As much as I liked Oath under the Snow for the cute sibling bond and seeing edgy Shirou being a bad a. The thing is I can’t help but look at this and see this as nothing but an entire fanfiction published animated movie.
I know there’re a ton of debates against Kiritsugu being a good or bad father, but his character is a multi-layered and complex character that can’t really be shoved into black and white, you have to look between the gray lining to understand him. However, the thing that people often forget is that he’s not a cold-hearted man. The whole point of his story is that he does love. He loves so much, that he’s willing to sacrifice what he loves in place of the world’s love because he’s just one insignificant man to the world. And I feel like the entire reason Zero has us follow Iri as a stand-in master for her husband is not because he’s puppeteering her, it’s because she understands his character more than anyone else—she doesn’t fully understand the ideal he wanted but she understands him.
In Zero’s/FSN’s timeline, Kerry falls in love with Iri. He already meets her as the Grail, he already knew he was going to use her and eventually lose her. But he still married her, he still went and had a family with her—none of that was even required as a contract of being hired by the Einzbern’s. Remember that Jubstacheit threw Iri out in the cold forest and Kerry is shocked about it, he goes to rescue Iri and from there on he begins to treat her as human and teach her things. He married her. It’s stated multiple times in the manga, anime and Character Materials that she’s his spouse/wife. She’s not his lover, or someone he had a long-time relationship with. And since Iri was pretty clueless about the world I’m going to infer that the marriage idea was his (also I don’t know when he married her but presumably before Illya’s birth? Which would be this man was 19-20 when he got married. Ok, diverging—)
Anyways, in Prisma timeline, it is Iri who chooses to not sacrifice Illya’s life and childhood for the Einzbern’s dream—going off from that one scene where Kerry cries to Iri about running away, Iri was the one who convinced him to stick to his ideal. In Prisma, Iri agrees to him to go against it, and he does so willingly.
In Miyuverse, though it is an alternate Kerry, the way he treats Miyu because she’s this ‘powerful wish-granting child’ and how he tries to enforce Shirou to do the same to me seems out-of-character. The man who still loved Iri knowing he would be sacrificing the mother of his child is shunning a child… rather than just, I don’t know, raising her like an actual daughter, lovingly but with the idea that she has a responsibility? Or maybe even encouraging Shirou to be a big brother? Instead of reprimanding him about it…
