Talk:Lancelot/@comment-35030496-20190122223355/@comment-34041338-20190511170430

"Which one is the actual spirit origin that came from the throne and which one is the variation?"

Fate Grand Order has muddied this exceptionally so I don't blame you for having this gross a misunderstanding but here's how it was orginally described. You are not summoning servants in their full glory from the throne in any normal summoning, they are in fact being "restricted" by their classes most of the time, sealing off certain NPs. For instance, Artoria summoned as a Saber has access to Excalibur but does not get access to her lance, her shield, her boat or her horse that she should by all rights have. It is not that Saber Artoria is the "actual spirit origin in the throne", it's that "Saber is her ideal class to be summoned in compatibility wise with the original". (For the opposite case, Caesar is incredibly upset to be summoned as Saber and insists that Rider is his ideal, yet Caesar is not an "Alter" just for being Saber) Normal Artoria could by any means be summoned into Rider, Lancer and even Berserker as well, and have access to completely different NPs. We have never seen an Artoria fight at full power with access to all her NPs at the same time and thus have never seen Artoria's "actual spirit origin". Type-Moon, in it's infinite lack of foreplanning, never actually utilizes this and instead spits out "alternate universe" Lancer, and Santa Claus and Maid Alter Rider, even though they could literally just copy and paste Artoria into these classes with no problems.

Alter used to mean (and probably still does except for EMIYA Alter) that a Servant is being modified by something outside the summoning ritual. Artoria Alter is corrupted by grail mud. Jeanne Alter is a wish for a Jeanne that never existed. Cu Alter is a mindfucked version summoned by Medb, etc. This is different from the ritual of adding Madness Enhancement which only works on Servants that were compatible with it in the first place (Why on earth would you want to say, force Medea to be a Berserker?). If you were to say have a summoning catalyst for Cu, you could add, during the ritual, the Madness Enhancement clause so that he is forced from what his "ideal" (again, not "actual", ideal) class Lancer to his Berserker variant (which even Cu Alter is afraid of the actual proper Cu Berserker btw).

TL:DR No, Lancelot Berserker is not an Alter, Lancelot was summonable as a Berserker in the first place. Kariya just wanted to summon a Berserker specifically so forced the class to be Berserker.