So New Year’s Eve has passed and Rasputin has been revealed as the latest servant to join Fate/Grand Order (FGO), but rather than the bearded love machine we all know, he’s taken the form of the Fate/Stay Night’s sinister minister, Kotomine Kirei, making him a pseudo-servant.

There are a lot of servants like this in FGO. Servants that are supposedly a god or a hero from legends but share a familiar face with one of Fate’s contemporary cast members such as Ishtar, Erishkegal, Zhuge Liang, and many others. Here’s a better look at pseudo-servants and what makes them so interesting.

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Pseudo-Servants in Fate

Within the Throne of Heroes which collects the souls of humanity’s best warriors, there are certain spirits that cannot be summed as servants. For example, Divine Spirits (ie. Gods) aren’t supposed to be servants and some heroic spirits just don’t qualify for one reason or another. So how do we bring them in as servants?

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The answer to this is that they can be summoned through human hosts who can act as a catalyst for the spirit to be summoned through. This is what is known as a pseudo-servant. The soul of the human host and the divine/heroic spirit merge to make a new singular soul that is primarily based on the spirit’s personality, and skill set but in the body of the host.

Some of these servants may have some character traits from the human host as well. For example, Ishtar, according to the original myths was known for being quite wrathful and violent but Rin’s more kind and caring demeanor underneath her tsundere-ness means that servant Ishtar, while still on the haughty side is a little bit nicer to her allies than god Ishtar might have been. There are some servants however where the roles are reversed such as with Ganesha where the host Jinako Carigiri is the primary personality of the servant.

The Hosts of Pseudo-Servants

The hosts of the pseudo-servant tend to be people that have come into contact with the Holy Grail, usually via a Holy Grail War. This is why so many of them are prior case members from the Fate Series. The Holy Grail can even summon hosts from different Fate timelines such as Zhuge Liang, whose host Lord El Melloi II came from the original Fate/Stay Night timeline.

How Many Pseudo-Servants Are There In Fate?

There are currently 15 pseudo-servants based on characters from across the Fate series that you can pull for in FGO.

Amour – Caren Hortensia
Astraea – Luviagelita Edelfelt
Ereshkigal – Rin Tohsaka
Ganesha – Jinako Carigiri
Ishtar – Rin Tohsaka
Jaguar Man – Taiga Fujimura
Kama – Sakura Matou
Manannán mac Lir – Bazett Fraga McRemitz
Odin – Cú Chulainn
Parvati – Sakura Matou
Rasputin – Kirei Kotomine
Senji Muramasa – Shirou Emiya
Sima Yi – Reines El-Melloi Archisorte
Sitonai – Illyasviel von Einzbern
Yaobikuni – Kiara Sessyoin
Zhuge Liang – Lord El-Melloi II

Why make pseudo-servants?

Now from a business angle, it’s pretty clear why Type-Moon would want to make pseudo-servants. They gotta bring the popular non-servant Fate characters to FGO, we all know just how many people would roll to get Rin, Shirou, or Bazett in their party, so they figured out a way to include them while also giving them new abilities, personality traits, and new costumes.

I have no doubt we’ll see even more pseudo-servants appear on the banners of FGO in the near future. Fate and by extension Type-Moon as a whole have plenty of popular characters to take inspiration from even if they might not necessarily have a seat on The Throne of Heroes.

Does make you wonder though, what would the Shinji pseudo-servant look like?

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