Also known asZouken Makiri
	AffiliationFirst generation family head of the Matou family
	ServantTrue Assassin
	GenderMale
	BirthdayUnknown
	Height145 cm
	Weight43 kg
	Place of originRussia

Background

Originally known as Makiri Zolgen, he was the patriarch of the Zolgen family five hundred years before the Fifth Holy Grail War. They were a noble family that originated somewhere around Russia and were driven out of their homeland. The family later became known as Makiri when he changed his name to Zouken Makiri. The family gained ties to both the Einzbern and Tohsaka families through his friendship with Justeaze Lizrich von Einzbern and Nagato Tohsaka, and he had enough of a relationship with Kischur Zelretch Schweinorg to be considered an a potential inheritor of the Jeweled Sword of Zelretch if not for Zelretch appraising the family as fundamentally evil

Zouken had the dream of creating a utopia, having pursued it since he was around two hundred years old. He wanted to eliminate and cure all hatred and suffering. He felt grief upon finding that "paradise" did not exist in the world and its creation was impossible with a human body, and he instead wished to go to a place where it could be accomplished. Humanity has set limits, so he wished for it to go outside the spiral of the brain and the limits of the body to reach the infinity called the soul. Obtaining all creation and knowledge where no human can reach, it was not to make a new world, but to change his human life.

He was around three hundred years old as of the establishment of the Holy Grail War to fulfill his dream along with the Tohsaka and Einzbern families. He moved his family to Japan under the name Matou, and while it was to hide the family's identity, they needed something tying into their real name and used a play on words. Zouken proposed the system of "Master" and "Servant", while Nagato provided his property Fuyuki City and Justeaze developed the Heaven's Feel system, offered the homunculi vessels for the Grail, and became the core of the Great Grail. Justeaze utilized her own body to become the magic circuit of the Grail.

Because the Matou blood has thinned and no longer produces heirs naturally capable of sorcery, Shinji was incapable of becoming a true sorcerer so Zouken offered to adopt Tohsaka Sakura into the Matou when her father, Tokiomi, decided to train only his older daughter, Rin, to become his successor. Sakura was implanted with Zouken's magical worms to prepare her as a vessel for Angra Mainyu in the fifth Holy Grail War.

Personality

Zouken is a shrewd old man with plenty of knowledge on magecraft due to the several centuries he has been alive. He is shown to be strict and harsh in the training of magi within his family and is becoming increasingly frustrated with the thinning bloodline of the Matou family preventing the birth of any natural-born magi.

Abilities

He is a powerful magus who had altered his body through Familiar magecraft so much that he is now more of a monster than human. Zouken can eat normal food but for him it’s more efficient to directly leech life force for nourishment. He cannot be killed by normal physical means because his body is made out of the worms. Fatal wounds can easily be shrugged off, and even if his body is destroyed, he can easily reform it by devouring a human. Then as long as his soul was intact, he could regenerate his former self. According to Faldeus Dioland, it is possible to kill Zouken by using a precision missile strike.

The Worms are the lowest of all familiars. His personal Familiars are magical energy eating worms that love feasting on the energy of humans and can channel energy even when their host is no longer alive. When the host is a male, they consume their bone marrow and part of the brain after shattering his spine, making him crippled in the process. When it is a female, they absorb the mental energy created after sexual stimulation is made through the nervous system. Usually don't consume the flesh of women, but the uterus is their favorite meals. Will eat the placenta after giving its victim sexual pleasure strong enough to fry the nerves of the brain. Shinji Matou's Book of False Attendent is made out of these. Zouken uses methods somewhat comparable to vampirism, and is actually Shinji's ancestor from five centuries past. He has used a species of magical worms to sustain his long life. Blood Worms are the creatures that have come to make up the body of Matou Zouken in his attempt to prolong his life. His existence is essentially a conglomerate of Crest Worms with a special appetite for human flesh and blood that combine themselves to take a human form. Despite the blood-sucking habits, he is not considered to be an actual vampire that the Church would hunt. This human form allows him to interfere with the physical world as it binds his soul, on this plane of existence.

Role

Zouken only appears in the Heaven's Feel route, so his fate in the Fate route and Unlimited Blade Works route is unknown. Zouken's original intentions are to wait until the next Holy Grail War to make his bid to win the Grail, only taking action in Heaven's Feel due to noticing Sakura's attraction to Shirou as a means of furthering her development as a Lesser Grail.

Gallery

Zouken during the Third Holy Grail War.

Zouken during Fourth Holy Grail War

Zouken art in Fate/Stay night

Zouken   at  his     young age

Zouken   at  his     young age