Caren Hortensia (カレン・オルテンシア, Karen Orutenshia?, Karen Ortensia) is the main heroine of
Fate/hollow ataraxia and the Master of Lancer and Gilgamesh. She is a member of the Church and works as a priestess. She replaces her father, Kirei Kotomine, as the priest of the Fuyuki Church.
Profile[]
Appearance[]
Caren takes after her mother, Claudia, having light grey hair and golden eyes. Due to her demon detecting abilities, she is nearly always covered in bandages. She is usually seen wearing church robes, and a hat if she is outdoors. On the other hand, Caren also wears what she calls her 'exorcist uniform' which is composed of a dress and stockings but without a skirt. She claims that she has removed the skirt to both increase her mobility and to seduce men.
Personality[]
As a priestess, Caren Hortensia has an angelic personality and is forgiving to the point that she believes her only purpose in life is to help others, even if she is hurt in the process. She never blames the person who has hurt her and blames the act on demons who caused the person to commit the sin. Whenever she is at fault, she apologizes to God rather than the person.
However, in contrast to her angelic persona, she also loves teasing people and exploiting others’ emotional vulnerability. Upon discovery of an individual’s weak spot, she enjoys bringing it out to light in front of all the other characters. While this antagonizes many characters and causes much outrage and humiliation, she remains calm: once, when Avenger retorted in response to her, she squeezed his face without a change in expression. She can be thought of as "the mouthpiece for Kotomine's personality" in this regard. Due to her somewhat twisted personality, both of her servants fear her and usually stay clear of the church just to get away from her. They also compare her to their previous master, Kirei, and note that Caren resembles the priest in many ways. Although she lacks Command Spells, she controls both Lancer and Gilgamesh with the force of her personality and the threat that her death would mean their ends as well. If threatened with “You’re an annoying Master. I’ll kill you,” she would seriously respond with “By all means.”[3]
Background[]
Caren is the daughter of Kirei Kotomine and Claudia Hortensia. Her mother, who was very sickly, killed herself in a final attempt to help Kirei, who was on the verge of suicide due to his inherently twisted nature, feel he deserved to live. It did not work, and rather than caring for Caren himself, he placed her in the custody of her mother's relatives, thus having her take up their surname. She eventually became a priestess in the Church. Despite being active in the same organization, she never encountered her father in any official capacity.[2]
She was sent to Fuyuki by the Church to replace Kirei after his death and report the aftermath of the Fifth Holy Grail War.
Development[]
She was to originally be a character developed for the potential Tsukihime 2 along with Bazett, but she was redesigned for Fate instead. The character present with Mr. Dawn in Prelude has an ability very similar to her.
Plot[]
Fate/Hollow Ataraxia[]
Caren serves an objective mediator in the false Holy Grail War created by Avenger and Bazett Fraga McRemitz and, in the place of the absent Kirei Kotomine, as the Master of Lancer and Gilgamesh. Because she was not present in the previous war, she is not affected by the four day time loop.
During Hollow ataraxia, Shirou Emiya finds that each time he runs into Caren, he dies. Eventually, Shirou ends up defending Caren from the dark creatures that have appeared since the time loop began. He is finally able to meet her without dying, but finds that he is experiencing strange feelings of anger and hatred and not acting like himself.
Shirou is eventually revealed to be an imposter or in the very least, not completely himself; he is actually Avenger in the guise of Shirou (the real one is either not present in the game, or being possessed by Avenger). She continues to offer advice to him, perhaps knowing his true identity(s) all along. She and Avenger develop intimate feelings for each other.
It is also revealed that the woman who finds Bazett and nurses her back to health is Caren.
Fate/tiger colosseum[]
She appears as herself and as her alter-ego, Magical Caren (マジカルカレン, ?). She gets to meet her father, who quickly remarks that while Caren looks physically like her mother, she is just like her father in terms of personality.
Carnival Phantasm[]
She makes minor appearances, but gets a major role and she is the protagonist of the EX episode. After Caren gets some money in an illegal job, she attempts to control the world using money with varying degrees of success.
Her trolling and abusive personality is comically exaggerated and Lancer and Gilgamesh often remark that she is just like her father Kirei. She also often has them around her all the time.
Fate/Kaleid Liner PRisma Illya[]
Abilities[]
As a member of the Church, Caren assists in exorcisms. Although her father has Magic Circuits, she didn't inherit them, but she did inherit her mother's "prone to be plagued by illnesses", much like an ordeal given by God.[4] Her body itself possesses an unusual property which is known as Masochistic Pneumatic Automatism Diathesis (被虐霊媒体質, Higyaku Reibai Taishitsu?); if there is a person nearby who has been possessed by a demon, she will experience the same pain as the person possessed. As a result, exorcists employ her to act as a radar of sorts to find demons. This ability cannot be gained from training since it is purely genetic, which is why people born with these traits are valued by the Church as demon detectors.
This ability is most evident whenever she comes in proximity to the Servant Avenger as her body sprouts grotesque spikes. She also experiences physical pain whenever people in proximity do evil things.
She owns the Holy Shroud, the Shroud of Magdalene (マグダラの聖骸布, Magudara no Seigaifu?), which is a red cloth with the power to forcefully bind men. However, while the man is bound, no harmful physical attacks can be made against him or Magdalene will be rendered useless. It is a type of Mystic Code.