Fanfic / A Cold Calculus

The White Queen, the Iron Heart of Britannia, Euphemia the Just, many are the titles and appellations for Euphemia I, 99th Empress of the Holy Britannian Empire. Her ascension is remarkable not only for the means by which Euphemia obtained the throne but also for those that rose with her or were felled in the process, a process with its share of near failures and deaths.

A Cold Calculus is an Alternate Universe Code Geass fanfic by Z98.

The Point of Divergence of this story is that both Nunnally and Marianne die in the "terrorist attack", prompting Lelouch to despair and kill himself much to Euphemia's dismay after earlier asking her sister to keep him safe. This prompts her to change her outlook and direction in life.

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A Cold Calculus contains the following tropes:

• Adaptational Badass: In a way, all of Emperor Charles' legitimate children. The series was a bit spotty about each child's competence and temperance, which is odd if one were to believe that Britannia possessed a Decadent Court. Here, all of them have greater involvement with the empire's workings, political or military. The most noticeable of them, other than Euphie of course, is Odysseus: In the series, he's an unassuming milquetoast of a man strung along by Schneizel despite being the Crown Prince. Here, he's a prominent figure in the Britannian Navy and is much more aware of himself and his siblings which is why he pulls a Hold the Line stunt to let his siblings escape from Lelouch's forces when the capital city is under attack as he understands that Schneizel is much more important than he is.
• Adaptational Villainy: While he was a bastard in canon, Lelouch had standards and lines he won't cross. However, in this fanfic, without his Morality Pet Nunnally, Lelouch is much more horrible than he was in canon as not only he has no problem of getting civilians killed to achieve his goals but he mind controls his pawns to obey his plans and have them kill themselves to prevent them from revealing his secrets.
• Agent Provocateur: Lelouch Lamperouge and Charlotte Dunois function as this for the EU while in Japan.
• Alas, Poor Villain:
  • Suzaku's death is treated this way by Kallen and the Four Holy Swords. Under Lelouch's mind control and manipulation, Suzaku unwillingly turns traitor on his Britannia allies and is unable to stop it no thanks to Lelouch's Geass. When Kallen ends his suffering, she finds no pleasure in his death as Suzaku was an unwilling puppet of Lelouch's schemes and won't live to see his dream of Japanese and Britannias working together peacefully.
  • Joshua's suicide. After this the protagonists realize that some of the Directorate's people are as much victim as they are enemy.
• Alternate Universe: Other than the obvious, this being a fanfic and all, the story has also become something of a World War II analogue, what with the presence of prominent people of the time.
• Anti-Magic: Monica Kruczewski has a Geass-cancelling Geass. It's comparatively weaker to canon!Jeremiah's, however, as its effects are temporary and doesn't cancel everything about another Geass' effects outright. When interrogating a soldier under the effects of Lelouch's Geass, her cancellation didn't hit what failsafes were put in and they fail to get Lelouch's identity from him.
• Antiquated Linguistics: C.C.'s speaking style, along with quoting Shakespeare.
• Anyone Can Die: The author has flat out stated that the only people with Plot Armor are the ones who are specified as living to see Euphemia's coronation according to the biography snippets at the start of each chapter. The survival of anyone else (including Suzaku and most of the Glaston Knights) is not guaranteed.
• Ascended Extra:
  • Naomi Inoue was a bit character mostly remembered for being voiced by Kikuko Inoue and got kaboomed at the end of Season 1. Here, she's the most prominent member of the resistance group after Kallen. She still dies towards the end of the R1 phase though, albeit differently (got impaled to death instead of engulfed in her Knightmare's explosion). However, while her death in canon was simply a minor event, here she's turned into an outright Sacrificial Lion.
  • Monica Kruczewski goes from being a bit character who dies in the first battle we see her in to an agent of the emperor with a Geass canceller.
  • The Glaston Knights were basically elite mooks just barely notable thanks to Andreas Darlton. In this fic, they're much more fleshed out, especially with their involvement in Suzaku's evaluation and elevation in status. Claudio Darlton stands out, notably becoming Suzaku's fast friend and supporter when he was being evaluated by Cornelia. Makes it all the more tragic when all of the Glaston Knights, save for Claudio, are killed at Keio when Suzaku's Geass triggers and he blindsides them.
• Assassin Outclassin': Princess Kallen was subjected to at least seven assassination attempts after being named Heir Secundus. She thwarted five of the seven confirmed incidents herself.
• Awesome, yet Impractical:
  • The Avalon. A flying ship is always cool, but the Float system's mobility advantages are offset by the thin armor, limited carriage capacity, exposed bridge and ludicrous maintenance costs. As such, it's the only ship of its kind. The impracticality actually gets deliberately advertised so that nobody realizes that the Empire has a secret program to make the technology more practical and use it to build a flying warfleet.
  • Part of the reason why custom seventh-gen Knightmares like the Lancelot and Guren are only seen in the hands of elite pilots instead of being mass produced is because the increased speed and agility of those models was obtained by removing the automatic stabilization systems found in production models. Thus, if placed in the hands of a rank and file pilot who doesn't have the skills necessary to stabilize the frame manually, the most they'd be able to do with the thing is fall over.
• Big Brother Is Employing You: Certainly how Honorary Britannians are seen, but Euphie has more benign intentions in properly integrating Area 11 and it's people with the Britannian Empire.
• Black-and-White Insanity: Suzaku, more so than in canon. Late into the story, his contorted way of thinking leads him to take a With Us or Against Us attitude towards absolutely everyone, believing that only he can bring things to a peaceful resolution and that everyone else would just perpetuate hate and conflict. Not to mention, the "With Us" part of that would involve being under More than Mind Control.
• Can't Kill You, Still Need You: One of the biggest reasons Suzaku isn't brought before a firing squad, let alone dishonorably discharged, is because he's still one of the best pilots in Japan and Lloyd does a lot of offscreen lobbying for him to receive clemency so he can continue to pilot the Lancelot.
• Child of Two Worlds: We have interesting and contrasting examples in Kallen Stadtfeld-Kouzuki and Mikasa Ackerman. The former looks more Britannian but identifies as Japanese while the latter has Japanese looks but identifies as Britannian. This colors their interactions as Kallen assumed they could become fast friends in Euphie's predominantly Britannian guard due to their shared Japanese heritage but finds herself rebuffed as Mikasa prefers to keep their interactions professional. It never occurred to her that anyone of Japanese-Britannians descent may not identify the same way she does.
• The Conspiracy: Euphie, Cornelia and Schneizel seek to remove Charles from power and, along with him, the Geass Directorate and the Ordo Hereticus.
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: Soldiers in Euphemia's guard suspect that watching the princess on her nights off is a punishment detail, as she likes to spend those evenings binge-watching a week's worth of soap operas on video.
• Corrupt Politician: Graft and corruption is a major part of the Britannian system - most policy makers are nobles, so they don't have to worry about elections. Euphie started her career as an auditor who rather firmly dealt with the more outrageous examples.
• Death by Adaptation: Suzaku Kururugi made it all the way to the end of canon Code Geass. Here he's one of the casualties of the attack on Keio Hospital.
• Decadent Court: While not shown much in the story proper, the existence of it shows in how Euphie weighs her actions when it comes to dealing with Britannian nobility.
• Demoted to Extra: Downplayed with Suzaku, who goes from a co-protagonist in canon Code Geass to a major supporting character here who is killed off before the 1/3 mark.
• Didn't Think This Through: The Chinese sent two divisions to conquer Australia. One division landed at Perth, figuring the small garrison there would be easy to neutralize. Then they learned that just like in RL, the Campbell Barracks at Perth are the Australian headquarters for the SAS. That division was the lucky one. The other one landed in the outback, and ended up getting lost, eventually losing most of their men to exposure, dehydration, and the wide assortment of dangerous wildlife native to Australia.
• Dies Differently in Adaptation:
  • Naomi Inoue goes from being killed when her Knightmare exploded during the Black Rebellion to being blown up and impaled upon debris during the attack on Keio Hospital. Due to this, her corpse was later recovered due to her body not completely destroyed in a fiery explosion as in the original.
  • Taizo Kirihara goes from being executed for treason to committing suicide.
• Door Stopper: The part of the story lining up with the R1 phase is fifty chapters and roughly half a million words, and the R2 phase is likely to be about the same. Euphie's coronation isn't until 800,000 words in, and the story finishes on chapter 157, at 1.3 million words.
• Double Agent: Actually a triple, who thinks she's only a single. Claire is a Hereticus agent who has been compromised by Lelouch's geass. Monica Kruczewski has figured this out, and is letting her run free in the hopes that she'll lead her people back to Lelouch.
• Driven to Suicide:
  • Pretty much everyone who is under Lelouch's Geass has a compulsion to fight to the death in order to avoid capture, and to commit suicide rather than talk if taken alive.
  • Kirihara Taizo, after the Britannians find evidence, or a Revealing Cover Up rather, of insurgent activity on his property. While the NAC's support of Japan's various resistance groups is something of an open secret, this compels the Britannians to arrest him and so he jumps to his death.
  • Makabe, a Japanese nationalist political protester kills himself after the Battle of the Tokyo Sessions. It is hinted he killed himself as he couldn't accept that the Japanese would accept Euphie plans to make them all equal and fair subjects of the Empire.
  • Joshua doesn't want to hurt Estelle, but is unable to resist his Directorate conditioning to follow orders, which in the circumstances he found himself in included killing the hostages - Estelle included - to prevent their rescue. He stabs himself in the heart to protect her.
  • Attempted by Euphie after learning her entire family including her beloved sisters Cornelia and Nunnally died due to a Geass command. Thankfully, she snaps out thanks to Milly.
• Easy Logistics: Totally averted. Attention is paid to logistics for everyone, from the resistance cell being nearly bone dry after the Shinjuku incident to the Keio Hospital's own lack of anything (to the point where they have to turn away a number of people, even if they don't want to, simply because they don't have anything to help them with) up until it gets support from the Britannians and the Sumeragi Group.
  • This also goes a bit more into adjustments made from canon. The role of knightmare frames are reduced due to the logistical problems of fielding them in the numbers seen in the show, so those are reduced with the role of infantry and the other branches of the military beefed up.
  • It's also brought up in the Fictional Document discussing the war. The EU had a large number of different types of equipment, stemming from the fact that its army comes from a dozen or more different nations, each of which had its own equipment, complicating logistics considerably. The Britannians, on the other hand, tended to only have one or two types of equipment for any given military role, making it easier to supply ammunition and spare parts for them.
  • Another important detail about the Damocles, other than the fact that it cost an insane amount of money and resources, is the fact that a good chunk of said cost was for building the infrastructure to even make it possible. This is a detail oft forgotten in like fiction.
• Enemy Civil War: From Euphemia and Britannia's perspective, the Japanese insurgency undergoes one when the SDECE subverts the hardline Japanese nationalists of the JLF, completely destroying any hope of a fully independent Japan and forcing the moderates led by Kallen to cut a deal with Euphemia.
• Fake Ultimate Hero: Imperial propagandists gave a young Cornelia credit for victories that she wasn't really responsible for in order to justify the Emperor placing her in overall command of the army over the heads of many far more experienced officers. She would going to regard said battles as an Old Shame, and in later years would make a point of ensuring that subordinates who performed noteworthy actions received the credit for them instead of stealing it for herself.
• Faking the Dead: Lelouch and Nunnally, despite the prologue, are alive and well in the meat of the story. The latter was spirited away by the Ashford family, had her death announced as being from the assassination attempt and given a cover as Milly's sister. The former faked his death after hearing of Nunnally's fake one and left for the EU.
• Fictional Document: Every chapter begins with an excerpt from one of four in-universe books, Towards a New Dawn: The Rise of Euphemia I (About Euphie's rise to power), Of Blood and Iron: The Reign of Euphemia I (About things Euphie did after taking the throne) , In Blackest Night: The Great War (About non-Euphie related things that occur during the world war that breaks out in the R2 phase) and A Spare to Spare: The Royal Houses of Ashford and Stadtfeld (About the noble houses Empress Euphie designates as Spare to the Throne until she has children of her own). Some of them are innocuous details that nonetheless help with the world building, such as Britannian succession procedures and Euphie's favoring of a Japanese artist. A few others are outright spoilers, such as Euphie's patronage of Nina leading to the development of nuclear weapons.
• Fighting from the Inside: General Katase is able to resist Lelouch's Geass just far enough to warn Todoh that the JLF has been compromised by outside forces and that he needs to prepare to carry on without them.
• Flat "What": Baron Stadtfeld's reaction to learning his daughter is the Red Knight is a flat "What?" brought on by surprise and incredulity.
• Foregone Conclusion: The synopsis outright says that Euphemia emerges as the Empress of Britannia. The story is about how she gets there. The opening blurbs also quickly establish that Kallen is fated to become her Knight of One, and Suzaku will go down in history as humanity's greatest traitor.
• Forensic Accounting: Euphie's power. With it, she uproots the corruption in her administration and even uses it to figure out such things as: how the resistance cells procured Glasgows, Clovis' secret project, the source of Refrain in Japan and the existence of the Geass Directorate.
  • Also how Heinrich Stadtfeld finds out about the existence of the Damocles. It's also his job as an analyst for the Ordo Xenos.
• Godzilla Threshold: Considering the threat the Krell and Suzaku posed, Euphie elects to drop an atomic bomb on the city of Toulon when they get wind that the latter is there. They fail because he was being moved out when it was dropped, but they did manage to ensure the fiery nuclear death of Marshall Juin and the destruction of the bulk of the French navy.
• Go Out with a Smile: When Naomi Inoue's corpse is recovered, it's discovered with a peaceful smile on its face.
• He Knows Too Much: Lelouch's Geass can kill anyone on the verge of revealing their secrets, including Private Peter Wake and the Sumeragi retainer Ichijo Hiroshi.
• Heroic BSoD: Euphie basically shuts down upon returning from the New York Thought Elevator after she's just lost her entire family.
• Historical Domain Character: A few, most prominently Alphonse Pierre Juin and Erwin Rommel. Albert Einstein also gets a mention as being Nina's grandfather.
  • Chapter 38 adds General Pytor Ivanovich Ivashutin, General Richard O'Connor, General Hubert Wingelbauer and General Manuel Gutierrez Mellado. All of them actual, period-appropriate military figures the author noted were pains in the ass to look up.
  • A non-military figure appears by reference: Boris Spassky is named as the only person in the EU who can beat Lelouch at chess.
• Historical Villain Upgrade: The Fictional Documents shown at the start of each chapter are implied to have been written well after the end of Euphemia's reign, and as such the portrayal of some figures in them tend to be exaggerated. Most notable is Suzaku being referred to as one of the greatest traitors in history, when the actual story shows his treason to be limited to leaking some classified technical documents and firing on his squadmates during a battle, which gets him killed when reinforcements arrive. And all of that was the involuntary result of Lelouch's Geass. The author eventually decided to rewrite the story so that Suzaku survives the JLF uprising in a manner that will allow him to return and do something that would better qualify him as one of history's greatest traitors.
• Home by Christmas: The EU and CF are under the impression that their war is going to be a short affair where they seize the Areas that allow Britannia to threaten them strategically and then seek a negotiated settlement. Unfortunately, Britannia is willing to make it a war to the knife.
• Honor Before Reason: Suzaku is noted to be the type of person to put personal honor before all else. This leads him to keeping quiet about Kallen's being the Red Knight when he finds out about it early on, supposedly hoping to somehow sway her to his way of thinking. This comes to bite him in the ass when his bosses find out about this when Kallen disappears after the attack on Ashford Academy. He barely escapes getting executed, thanks to a combination of his, until then, stellar performance track, the ASEEC's continued need of him and just a little bit of Plot Armor.
• Hourglass Plot: At the start of the story, Suzaku believes that cooperating with Britannia is the best course of action while Kallen takes the hardline "eject them outright" stance. Kallen will inevitably become one of Euphemia's allies and eventually her Knight of One while Suzaku spends his last battle ranting and screaming about how Britannia needs to be booted out, albeit due to Lelouch's Geass taking hold rather than a genuine ideological shift on his part.
• I Have Your Wife: The Geass Directorate and the Ordo Hereticus kidnap family members of Euphie's allies to use against her, but they're rescued before any significant moves can be done. It still puts Kallen's mother in a coma because her captivity caused her to miss a treatment in her Refrain detox program.
• "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: Kallen invokes this in her duel with Suzaku during the Tokyo Uprising, not because she believes she can break him out of his Geassed state, but because she hopes that inducing a conflict between his true nature and the actions he is being compelled to take will distract him and provide her with an opening.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: Kallen uses her geass to help her make a shot that rivals that of Carlos Hathock. It's become a matter of debate In-Universe which of them made the more impressive shot (Carlos may have made the longer shot - the exact distance of his shot is known, while Kallen's is only approximate - but Kallen made her shot on an unstable platform without a scope).
• Interservice Rivalry: The various Ordos of the Inquisition, as in its source.
• Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: Euphemia of all people, as the author has admitted. Kallen, Rai and Villetta among others are there to prevent her from crossing the point of no return.
• Jurisdiction Friction: One key bone of contention between the Ordos of the Inquisition is whether a foreign agent operating on Britannian soil falls under the jurisdiction of Hereticus or Xenos. While the Ordo Malleus (whose very existence is so classified that even most people in Xenos and Hereticus don't know the Inquisitio has more than two Ordos) considers the actions of Geass users to be under their jurisdiction even if their actions or sphere of operations would normally put them under the jurisdiction of one of the other Ordos.
• Know When to Fold Them: The Carolina Guard realizes that continued resistance after the arrival of 8th Fleet will just increase the body count while delaying the inevitable, and surrenders. This gets them a better deal when Empress Euphie decides what to do with the rebellious Provincial Guards (See Trading Bars for Stripes).
• Lensman Arms Race: Something prominent in the original anime that the author says will be outright disregarded as a more realistic rate of development will be followed. As such, Britannia will still be making use of Sutherlands and Gloucesters up to the story's end.
  • Indeed, a chapter with the European Union shows Marshals Juin and Rommel observing a weapons test for the Panzer Hummel, with the two noting how it will be years before said frames will be fielded in any significant number, but will at least have a division's worth available in short order.
  • Another aversion: The Knights of the Round do not have their unique Knightmare Frames, owing to how resource-inefficient and nonsensical it would be to make one-off machines, and are instead given variations of the Lancelot frame.
• Lethal Chef: According to Euphie, her staff has plenty of horror stories from her misadventures in the kitchen.
• Living Lie Detector: Kallen can use her Geass to analyze the tells of people she interacts with, allowing her to tell when they are lying. This even includes involuntary lies told under the influence of Lelouch's Geass.
• Maligned Mixed Marriage: Heinrich Stadtfeld and Kotone Kozuki. With the Britannian invasion of Japan, they had to get divorced, with the former eventually getting stuck in a loveless marriage with a philanderer and the latter reduced to a servant just so she could watch over their children. Then their son gets killed and their daughter is following in his footsteps. This leads him to butt heads with Euphie and her crew, despite the risk it poses to his position, as he perceives a threat to his daughter and would even threaten to see Area 11 ruined rather than let her die.
• Massively Numbered Siblings: The author toned the Emperor's love life down from canon (Stating that even a man who rules three continents would have a hard time supporting 108 different households), and as such only has a few dozen children rather than 89+ he had in canon. It's also mentioned that out of all those heirs, acknowledged bastards and unacknowledged bastards, only the dozen or so eldest really matter, as the rest are too young to make a play for the throne or otherwise influence the court at this time.
• Mind-Control Eyes: Originally a visual cue for the audience to know if someone is under the influence of a Geass, the fic has it that Kallen and Monica can spot these in people and, through them, suss out the EU's presence and sabotage.
• Mistaken for Servant: Lord Inquisitor Vail impersonates her secretary in order to prank some acolytes who'd never met her before.
• The Mole: An odd variant as Euphie is the mole to her and her siblings' cause, with the Geass V.V. gave her being a combination of a leash and a hidden microphone. She ceases being this when she enters the thought elevator and encounters Zero.
  • Suzaku is this when he's Geassed by Lelouch.
  • Lelouch is doing this to Claire to get a set of eyes on the Inquisitio and the Knight of Twelve.
• Morality Chain: The author's notes acknowledge that Nunnally is the only real tether Lelouch has to his humanity in canon. With her presumed dead to him, he has no reservations about the collateral damage he causes in pursuit of his goals.
• Morton's Fork:
  • Suzaku is nearly put in one during the Lake Kawaguchi incident when Euphie orders him to escort Nunnally home, leaving her in the care of a currently unidentified insurgent (Kallen). If he disobeys, he just committed direct insubordination against a princess of the Empire and will probably face a firing squad for treason. If he obeys and the insurgent murders Euphie, he abandoned a princess of the Empire to get killed and will probably face a firing squad for treason. Claudio notes after the fact that Suzaku got lucky it worked out for him.
  • Euphemia is put in one when a petition is made for her to release non-violent political protestors who have been imprisoned in the gulags since the occupation. If she accedes, she provokes her Britannian constituents; if she refuses, she provokes her Japanese constituents; either way, her attempts to peacefully integrate Japan into the Empire are fundamentally undermined. Euphie's third option is to offer clemency to any prisoner willing to recant their protests and swear allegiance to the Empire as an Honorary Britannian. Then when the resistance fighters stage a jailbreak to free the prisoners on their own terms, Euphie responds by assuming that any prisoner who escaped has chosen to accept her clemency unless they come out of hiding to explicitly reject it.
• My Skull Runneth Over: It's mentioned that many types of Geass, including those wielded by Kallen and Euphie, cause the brain to overclock itself trying to handle all the information being provided or processed and can potentially cause neurological damage. If such a Geass is used for too long a stretch, the user can end up needing hospitalization.
• Nerves of Steel: General Katase possesses enough of this that he manages to circumvent Lelouch's Geass long enough to send Todoh, the Four Holy Swords and a few other JLF soldiers off to the Sumeragi Group and away from Lelouch and the EU's sabotage plans.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: If it wasn't for Lelouch spurring the JLF to attempt a general uprising, Kallen probably wouldn't have decided to seek a negotiated settlement with Euphie, and definitely wouldn't have had nearly as strong a bargaining position if she had. Thus a plan to break Britannia's hold on Japan instead ended up breaking the strongest resistance group in Area 11 and made the second strongest join forces with Britannia, making the province more secure than it was before the revolt.
• Not Himself: Todoh notes that ever since the SDECE agents led by Lelouch arrived, JLF General Katase has been seeking Todoh's counsel less, and his plans are getting far more reckless. He's obviously not aware of it, but Katase has been subverted by Lelouch's Geass and is now only Lelouch's (almost) mindless pawn.
• One-Steve Limit: So far there has been only one case of characters sharing a first name, and since the two Lauras never end up in the same scene, telling them apart isn't hard. Come chapter 113, both Lauras appear in the same scene and the author trolls the audience by not specifying which Laura is doing or saying what.
• Open Secret: Kallen's being the Red Knight and Clovis' killer. Officially, it's unknown who it is, but many of the Britannian and Japanese higher ups already know and aren't going to say anything because they either have a vested interest in keeping quiet or because Kallen has Euphie's backing. Even Charles knows but doesn't particularly care for any of his children. The only one in opposition to that is Cornelia and even then, she's keeping her concerns private.
• Papa Wolf: Heinrich Stadtfeld essentially threatens to tank Area 11's economy to protect Kallen when she comes under investigation for being the Red Knight. Kallen doesn't know about this, given how absent he is from her life, and so dismisses him as a non-entity. He's also a retired intelligence analyst from the Ordo Xenos. And after getting reactivated, he's turning those skills to tracking down the foreign agent who nearly killed his daughter on two ocassions.
• Plot Armor: Some Fictional Document snippets mention the careers of certain characters, such as Kallen and Mikasa after Euphemia's coronation, making it clear that they will not only live through the story to see Euphie become Empress, they also live long enough past that for history to take note of what they did later.
• Police Are Useless: The gendarermie makes a series of monumental mistakes during the R1 phase that sees them disgraced and temporarily replaced by the military for policing duties. They recover after the leader who was in charge during those incidents was replaced by Colonel Cassius Bright.
• The Quisling: The Japanese that support Britannians are shown in various ways. There's the NAC, who are somewhat polarizing in their embracing the Honorary Britannian system though are secretly supporting the Japanese resistance movements, while there are those various individuals who sign up to be Honorary Britannians of their own free will for sympathetic personal reasons, like Suzaku and Mikasa.
• Rags to Royalty: Not quite literal rags, but Milly goes from disenfranchised nobility to Heir Primus (as a placeholder to ensure a defined succession until Empress Euphie has children). Kallen ends up as placeholder for Heir Secundus.
• Realpolitik
• Red Baron: Britannians call Kallen the Red Knight, the Japanese know her as Akakishi.
• Red Herring: The Avalon. All of the flaws that kept it from being a practical war asset were deliberately oversold so that the rest of the world would see the endeavour as wasteful, giving Project Damocles a head start on a flying fleet well before everyone else.
• Regretful Traitor: Todoh is not happy about having to desert the JLF, but resolves to go through with it when they bomb Keio Hospital. Even then, he's deeply unhappy about fighting his former comrades even though he knows they are nothing but the SDECE's pawns at this point.
• La Résistance: Akatsuki and the JLF have recently stopped being this, but mentions are made of resistance groups in all the other countries and areas bogging down the operations of whoever they're opposing. Notably, not all of them are anti-Britannian as resistance groups in India have made alliances with them against the Chinese Federation.
• Retcon: Suzaku's role in the story originally had him die tragically as a result of Lelouch's manipulations. Then the author decided to rewrite his death scene so that he could be revived and used as an agent of the Directorate and later the Krell.
• Sadistic Choice:
  • Colonel Jonathan Eyre is placed in one during the events of the prologue when he is ordered by Cornelia to arrest Duke Constantine for providing the military with substandard products. He can't disobey a legal direct order from a Princess, but if he carries it out it's him and his niece who will suffer the ire of the enraged nobles. Fortunately, when he explains the situation to Euphie, she grants him a third option by taking his niece on as an intern, granting him a royal patron and sparing the two the consequences of her actions.
  • The EU agents led by Lelouch tries this to undermine Euphie's rule. A petition is sent to her asking for the pardon and release of Japanese prisoners who were peaceful anti-Britannia protesters. If she pardons the prisoners, she wins Japanese support but loses Britannia support. And if she doesn't pardon them, she wins Britannia support but loses Japanese support. So what does Euphie do? She will release the prisoners if they pledge their allegiance to Britannia and become Honorary Britannians.
• She Is the King: Lord Inquisitor appears to be a gender neutral title - the heads of the Ordo Xenos and Ordo Malleus both hold that title as opposed to Lady Inquisitor despite being female.
• Shout-Out: Enough to have its own page.
• Silk Hiding Steel: Euphie's still kind-hearted and idealistic, if more grounded than her canon counterpart, but crossing her reveals that she has a steel spine. During the Lake Kawaguchi incident, she responds to the Blood of the Samurai taking Nunnally hostage with a threat to make them drown in their own blood. Much later, as they're planning on their retaliation, Euphie surprises both Cornelia and Jeremiah with her opting to kill all of them.
  • And then there's her diverting resources for the Damocles.
• Space-Filling Empire: Obviously, considering the source material, except with Australia having been conquered by Britannia. Also discussed by the characters: in the unlikely event that Britannia is defeated and driven from Japan, they're likely to find the EU or the Chinese Federation on their doorstep not too long after.
• Superior Successor: Euphemia very proves to be a much more competent viceroy than her predecessor Clovis. While Clovis' reign encouraged mindless exploitation of Japan and short-term profit at the expense of the future, Euphemia seeks to actually integrate Japan into the Empire for the benefit of both.
• Super-Senses: Kallen's Geass. In addition to boosting her own natural senses, her mind also reads and interprets information from what everyone else in the area is seeing/hearing/etc, allowing her to keep track of everything that is happening in her immediate vicinity.
• Superweapon Surprise: Damocles, also known as the Britannian 8th Fleet, which is comprised entirely of ships with Float Systems. This causes great shifts in known war doctrines as, even up to the war's end, no one is able to develop adequate countermeasures against it. And they already have another one nearing completion.
  • Chapter 97 has Britannia deliver a twofer to the world: The nuclear bomb that came from Nina's research coupled with a stealth bomber built in secret under Marshall Vander. With these, the Britannians destroy Toulon.
• Surprisingly Sudden Death: Following the Britannian loyalists' victory in the Battle of Pendragon, the entire Imperial family sans Euphie suddenly drops dead as though someone used a Death Note on them. And "entire" means everybody with a blood tie to the Imperial line, no matter how distant, resulting in people spontaneously dropping dead because one of their ancestors was the unacknowledged illegitimate child of the younger sibling of an Emperor who died centuries ago, or something equally remote.
• These Hands Have Killed: Kallen and Cole are shown to feel the weight of their deeds in the war against the Chinese.
• There's No Kill like Overkill: When given a chance to kill Lelouch Monica Kruczewski forgoes sending a strike team in to his hideout and simply has a cruise missile blow up the entire building. Unfortunately, he had already realized that he had been found and had already evacuated to another safehouse.
  • Luciano Bradley's dismissal from the Rounds involved reducing his estate to a crater.
  • The first attempt to kill a Krell-controlled Suzaku involved nuking Toulon. Unfortunately, the target had been moved shortly before the attack began.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: invokedAcknowledged in the author's notes for Chapter 15 as the reason why a completely unfettered Lelouch wouldn't be able to carry the story, as he'd ruin too many lives for his victory to be a satisfying ending. On the same tack, Schneizel and Cornelia would have similar problems in creating a satisfying conclusion to the story.
• Together in Death: Inoue and Naoto.
• Trading Bars for Stripes: The surviving members of the rebellious Provincial Guards are forcibly folded into the Imperial Army and sent to the front. The Virginians do so as a Penal Legion, getting the dubious honor of being first into the fray during dangerous operations like seizing a beachhead during landing operations, with no promised reward beyond the hope of not facing charges if they make it through the war alive, but the Carolinians (who had the sense to surrender without needing to be crushed by loyalist units first) are promised that if they serve without further incident the record will state that they are honorably discharged veterans at the end of the war.
• Translator Buddy: Kallen, and occasionally Milly, for C.C. Between the Antiquated Linguistics and quoting Shakespeare, nearly no one has any idea what she's saying until one of these two spell it out for the others or discern the context of the quotes. A few characters, like Euphie, understands her fine without any help.
• Unexpected Successor:
  • A terrorist group in the Britannian Homeland is being backed by a noble who technically isn't in the line of succession, but is highly ranked enough and closely related enough that if the Emperor and all his children were to die suddenly, he'd have a solid chance of becoming the next Emperor.
  • At the end of the prologue, Euphie is sixth in the line of succession. She eventually becomes Empress.
  • After taking the throne, Euphie names Milly and Kallen as her heirs, although she makes it clear that they are placeholders until she has children of her own.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: In Chapter 20, Rivalz uses his boon to get Nina a grant for her research into atomic fission. The beginning snippet makes it clear that this will lead to the development of the atomic bomb and that Euphie will ultimately deploy a bomb that kills tens of thousands in the immediate blast plus countless more from radiation poisoning.
• We Cannot Go On Without You: It is discussed that Euphie's well-being and political status are key for Akatsuki's goal of gaining equality for the Japanese. This is because she's the only person of authority willing to treat with them on equal ground (and is actually willing to elevate their status without hesitation) and if she dies or is removed from her post as viceroy, they can kiss any gains for their cause goodbye. This also assumes that Britannia's presence persists as they're under no illusions that the EU or the Chinese Federation will let them be if Britannia leaves.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Lelouch sees himself as doing whatever is necessary to stop Charles and V.V.'s plan for Ragnarok. Of course, his methods include trying to wipe out the entire royal family because some of them are involved...
• What the Hell, Hero?: It gets pointed out to Lelouch that his paranoia actually did more damage to those members of the royal family who were the Directorate's enemies than its allies.
• Worf Had the Flu: The first time Kallen manages to incapacitate the Lancelot in direct combat, Suzaku is operating at a disadvantage due to having already been worked over in a training exercise with the Glaston Knights.

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