The Einzbern family, known for their pride in their pure blood, is one of the three founding families of the Holy Grail War. It is the Einzberns that had been pursuing the miracle of the Grail the longest — over a thousand years — before conceding that outside help was necessary, hence the establishment of the recurring ritual. Widely regarded as masters of Alchemy, their magecraft revolves around the manipulation and transmutation of the flow of matter, namely of precious metals. One application of Alchemy is the creation of homunculi, and as one of the founders, it is the Einzberns’ responsibility to provide a new vessel for the Holy Grail in each war.

Their current head is Jubstacheit, an artificial intelligence in charge of the remote Einzbern castle in Germany, which is isolated from the outside world by a powerful Bounded Field and an eternal artificial winter. Jubstacheit has been around for about two centuries, and has led the Einzberns since the second war. By the beginning of Fate/Zero, the family, while immensely wealthy, does not have any true human members left, as most of them are some kind of artificial life form.

The Einzberns’ specialization in Alchemy makes them unfit for battle, which led to their early elimination in the first few wars. For the fourth war, the one that takes place during Fate/Zero, they have employed an outsider as their representative: Kiritsugu Emiya, a freelance Magus Killer who uses unorthodox — non-magical and underhanded — methods to take out his opponents. Chosen by the Holy Grail as one of the seven Masters, Kiritsugu uses the relic provided by the Einzberns as a catalyst to summon the powerful King of Knights as his Servant so as to fight as the family’s trump card.

Irisviel is a homunculus, an artificial life form, created by the Einzbern family. Her silver hair and red eyes are characteristic of the Einzbern homunculi, as all of them are modelled after Justeaze Lizrich, the head of the family at the time the Holy Grail War ritual was founded. As the homunculi pass on their memories and personality to the next model, each of them harbours traces of Justeaze within them.

Homunculi crafted by the Einzbern are capable of rapid mental and physical maturing, their aging coming to a halt once they reach adult form. They are born with an immense wealth of knowledge and reason that has been passed down for generations, and come with physical and mental traits optimized for the purpose they were designed for. Though physically frail, homunculi possess powerful Magic Circuits — they are meant to be Magic Circuits in human form, after all — that allow them to channel vast amounts of magical energy, making them first-rate Magi. As long as they have a supply of magical energy, they also do not require any sustenance.

Although Alchemy is not geared towards direct combat, Irisviel has, with Kiritsugu’s help, developed an offensive magecraft that draws from her inherited proficiency, invoked with the incantation “Shape ist Leben!”: By channeling magical energy through thin metallic wires, she transmutes them into a complex woven piece of art in the shape of a wire-mesh eagle, a makeshift homunculus capable of attacking and tying down targets at will. She is also proficient at scrying with a crystal ball and healing magecraft. As the latter is adopted from Alchemy, however, it does not recover flesh, but rather creates new tissue for the purposes of grafting — useful to restore homunculi, but as straining as an organ transplantation to a human patient.

Among the many Einzbern homunculi, each created for a specific purpose, Irisviel is unique in more than one regard. Her colourful personality and humanity are her very own, made up of the contrasting qualities of her creation and her life:

Following her encounter with Kiritsugu at the Einzbern castle nine years before the start of the fourth war, she was taught by him (for purposes of his own) about the outside world in the hope that she learn to feel interest and concern for herself. While satisfying her great thirst for knowledge, she grew more eloquent and expressive by the day. Over the course of their conversations and intense debates, she came to love him, and eventually gave birth to their daughter Ilyasviel, who they raised together in the small secluded world of the Einzberns for eight years.

In so doing, Irisviel alone has found love and happiness — including love for herself and happiness in her own existence — and experienced the joy of motherhood, allowing her to develop a sense of self and feelings just like a human. No other Einzbern homunculus had ever spent such a long time interacting with humans, much less behaved, lived or been treated as one.

Though her homunculus make-up has allowed her to mature rapidly, her inborn millennium of knowledge and reason stands in stark contrast to the mere nine years of life experience and emotional development she has had. Possessing the refined grace of a lady, the innocence of a child and wisdom beyond her years simultaneously, she makes, as her encyclopedia entry states, “quite the troublesome princess”.

Irisviel assumes several roles in the war and the narrative. First of all, she was created as the next vessel of the Holy Grail: a container that collects the souls of fallen Servants, to become an offering for the summoning of the Holy Grail. The vessels for the previous Grails had been literal cups and thus susceptible to damage, resulting in the interruption of the ritual during the previous war. Irisviel is constructed to be harder to break, and is the first to have been designed with a consciousness of its own and an instinct for self-preservation, capable of evaluating situations and defending itself so as to safeguard the Grail’s completion. This is a duty she has wholly accepted and strives to fulfil.

Secondly, she sets out into battle alongside Kiritsugu to help make his ideal of a world free of bloodshed reality. Equally strong is her own determination to ensure that it does not come to a next war, for that is the only way their daughter can be spared the fate of Einzbern homunculi as Grail vessels. For strategic purposes, Irisviel acts as a proxy Master to Kiritsugu’s Servant Saber, a decoy to draw the opponents’ attention as she shows herself with Saber in public while Kiritsugu and his aide Maiya gather intel and take them out from afar. (Her participation in the war as a member of the Einzbern faction actually constitutes as cheating. The Einzberns sought an advantage by implanting a sense of identification with the Einzbern family into the vessel.)

Thirdly, she functions as a mediator between Kiritsugu and Saber as they cannot see eye to eye from the start due to contrary battle tactics, opposite modi vivendi and clashing ideologies, and he outright refuses to communicate directly with her. (As previously established in Fate/stay night, Kiritsugu speaks to Saber only three times during the entire ordeal.) For their setup to work at all, Irisviel is saddled with passing information from one to the other and calming the waters whenever their conflict wells up in order to maintain battle morale. Through Irisviel, much of Kiritsugu’s personality and values is conveyed to Saber and therefore the audience — a perhaps much-needed contrast to the man in action.

DOWN TO ZERO WE GO
a guide to Fate and Fate/Zero

MOON CRADLE
character commentary, gendered