History CodeGeassThePreparedRebellion / TropesAToI

* ForWantOfANail: Oh boy, where do we even start?
** Probably the most important and far-reaching change is Lelouch learning a different set of lessons from witnessing the aftermath of the Gunma Massacre.
*** Lelouch hated the feeling of being barely strong enough to carry his sister through the CorpseLand, motivating him to request physical and martial training from Sayoko later on. While Lelouch remains an InsufferableGenius, as a no-nonsense mentor Sayoko curbed down much of his conceit and truly drove home the lesson that all the brain power in the world won't help him at all if an enemy can simply kick him in the side of the head and be done with it.
*** Incidentally, Sayoko taking Lelouch as a student of sorts helped to make them closer than in the series. This paved the way for the NinjaMaid to fall in love with him despite the age gap, and later becoming one of his most loyal supporters and a ''lot'' earlier than in canon.
*** Lelouch also came to ''despise'' [[WhatASenselessWasteOfHumanLife senseless loss of life]], making Zero's image as a protector of the innocent much less of the manufactured reputation that it was in canon. Most notably, both the Battle of Shinjuku and Saitama had significantly lower civilian casualties because Lelouch devoted part of his forces to evacuate the residents before Britannian military could find them.
*** The tragedy also prompted Lelouch to implement actual plans against Britannia way before he met C.C. in Shinjuku. For example, he's been acquiring funds to fuel his rebellion since he was 13-14 by using his gambling earnings as startup capital.
** Another important change in the backstory is that their Japanese hosts/captors offered Lelouch and Nunnally real SacredHospitality until the invasion and beyond, unlike canon where they were treated with poorly hidden contempt, and sometimes [[KickTheDog not even that]], except for Suzaku and not even he was any different at first. This changed Lelouch's opinion of Japanese people and that's likely why he offers them more than the PragmaticVillainy treatment he gave them in canon.
*** It's possible that the above was the result of Lelouch arriving to Japan so beaten up that he had to be hospitalized. This probably snapped the grown-ups out of their animosity towards the Britannian Royal Family and allowed them to see the exiled prince and princess for what they really were: children without a home to call their own.
*** Lelouch being an actual guest in the Kururugi Shrine created the opportunity for him and Kaguya to actually meet instead of the ForgottenFirstMeeting thing they had in canon. And just like it didn't take long for her canonical counterpart to fall for Zero, her 8-year-old self got a mad [[PuppyLove childish crush]] on Lelouch.
** The other big divergence from canon is Charles finding out about Code-R and giving Clovis his tacit blessing, per V.V.'s advice, to continue his inhuman experiments on C.C. Later on, the prince made the [[KickTheDog stupid mistake]] of [[JustBetweenYouAndMe telling C.C. about it as he never expected her to escape]], prompting her to abandon Charles' cause, cut ties with [[spoiler:Marianne]] and transfer her loyalties to Lelouch the moment she learned about his plans to destroy his father's Britannia.
** As seen in her FreudianExcuse entry below, Cornelia didn't take well the realization that the Emperor is all too willing to use his children as tools, even sending the son and daughter of his favorite consort Marianne as political hostages, and she became [[MyBelovedSmother extremely protective]] of Euphemia as result. Furthermore, Cornelia's becoming her little sister's legal guardian and dragging her around the world with her completely changed Euphemia's growing environment throughout her teens, in turn becoming less of the PrincessClassic and [[AuthorityInNameOnly figurehead]] that she was in canon and more of a SilkHidingSteel BadassBureaucrat.
** Mao is [[spoiler:[[DroppedABridgeOnHim killed off]] during the Battle of Shinjuku.]]
** Kallen is questioned away from prying eyes, minimizing her suspicions of Lelouch.
** [[TheAtoner Jeremiah]] [[spoiler:and [[GlorySeeker Villetta]]]] side with Lelouch, Gottwald because he's Marianne's son, [[spoiler:and Nu from the promise of a Grand Duchy.]]
** Kewell is blamed for [[ParanoiaGambit Project Orange]] instead of Jeremiah. [[spoiler:He's assumed dead, but was in fact captured by Code-R personnel for human experimentation.]]
** The li Britannia sisters learn Lelouch may be alive from [[TheMole Jeremiah]], killing any chance for Suzaku to be with Euphie. Euphie realizing that Suzaku has mental health issues from watching him pilot drove a stake in the corpse's heart.
** During the [[HostageSituation Lake Kawaguchi Incident]], Milly [[TakeMeInstead jumps in to save Nina]] [[spoiler:(her girlfriend)]] by revealing her identity as the heiress to the Ashford Foundation to their captors, and right before Euphemia could do the same. It also helped that Euphemia took her personal maid with her to the convention centre instead of her bodyguards, who ironically did a better job at protecting the princess than the trained professionals in canon by desperately clinging to her and covering her mouth, which prevented Euphemia from drawing the terrorists' attention to her.
** Thwarting Euphemia's TakeMeInstead moment also precluded Nina from becoming obsessed with the princess.
** General Katase pulls a HeroicSacrifice so Todoh and a majority of the JLF can escape.
** [[spoiler:Shirley's father survives Narita, which leads to Shirley getting her hands on some Code-R documents she later gives to Lelouch in hopes that he could help her father.]]
** [[spoiler:Lelouch reveals himself to all the Kyoto Group leadership, including Kaguya.]]
** Euphemia considers making Jeremiah or Villetta her Knight of Honor instead of Suzaku. [[spoiler:Considering that Jeremiah told Cornelia that he would politely refuse if asked, Villetta is the most likely candidate]]. [[spoiler:She eventually does give her the position.]]

* FreakOut: Lelouch was involved in a car accident a few years prior to the start of the story. He got out of it with nothing worse than a broken leg that healed completely, but at the time Nunnally fell into a bout of hysteria so severe at the idea of him dying that the doctors were forced to sedate her. [[spoiler:The incident and the conversation that followed it made it patently obvious for the two of them that Lelouch is his sister's LivingEmotionalCrutch and that Nunnally is entirely too capable of ''[[DrivenToSuicide willing herself to die]]'' if anything were to happen to him. [[ForWantOfANail Incidentally]], one of the reasons why Lelouch pushed himself so hard to get himself in shape and learn martial arts from Sayoko in this continuity is because he wanted to give Nunnally some peace of mind whenever he leaves the safety of Ashford Academy and their bodyguard's protection.]]

* CustomUniform: {{Downplayed|Trope}}. Uniforms in the Order of the Black Knights are all the same except for the red-rimmed berets worn by their founding members in lieu of their trademark red {{hachimaki}} from their time as the Kozuki Cell, subtly setting them apart from later recruits who wear gray-rimmed ones instead.

** Shirley feels this way towards her father after discovering [[spoiler:he's performing human experimentation as part of Code-R's research team. [[ThickerThanWater She still seeks help from Lelouch to try and get her father out of that mess, however]]. The pedestal becomes even more broken when she lesrns just how high in the organization Joseph really is.]]

*** To expand upon it, like most Britainnian laws, the Worthy Reward Law is filled with prejudices and the cutoff point between mistress and wife is the wife's family having a certain degree of wealth. Milly, as the heiress to the disenfranchised but still wealthy Ashford Foundation (which is slowly making a comback), Kallen as the heiress to the Stadtfelt Earldom and Kaguya as heiress to the Chrysanthemum Throne, whose royal lineage is still recognized despite Japan's conquest, would qualify as wives. Meanwhile, Sayoko, C.C. and Shirley; a Honorary Britannian servant, Frenchwoman with no known background and an upper-middle class Britannian commoner, would all be mistresses.

** Milly occasionally [[MundaneUtility uses the Ganymede for school events]], but the old generator is a ''lot'' les capable than modern ones, so firing it up is highly costly. The only reason she can keep justifying it is that it draws enough people to the events to cover the price.

** Clovis was a real nasty customer who ordered a massacre to cover up his own actions, but even ''he'' apparently found the Black King's continued criminal operations intolerable, as he was the ''only'' criminal he seriously tried to track down and have executed, but to no avail.

** For a specific example, [[spoiler:C.C. is planning on taking full advantage of the "Worthy Reward" law to someday make official the ever growing {{Polyamory}} centered on Lelouch. For now C.C.'s plan consists in making Milly the TopWife and Kallen the second one – while taking care of keeping her Japanese ancestry under wraps with a few well placed bribes – and getting Sayoko and herself formally recognized as his mistresses because neither of them are Britannian. While Kaguya as the heir to the Japanese throne is consdiered worthy enough to be a wife under this, Shirley's middle class status would render her but a mistress, though C.C doubts she'd mind. Her ''mother'' on the other hand...]]

** For a specific example, [[spoiler:C.C. is planning on taking full advantage of the "Worthy Reward" law to someday make official the ever growing {{Polyamory}} centered on Lelouch. For now C.C.'s plan consists in making Milly the TopWife and Kallen the second one – while taking care of keeping her Japanese ancestry under wraps with a few well placed bribes – and getting Sayoko and herself formally recognized as his mistresses because neither of them are Britannian. Shirley and Kaguya's exact positions in her plan are currently unknown.]]

** Shirley feels this way towards her father after discovering [[spoiler:he's performing human experimentation as part of Code-R's research team. [[ThickerThanWater She still seeks help from Lelouch to try and get her father out of that mess, however]].]]

** Sayoko kept her feelings for Lelouch hidden for three years. Plenty {{Justified}} in her case because she realized she loved a guy seven years younger that way when he was barely fourteen year old. She intended to keep her DarkSecret to herself until [[TheJailBaitWait he was of age]] at the very least, but [[ShipperOnDeck C.C. had other plans]].

* IDoNotWantToKnow: Kallen's reaction after arriving to the StudentCouncil office and find a passed out Rivalz, Suzaku with a {{Nosebleed}}, Shirley and Nina [[LuminescentBlush blushing bright red]], [[TheTease Milly and "Celesta"]] trying to out-flirt each other, and [[TheLastOfTheseIsNotLikeTheOthers Lelouch looking the same as always]]... except for the fact that they were [[InstantCosplaySurprise all dressed as cats]].

** Milly was at the most AmbiguouslyBi due to her canonical crush on Lelouch as well as some teasing comments towards Shirley. The story makes her a very promiscious, though {{ethical|slut}}, [[AnythingThatMoves pansexual]].

* AnythingThatMoves: Milly pretty much flirts with anyone, though she does have the standard of being monogamous if she is in a relationship her partner considers exclusive. If her thoughts are to be believed she actually has to struggle to not seduce Euphemia while meeting with her. Her grandfather even directly calls her pansexual, prompting Lelouch to quip that he thought she was "just bisexual and greedy".

** {{Defied|Trope}}. Lelouch bemoans the fact that, despite all his intellect, he's still very much a 17-year-old guy. For example, he's capable of explaining away the objective reasons for his attraction to Kallen, even identifying the OedipusComplex implicit in it, but that ''doesn't'' make him any less attracted to her. Being conscious of it, however, allows him to make sure Zero and Lelouch Lamperouge are behaving with the due propriety he thinks [[TwoPersonLoveTriangle they]] should as her commander and her schoolmate, respectively.

* {{Bishonen}}: Milly all but states that she was initially drawn to Lelouch's androgynous looks when they first met as kids. In her own words, he "looked both as pretty as a female, and yet, as handsome as any man. Just looking at him had made her blush."

** In canon, apart from the inference that she's attracted to men (e.g. her implied feelings for Lelouch by the series' end), there wasn't anything indicating C.C.'s sexual orientation beyond that. In this story, she has ImmortalityBisexuality in full effect.
** Kallen had a SingleTargetSexuality towards Lelouch with no implication that she was attracted to either men or women before or afterward. Here she is a closeted bisexual, [[TransparentCloset though not a good one according to C.C.]].

* AdaptationalBackstoryChange: Downplayed. In canon, the source Nina's xenophobia is implied to be [[TraumaButton due to a traumatic experience while "visiting" the ghettos]], here it is the actual mental disorder that a phobia is.

** Milly's mother Melisande, besides being emotionally neglectful and trying to force her daughter into a political marriage, has apparently slapped her for talking back to her at least once. To put it into perspective, during a conversation in chapter 53, Lelouch tells Kallen that Mlisande would make Kallen's stepmother, no paragon of virtue herself, a saint of maternal kindness and wifely fidelity in comparison.