Byakuya Matou

Byakuya Matou is a posthumous villain from the Fate series who is the older brother of Kariya Matou and father of Shinji Matou. He appears in Fate/Zero and is dead by the time of the events of Fate/stay night.

Appearance
Byakuya has curly blue hair, like his son, but unlike him, he has it in longer bangs that reach his eyes. His clothing consist in a white shirt and a black suit.

Personality
Due to being considered as a disgrace to his family, Byakuya is a depressed, broken alcoholic. He is the one who supervises Sakura's training at the underground worms storage. He knows that he is just being used by Zouken, but he is resigned about it (however, he tries to believe that he is following the right path for the future of the Matou family). Byakuya blames Kariya for all the pressures he must now face as the family head. He also loathes Sakura, because he was forced to stay in the Matou house in order to train her.

Byakuya hates everything related to magecraft and does not care about what happens to the family. The only exception was, apparently, his son Shinji, as Byakuya tried his best to hide the truth from him about Sakura's status as the heir and about the existence of the worms storage. Unfortunately, after Shinji later founds out the truth, Byakuya becomes distant with him.

In the Drama CD, it is revealed that Byakuya was neglected by Zouken due to his few circuits since childhood. Byakuya is prone to sulk about his disgraces when he is drunk and can be depicted as a haughty character, but later when Kiritsugu attacks him, he shows cowardly and even pathetic qualities, just like his son.

Background
When he was young he was passed over as heir to the family due to possessing very few, if any, magic circuits. Because of it, he was neglected by Zouken and due to it, Byakuya grew to resent his younger brother and more magic-capable, Kariya. Because Kariya refused to be the heir and a pawn for Zouken's plans, Byakuya had no choice but to become the next Matou family head. In later years Byakuya would meet a woman with an "inheritor" sorcery trait and marry, resulting over all in the birth of his son, Shinji. Unfortunately, Shinji was incapable of sorcery, making Byakuya even more of a disgrace to his family for not producing a worthy heir. Due to the failure, his wife was thrown to the worms storage where she later died. This would eventually result in Zouken adopting Sakura Tohsaka as the new heir to the family. Byakuya was completely aware that he wasn't really the head of the family (since everything was orchestrated by Zouken) but he decided to live a comfortable and carefree life, however the stress was too much and he became an alcoholic as a result.