Appraisals and emotions

As explained in the previous post, each mage summons a Heroic Spirit during the Holy Grail War and forms a duo to fight against the other mages. The Heroic Spirit Kiritsugu summoned was the famous King Arthur, but in Fate Zero, Arthur was actually a female.

Despite forming a duo, Kiritsugu and Arthur were not in a good relationship. Specifically, Kirutsugu despised Arthur, mostly because of her beliefs about war and death.

For Arthur, war was a place to display one's chivalry. From her point of view, one ought to act in a heroic manner in a war, and while an unheroic victory was considered an utmost embarrassment, a heroic death was considered noble. In other words, Arthur believed that war was not about whether a man lived or died but was about whether a man could act heroically. 

When Arthur told Kiritsgu about how she viewed war and death and how important chivalry was for her, Kiritsugu first laughed and then cursed her in the most harsh manner. His reactions can be explained from the perspective of appraisals, but first, I will elaborate on how Kiritsugu viewed death.

As mentioned in the previous post, Kiritsugu despised war and thus wished to create a world without wars. Similarly, He despised death, especially those who talked about it as if it were something noble. He had witnessed so many deaths in so many war zones. He had seen so many people being killed, and he had seen so many people whose loved ones were killed. These experiences made him believe that how one dies is not important. For him, what was the most important is that one does not die. Kirutsugu strongly believed that one should do whatever one can to survive, no matter how unheroic one could be, as death produces nothing; for him, death was utterly meaningless.

Returning to appraisals, knowing Kiritsgu's thoughts about war and death clarifies why he cursed Arthur. Because of his beliefs (i.e., death is meaningless), when Kiritsgu heard about Arthur's thoughts about war and death (i.e., death could be noble), he first appraised it as senseless and unpleasant. His appraisals then evoked specific negative emotions such as anger and disgust, which in turn led him to laugh cynically and then severely curse Arthur.

I am a huge fan of Kiritsugu, so when I was watching this scene, I was more sympathetic to Kiritsgu. However, the manner in which he cursed Arthur was so aggressive that I also felt a little sorry for her...