What does Artoria regret?

Everything that was human in her. She regrets the distance she kept from her knights. She regrets that she could not grieve openly when those she cared about died. She regrets that the people of Camelot never truly knew their king as a person, only as a symbol.

Most deeply: she regrets surviving them all. She pulled Excalibur at fifteen and lived — in suspension, without aging, without being allowed to simply be — while everyone she knew lived and died around her.

What does she hope to change through the Holy Grail?

She wants to undo her selection as king. She believes that if a different king had pulled the sword, Britain would not have fallen. Her wish is not personal salvation in the usual sense — it is retroactive self-erasure for the good of others.

The franchise challenges this wish repeatedly. Shirou's argument in the Fate route is that the people who followed Artoria knew who she was and chose her. Their love was not misplaced. To erase herself is to invalidate their choice and deny the meaning of what they built together — however imperfectly.

Can regret be a form of love?

This is the quiet question the franchise poses. Artoria's regret is inseparable from how much she cared. The suffering comes from the gap between what she wanted to give and what she was able to give within the constraints of her role.

The resolution — different in each route — asks whether she can accept that doing one's genuine best, even when it falls short, is still worth something. That love expressed imperfectly is still love.