Rin Tohsaka

Rin has inherited everything that belonged to her father, including heirloom jewels, jewels inherited from Zelretch, and the wares and knowledge to manage her workshop, the basement of the Tohsaka household. She originally would have had possession of all the commercialized spiritual lands that brought in more money than most Second Owner families elsewhere, but Kirei's mismanagement as her legal guardian has caused the most valuable properties to have been lost to others. She still obtains royalties from magical patents held by the Tohsaka family, "*0,000,000 yen" annually without including additional revenue, so she can be considered relatively wealthy.[23] She obtains jewels for her craft through exclusive channels used by her family, leaving her each day wondering "whether she could've gotten a better price from the buyer if she had just become friends with that lady." In preparation for the Fifth Holy Grail War, Tokiomi left her a special inheritance in his will that requires her to solve a special puzzle to find and open a box of his effects. The most prominent items are a pendant and the catalyst, having been smashed at some point in time, he had used to summon Gilgamesh. Opening it also causes all the clocks in the household to immediately become set one hour fast as a bit of playfulness as if to say, “if she can’t even notice a slip-up as trivial and close to home as this, it’s too soon for her to fight in the Holy Grail War.”

Her most common offensive spell is a Finnish technique known as Gandr (ガンド, Gando?), which concentrates Magical Energy into Rin's forefinger, resulting in a hazy black orb to be subsequently fired like a bullet. Originally intended to be a Curse, Rin's variation on Gandr takes on an unusual, corporeal form. Additionally, Rin has bypassed any need for a verbal component to initiate this spell due to having inherited and infused Magic Crest of her family, and she can fire as many Gandr shots in an instant, even set up a barrier and rain them on an opponent if she so chooses. Since Rin's Gandr Shot was particularly violent, capable of punching through and disintegrating a large portion of a concrete wall with just a single shot, it could be considered on the level of Finn Shot, or Finn Gatling Gun.

Rin knows the "popular spells", being able to make a Bounded Field the size of a classroom. Rin is also proficient with Reinforcement magecraft, allowing her to strengthen her legs so much that she can run over one hundred meters in less than seven seconds, fast enough to be perceived as a blur to a regular human. She is also able to use it on herself for a few seconds to deal critical damage to even a Servant like Medea with physical blows in a situation where Rin has her off-guard.

Rin was born capable of manipulating all five great Elements, an extremely rare trait for a Magus. Her potential is such that she will eventually be considered as one of the top one hundred ranking magi throughout the entire history of the Mage's Association. Compared using simple numbers, someone with an abnormally high potential like Ciel is at one hundred, someone who is eternally at apprentice-level like Shirou is at ten, and Rin falls from seventy to one hundred.

As the successor to the Tohsaka family, Rin excels in Conversion of power, which includes storage of Magical Energy in objects, typically jewels for Jewel Magecraft, as they are easy targets to transfer Magical Energy into due to being 'places' that easily store people's thoughts.
Additionally, crystals that have been in the ground for a long time carry strong Nature Spirits. She uses them as disposable, limited-function Mystic Codes. Because the amount of Magical Energy a Magus can release at one time is restricted by bodily limitations, giving them unused excess of Magical Energy at the end of the day, Rin has been able to accumulate all of the Magical Energy generated by her body during her seventeen years of lifetime through jewel crystallization, using a syringe to draw out her blood and drip it onto jewels to accomplish the process. As with practicing of magecraft, charging these jewels has become a daily process for her turning them into powerful bullets.

In Egypt, Rin and Ergo are confronted by Sion Eltnam Sokaris who captures Ergo and uses the god Set inside of him to access the Library of Alexandria.[40] Rin follows them, and the three run into Luviagelita Edelfelt who snuck into the library on her own to plunder it.[41] Rin and Luvia fight Karmaglyph Meluastea Deluc, the Lord of the Department of Mineralogy in which they are both students.

Rin is around 20 years old in The Adventures of Lord El-Melloi II and now a full-time student of the Clock Tower. Shirou came to London with her.[35]

With former troublemakers Svin and Flat being separated after Svin's graduation, Rin has become the new cause of chaos in the El-Melloi Classroom.[2] In addition to Lord El-Melloi II's Modern Magecraft classes, Rin also takes classes in the Mineralogy department.

Rin traveled to Singapore for her summer vacation away from the Clock Tower. While in Singapore Rin used magecraft to find the locations of sunken ships, rallied crews to salvage the ships, and then sold what she found. While doing this she came across Ergo drifting in the ocean and called for Lord El-Melloi II to come meet him.

Lord El-Melloi II made sure to keep his apprentice Gray out of the classroom whenever Rin had a class, and so until this meeting in Singapore the two had never met. Rin knew about Gray, and mistakenly thought that Lord El-Melloi II or Gray had something against her when Gray kept avoiding her. When they meet, Rin freezes after getting a look at her due to her resemblance to Saber.

Rin's pirate crew is actually comprised of orphan children. Upon seeing how she has taken them in, Lord El-Melloi II comments on how Shirou is rubbing off on her. When he asks if they are in a relationship Rin is flustered and denies it with "O-of course not! Give me a break!

Rin is the protagonist of the prologue of Fate/stay night, detailing her first three days involved in the 5th Holy Grail War. In her dialogues, she reveals to her Servant Archer that she is only participating in the war out of her own competitive desire to become the winner. She also expresses dissatisfaction with Archer, for she was attempting to summon a Saber-class Servant, though she quickly grows accustomed to him.

After scouting out Fuyuki City, Rin. is caught off-guard at Homurahara Academy by Lancer, who then engages in battle with Archer. This fight is interrupted, however, when Shirou Emiya is discovered and fatally wounded by Lancer; Rin, who felt sympathy for Shirou - and Sakura (in UBW) -, used her family's treasured pendant, which possessed a strong concentration of Mana, to repair his heart.[28] After she returns home, she realizes Lancer will continue to hunt Shirou when he discovers that Shirou is not dead, prompting her to sprint toward Shirou's neighborhood. It is here that she first encountered Saber, and the three Fate/stay night scenarios branch off. In all three scenarios, Rin helps and allies with Shirou.

By the conclusion of the prologue, Rin would have used two Command Spells on Archer; the first is to force him into submission after he acts insubordinately to her after he is summoned. The second is to force him into ethereal form before he is killed by Saber, except for the Unlimited Blade Works path where Shirou uses a Command Spell to stop Saber's attack instead. In all scenarios, her position as protagonist is given to Shirou.

Rin is a perceptive, serious, resourceful, and very competitive person. Though she is widely admired at school as a prim and proper honor student, it is a front she puts up in order to prevent others from prying into her life. In private, she is notably loud, shrewd, stingy, and bossy but usually means well for those she cares about. She is known as a model student and idol of her school. Her manner of speech is often hostile and dismissive of other people, but deep down she has a caring, big-sisterly disposition. Her tendency of making trivial mistakes at the worst possible moment is a hereditary curse. Though she really is a lot nicer than she seems, she claims to always make her decisions based on cold, rational logic in the end. In her own words, it's "not a very cute personality". In fact, her choice in personal clothes is probably an overreaction to that.

Despite claiming that she would do anything in order to win the Holy Grail War, no matter how underhanded, she has a deeply rooted sense of honor, seen refusing to dispose of Shirou despite numerous easy chances of doing so, simply because she owes him and deem disposing of him without clearing her debts to be cheap. In short, Rin is a tough, fiery, perceptive, judicious, mischievous, and considerably aggressive tsundere who shows both sides of the trope.

During her childhood, she understood the Fourth Holy Grail War about as much as Shirou understands the Fifth, seemingly understanding while not actually comprehending it. She saw her father as a great magus who must be respected and loved, but failed to understand the negative aspect of his personality, the coldheartedness that accompanied such an ideal. If he had lived until Rin could actually understand his personality, it is likely that it would have greatly affected the development of her own personality. It is unknown if she would have opposed such inhumanity and left the path of a magus, or if she would have become a “perfect and coldhearted” magus like her father. Either fate for Rin would have been one far away from happiness.

Due to Tokiomi's early and untimely death, she was not aware of the original goal of the Holy Grail War to open a “hole” beyond the World.[20]

For the sake of her deceased father and her family's name, Rin seeks to obtain the Holy Grail, though she has little personal desire for it. Unbeknownst to her sister Sakura, Rin feels guilty and believes that she has abandoned Sakura after she is adopted into the Matou household, so much the guilt was what driven her to revive Shirou, Sakura's target of affection, at the brink of death. While Rin eventually admits that she has always watched Sakura from afar, she never realized how much Sakura suffered under the Matou and fooled herself into thinking Sakura was happy to alleviate her own guilt. Her hobbies include admiring jewels.

Rin is a woman with aqua eyes and long wavy black hair. As an adult, she put down her hair. Two years after the Heaven's Feel route ending, she wears a long sleeve red shirt and a long maroon skirt. Her alternative costume is a long red jacket, a white polo neck jumper, a black mini skirt and long leather boots.

Two centuries ago, the Tohsaka House, in collaboration with the estates of Makiri and Einzbern, helped found the Fuyuki Holy Grail Wars. The land of Fuyuki City, which possessed the second greatest spiritual power in all Japan, was owned by Rin's ancestor, Nagato Tohsaka; at the behest of the Einzberns, he provided his property as battleground for present and future wars. Nagato was a kirishitanWP, as well as a pupil of Zelretch; these titles gave him considerable influence in both the Mage's Association and the Holy Church, allowing the Tohsaka family to participate in the Holy Grail Wars, free from harassment by either organization.

Rin was brought up as the successor to her family's magecraft, and was instructed by her father to prioritize magecraft over her own interests. Ten years ago, Tokiomi Tohsaka was selected as a Master in the 4th Holy Grail War, and Rin was entrusted to take care of the Tohsaka estate until his return. Her mother, Aoi Tohsaka, was left in a debilitated state from the war, so her care was left to her guardian, Kirei Kotomine. After her father was killed, Rin continued to improve her sorcery with some guidance from Kirei Kotomine. She also had a maid working since back when her father was alive, but left when Rin entered middle school, leaving her uniform behind.[15] To divert attention from her private life, Rin has diligently strived to earn the admiration of her peers, even though she is secretly stingy, tomboyish, and a perfectionist. The rights to the Tohsaka lands were inherited by Aoi after Tokiomi's death, and subsequently inherited by Rin after Aoi's death. Kirei managed them as Rin's guardian, and because of his foolhardy and coarse management, the majority of profitable properties ended up in the hands of others. It is possible that he believed the wealth was bad for her upbringing due to following the principles of humility and poverty.
Although Rin resents the sacrifices she has endured for the sake of tradition, she is fiercely competitive and eager to prove herself as a skilled and capable magus. She was immensely disappointed at summoning Archer and ended up in a quarrel with him; however, the duo soon reconciled, set aside their differences and quickly got along.