DEARLOVES

this blog is now an archive ! if you missed the post earlier , put shortly i’ve decided to remake irisviel as an act of self-care. i’m steadily following friends and long-time mutuals there, but otherwise i’ve migrated everything from this blog as far as metas and pages goes. i probably won’t be logging into this account again except to double check whether or not i’ve missed people. give me until the end of the week to make sure i’ve gotten everybody

♚ — MONSTROUS HEADCANONS [ NOT accepting ]

☼ - DAYSTAR - a secret they don’t want coming to light

more main-verse stuff as opposed to canon but the biggest one is probably how diarmuid was defeated during the fourth war. because of his improper summoning, his memories are jumbled ( as opposed to completely wiped ) and iri noticed that almost immediately. the way he was eliminated was incredibly underhanded and traumatic, and irisviel thinks that more than just a proceeding of a war where people have to die ( that much she’d been prepared for ), the way diarmuid was defeated was humiliating and took from him the only wish he had – and it wasn’t even one for the grail. 

diarmuid’s original defeat represents a turning point in irisviel’s character, because it was the first time she ever really saw how kiritsugu operates and she’s forced to acknowledge that she’s severely underestimated him; it’s the scene that drives home the point that she doesn’t know this side of her husband and that scares her. diarmuid’s death represents a lot to her and she feels a tremendous amount of guilt by proxy.

ever since her re-introduction to him, iri is very fond of diarmuid and regards him a best friend/brother-type character; she loves him immensely and in a way takes the circumstances as an opportunity to make recompense for what kiritsugu did to him. she can’t be some lord for him to pledge servitude to but she hopes that loyalty as a friend can at least somewhat give him what her husband took away. 

to that end she deliberately keeps how he died from him – both because she genuinely feels he’s better off not knowing and because she’s fearful of his response if it were to somehow come back to him. the way he looked at her and saber and kiritsugu and kayneth was entirely justified, and she knows that, but considering their current standing it’d probably ruin her if he looked at and cursed her that way again. 

♚ — MONSTROUS HEADCANONS [ accepting ]

⚔ - DUEL - a meeting or relationship that was important to them 

the easiest answer is kiritsugu, as irisviel owes everything she is to him and the most important person in her life ( illya ) couldn’t exist without him but that one is a given so let’s go with cu instead.

irisviel, in canon, didn’t have very many healthy relationships. arguably, those with illya and saber were the only ones she had. it’s true that kiritsugu was good to her for as long as he could be, but it’s also worth noting that he straight up clocked her hard enough to knock her out of her chair while ascertaining her usefulness ( which directly contradicts how disgusted he is when acht tosses her into the forest but whatever )  and he was essentially able to turn on a dime at will when the time came to distance himself from her. and upon doing that he cheated on her, disregarded her feelings ( vs caster, regarding the kidnapped children in the forest ) amongst other more obvious things. and then her relationship with her family is about as good as your grandfather only caring about your function as a grail vessel can get.

that’s to say cu is her only romantic interest that has been good to her through-and-through. at the end of the day kiritsugu is an incredibly selfish lover, because by resigning himself to her sacrifice he inherently never had her wellbeing at heart past “protect her until i have to sacrifice her myself”. cu, however, differs from him in that instead of resigning himself to the notion of sacrificing the woman he loves, he just doesn’t stand for it. he calls bullshit on it and even though it’s already happened he tries to save her from it. 

♚ — MONSTROUS HEADCANONS [ accepting ]

∇ - TOMBSTONE - who they are versus who they appear to be

it’s always been really easy to forget that irisviel is not an actual human being; she’s incredibly convincing and maybe can invoke a vague sense of “emotional uncanny valley” because in a meta way, she’s more human than a lot of the genuine article. she displays a warmth and kindness that seems to be absent in much of a cruel world -- juxtaposed with the fact that she’s set herself up to die in part for the wish of the salvation of a humanity that has reduced itself to a state of being less human than a fake like her.

irisviel appears to be the kindest, warmest woman you might ever meet and in a lot of ways that is the “real her” as a human being, and that she has evolved past the existence of being just another einzbern doll is stated to be something she’s immensely proud of. but the reality is, and always will be, that she is a tool with finite use and her humanity is just a superfluous aspect of her that has made her existence a little more meaningful.

she’s actually self-admitted in the drama CD to use her learned humanity and her dreams of just being a wife and mother as a means to make the reality of her life a little more bearable. she’s very aware of the dichotomy, and very aware that no matter how “human” she becomes, she will never not be “a holy grail”.

ϟ - LIGHTNING - something they thought they’d left in the past, returned

i have to answer this in the context of my main verse instead of canon just because canon iri doesn’t have much of a past to start with, but lmao --

as far as iri is concerned, kiritsugu, as the man she’d loved, died ten years ago. even though he lived for another five years, she deliberately avoided the emiya household and the curse of angra mainyu eventually left kiritsugu home-bound. not re-introducing him to her life was actually a pretty simple matter, and so her husband is, to her, a thing of the past.

no pants time, huh?

one of the strongest aspects of irisviel’s character is resolution vs resignation. she was a woman who had been created with the purpose of her death; in all technicality everything about her personality is a fluke ––––  she convincingly emulates a human being, and genuinely possesses the emotions and thoughts of someone who is human, but it is an immutable fact that she is a tool, likened even to a “beer mug” by her husband. hers is a meaningless, single-minded existence that, by a stroke of irony, she was able to give meaning via the fluke that is the personality she’d developed. however, because of the development of her ego she now has a great comprehension of pain that she’d otherwise been spared. most ironic, and paradoxical, is that she is incredibly strong of character at her own expense.

most important to note is that irisviel has her own wishes and goals that are separate from both her husband’s and her family’s. she admits to not understanding kiritsugu’s wish ( though she acts as if she does, since it’s easier for him if she was an ally dying for a shared goal, instead of a woman willing to die for her husband ), and she also has no interest in attaining the third magic. the latter differentiates her from her family, as she exists only to allow to descent of the greater grail and, in turn, the reclamation of that magic  ––––  that is to say that she has diverged from the sole existence as that of a “tool”.  she does not view her fate as tragic or something to grieve over, because she has given meaning what should have been a routine, meaningless sacrifice. this enables her to accept her death with incredible grace. she views her death as “something that had to happen, and so i made it mean something”, as opposed to “something that had to happen, and so there is no point in doing anything.”

interestingly, her approach is not to fight fate, but to take control of the path that leads her to a designated end. she’s incredibly self-aware in regards to the fact that the curtain on her life has been closed from the start, and her goals align more in preventing the same ending from befalling those closest to her.  this is the greatest contributor to her self-sacrificial tendencies.

because irisviel will always be the one who dies, any superfluous pain she takes onto herself is arguably trivial to her. those beloved by her take priority not only because of her love for them, but because they will live on. this sets her on a parallel with her husband, he who’s willing to commit the greatest evil to end all evil. irisviel wanted the 4th war to be the last; and likewise she intends for her suffering to be the same.

what makes this self-sacrificial is the fact that irisviel shoulders a great deal of personal pain throughout the duration of and leading up to the war and says nothing about it. the prime example of this is maiya’s presence and how it brings out a side of her husband that she does not know, and her vague feeling regarding kiritsugu’s infidelity ( which in and of itself had been a deliberate act for the sole purpose of distancing himself from her ).

on some level it’s reasonable to see this dedication as something to be admired, but in reality her self-sacrificing mindset is incredibly detrimental and self-destructive. it results in something of an anomaly because irisviel is not self-deprecating and is very aware of her strengths and is even assertive, but at the same time will allow herself to suffer without recompense. to quote a certain author, she will bear any pain if she feels it has meaning. 

in terms of personality she can definitely fit into them, and especially when juxtaposed to arthuria, she superficially appears as the princess type or half of the knight and their lady.  following suit with that she even fills the role of “somebody to be protected” –––– but the catch is that the trope also encompasses the concept of a happy ending; the princess gets her allegorical prince on a white horse and the damsel in distress is rescued, etc.