Lelouch(Zero) - Villain or Hero of Justice?

[Nightixu@hotmail.com]

To understand lelouch u have to understand where he's coming from and his thoughts. I'll try to make it short.
To begin with, he saw his mother die and his sister become blind due to politically motivated actions and he spends his life in hiding for his and his sister's life. His life crumbled at a young age leading him to lose faith and trust in the world and the kindness in men's hearts. He becomes practical and analytical throwing away emotions except for his sister which he greatly cares for.

Hence a person who is practical and logical is not evil as they use methods and means that are the most efficient and effective even if others suffer. To them, it is for the greater good. Every great leader is guilty of this. He grew up as a royal surrounded by ambitious courtiers. It is vital for him to understand politics which he eventually excelled in as he understood how people thought and what to say. He manipulated others for his cause and politics is all about sweet talking and manipulation.

And even though he may seem evil, he never lost sight of his goal or never deliberately wanted to make people suffer. He wanted peace for his sister and to do that there had to be sacrifices. He knew and accepted that.
Even with Rolo, he kept saying he wanted to kill Rolo, but in the end his heart soften and he admitted his misgivings to Rolo even though he died.

But comparing Lelouch to Kira from death note as they both fall into the same circumstance and situation, Kira is evil and lelouch is not. Lelouch has virtues and morals as seen by his love of his sister and his dedication to his goal for the good of humanity. Kira has love for noone as he manipulated his family to get what he wanted betraying their love. The killing of criminals for a better world was his goal and he did it not do it just because he wanted to save the world. It was because he could do it. He had power. He was absorbed in it.

[xXPainful SmilexX]

To understand lelouch u have to understand where he's coming from and his thoughts. I'll try to make it short.
To begin with, he saw his mother die and his sister become blind due to politically motivated actions and he spends his life in hiding for his and his sister's life. His life crumbled at a young age leading him to lose faith and trust in the world and the kindness in men's hearts. He becomes practical and analytical throwing away emotions except for his sister which he greatly cares for.

Hence a person who is practical and logical is not evil as they use methods and means that are the most efficient and effective even if others suffer. To them, it is for the greater good. Every great leader is guilty of this. He grew up as a royal surrounded by ambitious courtiers. It is vital for him to understand politics which he eventually excelled in as he understood how people thought and what to say. He manipulated others for his cause and politics is all about sweet talking and manipulation.

And even though he may seem evil, he never lost sight of his goal or never deliberately wanted to make people suffer. He wanted peace for his sister and to do that there had to be sacrifices. He knew and accepted that.
Even with Rolo, he kept saying he wanted to kill Rolo, but in the end his heart soften and he admitted his misgivings to Rolo even though he died.

But comparing Lelouch to Kira from death note as they both fall into the same circumstance and situation, Kira is evil and lelouch is not. Lelouch has virtues and morals as seen by his love of his sister and his dedication to his goal for the good of humanity. Kira has love for noone as he manipulated his family to get what he wanted betraying their love. The killing of criminals for a better world was his goal and he did it not do it just because he wanted to save the world. It was because he could do it. He had power. He was absorbed in it.

I agree. Kira was a man who only saw himself, Lelouch saw the rest of the world as well. I do believe at some point Lelouch became very corrupt. That's the reason Euphemia died. But, he turned around at the very end. I'd say hero with a strong resemblance to a villain.

[Aku no Hikari]

He's an anti-hero, a hero who just doesnt play by the rules

Almost there. More specifically, he's a Byronic hero.

Nightixu@hotmail.com: Nice analysis there. (Though I disagree about what you said regarding Kira...)

[proEuphie]

Almost there. More specifically, he's a Byronic hero.

Nightixu@hotmail.com: Nice analysis there. (Though I disagree about what you said regarding Kira...)

I don't see how being considered a Byronic hero can justify the crimes of Lelouch, such as murdering Euphemia for no good reason and no evil reason that makes any sense, and ordering the geass directorate massacre.

In real life, if someone who fit the description of a Byronic hero killed someone that you loved, would you try to have him acquittted of that murder because he was a Byronic hero? If not, why should you continue to admire or respect any fictional Byronic hero for a single instant after he committs an evil deed typiclaly committed by fictional villains?

I say that any Byronic hero who does something evil immediately becomes a villain, regardless of the literary conventions of Byronic heroes.

I can not and do not want to lower the ethical standards I hold for respecting people in real life when dealing with fictional characters, no matter how many literary genres may have conventions that require readers (or viewers) to judge the protagonist by lower standards.

[proEuphie]

I agree. Kira was a man who only saw himself, Lelouch saw the rest of the world as well. I do believe at some point Lelouch became very corrupt. That's the reason Euphemia died. But, he turned around at the very end. I'd say hero with a strong resemblance to a villain.

No.

I my eyes bieng a hero does not require extraordinary feats of heroism and a life filled with such feats. One single heroic deed in a lifetime is enough to qualify someone as a hero in my eyes. I do not set the positive requirements necessary to be considered a hero very high. But I do set very strict negative standards for eliminating a person from being considered a hero.

Being a hero does not require that a person be heroic all his life. It does not require being brave, or self sacrificing, or considerate of others, or honorable, or honest, or whatever else you might imagine being a hero is, for all of the hero's life. A hero can fall below heroic standards almost all of his life, and still be a hero if he does at least one thing which can be defined as heroic in his life, even for just one second in a long lifetime.

But being a hero does require that he be good and decent all his life and never do even one evil deed. Doing even one evil deed in a life time makes someone a villain. Even if he does just one evil deed for one second in a lifetime filled with good deeds and even heroic deeds.

So turning around at he very end is not enough to make Lelouch a hero instead of a villain.

And please see my post # 106 below.

[proEuphie]

To understand lelouch u have to understand where he's coming from and his thoughts. I'll try to make it short.
To begin with, he saw his mother die and his sister become blind due to politically motivated actions and he spends his life in hiding for his and his sister's life. His life crumbled at a young age leading him to lose faith and trust in the world and the kindness in men's hearts. He becomes practical and analytical throwing away emotions except for his sister which he greatly cares for.

Hence a person who is practical and logical is not evil as they use methods and means that are the most efficient and effective even if others suffer. To them, it is for the greater good. Every great leader is guilty of this. He grew up as a royal surrounded by ambitious courtiers. It is vital for him to understand politics which he eventually excelled in as he understood how people thought and what to say. He manipulated others for his cause and politics is all about sweet talking and manipulation.

And even though he may seem evil, he never lost sight of his goal or never deliberately wanted to make people suffer. He wanted peace for his sister and to do that there had to be sacrifices. He knew and accepted that.
Even with Rolo, he kept saying he wanted to kill Rolo, but in the end his heart soften and he admitted his misgivings to Rolo even though he died.

But comparing Lelouch to Kira from death note as they both fall into the same circumstance and situation, Kira is evil and lelouch is not. Lelouch has virtues and morals as seen by his love of his sister and his dedication to his goal for the good of humanity. Kira has love for noone as he manipulated his family to get what he wanted betraying their love. The killing of criminals for a better world was his goal and he did it not do it just because he wanted to save the world. It was because he could do it. He had power. He was absorbed in it.

I say that Lelouch was evil and he was often not practical and logical, so many of the evil deeds that he did were actually against his best intersts.

In Code Geass:Black Knight/White Knight post # 154 Rolo Vi Britannia, claiming the Lelouch could not and should have saved Euphemia's life says:

Would her living be a good thing for Lelouch? No.
Would her living be a good thing for Euphie? No.
Would her living be a good thing for the plot? No.

In my post # 155 I responded to "Would her living be a good thing for Lelouch? NO." with :

Yes it would be. Haven't you seen any of my posts where I point out that that Lelouch needed a live Euphemia?

from post # 24, Mecha Ethics: Tens or hundreds or thousands of Britannian soldiers obeyed Euphemia's orders to kill Japanese at the Fuji stadium. Unless you have proof that Lelouch knew that Euphemia was the last Britannian left at Fuji then he should have captured her and used her as a hostage to stop the massacre instead of killing her.

And don't forget that Euphemia broadcast an order to kill Japanese at the beginning of episode 23. If any Britannian military units not at the Fuji Stadium were close enough to receive that message then there would have been other massacres taking place in other locations beside the Fuji stadium and the surrounding area that the surviving Japanese fled to. Could the Black Knights have learned about all those other massacres and stopped them before Lelouch found Euphemia? Probably not. So Lelouch should have captured Euphemia and broadcast a message threatening to kill her unless all the Britannians who heard it stopped killing at once. Not doing so makes Lelouch guilty of murdering all the Japanese who might have been killed after he could have used Euphemia as a hostage to stop the massacre or massacres.

from post # 19, Mecha ethics: And remember Euphemia broadcasting an order to kill Japanese at the beginning of episode 23. If that order was received by any Britannian soldiers who were not at the stadium, and obeyed, there would have been other massacres taking place besides the Fuji Stadium Massacre. It seems highly unlikely that the Black Knights had already heard about and stopped those other massacres by the time that Lelouch found Euphemia. Thus Euphemia should still have been valuable as a hostage to stop those other massacres even if she was the last Britannian still fighting at Fuji.

And if Lelouch and the Black Knights were defeated having Euphemia as a prisoner to trade could save the lives of many Japanese, many Black Knights, and even Lelouch himself. Since nobody knew all Lelouch's plans and goals with the possible exception of CC who cold not be counted on to carry on after Lelouch's death, Lelouch's death would have been the total end to all his plans. Thus if he had any desire to protect his followers and if he wanted to have even the slightest chance of surviving defeat to try again, Lelouch had to keep Euphemia alive to trade for their lives in the case of a defeat, which only an arrogant jerk would not consider likely enough to plan for.

And Lelouch should have known that if Euphemia survived, even if he was defeated and captured before being able to use her to bargin for mercy, Euphemia would use what little influence she had to plead for Lelouch's life, and thus reduce his chances of being executed from possibly about 99 percent to possibly about 95 percent.

And of course if the Black Rebellion was defeated the fate of thousands and millions of Japanese would largely be in the hands of Cornelia. If Euphemia was alive she would try to restrain Cornelia's violent tendencies, while if Euphemia was killed Cornelia's anger could result in many thousands or millions of extra Japanese deaths. And even after Lelouch gave Euphemia the command to kill the Japanese Cornelia's greater power meant that a dead Euphemia and an enraged Cornelia would be more dangerous to the Japanese than a live but discredited and probably considered insane Euphemia trying to use her lesser authority and influence to kill as many Japanese as possible.

from post # 179, Did Euphemia Escape from her Geass Before Lelouch Shot her?: And Lelouch might have been able to use Euphemia to force some military or political concession out of Cornelia.

For example, he might force her to agree to march her army to meet his at a specified time and place. Lelouch could tell his followers that if a few of them were stationed at points A, B, And C on the map they could trap Cornelia's army. And Cornelia would tell her men that Zero was planning to put men at points A, B, And C to trap them but she would foil him by sending some of her men to points D and E to trap the rebels. And Zero would privately tell his commanders that Cornelia would no doubt plan to trap them by sending men to points D and E but they could trap them and the rest of Cornelia's army with units at points F and G!

from post # 179 Did Euphemia Escape From Her Geass Before Lelouch Shot Her?: And later Lelouch privately gloated to CC that the Emperor would have to meet Zero once the rebels proclaimed an independent Japan in the Government Center in the Tokyo Settlement. Which is like saying king George III would have had to come to the United States as soon as he heard about the Declaration of independence. So Lelouch privately told his only confidant that he had no plan prepared to defend against the weeks and months and years of attacks from Brittannia which would have occurred instead of the visit from Emperor Charles.

Lelouch desperately needed to keep as many Britannians as possible alive, especially Cornelia and above all Euphemia, to trick the Emperor into thinking it was safe to come to Japan. Lelouch could not expect that anyone who knew Euphemia even slightly, like her father did, would believe the massacre story. Instead they would believe that the Japanese had made up the story and faked the videos to justify the murder of an innocent girl. It would have been incredibly suicidal for the Emperor to go to Japan if Euphemia was alive, since he was hated much more than she was, and thousands of times less likely for him to go there if she was dead.

So Lelouch killed his plan by killing Euphemia. Lelouch must have been irrational with anger ever since the announcement of the SAZ plan; that seems like the only explanation for killing Euphemia.

I have demonstrated that Lelouch killed Euphemia despite having many practical reasons why he had to keep her alive at all costs. That does not seem very much like a practical person to me. Killing Euphemia shows that Lelouch was evil and not practical and logical.

I responded to "Would her living be a good thing thing for Euphie? No." With:

Yes it would have been good for her. Nobody can ever benefit from death. The only good is to be alive, to think and feel and sense your surroundings, to do things and experience events. Death is absolute evil.

And even if I agreed that in some cases an adult who is suffering terrible physical pain and is begging for death might possibly be correct and it might be right for someone to kill him, what has that got to do with Euphemia?

Euphemia did not seem to be experiencing intense pleasure or pain while controlled by the geass command nor while she talked to Lelouch right before he shot her, when I think she broke free of the geass command. And when he shot her she asked him why instead of thanking him.

If Lelouch suspected that possibly Euphemia might be better off dead, he should have captured her and had her examined by psychiatrists for months or years and based his decision whether to kill her on their reports. Except for a few hours he had not seen Euphie for seven years, almost half her life, and did not know her very well.

So I say Lelouch killed Euphie, an obviously evil deed, for no reason and so deserved to die by your definition in post #154 of Code Geass: Black Night/White Knight..

I responded to: "Would her living be a good thing for the plot? NO." with:

Yes. Euphemia's survival would be absolutely necessary for the good of the plot. Without Euphemia the story became evil people fighting other evil people and I found no reason to watch it or care about what would happen next.

[xXPainful SmilexX]

No.

I my eyes bieng a hero does not require extraordinary feats of heroism and a life filled with such feats. One single heroic deed in a lifetime is enough to qualify someone as a hero in my eyes. I do not set the positive requirements necessary to be considered a hero very high. But I do set very strict negative standards for eliminating a person from being considered a hero.

Being a hero does not require that a person be heroic all his life. It does not require being brave, or self sacrificing, or considerate of others, or honorable, or honest, or whatever else you might imagine being a hero is, for all of the hero's life. A hero can fall below heroic standards almost all of his life, and still be a hero if he does at least one thing which can be defined as heroic in his life, even for just one second in a long lifetime.

But being a hero does require that he be good and decent all his life and never do even one evil deed. Doing even one evil deed in a life time makes someone a villain. Even if he does just one evil deed for one second in a lifetime filled with good deeds and even heroic deeds.

So turning around at he very end is not enough to make Lelouch a hero instead of a villain.

And please see my post # 106 below.

I disagree. I believe Lelouch was a hero, not only for his sacrifice, but also for the entire second half of R2. He didn't do anything bad, of that bad that was not part of the Zero Requiem, after episode 14(The unreasonable massacre of the Order but we all know this was just a reference to Gundam 00(Jk)
I don't believe what makes someone good is if they're good deeds outweigh their bad. I believe that it's judged by every single action and feeling. It's not the act that is committed, it's in the heart. That's what i truly believe.
On Gundam 00 Season 2.
Tieria

 

was always the bad, more antihero out of Celestial Being, but he does save everyone in the end, at least so far. He turns into a hero to me

I like the place between good and evil, or more, I like when the hero has to learn how to be a hero. Otherwise, it's a bit boring to me.
However, this is all just my opinion.

[Aku no Hikari]

I don't see how being considered a Byronic hero can justify the crimes of Lelouch, such as murdering Euphemia for no good reason and no evil reason that makes any sense, and ordering the geass directorate massacre.

I didn't say that being a Byronic character justifies anything he does. I was just stating the fact that he is.

And besides, can you tell me one thing that I said that suggested that I was trying to justify him? As far as I remember, I said (in the other thread) that Lelouch committed "an unforgivable crime", which he had to pay for later. "Unforgivable" and "crime"? I think these words are more likely to suggest that I agree with you than to suggest that I don't. (Though actually I DON'T.) Seems like you just want to pointlessly keep asserting your viewpoints and keep arguing about them with other people, even if the other people said that they agree with you!! You just want a reason to argue. Actually, you don't even want a reason. You just want to argue.

[proEuphie]

I disagree. I believe Lelouch was a hero, not only for his sacrifice, but also for the entire second half of R2. He didn't do anything bad, of that bad that was not part of the Zero Requiem, after episode 14(The unreasonable massacre of the Order but we all know this was just a reference to Gundam 00(Jk)
I don't believe what makes someone good is if they're good deeds outweigh their bad. I believe that it's judged by every single action and feeling. It's not the act that is committed, it's in the heart. That's what i truly believe.
On Gundam 00 Season 2.
Tieria

 

was always the bad, more antihero out of Celestial Being, but he does save everyone in the end, at least so far. He turns into a hero to me

I like the place between good and evil, or more, I like when the hero has to learn how to be a hero. Otherwise, it's a bit boring to me.
However, this is all just my opinion.

From my post # 179 in Code Geass: Black Knight/White Knight

Everyone does evil deeds in their lives. When they are kids if nothing else, because then they have less self-restraint and will take pleasure in causing harm to others, at least a few times. Tearing wings off ladybugs for example, to take pleasure in hurting someone - even if a small act, it is evil. So should such people be hated and despised always?

Never write that "everyone" does something. With billions of humans alive today, it is almost certain that not "everyone" does anything that you could possibly claim that "everyone" does. I am constantly amazed at how different from me other people are.

I never pulled the wings off of any insect. I can get along with most insects all right -- I shared a bedroom with a wasp one summer with no problems -- but I find the idea of touching insects disgusting. So even if I was mean I wouldn't force myself to tear a bug apart just to be cruel.

I don't remember doing things just to be mean or to feel powerful from humiliating and hurting other people or creatures. I can't understand the aggressive cruelty of bullies.

When I entered junior High school at the age of twelve most of my classmates started to bully me and about ten percent of all the kids in our class. Fortunately I am a hermit and don't care about my social position so I simply ignored the bullying when it was not happening, having more interesting things to think about. I can never claim, of course, that I never had wild revenge fantasies about using fiendish tortures on my classmates.

But I did not think that my classmates deserved to die for their evil bullying. And I never decided that people become too evil to live at the age of twelve. Whenever I read about one or more historical kids twelve years old or older being killed, or saw fictional kids twelve years old or older killed in movies or tv shows, I never thought: "Good! There goes another evil teenager getting what he deserves."

Instead I gave the historical or fictional kid the benefit of the doubt and supposed that he was one of the relatively few good and nice teenagers and was angry at the historical or fictional character who killed him. Or, assuming that he might be an evil bully, I never considered that being a bully was evil enough to make him deserve to die or for me to enjoy his death.

You do have a point. I was vague in my definitions. Minor evil does not make a person deserve to die (or else half the teenagers and adults in the world should be killed) and is not enough for me to desire that an audience hate a fictional character.

From now on I will try to write that anyone who commits a single MAJOR evil deed, involving KILLING at least one person unnecessarily, counts as an evil person that nobody should like. Even doing infinite good in the future cannot undo killing even one person unnecessarily, nor make such a killer a good person worth caring about.

I think a person who is overall good should not be hated. A person may be wrong about what is good to do, but that only makes him stupid or misinformed or obstinate, not evil. Two opponents in the same war can both be good - maybe one of them is simply wrong, or they both are.

Of course you would like to think that being mostly good would be good enough to make you a good person. Of course you want to believe that you should not be despised if you managed to be at least 51% or 76% good.

But remember that Churchill was mostly good, but he let the RAF bomb German cities and kill tens or hundreds of thousands of civilians in terror bombings which have never been proven to have been vital to saving Britain from Nazi conquest or ending the war as fast as possible. Targeting vital structures such as railroad bridges and power plants and dams might have worked at least as well.

And Truman was mostly good but he permitted massive conventional air raids on Japanese cities and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with no clear proof that they were necessary.

Churchill and Truman were mostly good, but they were also mass murderers who rank among the twenty five most evil warlords in history, in spite all the competition for places on that list. So saying that being mostly good is good enough doesn't convince me.

A person may be wrong about what is good to do, but that only makes him stupid or misinformed or obstinate, not evil. Two opponents in the same war can both be good - maybe one of them is simply wrong, or they both are.
Heck, I am sure that in many wars there have been people looking at the other side and seeing they have more in common with the best people there, than with some of the rabble on their own side.

You say that being misinformed about what is right and wrong is not enough to make a person evil. Then what is enough to make a person evil? All the most evil forces in history, The Nazis, the Communists, the Mongol hordes, the Imperial Japanese army, the Assyrians, etc., etc., etc., all believed that they were fighting for good. They believed that part or all of the world, or at least their own peoples, would benefit greatly from achieving their goals, and so it did not matter how many people they killed achieving those goals. They believed their goals were infinitely good and therefore they would be doing good if they killed anything less than an infinite number of people while striving for their goals. And thus they did not care how many people they killed or try to reduce their killing rate.

The main defense against there being more such misinformed people in the future is 1) insisting that everyone think clearly and logically about their goals and examine them for ethical and factual flaws before starting to pursue them, and 2) insist that everyone pursue their goals, no matter how just, noble, holy, and vital they believe those goals are, with constant care to reduce killing to the absolute minimum necessary to achieve those goals.

For example, if the Nazis had not been more afraid of thinking clearly about ethical issues and the facts than they were of dying in battle, they might have realized that the Jews were not a terrible, demonic plague upon humanity and that exterminating the Jews was not necessary and was a waste of perfectly useful people.

And if the Nazis had believed in pursuing every goal, not matter how great and good it seemed to them, in the most humane and gentle way possible (which would be highly unNazi-like, of course), they would have simple rounded up all the Jews, sterilized them, and kept them in captivity for the rest of their lives, preventing them from doing any imaginary "Jewish Evil" to anyone. The last Jewish babies captured by the Nazis in the 1940s would die of old age in the 2050s (unless methods of major life extensions were invented first).

So people who defend Lelouch or Celestial Being for killing people unnecessarily on the grounds that they did more good than evil overall are denying the importance of one of the two main intellectual, spiritual, and ideological defenses against the possibility that in the future more deluded people will slaughter more thousands or millions of people unnecessarily.

The belief that anyone who, while seeking even the most good and noble goal imaginable, kills even one person unnecessarily is too evil and disgusting to be good or to be liked is an idea that should be spread and accepted as widely as possible in an attempt to prevent any repetition of the horrors of the past, instead of being scoffed at because it makes the protagonist of a tv show you have enjoyed seem evil.

[kimi no kioku]

Keep your lame arguments to your own thread.

[The Butcher]

A Anti-Hero at the beginning,then he turned Evil to bring the world peace by rising to the most powerful person on the Planet.

So I consider him a hero from his very last action.

[-P.N.-]

He is kinda like Light but Light failed.
Yea I would call him a hero. you can't save everyone! sacrifice must be made... I dun belive in happy ending anyway.
~P.N.~

[Aozora*Pen]

Almost there. More specifically, he's a Byronic hero.

^ Makes me think of Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights.

No, Lelouch doesn't really seem like one.

[IcePriestess]

Yeez... Even though it's my thread, ProEuphie still likes to flood in it... Oh well... PM me if you ever see a post of ProEuphie where the name "Euphemia" isn't mentioned.

I've read your thoughts and I totally agree with akuNoHikari. He totally matches Byronic Hero(well maybe not totally, but some points are very accurate).

[CorneliaNoGeass]

He is kinda like Light but Light failed.
Yea I would call him a hero. you can't save everyone! sacrifice must be made... I dun belive in happy ending anyway.
~P.N.~

even if he did sacrifice himself he killed thousands of people and thats unacceptable, only god has the right to take human life and well...lelouch isnt god.

any news on the new code geass?

[Russian Medved']

even if he did sacrifice himself he killed thousands of people and thats unacceptable, only god has the right to take human life and well...lelouch isnt god.

He sacrificed himself 'cause it was needed to do, not for repayment. And anyway he never thought about himself as a god. He was an idealist and altruist deep inside. Speech with Suzaku - "Don't you think human's desires like a geass? I am influenced by that geass". He had killed thousands of people indeed, but how many did he save?

He is a villain. It is a price which he had paid. But he was needed.
One thing for sure - if he had not died he would be a Great Emperor.

[Hollow Lelouch]

Anyone who would comepletely forsake his own desires and destroy his own good nature, even

 

-----die-----

for the sake of peole he didn't even know is a hero in my eyes.

And, proeuphie, are we going to have to do this again?

+

[Ténèbres éternelles]

He is neither hero or villain. As said in previous posts, he killed a lot of people however reunited the world.
For me, the balance leans more toward the hero beacause at the end, everything seem to be peaceful.

[Sword]

Lelouch is no doubt a hero in my opinion. He carried the weight of everyone's hatred on his shoulders in an attempt to bring peace to the world. Killing people isn't so black and white. The people he killed were either soldiers or inevitable casulties of war. In the case of Euphie, that was a complete accident and he had no choice but to kill her.

[Marius2000]

I also believe Lelouch is a hero, at least at the end. In the beginning he has selfish motives basically starting a rebellion to get revenge for himslef and his sister, his only real goal to kill off the royal family. I know Lelouch says he is doing it to create a better world for Nunnaly, but his actions are more geared toward killing his relatives. However as the series goes on Lelouch changes (not always for the better) but eventually he sees what he need to do to make the world a better place and he mans up and sacrifices himself to do it.
I think Lelouch is best seen as a deeply flawed hero, there are several times during the series that he nearly looses is sanity and he could be very cruel at times and he made a lot of mistakes. As for the people that say he isn't a hero because he killed thousands, well no great social change or revolution in history was bloodless but I think Lelouch's sacrifice in the end really reduced the blood shed necessary to bring about a complete societal paradigm shift.
Lelouch is a very complex character which is what made him so interesting to watch, we not only saw his genius as a tactician, but we also got to see his flaws as an emotionally damaged human being.
Now if you want to get really complicated with it we can talk about Lelouch vs Zero and line where the man ends and the symbol begins, because at times during the series there were pretty big divergences between the two.... but that is a disscusion for another time.

[Maha Vailo]

I think he's a hero, and to be honest I wish people like him existed in real life. Sword's post above pretty much sums up my views of Lelouch.

[Saxima]

Lelouch is both. It's just that simple, the way he views justice is common; to get peace you must first take action and destroy.
(also, he's a bit psycho...)

[proEuphie]

I think he's a hero, and to be honest I wish people like him existed in real life. Sword's post above pretty much sums up my views of Lelouch.

I can only hope that if you every meet someone like Lelouch in real life,and find yourself in a situation where killing you would be as totally senseless and unjustified as killing Euphemia was, you will suddenly fear that this person might kill you anyway, just like Lelouch killed Euphemia without any reason or justification.

---------- Post added at 12:08 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:05 AM ----------

Lelouch is both. It's just that simple, the way he views justice is common; to get peace you must first take action and destroy.
(also, he's a bit psycho...)

More psycho than hero in my opinion see my post # 106 and # 109 above for reasons

---------- Post added at 12:15 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:08 AM ----------

Lelouch is no doubt a hero in my opinion. He carried the weight of everyone's hatred on his shoulders in an attempt to bring peace to the world. Killing people isn't so black and white. The people he killed were either soldiers or inevitable casulties of war. In the case of Euphie, that was a complete accident and he had no choice but to kill her.

What about the civilians killed in Lelouch's landslide at Narita? Lelouch did not have to use a landslide to wipe out Britannian soldiers and JLF fighters and continue on to wipe out Narita. Lelouch could have found a different tactic if he cared enough about reducing civilian casualties. And how was massacring the geass directorate people inevitable? If you can massacre people you are in a position where you don't have to massacre them. All massacres are unnecessary and easily avoidable..

Giving Euphemia the geass command may have been a accident. But saying that Lelouch had no choice but to kill her is utterly senseless. All my posts on the topic have stated that Euphemia was wonderfully safe and easy to capture alive and that nobody who had the slightest respect for human life would ever kill someone who was that easy to capture alive.

The killing of Euphemia was one of the most terrible and evil (fictional) murders (of a single person) I have ever seen on television. Having such a terrible murder committed by a protagonist who millions of viewers continue to like and respect is intolerable.

I suggest that you look up Arther C Clarke's short story "I Remember Babylon" (1960). All the changes in television programming that Clarke speculated about have happened, though not as part of any sinister plot. I suggest you find out how fictional heroes behaved in 1960 television shows and how evil were the military and political actions which the viewing public tolerated in real life. Then compare that the way modern tv heroes behave and imagine what evil military and political deeds today's viewing public might tolerate in real life.

[Aozora*Pen]

Lol? Who revived this thread. Anyway you have to agree that no one character in Code Geass is clearly a villain or hero.

[proEuphie]

Lol? Who revived this thread. Anyway you have to agree that no one character in Code Geass is clearly a villain or hero.

I believe that all the characters are evil enough to be considered villains (or their henchmen) except for Euphemia, who is the only one good enough to be a hero.