Kirei Kotomine is not a good person.
But that's something he knows very well. From the time of his childhood, Kirei was aware of a key discrepancy between himself and others; what typically brought people joy, happiness, and pleasure in life held no such benefit for him. In fact, little
does bring Kirei pleasure, aside from the most damning: anguish. Despair. Carnage. He takes pleasure in the pain and suffering of people. Everything labeled "evil" or "bad" in the world earns only ecstatic joy from him, deep down, however much he would like to deny it. Seemingly born that way with no recompense, this is the core of who Kirei is.
And yet that's not all there is to him. What enabled Kirei to detect his faults in the first place was his strong sense of morality, cultured from a young age. Raised as the sole son of a priest, as a boy he developed the favorable qualities any father who doubled as a man of God would value in their son. Kirei possessed a solid grasp of good and evil, was intelligent and insightful beyond his years, and easily surpassed the expectations his father, Risei, set for him, becoming a truly cherished and "beautiful" child. Although he has retained these characteristics over time, they only exacerbate the major problem within Kirei, not solve it. For an incredibly moral individual who understands the difference between right and wrong quite clearly, existing as someone inherently wrong agonizes Kirei constantly.
The result is that Kirei is full of questions, at the same time he is endlessly searching for answers. Surrendering himself to his baser desires has never been a choice acceptable to him; it's unforgivable on the basis of what he deems to be morally sound. Instead, he must try to fix whatever is wrong with him in order to be right. Unfortunately, though, every tactic Kirei's pursued to correct his critical deficiency has ended in abject failure, almost without exception. This isn't due to a lack of effort on his part-- Kirei confronts any task given to him with the utmost dedication and his accomplishments speak for themselves, rising through the ranks to become one of the Holy Church's strongest Executors by his twenties. He has truly exhausted his options, attempting everything from physical and mental torture to marriage and fathering a daughter in search of his salvation.
The one undertaking that sticks with him above all others is his faith: Kirei is a devout Christian, and although strict adherence to the teachings of God has not yet brought him the answers he seeks, he believes if anyone could forgive him and save him from his intense confusion over his own existence, it would be God.
On the outside, Kirei appears coldhearted, lifeless, and disciplined. He binds the truth of his evil nature deep inside himself and barely lets any personality show aside from what's most suitable for others in a very literal sense of the word; he is dependable, hard-working, and carries out requests perfectly and without complaint, as if he has no will of his own. In actuality, this is a manner of coping mechanism for Kirei, and it's existed as one for
years, since he first discovered his deplorable love of suffering as a child. If he doesn't keep his real self locked up, it might rear its ugly head again when he least expects it, and that is fundamentally flawed compared to how he should conduct himself. Striving towards some form of normality on the surface -- even if it's stilted and boring -- while he struggles silently within is all Kirei has, and all that's gluing him together. He's not as firm and unwavering as he appears.
Truthfully, Kirei's innate corruption is always just skin deep, and it only requires a little poking or the right set of circumstances for his tough outer shell to crack.
Take the passing of his wife, for example. Claudia Ortensia was a sickly woman, on death's bed throughout her marriage to Kirei, but she nevertheless loved him and tried harder than anyone to understand his twisted nature. In the end, it was still only her suffering that brought him pleasure. When he was tempted to the point of suicide by this, Claudia committed suicide instead, before his eyes; her goal was to force him to cry, proving that he could feel genuine love towards another and therefore deserved to live on. While he did cry, his tears were not from sadness born of love, but his regret he wasn't able to kill her himself. Her death produces such a profound effect on Kirei that he later can't think of her at length without teasing at a mental collapse.
"I could not love you."
"No, you love me."
With a smile she took her own life.The effect is much the same with regard to his father, Risei. Risei meets a cruel end during the Fourth Holy Grail War, shot inside his very own church. Confronted with his faith and the familial love he should feel, as well as his crooked sadness at the fact he wasn't the one who murdered his father, Kirei again reaches a breaking point. His father is the pinnacle of a man who never understood him and was so different from him across his entire life, yet praised him as the best son a priest could ever hope for. To Kirei, the pleasure of killing him due to his mistakes would be exquisite-- a frightening truth he attempts to resist at all costs, because that's not what a normal or a "right" son would do, is it?
Shedding tears at the sight of the corpse of one’s father,
and at inheriting his will, was natural to a normal person.
Instead, Kirei was mired in terror and confusion,
as one falling into the abyss of hell.It's a blinding, and perhaps the most poignant, sign of the depravity in Kirei. Instead of forming bonds of companionship that give him pleasure, he invariably comes to enjoy people's pain and treasures the chance to toy with their lives no matter who they are: in fact, the more significant the individual is to him, the better. This understanding is so condemning that he's actively sought to block it from his mind for the last three years of his life, ever since Claudia's demise. When the urges reappear once more, as with his father? He moves to stuff them back down immediately, assuming the plain exterior of a holy priest. Kirei's self-denial buries his true self under layer after layer of thick protection, to the extent that everyone, including himself, is fooled. It's the only way he can live, or so he thinks until the events of
Fate/Zero.
Kirei is, initially in
Fate/Zero, nothing more than the Church's and Tokiomi Tohsaka's lackey. He was chosen to participate in the Holy Grail War regardless of his status as a non-magus, let alone his problematic lack of a wish for the Grail to grant. This is fine, though. Part of Kirei exists only to dutifully carry out the orders of others, and it's enough that he's just there to spy with his Servant or sit in the church all day. What begins to change this is a single man, another participant in the Fourth Holy Grail War: Kiritsugu Emiya.
Kiritsugu Emiya captures Kirei's interest because, at first, Kirei is wholly convinced this man is identical to himself. While he once believed he was alone in the world, Kiritsugu's heart seems just as empty-- and not only that, the man appears to have the answer to his life of emptiness and self-destruction squarely in his sights. Kirei's overwhelming desire to pull the answers to his own questions from Kiritsugu powers him almost without his noticing. He leaves the Fuyuki Church when he's supposed to be hiding in it to keep up his and Tokiomi's deceit, and he directly interferes with Kiritsugu's camp starting with their bombing of Kayneth El-Melloi Archibald's hotel, actions of which Tokiomi would greatly disapprove.
However, Kiritsugu does not prove as helpful to Kirei as he hopes. Through his interactions with Maiya and especially Kiritsugu's beloved wife, Irisviel, he comes to understand how different the two men actually are. Kiritsugu is a man beyond comprehension, empty hearted because he chooses to be rather than because of an inherent flaw. He and Kirei exist as effective reversals of each other: one having everything, but throwing it all away; the other having nothing but seeking everything. Kirei's pursuit of Kiritsugu for answers becomes a vendetta of hatred to destroy him and crush his dreams. How his perspective towards Kiritsugu escalates defines not only Kirei's desperation, but his eventual acceptance of himself as a "bad" person who nevertheless fights for crookedly righteous goals.
"You … you must have arrived here by throwing everything
away, by sacrificing everything! You did all that to achieve this;
how could you just make it worthless now?!"And of course there's Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh, King of Heroes, is good at poking. Without the influence of the summoned Servant Archer of his mentor, Tokiomi Tohsaka, Kirei would not tip nearly as far into Hell as he does. For the most part, this is because Gilgamesh understands Kirei immediately. He finds him enthralling compared to the droll Tokiomi, senses a sort of kindred spirit who's similarly bored with the Holy Grail War proceedings, and spends much time with Kirei whether he's invited or not (note: he's usually uninvited). While their relationship certainly begins as an odd one, the gift of it is that Gilgamesh is one of the only individuals who acknowledges Kirei and speaks with him about the critical matters that concern him. In the light novels, Kirei often mentions how the Servant reads his secret intentions before he's aware of them himself. This is depicted in the anime shortly after Kirei brings news of Risei's death to Tokiomi, when Archer accurately hits on the fact the priest wanted to murder his own father.
Gilgamesh: "Why didn't you tell Tokiomi?"
Kirei: "Tell him what?"
Gilgamesh: "Your poor father... He left this world, convinced his son was a man of God.
Or perhaps, was that his salvation? Do you even care that your father is dead?
He was murdered, after all. Should you not, at least, pretend to be upset?"Kirei: "I'm very frustrated, yes."
Gilgamesh: "Are you? Is it... because you could not kill him with your own hands?"(video link: X , start at 2:30 in)
What Kirei offers Gilgamesh in return is one of those rare individuals unafraid of confronting the Servant face-to-face. From the beginning, Kirei sees Gilgamesh as an equal, and openly rebukes Archer with arguments based upon his faith. At the same time, he gently answers Gilgamesh's questions, serving as perhaps the only human in
Fate/Zero who can share a meaningful conversation with Gilgamesh over any length of time. The King of Heroes is thrilled by Kirei's dysfunction, so he continues to invade his bedroom (yes, really) and chat with him more. They're compatible and the enjoyment they reap from each other's company is mutual, although naturally it takes the priest portion of the equation longer to realize this.
Gilgamesh is the biggest driving force in the transformation in Kirei. As an ancient hero-king who's indulged every pleasure of the world, he knows Kirei is an oddity among humans as soon as the man admits he has no ideal for the Holy Grail to grant, and watching that oddity sort itself out is amazing fun from the sidelines. The King of Heroes is rather shrewd, even if he doesn't necessarily employ his insight to noble ends. He picks up early on that Kirei not only dismisses pleasure as a sin, but believes he isn't capable of enjoying pleasure at all, and urges Kirei to challenge those notions, insisting he can experience and
is experiencing pleasure, he just isn't aware of it yet. Gilgamesh assigns Kirei a task to closely examine the other Masters' reasons for pursuing the Grail, detects his interest in both Kiritsugu Emiya and Kariya Matou -- a weak Master whose life is fraught with pain -- and from there defines Kirei's enjoyment of the suffering of others, because he investigated Kariya most thoroughly and he wouldn't have done
that unless it was entertaining for him. Naturally, Kirei rebukes Gilgamesh at first, but the Servant's line of thinking isn't faulty, and Kirei soon comes to find merit in his assertion that pleasure adopts many forms. Each is valid. He doesn't need to struggle any longer for answers, either, because his wish for the Grail can simply be the act of giving him these answers.
Gazing at Archer’s expression, Kirei suddenly felt a sense of déjà vu.
Yes—that was depicted in the illustrations of the Bible,
the expression of the snake of Eden.To use a high school analogy, Gilgamesh is the worst kind of peer pressure, and Kirei references his evilness regularly but finds himself coerced by it nonetheless. (It helps, probably, that he later considers himself just as much of a Devil.) He revives Tokiomi's sworn enemy, Kariya, with the understanding it's a traitorous act. He exploits his position in the church to tail Kiritsugu Emiya's allies and raid their final hiding spot, moments after an alliance forged between those allies and Tokiomi. Finally, with Gilgamesh's encouragement, the two villains team up to murder Tokiomi and become a Master/Servant pair themselves, thus leading to the conclusion of the Fourth Holy Grail War and Kirei's ultimate, absolute descent into embracing his true self and his joy of misfortune. They never look back. At his current canon point, Kirei is at the middle of these crossroads, right before Tokiomi dismisses him from Japan, Kirei and Gilgamesh decide to kill him, and Kirei has not fully committed to a life of sin.
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