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Yeah, but if we're talking real life, Lelouch's plan would make no sense and would in fact be quite unforgiveable (committing mass murder in order to focus hatred on oneself and atone through assisted suicide? Really?), so... yeah. I think in this anime the characters deserve quite a bit more leeway than would ordinarily be given in real life. :/
When you think about it, what Lelouch did wasn't really much more different than what the Britannians did. We can say that Lelouch felt remorse (sometimes. He didn't seem to care much about the Geass Order massacre, and he laughed about Narita before learning Shirley's father was caught up in it --- he wavers between caring and not caring) and was doing it for the greater good, etc, etc, but the bottom line is that he killed innocent people, and continued to kill people mostly to calm his own guilt by making the lives already taken not in vain. It makes sense, in an ideological way, but it's still killing people.
He killed for his reasons, and the Britannians killed for theirs. Lelouch's makes more sense to us because his reasons and mindset are clearly given to us in a sympathetic light, while Britannia was mostly portrayed as the villains.
I would say that what Cornelia was doing was not right, but it was what she had been taught from birth. You can argue that Euphie didn't turn out that way, even though she grew up as a Britannian too, but even she took some time to fully get over the values that had been instilled in her since childhood (I don't remember what episode, but in one scene she thinks about "We risk our lives in battle and conquest, so we deserve to rule. I know that, but..."). It's easier for her because she's always had a gentler and kinder disposition, and she was sheltered most of her life by her family and never fought or commanded battles.
And Cornelia does change her ways, you can see it even in the later eps of season one when she at last accepts Suzaku as her sister's knight. And in later R2 eps, when she tells Villetta to follow her heart and basically stops caring about class and race. We don't see much regret from her, true, but that's not really in her character. She's not the repenting kind.
Basically, Cornelia is neither worse or better than most of the other characters, I'd say. She lived according to a different belief and value system, and she certainly enjoyed battle. She had a certain disregard for human life that was prevalent in almost all the royal siblings that were given focus (excluding Nunnally and Euphie --- though, Nunnally didn't seem to have much of a problem nuking people...), but she was brought up to believe that Numbers and commoners were beneath her and expendable. She was pretty cold-hearted, but that was part of what made her such a good commander. And, as mentioned, she began to change her mind about Numbers and rank, etc, near the end.
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