Yeah, I suppose "assassination" was not the best word to describe it. But it was still a very major contradiction to his character. One of his core-most attributes is how he values his allies to the point where he's always hoping to "conquer" others to his side. I have no doubt in my mind someone who values their friends that greatly would do everything in their power to protect those same people, even if it was retroactively (if given the chance). I don't think it would be in character for him to do this by using the Grail, because undoing his failure in life instead of continuing the legacy that his people died for would be an insult to those deaths. At the same time, I can't imagine him judging someone else for wanting to protect the people they cared about either.

Pretty much. It requires ignoring what almost half the other cast should be motivated by whenever it's not convenient. Hence why Gilgamesh and Illiya aren't doing anything for 10+ days, why Rin suddenly drops her search for Caster so she can fight Shirou at school, why Lancer can't act in any way that would actually protect Rin when they go after Caster, etc. The story is about Shirou above all, but at the cost of ignoring the rest of it's cast half the time.

@@periodicpete And that just really comes down to Nasu's writing style. He seems to like to make really complex high concept things (ex; The Grail War itself, everything going on with the Moon, the Root, Dead Apostles, I could go on) but can't write a broad story that covers all of it and is still a good story. I think the Grail War have 7 Masters and Servants was an overreach for Nasu's level of writing skill at the time of Fate/Stay Night. So he did what he could do well, which is write a complex character's internal monologue and arc, but it came at the expense of the other 6 Masters. The fact that Stay Night is a Visual Novel just makes things more complicated because rather than telling one story he's telling three but they're all meant to work together as a single overarching story and actually there's even more because of all the bad ends, etc. Edit: I should say, I say this out of love. I love Stay Night and Fate in general. But I'm a writer myself and I think if you truly love something you should be able to see its flaws as well as its strengths.