the Rail Zeppelin arc as Haphaestion, one of Iskandar’s generals and closest confidantes. Waver quickly accepts that she’s a Heroic Spirit summoned from his stolen Iskandar relic: a piece of Iskandar’s mantle. However, doubts still plague him about the rest of her self-introduction. Haphaestion-supposedly announces her identity quite freely without disclosing what class of Heroic Spirit she is, which is weird. It’s typically standard in Holy Grail Wars for Heroic Spirits to purposely conceal their names, so as to keep their adversaries from parsing out and preparing countermeasures for their true abilities. Waver also doesn’t recall seeing her face at all in the Ionioi Hetairoi, which is odd. Ironioi Hetairoi is the noble phantasm that Iskandar uses to call once more into battle all those who shared his ambitions and fought with him.

These discrepancies gradually lead Waver to deduce that the self-proclaimed Hephaestion isn’t actually Hephaestion. She is a phony, a Faker, the body-double bodyguard of Iskandar. She was the Classical Greek equivalent of the Secret Service, ready to take the figurative bullets. As a half-nod to the Fate franchise’s propensity to play liberal with historical likenesses, not!Hephaestion looks closer to what Alexander the Great has been recorded to have actually looked like (sans the part about the lengthily haired woman, because Fate also likes playing fast and loose with sex). Being neither a great general or rank-and-fire soldier, but a dedicated bodyguard, she lived a contradiction. Faker’s job is to keep Iskandar out of danger, and Iskandar’s always putting himself into danger. The gravity in which she treated her leads her to vocally object to Iskandar’s dangerous pursuit of what she considers a fairy tale — Oceanus, the Hellenistic Conqueror’s equivalent to El Dorado.

All this self-seriousness led to Faker being alienated. She disapproves of his dangerously unrealistic ambitions, and she resents all his other company for encouraging him. While her alienation was brought about by her choices, choices she’s taken prideful responsibility for, they are implied to have left her feeling ambivalent. It’s her duty to guard her king from harm, and she’s loyally followed it to the letter. And yet… can she really be her king’s bona fide follower and companion when she only half-believes in what he’s fighting for? Can she really be that happy being so half-hearted with her king’s company? When people like Waver who’ve known Iskandar recently and for less time are possibly closer to him, how much of herself does she really like? Just half, if at all? Gray’s inadvertent intrusions into her troubled Iskandar memories elicits a violent reaction from Faker after she pieces together what happened. Buried within are feelings of hers she desperately wants out of sight: feelings of doubt, shame, loneliness, weakness… a combination of traits unbefitting of either a body guard or a companion of Iskandar.

Chasing their king’s shadow, both Lord El Melloi II and not!Hephaestion consider themselves impostors deep down. Both have names they believe don’t quite fit them. Waver insisted that his Lord El Melloi title must also include a II (aka the Second) because of his belief that he can’t even hope to surpass his mentor Kayneth. Faker was insisted that she adopt and was even offered a name by Iskandar out of a desire for her to become closer to everyone, yet she refused to make her body-double identity more believable. Both engage in self-projection against each other. Waver labels Faker a Faker after deducing she’s not Hephaestion, and Faker calls him a fake follower and companion of Iskandar. Waver begins the show trying to worm his way into into a spot for the next Holy Grail War so that he can see Iskandar again for validation. Faker develops from her debut trying to murder Waver out of resentment for his close bond with Iskandar that she doesn’t share.

But while Faker’s character remains insecurely unchanged throughout the Rail Zeppelin arc, Waver’s character seems to have come to have come to peace with his impostor syndrome. Waver could have only made it as far in the Rail Zeppelin arc and his entire life because of his connections with others like Gray and Svin. The help he receives from them are seen not as tribute they’re obligated and forced to offer, but as aid offered by them gladly and with consent because they respect, admire, and like him.

The reason why he’s not alone is because his humanism comes before his profession. A lot of mages in the Fate universe are callous bastards, enough so that magecraft has an awful reputation for it. The Lord El Melloi II anime begins with the supposedly deceased patriarch of a mage family attempting to sacrifice his daughter for the sake of his magus experiments. The patriarch of the Animusphere mage family loses all interest in his daughter Olga Marie after discovering the corrupted nature of the Greater Grail, suggesting he only raised her to be of use to him during the next Holy Grail War. The Fate/Zero anime shows Zouken Matou gladly subjecting his son and adopted granddaughter to tortuous experimentation to achieve his goals. Kiritsugu’s Emiya’s father brutally sacrifices a local girl close to Kiritsugu to further his own magus research. The worst elements in mage society are the result of a combination of aristocratic-esque arrogance and mad scientist-like amoralism.

All of this magus baggage comes to a boil and decantation in the Rail Zeppelin arc between the former and current department heads of Modern Magecraft Theory. As his name may suggest, Doctor Heartless is the epitome of everything morally reprehensible in the mage profession: willing to commit how many horrible (dare I say, heartless) acts that he can get away with to further his own self-interested mage-related agenda. By contrast, so many of Waver’s actions are dictated by his natural sense of (dare I say, heartfelt) compassion, a compassion begot from his own underdog status and nurtured through his time with Iskandar. That compassion is alluded to with Svin and Gray, two of Waver’s followers. Born into bad situations with disadvantaged conditions, they were taken in by Waver, not as pawns or resources like other mages, but as Waver’s wards, pupils, and later partners. Older Waver treated those two like people beings worthy of dignity and respect…

…just like how Iskandar once humanistically treated young Waver despite his own limited power and utility all that time ago in Fate/Zero. Despite Waver’s hot-and-cold displays of magus-conditioned arrogance and sniveling self-pity, Iskandar reached out to Waver and made him his friend anyway. Iskandar encouraged Waver’s ambitious yearnings by insisting that he was worthy to ride with him into his final battle. Iskandar affirmed Waver’s instinctual compassion at the children charnel house by assuring him that its right to feel sickened. It’s no wonder that Iskandar’s bond and friendship with young Waver eventually led to an older one who’s now a ranking mage who helps people. He’s a Lord of the Clock Tower, and the person who saved Gray and Svin. Until the end of Season 1 of the Lord El Melloi II anime, Waver has been desperately chasing the shadow of a man who he owes so much to. He’s felt inferior in relation to him for so long, and has fully appreciated his words about their relationship just recently.

By the end of Season 1 of the Lord El Melloi II anime, Waver begins realizing how much of a shadow he’s cast on those who they feel him owe so much in turn. Svin and Gray are the obvious culprits of this affection, with Gray being particularly meek and deferential in relation to her “Sir.” However, those two’s heart-warming bonds with Waver are already very well established by the beginning of the anime. The effects of Waver’s humanistic influence on others is better observed through Olga Marie Animusphere. Waver praises her status and abilities as a mage from a pridefully venerable household despite her youth and naivete. Waver comforts her by saying it’s okay to express emotional vulnerability at a friend’s death despite her upbringing by her callous bastard of a father. Far from treating people like pawns and resources like many mages do, Waver treats them as wards, pupils, partners, and equals. Far from treating Waver like a mere magic battery or potential liability, Iskandar treats him like his follower, companion, friend, and equal.

That is why Faker continues to be alienated and torn up inside. It’s not only because she thinks Iskandar’s ambitions are stupid. Both Waver and Iskandar himself would say that the latter’s dreams of Oceanus are far-fetched and far-flung enough to be idiotic. Starting with her name (her lack of), it’s because she can’t bring herself to acknowledge herself as Iskandar’s equal. She regards herself as ultimately just a resource to him, accommodations to her humanity a burden to performing her job properly. For now, Waver has set aside his plans for entering the next Holy Grail War so he can focus on his students and colleagues now. Iskandar and Waver have their own wars they need to fight, even if they’ve fought with each other same battlefields several times. Through the people that look to him, Waver still has his own shadow he needs to broaden while he yet has light in his eyes. With no one else by her side except Doctor Heartless, the Doctor in using people as tools, Faker ventures deeper into the dark, forever chasing her king’s shadow.