Warning: This article contains major spoilers regarding the true purpose of the Holy Grail.

Fate/stay night: Heaven’s Feel premiered in Japan on 14 October 2017. It is still talked about and became a trending topic on the internet after Fate/Grand Order announced its recent in-game event.

Anime! Anime! has been running a series of introductory articles on the world of Fate, and MANGA.TOKYO is translating them into English. You can find the first one here:

What Is Fate’s ‘Holy Grail War’? Part 1/3: History and Basic Rules

The second part is about the mechanism of the Holy Grail War and the relationship between the Three Founding Families.

※The explanations are based on the world of Fate/stay night, so there may be facts that differ to the Holy Grail Wars of other series in the franchise.
※Informal and straightforward phrases are used to make things clearer.

What is the Fate Series and In What Order Should I Watch It?

What is the Holy Grail in the first place?

The Holy Grail is a holy relic that appears in Christian legends and myths. The best-known version is the one used by Jesus’s at The Last Supper, and there are many myths and works talking about the grail, including ‘King Arthur and the Holy Grail’. The artifact that appears in this series is supposed to grant you wishes when you win The Holy Grail War.

There are two different artifacts called the Greater Grail and the Lesser Grail in the system of the Holy Grail War. The Greater Grail accumulates the magical energy on Earth and will be used for the final ritual. This accumulated energy is used to summon powerful Servants.

The Lesser Grail is a vessel to collect souls of Servants. Because you have to fill the Lesser Grail with spirits to carry out the ritual with the Greater Grail, you need to kill Servants. You need all the souls to fill the Lesser Grail, which means that you need to kill your own Servant in the end too. That is why you need to gain absolute obedience with the Command Spells.

To summarize, you summon a Servant made of enormous energy, using the one accumulated in the Greater Grail. When you kill the Servant and pour its energy into the Lesser Grail, it becomes a switch to turn on the Greater Grail. It’s a bit confusing but necessary for the ritual.

Why the Holy Grail War started

To explain the cause, we need to explain about magi. Magi practice and magecraft passed down in certain families for generations. The ultimate ambition of the magi is to ‘reach the Root’, the explanation of which we will skip in this article because you would need to deeply understand various magic and methods of the world of Fate in order to see what it is. It takes an extreme power to reach the Root, and the Einzbern, Tohsaka, and Matou families cooperated to establish the Holy Grail War to achieve it. Einzbern provided the system, Matou the rules such as the Command Spells, and Tohsaka the land.

The First Holy Grail War took place around 1800, and since then they occur every sixty years or so. The wars are being repeated because they have all failed. The rules and system have been improved after every failure, but the Holy Grail became corrupted after summoning a certain Servant during the Third Holy Grail War. As a result, a huge fire occurred and killed some 500 people at the Fourth Holy Grail War.

Next Page: Who are the Three Founding Families of Einzbern, Matou, and Tohsaka?