Masters.
Their sole duty being the cultivation of Servants and the preparation of the Holy Grail War, Masters were chosen and carefully selected by the Grail itself. Both Masters and Servants, bound by a contract, would have to work in tandem to obtain it. The Master would then combat other Masters with their Servants to obtain the sacred object of the Holy Grail itself. As a reward for surmounting other Masters and their Servants, the last standing Master and Servant would be granted the Holy Grail itself, capable of performing a wish of any range, but that limitless range itself was limited to only just one, forcing said Master to choose a wish wisely by their deepest desire.
It was a tedious process, one that had been done over a millenia. Masters fought, died, and only one was left standing to claim the Holy Grail as their own.
Shirou Emiya was one such Master. Bounded to Artoria Pendragon, or otherwise known as King Arthur and by her title, Saber, he rose through the ranks. Both servant and Master, through the trials and tribulations of the Grail War, fought together as one. Their growth, Shiro Emiya's growth, was astonishing to watch.
If he was honest, he had been a sucker for epic tales of heroes, and Shiro Emiya could very much himself be one.
He watched as Emiya dueled a final duel, a myriad of a near infinite supply of weapons came from quite every single direction ready to tear him to bloody bits, yet Shiro Emiya, by his own sheer determination, retaliated or all but avoided it.
His opponent was the very face of tragedy. Books were written as genres covering a multitude of topics of the ancient past, including figures, and he liked the stories and tales of those figures in history since time immemorial. But he was far more interested in genres of those who fell. Their stories being written as one of them obtaining or born with a high status. Their early lives were one of great and bold achievements. But before they themselves even realize it, what they had could simply be taken away by a factor, either by their own hands inadvertently or elsewhere. It would be a slow gradual descent, before they would become little more than a former shell of themselves.
In essence, simply put, he was a fan of tragedies.
Gilgamesh. Regal, noble, and proud Gilgamesh, was just an example of such. Shiro Emiya faced the man for the Grail in a duel to the death.
Anakin Skywalker, or by his later name, Darth Vader was another.
What made the two different was far more than he realized, and it very much made him further interested when he saw the life of Skywalker.
The boy, conceived by a mythical life force of his universe, his mother proclaiming him a miracle birth above all else.
Anakin Skywalker was not born of a high status. He was not a pampered prince of royal blood, he was not the son of an official, he was not one that anybody would ever care to recognize, because upon the million faces in his home, he was simply just another face upon the masses.
That face would later be known as a hero, before it was mutilated beyond recognition, and twisted into an amalgamation of a broken villain that everybody would soon grow to fear.
The life force of his world and the Order he would later serve in the time of war designated him the title, yet the man himself all but despised it, wishing that when he was brought to that Order, he was never given that title in the first place, for it caused him a far great deal of stress amongst allies and colleagues and friends. He would be granted another title that, on the other hand, he would enjoy being recognized in the public, made by the populace by his achievements in war and in battle, but even that was made due to the lack of understanding of the man within, his innermost traits being hid behind a mask of confidence and arrogance that they all saw him as.
Before those titles, before he donned the Sith mask and name, Darth Vader, he was just Anakin Skywalker, born as a slave, a son to his mother, another slave. Lower than commoner, he was created by the will of the energies to have the greatest importance and impact, destined to be great, yet he never was born to the destiny with that knowledge.
Gilgamesh was born into an affluent prestige. Anakin was not.
Anakin Skywalker would have led a relatively simple life, one where he would never achieve his destiny; the prophecy he was meant to fulfill, had the Order not discovered him.
An aging man and his apprentice had discovered him in the sandy desert of a homeworld. With his mass concentration of his cells empowering the energy they preached, they believed him to be their Chosen One. He was taken in, but refused, his age proving to be far above their requirements to train. It would only prove a temporary lapse, as before the aging Master who discovered him was killed by their Order's enemies, before he was in the hands of the apprentice of the aging Master who had yet to grieve properly.
Their relationship was shaky ground, if one were to describe it when Skywalker was accepted within their ranks. The boy believed he only took him on as a promise to his dying Master's wishes, and the apprentice, Kenobi, now a rank above, was vastly underprepared, lost, and still grieving. It was a setback before they grew as brothers, yet he noticed the reason for it was a lack of understanding and communication.
Oh, wouldn't it prove to be Skywalker's fall later… A simple problem that feasibly would have been simple to fix would prove disastrous for them in the future.
But for now, both grew as brothers in arms and friends. Missions together grew their camaraderie and friendship, and both fought together no matter how daunting their objective was, they completed it.
And before Skywalker himself knew it, he was given an apprentice of his own, and started to fight a war along with the hundreds within his Order.
Skywalker did not want nor desire an apprentice. The girl who was apprenticed to him was an obstinate brat by the Order that he never asked for; a responsibility that was thrusted into his hands with no consideration or regard to how he felt, when he already had far too much on his plate. Nevertheless, he eventually saw the girl as a younger sister. A sibling, either older or younger, was just annoying as they possibly could be. Together, the three of them went on missions, battling the Republic's enemies, victories after victories.
Truly it was a story of a hero. Anakin Skywalker and his friends continued to battle in the war, the galaxy spanning war of the Clone Wars. The Jedi was seen as a hero by many within the Republic's borders, a tale of heroism and daring bravery. Skywalker, who was once a lowly slave of the lowest status, was a hero and a great warrior in the eyes of many. On the level with King Arthur.
It was in a sense of the word, a commonality with Gilgamesh that their flaws began to show.
From the very start of his conception, Anakin Skywalker had only knew his mother. His mother, who birthed and raised him. It showed far before the Jedi had found him.
This very fatal flaw, attachment, would be the crack that would escalate his fall.
He watched and fought as troops under his command, the men he considered brothers in arms, died, leaving him empty as while he won the battles for the Republic, there was a haunted look in his eyes that felt nothing but agony as he was unable to stop the war that took his men's lives. His mother died before the war, killed by a tribe of inhuman beings that he returned with a vengeful massacre, coated in the blood of those he sought vengeance on.
War had changed Skywalker from a boy into a man, hardened by war and shaped by his experiences.
Praised as the Hero with No Fear by the Republic, feared as the will of the Empire as Darth Vader, Anakin Skywalker lived his entire life as both hero to many and villain to the countless trillions.
It was one such timeline after he sacrificed himself to destroy Darth Sidious, and bring balance back to the Force.
These similarities and differences as such, between Skywalker was that he was a man of many regrets far after he passed into the Cosmic Force
Similar to Saber herself, or Artoria Pendragon, was that in their final moments of death, they had many regrets. Skywalker for his deeds as Darth Vader. Artoria for her bastard child, Mordred and her kingdom. Yet only one had found a way to cope with that loss in a young man named Shiro Emiya, her master, and perhaps in one of the splitting divergences, a lover. Skywalker placed his hopes in his son to mend the mistakes of his deeds as Vader.
In the countless worlds where Shiro Emiya would summon her, this one would have its own divergence, it was with the Force itself, for it contained infinite possibilities, influencing the past, present, and future. Perhaps there was one of those timelines, within Infinities of Aperion, that nothing was impossible with the Force, as the former Darth Traya had once said.
So was it that in this timeline amidst the Clone Wars, would Skywalker become the Master of Saber instead.