[Sol Falling]

Originally Posted by morbosfist

While Lelouch does go with the "work within the system" means of fixing things, that was only ever half of Suzaku's philosophy. He was also all about doing things the "honest" way. Mind-raping people left and right isn't exactly the honest way. They merged their ideals to get things done: do it in the system and by whatever means necessary. Suzaku's initial plan was never right. He only got the right idea when he stopped caring about the morality of his actions.

Well to be honest, that's pretty much the position I was eventually getting at. With regards to Suzaku's tenuous hold on morality, my reading is that he had pretty much abandoned himself and given that up the moment he witnessed the death of Euphie. Whereas Suzaku's earlier ideals were driven by self-hatred and suicidal tendencies over the sin of murdering his father, after Euphie's death Suzaku's hatred became outwards directed so that the only real principle guiding him was the pursuit of power. While throughout much of R2 Suzaku still experienced some internal struggle over not "becoming what he hated", by the time of the nuking of Tokyo Suzaku basically abandoned all pretenses of moral righteousness entirely. So in the end, I think the "honest" part of Suzaku's ideologies began fading away long before Lelouch and him decided to cooperate.

Meanwhile, Lelouch's initial hatred was outward directed, towards Britannia, but at the end of the story turned inward into a suicidal resolve in atonement for his sins, paralleling early Suzaku. So yeah, this was a deliberate inversion on the part of the authors. At the start of the story, Lelouch valued "ends" over "means", being willing to commit any atrocity in order to destroy Britannia ("become evil to destroy evil"), while Suzaku (having already committed an atrocity) was consumed by guilt and self-hatred; by the end of the story Suzaku became consumed by the pursuit of power by any means in order to achieve his objectives (i.e. paralleling Lelouch's early justification of continuing forward so that the blood which has already been lost is not wasted) whereas Lelouch came to acknowledge the weight of his sins and thereby resolve himself to die in atonement.

Lelouch's own initial plan was never right either: by committing atrocities, bearing sins, becoming evil himself to overcome the evil of Britannia, Lelouch was only continuing the chain of hatred (i.e. it was precisely because Suzaku was forced to "become evil for the sake of defeating evil" in trying to stop Lelouch that in the end he too was lead to abandon his morality). Whereas Suzaku's initial method would have only ended in his own death without accomplishing anything, Lelouch's initial method also only managed to exacerbate the pain and conflict. The resolution at the end of the story was thus a synthesis of initial Lelouch's hatred for the atrocities of others, and initial Suzaku's hatred for the atrocities of oneself, in the form of an "evil" which destroyed other "evils" by committing atrocities, but then atoned by destroying itself.

Originally Posted by azul120

What?!?! By what bizarro logic can committing even more horrendous atrocities than what he earlier did be considered redemption? Besides, it was Britannia who was at fault, and while he wasn't exactly a saint, he didn't always have less drastic options. Lelouch's earlier plan of beating Britannia via the Black Knight/UFN alliance would have worked if he wasn't such an unlucky bastard.

Plus, Euphie would NEVER want her name to be cleared that way. Not to mention Suzaku didn't want to do it.

And if Lelouch deserved to die, what about Cornelia, Guilford, Villetta, or Ohgi, for starters? Why do they get to live in the world they did NOTHING to deserve, or in the latter's case, nearly screw up?

Britannia was always too big to destroy externally. They were the largest empire/nation on the planet holding at all times the greatest wealth, technology, and industrial capacity. A war of destruction under the initiative of the UFN and the Black Knights could never have ended in anything other than more hatred, more death, and more tragedy. From the start, an internal reform/revolution of Britannia was the only solution which stood a chance at succeeding.

Lelouch deserved death in atonement above all those other people for his atrocities as the Emperor of Britannia. Those atrocities were in turn necessary to create the peaceful world Lelouch and Suzaku desired.

Incorrect. He didn't force Lelouch to answer for Euphie. Lelouch wanted to do it of his own accord before shuffling out of the mortal world.

Besides, that would have just made Suzaku remain as hypocritically vindictive as ever. Suzaku was partly responsible for 35 million deaths in Japan, and as far as he and Lelouch knew, the death of Lelouch's other sister, Nunnally.

Suzaku would have killed Lelouch right then and there after Charles was gotten rid of if Lelouch had not shown his sincere intention to atone for Euphie. If Lelouch had not, Suzaku would have been entirely justified in killing him by the same terms of Lelouch's hypocrisy in committing atrocities to destroy Britannia; "become evil to defeat evil".

What does it have to do with anything, you ask? Why is it that they get away with being mass murderers and occupiers, yet Lelouch is the one who has to die? Well, Schneizel doesn't completely get away with it given that he's a slave, but Cornelia is a pure Karma Houdini.

Lelouch was the one to die because he was the one who chose to take up the burden of committing irredeemable sins to bring peace to the world/destroy old Britannia. By any measure, Cornelia held herself to a higher moral standard than Lelouch did. Schniezel, meanwhile, was just as amoral as Lelouch was, which is why he was put under the thumb of Suzaku.

You're going off of pure speculation. There was nothing to suggest it was because of Euphie. Besides, 1) it was an accident, 2) Suzaku suspected Lelouch was lying in his confession, and 3) as I mentioned earlier, Suzaku was no better.

And again, you're going completely off of speculation. There was no indication Lelouch would have isolated himself after he got rid of Charles.

See above. Suzaku's hatred/continued intention to kill Lelouch was what prompted Lelouch to realize he had to atone to end the chain of hatred/make up for his atrocities.


As for this:

Originally Posted by blitz1/2

oh my gosh, I thought we were done debating this!

I have no real interest in rehashing this discussion actually, personally, except that I had to talk down some of the truly delusional bullshit of that earlier Lelouch fanboy ("Lelouch won"? "Suzaku lost"? Jesus christ.).