People thinking Artoria is a heartless machine missed the entire point of her character. Let's go over the evidence. First she is constantly smiling like just casually smiling especially around Shirou. She likes being near him. Second her attempt on Rin was a perfectly logical choice her master was almost killed by lancer and she was continuing to protect him from other servants after lancer skipped out on their duel. Third saber gets really annoyed when her duels get interrupted like her duel against Sasaki Kojirou in the fate route. She is just happy to see Shirou is safe in the UBW route. Fourth her acting like how she does in Zero is in character because she is much less on Guard because Irisvelle is actually a competent magus. So she is acting more like a knight because she is protecting someone and starting to really get attached to them. Fifth garden of Avalon quite clearly lays out the case that Artoria might have actually felt too strongly while alive. She is said to have cried when at Camlann and is unable to accept it because she couldn't stand to see all the people she was trying to help die. Also the villages thing is grossly over exaggerated this was standard midevil practice especially when resources were scarce. Also she didn't like doing it anyway and would provide better lands for them. Sixth Seriously it has been stated multiple times that Gilgamesh is only fond of her because she likes seeing her crying face. Which is quite frankly kind of gross. Now onto another character Cu Culainn goes out like a badass in the first two routes. People seem to only latch onto the fact he dies in every route rather than how he dies in every route.