Characters / Lelouch of the Wings of Rebellion: The Black Knights

Due to wiki policy, characters pages contain numerous unmarked spoilers. You Have Been Warned.

Lelouch of the Wings of Rebellion Main Character Index
The Black Knights - Confidants - Other Vigilantes / The Irregulars / The Glinda Knights - Antagonists / Major Targets - Other Characters

The Black Knights

In General

• Accidental Pervert: The Outdoor Bath Peeping incident in Izu that almost gets the guys in the Student Council beaten up. Subverted in that it wasn't an accident. Double Subverted in that none of the guys planned it.
• Achilles' Heel: All of them have an elemental weakness that will swiftly put them in the dirt.
  • Arthur/Tama's weakness is Electricity.
  • Kallen/Queen's weakness is Ice.
  • Milly/Diamond's weakness is Wind.
  • Leila/Bishop's weakness is Fire.
  • Euphemia/Noire's weakness is Psychokinesis.
  • Shirley/Dame's weakness is Curse.
  • Xingke/Dragon's weakness is Nuclear.
  • Suzaku/Knight's weakness is Curse.
• Adaptational Badass: Most of their members were non-combatants in canon, but here they're Persona Users. Especially Lelouch who goes from Non-Action Guy to the resident Wild Card wielder.
• Amazon Brigade: Downplayed. Following the events of the fourth Palace and Story Arc, the Black Knights consist of one guy, one male cat, and five girls. They finally get another man during the fifth arc, Li Xingke. Subverted with the addition of a third man later, Suzaku.
• Aristocrat Team: Kallen comments on the irony of a rebel team like this. Her points are even more valid after the fourth Palace, when only Arthur, Shirley/Dame, and Suzaku/Knight aren't Britannian nobility or former members of it, herself included as the daughter of a nobleman (and Arthur is a cat).
• Ascended Extra: Many of their members were only secondary characters in Code Geass. Especially true for Milly, Dame, and Arthur.
• Battle Harem:
  • Subverted. The Black Knights may look like one, but Lelouch wasn't dating any of them until his Relationship Upgrade with Kallen/Queen in Chapter 28. Lampshaded by the Shadow ruling the fourth Palace, who outright refers to the four girls in the team as their leader's harem. Increasingly Double Subverted as time goes. By the midpoint of the fifth Story Arc, out of the five girls in the team, three are head-over-heels in love with him and are actively dating him (don't worry, it's consensual), the fourth one's Incest Subtext gets kinda eyebrow-raising at times, and the last one is very much The Tease around him and you can never be sure how serious or not she really is about it.
  • It becomes an actual harem after Lelouch and Leila's Relationship Upgrade around the end of the fifth Story Arc.
  • Unfortunately in Chapter 72, Lelouch just doesn't see Milly as a love interest despite her own interest, and the two decide they are better off as friends.
• The Beautiful Elite: Lampshaded by Alice after seeing them in their swimsuits during the Beach Episode, who sarcastically asked if you have to win a beauty contest before they let you join.
• Beauty, Brains, and Brawn: Diamond, Bishop, and Queen, respectively, as the three first girls in the Black Knights. Played With at every step of the way, though. Diamond is a gregarious, unifying influence, but also The Gadfly and The Tease. Bishop is The Smart Gal but can be Innocently Insensitive and brutally honest. Queen is a Hot-Blooded Action Girl, but she's devoted to her boyfriend to an almost unhealthy degree.
• Code Name: Like in the game, each party member goes by an alias in the Metaverse. So far we have: Zero (Lelouch), Tama (Arthur), Queen (Kallen), Diamond (Milly Ashford), Bishop (Leila Breisgau), Noire (Princess Euphemia), Dame (Shirley Fenette), Dragon (Li Xingke), and Knight (Suzaku Kururugi).
• Costume Porn: Their outfits for the Black-Tie Infiltration at the Masquerade Ball. In appearance order:
  • Zero: He based his costume on his Persona Arsene but in a different color scheme. That is a La Belle Epoque tuxedo with a Classy Cravat, top hat, and a demonic black mask complete with red contacts to enhance the look and hide his distinctive purple eyes.
  • Diamond: Milly wears the same Sexy Backless Outfit with a Navel-Deep Neckline blue cocktail dress with white opera gloves as she did for the wedding reception in Turn 09.
  • Queen: Also a Mythology Gag, but a much obscure one based on a piece of promotional art from 2017. Kallen's outfit consists of a burgundy red and pink ankle-length frilly dress, with the top half modeled after a bodice and a "low neckline though nowhere near as daring as Milly's", complete with an elaborate piece of hair dec made to look like three tiny roses.
  • Bishop: Her costume is styled after a black butterfly, wings, and everything, and a matching veil that covers the upper half of her face in lieu of a mask.
  • Dame: Hers seems to be based on the Persona Titania's outfit◊ — a long green dress embroiled with gold patterns complete with dragonfly wings — but with "a domino mask, half gold and half white, embellished with intricate patterns and decorated with a lily on the side."
• Distracted by the Sexy: Invoked in their dancer outfits for The Infiltration of the 5th Palace in order to get the Cognitive soldiers guarding the entrance to let them in. To wit:
  • Queen: Bared midriffs, short skirt, and the Miko equivalent of a Naughty Nuns.
  • Diamond: A particularly Stripperiffic example of a Sultry Belly Dancer outfit.
  • Bishop: Hot Gypsy Woman and a bit of Everything Sounds Sexier in French.
  • Noire: Pink Means Feminine Hindu-inspired attire with a Showgirl Skirt and a Mysterious Veil.
  • Dame: Kimono Fanservice with the Navel-Deep Neckline variant of Side Boob.
  • Zero: Disguised in Drag Attractive Bent-Gender outfit mostly based on Bishop's Hot Gypsy Woman getup.
• Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: As in Persona 5, each of their Personas is proficient in and resistant to an Elemental Power and weak to another. Evolved Personas become immune to the former and gain a new resistance.
  • Arthur/Tama's Master Cat wields Garu, and is weak to Zio.
  • Kallen/Queen's Suzuka Gozen is proficient in physical attacks and Frei skills, and is weak to Bufu. Guren Jigoku is immune to Frei, resists Curse, and can evade Bufu skills better.
  • Milly/Diamond's Medea uses Agi and is weak to Garu. Hecate is immune to Agi, resists Psy, and can evade Garu skills better.
  • Leila/Bishop's Joan of Arc is a Sensor-type that also specializes in Psy, and is weak to Agi. Freyja is immune to Psy, resists Bufu, and can evade Agi skills better.
  • Euphemia/Noire's Eilonwy can use Bufu spells, but is weak to Psy.
  • Shirley/Dame's Maid Marian can use both Bless and Gun-type skills, but is weak to Curse.
  • Xingke/Dragon's Zhuge Liang can use Zio spells, but is weak to Nuke.
  • Suzaku/Knight's Lancelot favors physical and gun attacks, but unlike Aragaki or Zenkichi, he is weak to Curse.
  • If you look at the above list, you may notice that most of the Black Knights have an extended Rock-Paper-Scissors kinda deal going on. Starting with Kallen/Queen, her Persona is weak to Euphemia/Noire's Ice-type attacks. In turn, Noire's Persona is weak to Leila/Bishop's Psy attacks. Bishop's Persona is weak to Milly/Diamond's Fire. Diamond's Persona is weak to Arthur/Tama's Wind. Arthur's Persona is weak to Xingke/Dragon's Electricity. And Dragon's Persona is weak to Kallen's Nuke-type attacks, thus closing the circle. As for the remaining ones, if we consider Lelouch's initial Persona, he and Shirley/Dame are weak to each other Curse and Bless' attacks, respectively.
• Embarrassing Cover Up: Lelouch isn't sure what the tailors thought when the team ordered Fanservice Costumes for themselves as a rush job, but guesses that they assumed that "the costumes were for a party or nobles having some sort of tryst". Downplayed a bit in that he doesn't particularly care about it as long as it makes for a good cover story.
• Fear Is the Appropriate Response: Lelouch and Bishop's reaction to Chapter 62's reveals is one of barely suppressed panic. They try to take the edge of it by engaging in several chess matches^note studies show that using the logical part of your brain after something unnerving happens helps the mind to process it better, which is why soldiers are made to play Tetris right after an incident to reduce the likelihood of traumatic flashbacks. When that doesn't quite work out, they resort to something a bit more drastic.
• Femme Fatale: Discussed. None of the female members of the Black Knights really fits the bill, but they're mistaken for femmes fatales due to their proclamation video in Chapter 49. To be fair to their in-series fandom, they only had the girls' Sexy Silhouettes and Zero's speech to go by and that's just how they ended up filling the blanks.
• Foil:
  • Fellow blondes Milly Ashford and Leila Breisgau. The former is a Lovable Alpha Bitch, Shameless Fanservice Girl, and The Tease, playful gadfly and prankster, a bit of a Book Dumb but with enough of leadership and people skills to run a school for the elite as their undisputed Student Council President despite being a former noble. For her part, Leila suffers from Intelligence Equals Isolation, attracts more male attention she'd like, she's usually very formal and poised and enjoys playing chess and reading books, comes from a Friendless Background in part because her and her parents' secretly subversive political views, and she's a bona fide Countess despite her young age after the death of her parents. To further drive the point home, Milly is whole 14 cm (almost 6 inches) taller than Leila. They do have several points in common: they're both members of the Black Knights, have problems with unwanted suitors — albeit due to opposite reasons because Milly's mother wants to marry her off to a noble, whereas men are after Leila's title and inheritance — and have a close but not-quite platonic friendship with one Lelouch Lamperouge.
  • Kallen and Shirley. The former is a Fiery Redhead who is one of the more combative members of the team, while Shirley is far calmer and abhors fighting. Kallen focuses on physical combat while Shirley is a supporter. Kallen was the first girl Lelouch met among the Black Knights and ended up becoming his girlfriend while Shirley fell for him later and is trying to arrange a harem for him so she can get closer to him. Both have an unhealthy devotion to Lelouch with Kallen outright admitting she'd knowingly walk to certain death for him, but in Shirley's case, it caused her to develop a palace.
• Four-Girl Ensemble: The girls in the Black Nights before Dame joins in. Queen is the Tomboy and The Big Guy of the team, Diamond is a Heroic Seductress and consistently The Tease, Bishop is The Smart Gal and the team's Number Two, and Noire is a Silk Hiding Steel Girly Girl.
• Frame-Up: The Black Knights are framed for the short-lived kidnapping of Euphemia in Chapter 57. Lelouch isn't sure whether Schneizel engineered it or he's just taking advantage of the situation to further his own agenda.
• Freudian Trio: Queen, Bishop, and Dame. Namely, Lelouch's Love Interests, and as of Chapter 61, his girlfriends.
  • Kallen/Queen represents Id. She's passionate and quick to anger, her battle instincts are second to none, will jump forward without any hesitation no matter the enemy ahead, and conforms to social expectations the least. On the flip side, her impulsiveness has gotten her into trouble several times in and out of battle, her inability to contain her emotions allowed her relationship with her mother to turn toxic, and before Lelouch entered the picture, she was basically on a one-way track to get herself arrested and killed fighting Britannia with no hope of accomplishing anything in the process.
  • Bishop represents the Superego. She's The Smart Gal of the team and The Strategist around Lelouch's level, tends to keep her wits about her and acts rationally most of the time, and she's the one that outwardly conforms to social expectations the most of the three. Deconstruction kicks in when you consider that she learned to be this way as a survival adaptation to a ruthless environment like Britannian high society while she and her parents are ideological traitors to the monarchy. The need for secrecy keep Leila from making any real friends until joining the Black Knights, and her attempts to do the rational thing and accept being a secret Romantic Runner-Up to a Lelouch that was already in a relationship failed spectacularly. It's quite ironic (and thematically fitting for her Confidant Arcana) that things turned out better for her once she started to listen to her inner voice and desires rather than suppressing them with arguments.
  • Dame represents Ego. She's the most normal of the three, with both personality and backstory to match, and she's in many ways a bridge between Queen and Bishop. In fact, it's very likely that their Polyamory would have never come to pass were not for her. She embodied too much of Kallen's issues for the latter to not empathize with Shirley's own feelings for Lelouch, which was a key element in both girls finding enough common ground to consider a triad as a better solution than making one or the other the Romantic Runner-Up. In Bishop's case, Shirley's experience trying and failing to accept that her love for Lelouch would remain forever unfulfilled allowed her to recognize the same in Leila, prompting her to actively help her to convince everybody that allowing Lelouch and Leila to act on their feelings for each other was the right thing to do for all four of them. The Deconstruction here results from Dame's inability to reconcile her own Id and Superego for the first part of the story. She resigned herself to the fact Lelouch got together with Kallen instead of her, but she was unable to move on. Then Lelouch was framed-up with her father's murder, and she was again unable to reconcile her feelings with her judgment, now resulting in self-loathing from the fact she remained in love with the man she should hate -- all these personal issues being channeled straight into her Shadow and resulting in the creation of her Palace.
• Genre Savvy: Knowing the lore behind enemy Shadows tend to help the team a lot to defeat them. For example, Zero immediately figures out the remaining weakness of a Dual Mini-Boss in Chapter 52 after one was knocked down by a Curse-type attack that the other barely felt, and from the latter throwing a dark-aligned One-Hit Kill spell. His educated guess comes from how the Dual Boss is based on a Chinese Guardian Lion/Lioness pair of statues that in turn represent the male's yang/light and the female's yin/dark.
• Hero with Bad Publicity: Just like the canonical Phantom Thieves, except they get hit with it even harder and earlier. They get framed for murder on their second target rather than their fifth, being blamed for the Black Mask's murders of people such as Prince Clovis and Shirley's father, and their public support is scarce due to Britannia's authoritarian control of the media. For an extra bit of bad rep, some people in-story thinks Zero is using his brainwashing powers to make himself a harem based on how he was surrounded by the Sexy Silhouettes of five beautiful girls in his proclamation video in Chapter 49.
• Honey Trap: Milly Invokes this in order to gain entry to the 5th Palace by disguising themselves as dancers in alluring outfits. Lelouch has an Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap! moment when he realizes that includes him.
• Hopeless Suitor: Both Shirley/Dame and Leila/Bishop have feelings for Lelouch but are unable to act on them after his Relationship Upgrade with Kallen/Queen.
• Idiot Ball: Lelouch chastises himself for going and challenging the Black King alone to a chess match in order to glean the information the team needs to enter his Palace. It didn't occur to him until it was too late that the Black King, unlike his usual opponents in the gambling scene, is a total crook that would ignore the outcome of the match and use his hired muscle to force him into submission. In a "two wrongs make a right" kinda situation, at the very same time Princess Euphemia grabs a similar IdiotBall and goes alone to investigate TheDon making so many people suffer, reuniting the half-siblings after years of her thinking he was dead.
• "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: A Brainwashed Bishop uses her Psychokinetic skills against Lelouch, which accidentally allows him to talk directly to her mind, his words helping Leila to snap back to her senses.
• Irony: In Chapter 16, Kallen remarks on the irony of the Black Knights being a Japan-based rebel group that opposes Britannia where only she has any Japanese blood at all. While it only got more ironic with the addition of Shirley, eventually, Li Xingke offered some diversity, then Suzaku, a full-blooded Japanese member joins after.
• It's Personal: Each of the Palace missions is this to at least one of the members of the team.
  • Coach Villetta made Shirley the focus of her abuse, and tried to get Suzaku expelled under false accusations.
  • Viceroy Clovis ordered the death of Leila's parents.
  • The Black King got his hands on photographic evidence of the survival of the vi Britannia siblings and tried to blackmail Lelouch for it. Although the professional extortionist mistook the reason why Lelouch didn't want the pic to get out.
  • Shirley Fenette's Palace for the Black Knights, believing they murdered her father. Especially after Medjed kidnaps her and traps her in it.
  • Gao Hai, whose corrupt exploitation of the Empress and Chinese people motivated Xingke to plan a rebellion even before he joined the Black Knights.
• Karmic Thief: Downplayed because they're just stealing things from Palaces in the Metaverse, but Diamond commented that it felt particularly justified about stealing from the Fifth Palace because those riches are Cognitive representation of all the Plundering the Chinese Federation inflicted on other countries.
• Kleptomaniac Hero Found Underwear: Discussed. Milly joked if they were going to find what kind of panties Shirley has when entering her dorm room (the Cognitive version of it, that's it). Lelouch just sighed and ignored the question.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: The Black Knights withdraw from Shirley Fenette's Palace after its ruler throws a Timed Boss Battle at them right from the get-go, and before the Shadow can use a Zerg Rush tactic.
• Locked Out of the Fight: Diamond, Bishop, Noire, and Dame miss Chapter 57's Mid-Boss fight due to being stuck keeping up with appearances at the Masquerade Ball. Thankfully for Lelouch and Kallen, he was Properly Paranoid enough to have Arthur and the Irregulars on standby inside the Palace just in case something needed to be done on the Metaverse side of things once the Cognitive barriers were disabled. That prevents the two of them from fighting the Mid-Boss at a disadvantage with only Xingke, who just awakened to his Persona, on their side.
• Locked Out of the Loop: All the Black Knights except for Shirley herself knows Lelouch reciprocates her feelings by the time they infiltrate her Palace.
• Mistaken for Murderer: The Black Knights are blamed for Clovis' death despite it being pointed out In-Universe that killing the viceroy when they did makes little sense even assuming they have the means to do it. Same thing with Joseph Fenette's murder.
• Motive Decay: Averted. Unlike the Phantom Thieves of Hearts who slowly buy more and more into their own popularity and lose sight of founding principles, the Black Knights and Lelouch, in particular, see their own notoriety as an unavoidable side effect of their activities, and as a variable, they need to handle with care because it's required to unlock new areas in Mementos.
• Occult Detective: Inverted. The Black Knights use the Metaverse to investigate mundane criminals in order to find out the Black King's true name and whereabouts.
• Oh, Crap, There Are Fanfics of Us!: In-Universe lemons starring the Black Knights starts to crop up after their proclamation video released in Chapter 49. Milly has read some of them and tells the others they guessed the details so wrong that the stories may as well be about other people, but most of the team is still horrified by the fact that smut inspired by them even exists.
• Open Secret: Much like in canon, Lelouch being Zero and the Black Knight's activities are already known by several key figures right after their first major act of rebellion. Specifically a discussion by the Black Mask and his boss (which is implied to be V.V.) show their full knowledge of the situation and also hint at Charles being aware as well and during the 5th Arc's heist Suzaku catches the Black Knights and Irregulars red-handed but is largely unsurprised due to having suspected Lelouch and most of the others as the only ones with motive in targeting Villeta Nu as their first heist.
• Pair the Smart Ones: Discussed. Lelouch and Bishop have plenty of chemistry, especially at the intellectual level, and more than enough of it for his girlfriend s to feel uncomfortable with the idea of her spending even more time with him after she transfers to Ashford Academy. Their jealousy is very well justified because Lelouch and Leila are very much attracted to each other, but neither is willing to damage his current relationship because of it.
• Playboy Bunny: Every girl in the party has to don the look in order to infiltrate a resort-themed Palace as waitresses. They reluctantly agree to it except for Milly who actually always wanted to wear one and positively relishes in the opportunity to better play The Tease.
• Restricted Rescue Operation: Neither Milly nor Bishop were able to leave the Masquerade Ball and follow Euphemia into the Metaverse when the Black Mask kidnapped her because they're well-known faces among the nobility and their absence would be immediately noticed, and that's assuming they would be able to activate the Metanav without getting caught. Shirley, on the other hand, was just a masked commoner mingling among the elite incognito, so she was able to sneak out after them unnoticed.
• Sexy Silhouette: People can't help but notice this of most of the Black Knights in their proclamation video from Chapter 49.
• Sinister Silhouettes: Hilariously Subverted. In Chapter 49, the Black Knights release a proclamation video showing them in their disguises like this to protect their identities. It works, but the problem is that Lelouch never considered that showing the very Sexy Silhouettes of five shapely young women flanking their charismatic Rebel Leader while he talked to the camera would provide more than enough subtext for their in-universe fandom to go nuts with Shipping speculation portraying them as a harem, up to and including Lemons starring them.
• The Smart Guy: Zero and Bishop share the position in the Black Knights. Zero as the guy with the plan, and Bishop who second-guesses him and does the explaining. They probably fell into those roles due to their personalities rather than the capabilities. Lelouch is usually the first one to figure out something, but he also tends to keep things on a need-to-know basis. Bishop is a lot forthcoming with her theories and deductions, but she's a lot more blunt with her words.
• Thou Shalt Not Kill: In stark contrast to Code Geass, Lelouch and his group don't kill people. On Lelouch's end, this is more of a pragmatic restraint given that victims of changes of hearts are more valuable to him alive and he would risk driving off the more kind-hearted allies in his entourage. In Chapter 41, he outright admits a full intention to murder Mao/Medjed after he becomes too dangerous to spare, but Alice/Speed deals the finishing blow to spare his hands from becoming stained with blood right in front of Nunnally.

Founding Members

Zero

Lelouch vi Britannia/Lelouch Lamperouge/Zero

Arcana: 0. The Fool
Persona: Arsène

The Leader of the Black Knights. The exiled 11th Prince of the Holy Britannian Empire and eldest child of the late Empress Marianne, Lelouch desires to create a better world for his sister Nunnally, and bring down his father's corrupt regime. Having discovered the Metaverse, he now has the means to do so.

---

• Above the Influence: He refuses to take advantage of a hammered Leila/Bishop despite her drunkenly entering his room in the middle of the night and all but jumping into his arms, plus his hormones demanding he do so.
• Accidental Pervert: His Shower of Awkward moment with Kallen from early on in the anime happens here in Chapter 11, but it ends with a naked Kallen laying on top of him. See the relevant entry in the Mythology Gag page for details.
• The Ace: Downplayed. He's the resident Wild Card wielder of the team, but Lelouch is well aware that despite his amazing versatility as a Persona-user, he's still one guy, and trying to play every combat role himself will quickly tire him out before he can make any progress into a Palace. And likely get him killed as soon as he can no longer hit the Shadows' elemental weaknesses.
• Ace Custom: Lelouch makes sure his Cognitive Burai looks like his from canon with its "head" made to resemble a samurai helmet with golden horns by having the one used as a basis decorated before taking the footage detailed in Your Mind Makes It Real below.
• Actor Allusion: Of course, the primary gag of this fic is that it relies on Lelouch taking the place of Joker easily, since both characters were voiced by Jun Fukuyama in Japan.
• Adaptational Badass: Lelouch is given the power of the Wild Card instead of his trademark Geass, meaning he is significantly more involved in the execution of his plans this time around. Lelouch actually invokes this by requesting Sayoko to teach him some fighting and infiltration how-to he can apply later to the Metaverse. This and his physical activity in the Metaverse have the welcome side-effect of making him less of the Non-Action Guy he was in canon. Baby steps, though, as while he's not going to outrun someone like Kallen in the real world any time soon, he no longer loses his breath running after her.
• Adaptational Heroism: Owing to being significantly more dependent on his teammates this time around, Lelouch is a lot less willing to sacrifice his allies than he was in canon. He's also shown to be rather remorseful when he's executing Personas to fuse new ones (except for Incubus, who had it coming). Later chapters show this goes beyond Pragmatic Villainy. Lelouch's entire Character Development seems to be going in the opposite direction than in the series. This is especially significant in the Story Arc focused on Shirley. Whereas his canonical self used his Geass to delete her memories of him, this version of Lelouch couldn't go through with it despite having the chance to destroy her Treasure to achieve more or less the same effect.
• Adaptational Intelligence: Relative to Joker. Lelouch's far more perceptive when it comes to understanding the Metaverse and figures out several endgame plot twists on his own by the time summer vacation rolls around.
• Adaptational Superpower Change: Becomes a Wild Card wielder instead of being granted his Geass.
• Anchored Ship: With Leila Breisgau. See Bishop's entry below under Later Members for details.
• Anger Born of Worry: There's a variant in the aftermath of the fourth Palace. Lelouch, smart as he is, gets progressively angry at himself while enumerating in his mind each and every way the mission could have gone wrong at the cost of people important to him.
• Archnemesis Dad: Exploited at his expense. Igor is well aware that Lelouch hates his father's guts and hopes that revealing that Charles zi Britannia is behind "Ragnarök" will motivate him to oppose him. While Igor is right about that, Lelouch is not so blinded by revenge to not see such a blatant manipulation attempt for what it is.
• Badass Longcoat: Instead of the helmet and cape costume from canon, this Lelouch carries out his quest in the same Thief Suit as Joker, complete with mask and long coat.
• Balanced Harem: Invoked. After he starts dating both Kallen and Shirley, Lelouch takes care to not play favorites. For example, he thinks the Queen's Necklace would make for a good present and stat- and SP-boosting equipment for Kallen, but refrains from gifting it to her until he Itemizes a similarly good accessory for Shirley a few chapters later.
• Battle Couple: With Kallen/Queen after their Relationship Upgrade in Chapter 28. Upgraded to Battle Harem after his Relationship Upgrade with Shirley and then Leila in Chapter 51 and 58, respectively.
• Betty and Veronica: Shirley and Kallen to Lelouch's Archie. Unlike many examples of this trope, he decides early on that he doesn't want to expose Shirley to the dangers of his double life and puts some distance between them. This creates complications later on when Lelouch actually gets together with Kallen and Shirley develops a Palace following a Trauma Conga Line.
• Big Brother Instinct: Deconstructed. Based on how differently his sister acts in the Metaverse, Lelouch arrives to the conclusion that he himself is the main factor stunting Nunnally's growth as a person, perhaps even preserving her psychosomatic blindness. It boils down to abandonment issues. Just like Lelouch can go to insane lengths to protect the only true family he's got left, Nunnally can resort to unhealthy behaviors to need that protection just to make sure he won't leave her. That is, Nunnally unconsciously makes herself more meek and dependent on Lelouch than she really has to be because needing him is the most certain way she has to remain a priority in her brother's life.
• Big Man on Campus: In Ashford Academy just like in canon. Somewhat Deconstructed in Chapter 58 where his Urban Legend Love Life translated into New Transfer Student Leila Breisgau getting concerned warnings advising her to not tarnish her reputation by getting involved with him.
• Birds of a Feather: Lelouch felt a certain level of kinship with a noblewoman around his age he played chess against during the Masquerade Ball, particularly in that she seems to wear a mask of a personality as your run-of-the-mill bored upper-class teenager just like the "Lelouch Lamperouge" that attends Ashford Academy is to him. This helped him to figure out that her seemingly small talk about the Black Knights was anything but. The "kinship" part takes a new meaning when the girl in question is later revealed to be his half-sister Marrybell mel Britannia in disguise.
• Blood Oath: After they both failed to live up to their Pinky Swear to not lie to each other, Lelouch and Nunnally make a Blood Oath by pricking their pinkies. This marks the point he maxes out his Confidant rank with her.
• Brilliant, but Lazy: Lelouch's public persona in Ashford Academy, much to Shirley's chagrin who's certain he could do so much if he just tried. Post-Palace Shirley is overjoyed when she gets to meet him as the driven and brilliant leader of the Black Knights.
• Brother–Sister Incest: Discussed. From what Cognitive Lelouch says in her Palace, Coach Villetta seems to think that there's more than a sibling relationship between them.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: Lelouch barely remembers the incident that caused Shirley to fall in love with him from canon, which is exactly the reason why that's the case.
• Celibate Hero:
  • Played With. Lelouch may seem borderline Asexual most of the time as in canon, but deep down he's as warm-blooded as the next 17-year-old guy. This comes to the fore of his mind when he carries Personas related to sex and lust such as Incubus, who makes him focus on how attractive Shirley is and how easy it would be to have her if he just let it happen given that she's already head over heels in love with him. Lelouch makes him stop by threatening to execute him in the Velvet Room as soon as possible.
  • Increasingly Downplayed, and then Subverted, as his Defrosting Ice King Character Development goes.
  • Also a Discussed Trope. Lilim argues that, even after getting his Relationship Upgrade, he's repressing his libido too much, and that doing so only makes his unacknowledged desires stronger deep in his subconscious. This is the whole reason why Personas with a strong connection to sex like her and Incubus are so insistent in him acting on his desires more. Lelouch took some heed of this after noticing that something similar happened with Nunnally, who spent years bottling up so much anger that her Persona became something akin to the embodiment of that wrath and now it has to be let run wild from time to time lest it becomes too uncontrollable.
• Chick Magnet: Let's put it this way: in Chapter 51, when his hot girlfriend and the equally attractive girl who has been crushing on him for a long while talked him into dating the two of them at the same time, Lelouch was genuinely and justifiably concerned that at least two other girls (both of them beautiful Teen Geniuses with huge fortunes to their name, mind you) could try to get in on it and make their Polyamory too complicated to function. The amazing part is that such a Parody-sounding development makes total sense if you know the characters involved and each's complex circumstances leading to it.
• Clueless Chick-Magnet:
  • Deconstructed with Lelouch, whose lack of awareness in romantic matters causes more than a few problems. Long story short, he failed to notice that Kallen was falling for him until her sudden (for him) Love Confession. While he knew Shirley had a crush on him, Lelouch greatly underestimated how deeply in love she was with him until his Relationship Upgrade with Kallen pushed her to the brink of forming a Palace. After all this, Lelouch made a conscious effort to be more alert of what his female friends think of him, which wasn't for the best either because it allowed him to figure out Leila was secretly crushing on him but had decided to keep quiet about it in consideration to his relationship with Kallen and the complicated situation with Shirley.
  • Also Played for Laughs. Lelouch was always well-aware that girls in Ashford Academy found him attractive, but he didn't understand why the aloof, underachieving, and troublemaker persona he presented at school didn't make him any less popular as he expected to. It would take until Chapter 73 for Leila Breisgau to basically sit Lelouch down and explain to him that he fits the traits of Byronic Hero almost to a T, and even girls who can't figure that much of his personality see him as a mysterious Tall, Dark, and Handsome Bad Boy who's obviously more intelligent than his grades (used to) suggest.
• Color-Coded Eyes: Lelouch takes care of hiding his distinctive lavender eyes on occasion as the color is strongly associated with the members of the royal family. For example, he wears red contacts at the Masquerade Ball because it's attended by most of Area 11's nobility, under the simple excuse of being part of his costume.
• Combat Pragmatist: Lelouch as a Persona User is the epitome of the "fight smarter, not harder" maxim. Persona 5 players will recognize many of his tactics — such as exploiting weaknesses, stacking buffs with debuffs, resorting to Status Effects to effectively incapacitate enemies and then going for the extra Technical Damage, favor the fusing of Personas with a high Confidant Rank, and long etcetera — but he's also pulled off stuff like goading enemies to charge at him for a bullfighting maneuver, making a large Mini-Boss eat a grenade, smooth-talking a Shadow into hiring the girls in the team as waitresses and himself as a valet in order to move freely in the Palace (It Makes Sense in Context), and getting The Reaper run over by a speeding train in the Metaverse, which is arguably his best moment so far.
• Comedic Sociopathy: He won't hesitate to Sacrifice or Fuse away Personas that annoy him, or if they have Skills he wants to pass down to other Personas. Most notably, in Chapter 59 he doesn't hesitate to sacrifice Lilim to give her recently acquired immunity to Bless attacks to Scathach and make the latter (and thus himself) immune to insta-death spells. Then he immediately resummons Lilim from the Compendium as promised... only to execute her again just as quickly in order to fuse a Girimehkala also immune to Hama/Mudo skills. He resummons her again, but this time to keep her in his stock.
• Comically Missing the Point: He's such a Clueless Chick-Magnet that he doesn't get why Kallen is so opposed to the idea of him attending to the Masquerade Ball as her reformed stepmother's plus-one for the Black Knights' Black-Tie Infiltration until she snaps and spells it out for him.
  Lelouch: I understand that Lady Stadtfeld has been doing her best to be a better stepmother to you since her change of heart, so I think we can get her to agree to the plan if you frame it in that way.
  Kallen: [looking like she wants to strangle him] How oblivious can you be, Lelouch? You're totally her type! She used to always be coming in with men who were younger than her, and you're more handsome than most! (...) If there's anything that will get that cougar back to her old ways, it's going to be you!
• Corpsing: In-Universe. While Disguised in Drag, Lelouch had to resist the urge to smirk and break character when Bishop subtly but thoroughly insulted the guards of the 5th Palace and their ruler and they didn't even notice.
• Cosmic Plaything: While not nearly as bad as in canon, there are times when Lady Fortune just seems to love throwing curveballs at his plans. Especially during their Black-Tie Infiltration at the Masquerade Ball as detailed under A Simple Plan in the main page.
• Crazy Jealous Guy:
  • Downplayed. He didn't like hearing in Chapter 54 just how many guys are interested in Leila Breisgau, but he did nothing about it other than suppressing the irritation he felt at that.
  • Something similar happens in Chapter 62, when he hands over his jacket to her because his half-sister Marrybell keep on ogling at her in the formfitting Stylish Protection Gear she was wearing at the time.
• Dare to Be Badass: Lelouch has a knack for saying the exact words people need to hear in order to fully awaken to their Personas, as is the case with Kallen, Milly, Leila, Euphemia, Shirley, and Xingke. Extra Batman Gambit points in Milly's case where he goads the enemy into saying the words that pushed her to make the breakthrough.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: Lelouch. Not entirely a good thing because of becoming more emotionally available set the basis of the Deconstruction of the Clueless Chick-Magnet trope as seen above.
• Devoted to You: Both Shirley and Kallen to Lelouch, who loves them back and thus is worried for them about the depths they would sink into for him if he's not careful.
• Disguised in Drag: Lelouch pulls a Cloud to gain entry to the 5th Palace. The guard in charge even picks him over his attractive teammates and doesn't particularly mind when he tells him he's a guy.
• Do Well, But Not Perfect:
  • Subverted to a point. As in canon, Lelouch deliberately underplays his intelligence at school in order to avoid attention that could potentially expose him and Nunnally as Noble Fugitives. However, two of his Confidants place great importance on academic performance, so he decides to actually try in the following round of exams in order to raise his standing with them. Despite barely studying and sleep deprivation, he scores within the top ten of his year.
  • At the Masquerade Ball, Lelouch has to make sure to win or draw a game of chess with the narrowest margin possible, as his real objective is to entice his opponent to a second match, which is a lot more difficult to pull off than simply playing to win.
• Dreaming the Truth:
  • In Chapter 51, Lelouch has a dream where the girls he's interested in have a heated argument over who should marry him. Despite the silliness involved — for example they were driving the "Arthurmobile" through Mementos at the time — his subconscious is proven to be really onto something by the end of the chapter when his girlfriend and Shirley tell him that they did have a serious heart-to-heart off-screen to clean the air between them and actually start addressing the Elephant in the Living Room that it is their Love Triangle.
  • Interestingly, the above is quite a realistic take on how this trope and Dreaming of Things to Come work: Lelouch is shown beforehand to have noticed the girls were getting along better and they even picked Coordinated Clothes for one of Milly's ideas involving Fanservice Costumes, plus the issue of Shirley remaining head-over-heels in love with him despite everything it went through between the three of them was weighing heavily on their minds, so it makes a lot of sense for his subconscious to connect the dots and forecast the girls talking about it outside the scope of his narration.
• Dream Reality Check: Lelouch pinches himself to make sure he isn't dreaming the closing scene of Chapter 51. Understandable considering that Kallen and Shirley just told him he can date two of them at the same time if he wants to.
• Embarrassing Nickname: Lelouch complain to his "wardens" about their nickname for him as the "Inmate" of the Velvet Room, especially because Sayoko overheard Tsu saying it in his room and now she thinks he's the occasional client of a professional {{Dominatrix}}. Tsu insists it's an Appropriated Appellation because she thinks he's really a "prisoner of fate".
• Enemy Mine: He doesn't trust Igor at all, but he's certain that the long-nosed man does want to stop Charles for real, and that's enough for Lelouch at the moment.
• Entertainingly Wrong: Lelouch mistakes Nunnally/Nemo's Thief Suit for her Shadow Self. A valid theory, but in this case, it's more his denial talking than anything else and he's proven wrong moments later.
• "Eureka!" Moment:
  • Lelouch has an important one in Chapter 47. By putting his empiric knowledge about Palaces and the Metaverse together with Tsu's cryptic reveals and Igor's (deliberately) unhelpful advice and "encouragement", Lelouch is able to put together a remarkably accurate working theory of the true nature of the other world way before putting a foot in the Depths of Mementos. This includes conjecturing the existence of the Treasure of the Public and he even theorizes that stealing it would change the cognition of the collective and perhaps even spark a global revolution against Britannia's oppression. With this endgame in mind, Lelouch decided to increase the people's awareness of the Black Knights in order to unlock more areas of Mementos while keeping his cards very close to his chest from Igor, who he suspects is the ringleader in all this.
  • The next chapter he figures out that the ruins in Kamine Island is the entrance to his father's Palace.
• Even the Guys Want Him: He ends up Disguised in Drag as part of a Distracted by the Sexy Batman Gambit to trick the 5th Palace's guards into letting them enter. When he reveals himself to the Mini-Boss, the guard barely seems to mind he's a guy.
• Exact Words: Lelouch isn't exactly lying when he tells Rolo Haliburton that his father sent him and Nunnally overseas because he couldn't be bothered to take care of them himself after their mother died.
• Fatal Attractor: Much like in the series, it's almost a natural law that girls just can't fall for Lelouch in a normal or at least healthy way.
  • Kallen feels herself "slaved" to him due to her bitter realization of how deep her UndyingLoyalty for him actually runs.
  • Shirley's heartbreak from his Relationship Upgrade with Kallen gets so bad that, after her Trauma Conga Line, she ends up forming her own Palace. Worse, the events in it prove that, much like her canon self, Shirley is willing to commit murder in order to protect Lelouch despite being psychologically unequipped for that kind of violence.
  • For the hat trick and due to several circumstances outside either of their control, Lelouch is Leila's first real friend and the only person who could feasibly be a potential Love Interest for her. Problem is, they aren't sure if what she's feeling for him is genuine or just some kind of situational attraction resulting from being unable to be her real self with anyone outside the Black Knights. Either case, the fact she can feel that way despite having witnessed Shirley's situation first-hand is pretty worrying on its own.
• Fist of Rage: His reaction at hearing that Marrybell as a kid committed far more serious transgressions against their father than him, yet she was allowed to live in comfort in the Homeland while he and Nunnally were sent as political hostages to a foreign land that the Emperor knew it was about to be torn asunder by war — must be noticed that he was angry at Charles, not at Marrybell. It takes Leila resting her hands on his own as a wordless gesture of support to keep him from digging his nails hard enough into his palm to draw blood.
• Foil: Lelouch is one to his father and Igor - the latter two are elder men (humanoid in Igor's case) who have access to supernatural powers attained through either birthright or personal effort and espouse a Social Darwinist philosophy. Lelouch, by contrast, obtained his supernatural powers as a gift from Igor and is generally more accepting of a world built upon equality.
  • This is especially pronounced when comparing Lelouch and Charles. Charles is an Emperor who commands armies through others while Lelouch only has the aid of the Black Knights, who he leads personally. Charles is distant from the majority of his family while Lelouch is close to his siblings and half-siblings (well, the ones that still know he is alive). Finally, and rather importantly, Charles had 108 wives but was only really close to Marianne who ended up enabling his worse traits, while Lelouch is in a Polyamory situation with three different girls, each of whom he truly loves and who bring out the best traits in him.
• Forgotten First Meeting: Squared. Lelouch met both Kaguya and Kallen at different times when they were kids, but he and the latter completely forgot about it. Subverted in Kaguya's case when she runs into him during Tanabata and she instantly recognizes him. Also Subverted in Kallen's case, when the student council makes a stop in Izu city and the environment helps her to remember her chance meeting with a young Lelouch and Suzaku.]]
• For Halloween, I Am Going as Myself: Lelouch's costume for the Masquerade Ball is based on his initial Persona Arsene, demonic mask, top hat and all, albeit his clothes were in a different color scheme. Being this Lelouch, he put particular effort in getting the mask right due to both practical reasons (there's always a chance someone could recognize him as a Noble Fugitive) and of course Rule of Cool.
• Freudian Slip:
  • He's irked at seeing Bishop acting so servile for the sake of a Distracted by the Sexy Batman Gambit in the 5th Palace, remarking "she was far more attractive when she wasn't trying to hide or intelligence or opinions". Then he stops that train of thought right there because he considers he shouldn't be thinking about what makes her more or less attractive when he's already in a relationship with someone else.
  • In Chapter 58, he had a conversation with Lilim in his head while seemingly looking in Bishop's direction. When he came back to, he realized she could have thought he was checking her out and he "didn't want her to think he was like all of her other suitors". Then caught himself right there, realizing that the word "other" in "other suitors" makes it sound like he considers himself one of them.
• Green-Eyed Epiphany: Played With. By Chapter 44, Lelouch was already well aware he loves Kallen and Shirley, but Jeremiah making him think of them hypothetically together with somewhere else prompts the realization that he would NOT be okay with losing them despite outright admitting that, objectively speaking, their devotion to him is not healthy.
• Harem Seeker: Lelouch appears to be one in denial. He reciprocates Shirley's feelings but remains quiet about it because he's not willing to break up with Kallen in order to pursue her. He doesn't want to lead Shirley on, yet in his heart of hearts, he strongly disagrees with the idea of her getting together with someone else. Lelouch's narration sometimes toys with the possibility of a One True Threesome, but always veers away from actually considering it because it makes him feel too much like his polygamist ArchnemesisDad. And that's not counting the other girls that are interested in him.
• Has a Type:
  • Discussed. Lelouch arrives to the hypothesis that Shirley probably thinks he likes busty girls better. He refuses to pursue that line of thought.
  • Probably just an amusing coincidence, but his three main Love Interests are hopeless Lethal Chefs.
• Heroic Self-Deprecation: Lelouch understandably looks at himself in a rather negative light considering the unintentional love triangle he instigated between Kallen, Shirley, and himself.
• Hormone-Addled Teenager: Lelouch normally isn't this. But when he sees Shirley in a cat costume while carrying Incubus in his Persona stock, this is in full effect. In no way helped by Incubus goading him to act on his desires.
• Hyper-Awareness: He describes his "Third Eye" ability as a sorta mental filter that highlights what's important for him to notice, like guards and traps, and dims down everything else.
• Implausible Deniability: Lelouch tries to deny his identity while under his Thief Suit, but he's instantly refuted by a) Nunnally stating that she wouldn't mistake her brother's voice for anyone else's, b) Sayoko took orders from "Zero", and c) Alice got the current location in the Metaverse following Lelouch.
• Incest Subtext: With Nunnally and Euphemia. Why yes, this is a Code Geass fic after all.
• Insecure Love Interest: While Lelouch is far from an insecure person, this trope gets Played With in interesting ways with each of his Love Interests as an extension of his Byronic Hero and Fatal Attractor status. To sum it up, the keyword here is guilt.
  • Kallen: Unlike canon, their Will They or Won't They? eventually ends in a Relationship Upgrade, as their relationship progressed from colleagues to friends and then to lovers in a seemingly normal way, even though her Love Confession did catch him quite by surprise. However, the dysfunctional nature of their canonical relationship wasn't entirely averted, even outdoing it in the sense that Kallen goes from a Love Martyr to a self-aware example of Property of Love as detailed in her character section below. Lelouch doesn't think himself at all deserving of such devotion and worries that if something makes him go down on a self-destructive path, he would be signing Kallen up to the same fate because, when push comes to shove, Kallen will follow him regardless consequences. There's a reason why canon Lelouch had to Break Her Heart to Save Her at an Evil Overlord scale in order to push her away, and not even then she stopped loving him.
  • Shirley: Lelouch feels responsible for all the suffering she went through due to her feelings for him, especially after Mao used her to get at him. He also feels guilty for choosing to keep Shirley in his life rather than destroying her Treasure and thus her memories of him when he got the chance, despite Shirley's reassurances that she wouldn't have it any other way. Like Kallen, she's also a Love Martyr and it's all but stated that she would have agreed to be The Mistress had he asked her to, with only the three of them starting a Polyamory making that uncomfortable fact moot.
  • Leila Breisgau: Their growing mutual attraction is something neither of them would have chosen for themselves given his already complicated love life. For his part, Lelouch seems to feel guilty because, objectively speaking, Leila's circumstances by the time he entered her life made it unfairly likely that she would develop romantic feelings for him. To wit, he's her first real friend that appeared when she needed one the most after the death of her parents, one that not only is her intellectual peer, but also a guy who is a very welcome exception from all the others that lusted after her title, money, or just herself. Lelouch may have never tried to take advantage of Leila's vulnerability, but that doesn't mean it didn't happen anyway, albeit unwittingly.
• In Spite of a Nail: Lelouch still uses "Zero" as his alias, but this time as a reference to the number associated with the Fool Arcana and the Wild Card.
• Intergenerational Friendship: With both his Confidant of the Hanged Man and Tower Arcanas — Jeremiah and Kirihara, respectively.
• It's Not You, It's My Enemies: Despite knowing Shirley is in love with him and realizing his own attraction to her, Lelouch is adamant about not entangling her too much with his life for her own safety. Both because he's a prince in hiding and the leader of the Black Knights. It's not a coincidence that Shirley is the only member of the Student Council that isn't a Confidant at first. This ends up biting him in the ass when, after undergoing a Trauma Conga Line, Shirley gains a Palace of her own due to the distance Lelouch puts between himself and her.
• I "Uh" You, Too: In a way, a Justified Trope. He doesn't quite respond to either Shirley's or Leila's Love Confession with his own despite reciprocating because he was already in a relationship and he seems to consider saying the words a betrayal in itself and thus a line he won't cross. A moot point in both cases given the outcome.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Interestingly Subverted. Lelouch has a Green-Eyed Epiphany moment in Chapter 44 that made him realize that he'd have to twist his own arm in order to let Kallen and Shirley go find a less Destructive Romance for themselves than one with him.
• Keeping the Enemy Close: Much like the game protagonist with Akechi, Ashford Academy's resident Private Detective Rolo Haliburton is a Confidant. Lelouch tries to be as much a friend as he can despite Living a Double Life, but won't hesitate to put forward valid theories about the Black Knights that subtly steer the P.I. away from the truth.
• Kleptomaniac Hero: They may call themselves "Knights" unlike the game, but Lelouch has absolutely no compunctions against stealing from Palaces. This is particularly relevant during his solo run in the Battle Arena where he gets by thanks to some healing items that he stole from them.
• The Leader: As Zero, he leads the Black Knights.
• Like Father, Like Son: According to Jeremiah Gottwald, Lelouch is a lot more similar to Charles than he cares to admit. He means it as a compliment, but Lelouch doesn't like to get compared to his father at all.
• Lovable Sex Maniac: What Sayoko thinks Lelouch is. Notably, she doesn't hold his alleged perversions and philandering against him at all, which only further annoys him.
• Love Epiphany:
  • Leila forces Lelouch to realize his feelings for Shirley. Her intent in making him admit it isn't clear, but Lelouch states it doesn't make a difference either way. He already chose Kallen and he's going to honor his promises to her.
  • He has a long time coming one in Chapter 58 when he admits to himself that he does reciprocate Leila/Bishop's feelings, but he isn't going to end his current relationship in order to pursue her. Lelouch himself noticed that's the same argument he used to try and ignore his feelings for Shirley in order to focus on his relationship with Kallen, something he failed to follow through when the girls proposed a triad instead.
• Male Gaze: His narration can get rather descriptive when looking at girls he's attracted to. Like Shirley in Cat Girl costume for one of Milly's parties in Chapter 23, or Leila sporting a Zettai Ryouiki look in her new school uniform in Chapter 58.
• Master of the Mixed Message: Defied. Lelouch tries to avoid being this once he starts to grow out of his Clueless Chick-Magnet status. Seen in the "Birthday Bash" in Chapter 43, where his narration reveals he carefully selected presents that the birthday girls would like while making sure he doesn't give them or his girlfriend the wrong idea about his intentions.
• Master of Unlocking: One of his tasks for the team. His experience picking locks in the Metaverse actually translates well to the real world, something he was counting on for the Black-Tie Infiltration, but in the end, he didn't have to resort to it.
• Meaningful Name: Zero takes on an added meaning in this story, as it is the numerical designation of the Fool Arcana.
• Mistaken for Cheating:
  • Discussed in Chapter 54. For people unaware that he's dating both Kallen and Shirley at the same time with their consent, him going out with the latter is something of a problem as everyone in Ashford Academy knows he's dating Kallen.
  • Played straighter in Chapter 59, when he had to give an explanation for Leila having a new Persona after staying over the night at his place. The problem is that Kallen of course remembered that her own Persona transfigured into its current form the very same night she and Lelouch had Their First Time and she thought the same happened with Leila. Lelouch explained that one thing isn't related to the other, and as proof, he had to very awkwardly remind Kallen that Suzuka Gozen evolved into Guren Jigoku right before they had sex.
• Mistaken for Murderer: When his sister Nunnally discovers that Lelouch is the leader of the Black Knights, she briefly thinks he's murdered Clovis and is about to kill again.
• Mistaken for Romance:
  • It's a Running Gag where people assume Lelouch and Kallen are in a relationship. This goes on to include the other girls after their Relationship Upgrade.
  • He gets an extreme example of this as Zero, whom the Black Knights' in-universe fandom thinks is dating all of his five attractive teammates at the same time.
• Mundane Utility:
  • Lelouch once enters the Metaverse just so he can summon a Persona with healing skills and avoid the hassle of walking around with a black eye.
  • He also uses areas of the Metaverse with little to no distortions to have completely private discussions with people.
• Nosebleed: When under Incubus' influence at seeing Shirley in a Cat Girl costume. Milly tries to tease him for it, but Kallen unwittingly diverts the room's attention elsewhere.
• Not So Above It All: Lelouch's usually a Celibate Hero, but he's got his limits. One time Shirley in a somewhat revealing Cat Girl costume gives him a Nosebleed while she's very close to him while doing his make-up for a cat-themed party (Milly's idea), and another time he can't help but ogle in total silence at Shadow Shirley coyly posing for him almost in the nude. And later as the group attempt to infiltrate the 5th Palace as exotic dancers (Lelouch included) he couldn't help but ogle the girls in their sexy outfits.
• Obfuscating Stupidity:
  • Once Lelouch becomes convinced that Igor is not to be trusted, he decides to play the fool he's being taken for. Not to the point of incompetence, though, just lulling Igor into thinking he's a better deceiver than he actually is.
    Tsu: So in other words, you choose to act like a spoiled brat who thinks he's smarter than everyone else because he has daddy issues.
    Lelouch: [smirks] Isn't that the same as being a normal teenager?
  • Chapter 54 confirms that Lelouch thinks he figured out who the Black Mask is, but warns his sister Nunnally how important is to keep pretending they don't suspect a thing until the moment they're ready to strike back at both the Black Mask and his employers.
• Oblivious to Love:
  • As in canon, Lelouch has a huge blind spot when it comes to girls interested in him. Kallen/Queen's Love Confession caught him completely off-guard, and while she was aware that Shirley likes him, it took him until visiting her Palace to actually realize just how deep her feelings for him really run.
  • Lelouch can, however, learn from his mistakes... with mixed results. For example, he is able to correctly realize Leila is hiding something of a crush on him, but he also seems to naively think that's only because he's, in a way, her Only Friend and that helping her to spend more time with their other friends will be enough to steer her feelings away from that direction.
  • Then there's Milly, who's had a crush on him for a long time, which everyone discovered in Chapter 69 when confronting the Shadow of Milly's mother. Admittedly, Milly never acted n her feelings because she felt it wouldn't be fair to Lelouch, so Lelouch can be somewhat forgiven for not noticing.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Lelouch's reaction in the first chronological chapter when Shadow Villetta reveals that her real self in a Britannian spy.
  • He has another during the Masquerade Ball in Chapter 56 when two Knights of the Round walk into the party because it means that his father specifically order them to attend for unknowing reasons with worrying implications.
• Old-School Chivalry: Invoked when acting in-character for the Masquerade Ball.
• The One Guy:
  • Other than Arthur, Lelouch is the only guy in the Black Knights. Given that many characters already think he's The Casanova, team gatherings out of costume after every new addition to the party make it look like he's building a harem.
  • In a bit of meta-humor, readers have noted that, with most of La Résistance out of the picture, few male characters in the story have the motivation to rebel against authority, whereas many girls have strong reasons to do so. This means that the male-to-female ratio in the party has better chances of getting even more skewed rather than less. This comes true after the fourth Palace, with a team consisting of one guy, five girls, and a talking cat.
  • The lack of guys comes to bite Lelouch and Arthur in the ass during the Boss Fight against Azazel. Clovis has such a high opinion of how attractive he is to the opposite sex that his Shadow has the power to Charm female party members and make Kallen, Milly, and Leila fight for him.
  • Finally Subverted when Li Xingke joins the team in Chapter 57.
• Only Friend: Lelouch realized that as sad as it sounds, he's Bishop's only actual friend. On top of being too smart for most people her age and wearing the mask of an aristocrat and a socialite in public, Leila and her family's secret anti-monarchical sentiments made it so she was to hide her real self from pretty much everybody outside her parents who were killed right before her introduction to the story. Once he did figure it out, however, Lelouch took action to improve her bonds to the rest of the team and not just to him. He also seems to think Leila is falling for him because he sorely lacks any other person in her life she can consider a potential romantic partner despite the fact she very well aware he's at the center of a complicated Love Triangle.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • Lelouch is usually a Celibate Hero, but the more he Defrosts, the easier it becomes for him to be Distracted by the Sexy by his girlfriend and Shirley's beauty. The latter makes him feel guilty due to all the stuff Shirley went and is going through because of her feelings for him, but when Leila starts to distract him in this manner, he considers it as a red flag.
  • Also Defied. Lelouch considers that acting too respectful of Igor is actually less prudent than being his usual overconfident rebellious self. As he explains to Tsu, while Igor may not like his attitude, that's something expected of an Insufferable Genius like him, and doing otherwise could come off as suspicious.
• Paid Harem: Some people In-Universe think Zero is living up to this villain stereotype after seeing his proclamation video in Chapter 49, one featuring him as the leader of the Black Knights and sole male in a team with five attractive young women. The opinions seem divided between the ones who think Zero is using his brainwashing powers to make them follow him, and the ones who think All Girls Want Bad Boys and that a charismatic Visionary Villain like him wouldn't have trouble attracting Dark Action Girls to himself.
• Pinky Swear: Lelouch and Nunnally swear not to lie to each other like this as in the series. Given that both break their promise almost in the same manner, they prick each other's pinkies with needles in lieu of the thousand ones they were supposed to swallow according to the Japanese version of the oath, and replace their failed Pinky Swear with a Blood Oath.
• Point of Divergence: Discussed. Lelouch wonders how his life would have been if his mother had not been murdered eight years ago. He soon arrives to the disturbing conclusion he most likely would have thrived as a royal and Social Darwinist, eventually becoming the next Charles zi Britannia by either succeeding him or overthrowing him after beating him at his own game. Needless to say, Lelouch does not like the "Black Prince" he could have been.
• The Power of Friendship: The Confidant system turns this into very literal power for Lelouch's Personas. Deconstructed by a very particular version of the Hedgehog's Dilemma: The closer Lelouch gets to people, the easier it becomes for a Byronic Hero like him to get them hurt in one way or another. But keeping his distance from people isn't really an option because it would make him weaker in the Metaverse, which could get him and his teammates killed, on top of the consequences of failing to complete their missions.
• Professional Gambler: As in canon, Lelouch gambled out of boredom and for pocket money before the story's main events unfolded. At the Masquerade Ball, he plays up this side of him because it makes for a convenient cover for his Black-Tie Infiltration.
• Properly Paranoid:
  • Lelouch fused a Persona with the "Resist Charm/Brainwash" passive skill because he correctly suspected the Ruler of a Palace themed after the Deadly Sin of Lust would have a gimmick based on it.
  • He also expected that the same Shadow would go the extra mile to harm his teammates due to Shadow Shirley's insane jealousy of his female friends so he sacrificed a Treasure Demon to unlock a party-wide defense buff ahead of time. This time, though, Shadow Shirley out-prepared him and had the Dekaja spell at her disposal.
  • He's concerned the team didn't see Mao/Medjed actually die in Shirley Fenette's Palace. It takes Lelouch like a week to stop waiting for said enemy to make a comeback. And sure enough, a worse-for-wear Mao does return as soon as he can and kidnaps Nunnally like in the series.
  • In Chapter 39, Nunnally introduces her new friend to Lelouch, a twin-tailed blonde New Transfer Student and classmate of hers in Ashford Academy Middle School Division. He immediately becomes suspicious of her. And with good reason, as Alice is a wanted Code-R escapee and partially responsible for getting Nunnally involved with the Metaverse.
  • His paranoia pays off the next chapter. Lelouch has Alice's background checked and finds out she doesn't legally exist. Jeremiah manages to track her down to the fire that killed her younger sister and allegedly Alice herself, and the two of them suspect that she's either a Dead Person Impersonator, or she or someone else is professionally Faking the Dead in her case. The following chapter confirms it's the latter.
  • He prepares a fully identity-concealing costume for the Masquerade Ball unlike the rest of the team, up to and including a full-face mask and red-colored contacts, just in the off-chance someone in attendance could recognize him as Lelouch vi Britannia despite being declared dead more than seven years ago. His precautions pay off handsomely when two people likely to recognize him show up at the party — namely Schneizel and Suzaku.
  • The moment Lelouch learns that Charles is planning on causing The End of the World as We Know It, he immediately tells the Glinda Knights the location of his father's Palace despite being a highly-guarded secret seemingly only known by his inner circle. He does it because stopping this particular enemy is far more important than who manages to do it, and in the eventuality that one of their groups is captured or killed, the other could complete the mission for the two of them.
• Publicly Discussing the Secret: Defied by the very security-conscious Lelouch. He always tries to have a conversation related to the Black Knights in the Metaverse where they can't be overheard by normal people, and even made a point of acquiring top-of-the-line encryption technology for his phone through his contacts with Jeremiah and Kirihara just to make sure the phone calls between teammates won't be tapped or tracked.
• Real Dreams are Weirder: As a Running Gag. When Lelouch isn't entering the Velvet Room in his dreams, he's having one of these. For example, one of his dreams involves Sayoko setting him up on 108 dates, others involve the Team Pet demanding that he should go to sleep or suddenly becoming human and asking the other cat-themed team member out. The strangest by far has Suzaku declare he's going to pleasure himself with a fish.
• Relationship Upgrade: With Kallen/Queen during her Rank Max Confidant event in Chapter 28. Followed by getting together with Shirley and Leila in Chapters 51 and 61, respectively.
• Rookie Red Ranger: Lelouch when he teams up with Arthur and Kallen at the beginning of the story, who quickly realize that while Kallen is the most powerful Persona User of the three, Lelouch is the one with the head for tactics and infiltration.
• Rousing Speech: He gives one to the team in Chapter 59, remembering what's at stake if they change Gao Hai's heart, in order to motivate them to get their Heroic Second Wind for the final stage of the Marathon Boss. The Palace Ruler mocks him for his "pretty speech", but doesn't get to mock him for long.
• Science Hero: There's a notable moment in Chapter 59 where he defeats the Palace Ruler's Zerg Rush tactics with high school-level physics. He took notice of the mountainous piles of gold surrounding them and remembered that the precious metal is both very dense and has a relatively low melting point. Thus, he ordered the team to attack the base of a large column of wealth with Fire- and Nuke-type skills to soften up its base and weaken its structural integrity, while the rest aimed their physical skills at the top in order to induce as much torque as possible, i.e. better leverage to make the whole thing collapse on top of most of the terracotta soldiers in "quite possibly the most expensive avalanche ever".
• Secret Relationship: He ends up in a Polyorous one with Kalle, Shirley, and Leila - while everyone at Ashford is aware that he is in a relationship with Kallen, he keeps the other two secret for personal and pragmatic reasons, with only the Phantom Thieves and some of his Confidants knowing the truth. Eventually, the rest of the school finds out about him dating Shirley and Kallen simultaneously due to an accidental meeting with the uninformed members of the student council, but he still has to be secret about dating Leila because her being a member of the nobility would likely set off alarm bells.
• Selective Obliviousness: Lelouch's narration shows that he pointedly refuses to believe the girl in front of him in Chapter 41 is Nunnally in a Thief Suit. It takes him perhaps a minute to finally accept the reality of the situation.
• She Is Not My Girlfriend: It's almost a Running Gag that Lelouch and Kallen have to explain that no, they aren't an item. That is, until they become one.
• Shipper on Deck: Not Lelouch himself, but his Personas tend to be this about him and the Confidant matching their Arcana. This is especially true for Mermaid who's a shameless Lelouch×Shirley supporter, but even Isis won't let him forget Leila is also interested in him.
• Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: With Incubus, one of his Personas, who embodies his usually well-suppressed libido and encouraged to take advantage of Shirley's massive crush on him that way. Lelouch fuses him away for that very reason.
• Small Steps Hero:
  • For a long while, the scale of Lelouch's revolution is a lot smaller than in the anime as a result of being granted a very different supernatural power than his signature Hypnotic Eyes. On the other hand, his Black Knights can now have Thou Shalt Not Kill as one of their tenets, which they've managed to do so far despite people believing they're behind the mental shutdown murders.
  • Subverted by the 5th Palace, where he targets a foreign ambassador in order to prevent Schneizel's subtle takeover of the Chinese Federation via Altar Diplomacy. Lelouch estimates that an alliance like that between two of the three global superpowers will end up with Britannia Taking Over The World in a matter of decades.
• The Strategist: As in canon, but being a Wild Card wielder makes Lelouch more of a Frontline General.
• Talking to Themself: A variant. Lelouch interacts with his Personas as they were voices in his head with their own distinct personalities. He is, however, well aware they're only manifestations of his own subconscious and not more real than characters in a dream (and so they are for that matter), but he's learned to consider their opinions as valid expressions of his suppressed thoughts and desires — even though he's annoyed that Personas like Incubus and Lilim tend to agree he isn't getting laid as often as he could or should.
• Tempting Fate: Just before the Black-Tie Infiltration he remarks to Mrs. Stadtfeld that once they're in the doors there will be no further problems. He is so very, very wrong.
• Think Unsexy Thoughts:
  • In the Beach Episode, Lelouch makes sure to apply suntan lotion to the girls' backs as quickly and to the point as possible "to avoid any accusations of behaving in an untoward manner".
  • Again in Chapter 50, when he notices how attractive the girls are dressed as dancers for a Distracted by the Sexy Batman Gambit in the 5th Palace.
• Unspoken Plan Guarantee: Almost to the point of Lampshade Hanging. The Black Knights have gotten very used to his tendency to spring strange yet very effective plans on them with little to no warning, either because he needed to keep it a secret for some reason, or because he came up with it two seconds ago. It gets to the point that, by the Fifth Palace's Boss Battle, they barely even blink to ridiculous-sounding orders amounting to "Fastball Special this small and under-leveled Persona of mine with yours at that huge Cognitive being serving as The Dragon" before promptly complying.
• Urban Legend Love Life: It's practically an established fact in Ashford Academy that Lelouch can and will get any and every girl he wants and the only thing keeping him from Really Getting Around is because he's highly selective about his partners, only targeting the best among The Beautiful Elite like Milly, Kallen, and Shirley. It gets to the point that when a high-ranking and beautiful young noblewoman transferred into Ashford Academy — namely Leila Breisgau — she got concerned warnings on her very first day at school that Lelouch could go after her next. Leila readily admitting they have been introduced to each other already likely only increased his street cred as The Casanova even further.
• Vicariously Ambitious: Lelouch reveals to Kallen that his ultimate endgame is to try to put Euphemia on the throne, after they change the Emperor's heart, as she can be trusted to change Britannia in the ways they like, and he doesn't want himself or Nunnally to return to court. Kallen points out that as Euphie is a Black Knight, Lelouch is still the leader, and thus would ultimately still be in charge of everything.
• You Do NOT Want To Know: He says this to himself in Chapter 54 when a blushing Nunnally asks him if he really wants to know what it gets said between her and her Shadow Self. Especially because she could ask him back what his Personas talk to him about, which would include Lilim giving him an Erotic Dream and that's NOT a conversation he wants to have with his little sister.
• Your Approval Fills Me with Shame:
  • Sayoko is way too understanding of each and all the perversions that Lelouch doesn't have. It's not certain whether she really thinks her master is a very kinky womanizer and she's fine with it, or she just really likes to mess with his head by making him believe she isn't buying a word he says when he tries to explain to her otherwise. Amusingly enough, the former seems to be the correct interpretation.
  • Similarly, Jeremiah Gottwald sees Lelouch's Chick Magnet status as a natural consequence of his mother's charisma and his father's... prowess. He means it as a compliment, but for Lelouch getting compared to his Archnemesis Dad in any context feels like a slap in the face.
  • During the Accidental Pervert moment in the Hot Springs Episode, Lelouch doesn't miss how Sayoko looks faintly amused rather than outraged like the rest of the girls.

Queen

Kallen Stadfelt/Kallen Kouzuki/Queen

Arcana: VII. The Chariot
Persona: Suzuka Gozen, Guren Jigoku

The Ace of the Black Knights. The daughter of a Britannian noble and a Japanese woman, she initially served as a resistance fighter/terrorist before discovering (through her late brother) the Metaverse.

---

• The Ace: She's the tip of the team's spear just like in canon. Her Persona is the strongest stat-wise, and its skillset is geared for dishing out lots of damage and tanking just as much, but it comes at cost of lacking versatility.
  • Chapter 66 also showcases that, despite the lack of Knightmare battles in this story, she is still easily one of the best pilots in the world.
• Ace Custom: Kallen, naturally, has her Cognitive Burai painted all red.
• Anger Born of Worry: Often because of Lelouch. For example, when he goes to check the security level of the fourth Palace alone, or after the events of Chapter 41:
  Kallen: I swear, Zero if you keep going off by yourself like that, I'm so going to murder you myself to save our enemies the trouble!
• Attack! Attack! Attack!: Kallen's Persona (and personality for that matter) is geared for this. Tough and possessing strong physical and nuke-type attacks, however, she lacks healing spells or any support skills other than an attack buff.
• Bastard Angst: She's the illegitimate daughter of a Britannian Noble and a Japanese woman, who was adopted into her father's family after his legal wife was found to be barren. Said legal wife acts monstrous toward Kallen and her mother.
• Battle Couple: With Lelouch/Zero after the Relationship Upgrade.
• Betty and Veronica: Played With a bit because Kallen pretends to be a shy ill girl at school, making her look like the "Betty" to Shirley's "Veronica", but the opposite is closer to the truth.
• The Big Guy: Her role in the team. Her Persona is tough and hits hard, but lacks any support skills other than an attack buff. Lelouch and Arthur estimate that she could easily take the two of them on at once, despite not having an elemental advantage against either of them, at least until the former gets a real handle on the power of the Wild Card. Later on her Persona evolves into a more powerful form that makes Kallen even more of The Big Guy of the team.
• Bodyguard Babes: Self-Invoked. Kallen is fiercely protective of Zero in battle under the excuse his role as The Leader/The Strategist and his versatile Wild Card powers make him less expendable than her, but the Violently Protective Girlfriend trope seems like a more likely explanation. It says a lot that later on she implicitly shares the position with Shirley.
• Clingy Jealous Girl:
  • About Lelouch, but she will deny it if asked. She becomes quite territorial after their Relationship Upgrade, but considering that he's a Clueless Chick-Magnet and the fact that most of his female acquaintances are into him to a greater or lesser extent, her jealousy is not unjustified.
  • Also Invoked by Tsu, who enjoys provoking Kallen with Exact Words about her (actually platonic) relationship with Lelouch just to get a reaction out of the Fiery Redheaded Tsundere.
  • Shadow Shirley is a constant strain on Kallen's nerves because she has no hesitation whatsoever in acting on her attraction to Lelouch, up to and including presenting herself all but naked in front of him. Shirley's Palace in itself drains Kallen's small pool of self-control dry, which also makes her disgusted with herself for reacting like a violent Clingy Jealous Girl would.
  • Kallen also complains when Shirley speaks without thinking and says Lelouch should apply suntan lotion to all the girls during the Beach Episode.
  • In Chapter 57, Kallen inserted herself into Lelouch's plan to lure two random party-goers attending the Masquerade Ball into Gao Hai's office as part of a larger plan to change their current target's Cognition, apparently just because the two of them happened to be two very attractive young women. Lelouch rolled with it because Kallen's presence and behavior served to allay the girls' suspicion he was hitting on one of them.
• Composite Character: Relative to Persona 5, although mostly gameplay-wise. Kallen combines Ryuji's Arcana and skillset, but with Makoto's codename, elemental type, anger issues, and her Persona looks quite mechanical compared to the rest.
• The Conscience: Lelouch admits to Kallen that he counts on her the most in the team to stand up to him if he ever loses his way and "becomes the very thing he set out to oppose". Immediately subverted by her, who recently reached the twisted epiphany of knowing herself willing to walk right beside him even if she knows he's leading them to hell itself and implying that he needs to be his own conscience if he doesn't want that to happen.
• Costume Porn: She wears an elaborated hair dec for the Black-Tie Infiltration at the Masquerade Ball, described as "a hair ornament that was made to look like three tiny roses with pink and gold ribbons flowing out from them."
• Dark Mistress: Discussed. The events of the 4th Palace taught Kallen the Awful Truth that if Lelouch ever breaks bad, she is going to be right by his side every step of the way down to hell, no ifs or buts about it. It says a lot that Kallen thinks her best chance to Defy this is warning Lelouch she's a Love Martyr because in her heart of hearts she knows she's never going to willingly leave him.
• Deus Sex Machina: Discussed for laughs. After seeing Kallen's evolved Persona, Milly teasingly asks her if she unlocked that sort of power by having sex with Lelouch. This is actually sort of Inverted. Kallen's Second Awakening actually took place right before Their First Time, implying that the sense of self-realization she got from it is the reason why she felt confident enough to proposition her boyfriend for the first time.
• Electric Torture: In Chapter 59, her Persona is snared by an enemy's electrified cables, inflicting pain on her via Synchronization.
• Experienced Protagonist: Has been to the Metaverse before, but doesn't manage to awaken her Persona before meeting Lelouch much like Haru in the game.
• Fantastic Racism: Despite spending plenty of time with the rest of the Black Knights, Kallen still hasn't quite got over her own issues with Britannians, and is rather cold toward Euphie when the latter ends up tagging along with them into the Black King's Palace. The rest of the Knights call her out on this.
• Fiery Redhead: It's Kallen, what'd you expect?
• Finishing Each Other's Sentences: With Shirley/Dame of all people, due to how they tend to get angry at the same thing. Namely, Lelouch stirring up their Violently Protective Girlfriend side. Lampshaded, of course.
  Leila: A merging of opposites into a new and harmonious whole.
• First Girl After All: It turns out she and Lelouch had a Meet Cute as kids and completely forgot about it. Once they realize this, they resolve to not let their friends find out because they would never hear the end of it. It's Played With a bit in that Kallen is the first female to join the party, meaning she already had a good claim to the title of "the first girl", but Lelouch already was friends with Milly and Shirley.
• Forgotten First Meeting: She and Lelouch meet as kids and forgot about it according to the (untranslated) Red Tracks light novel. Unlike canon where they never realized this, the Student Council's summer trip incidentally refreshes Kallen's memories when the gang makes a stop in Izu.
• Friendly Rivalry: With Shirley, after they work out some of their issues resulting from their Love Triangle with Lelouch.
• Had to Be Sharp: Her stepmother guesses that Kallen got into martial arts out of necessity because visiting the ghettos looking like an increasingly attractive Britannian-looking young woman was bound to get her mugged or worse someday.
• Hypocritical Humor: Kallen qualifies the Technical Damage from Psi attacks on a charmed Shadow as "brutal". She gets immediately called out on it because her trademark fighting style based on hitting and then blasting nuke-type attacks on a Shadow at point-blank isn't in any way gentler.
• I'm Standing Right Here: Her reaction when Rivalz clues him in on a pretty girl apparently checking him out. The girl is Tsu, one of his Wardens from the Velvet Room, and Lelouch silently snarks she's more like glowering at him instead.
• Internal Reveal: She learns Lelouch is a prince in Chapter 8. She's told about the Velvet Room in Chapter 47 after meeting Shi and Tsu, and about Igor (and his ties to her brother) and Ragnarök in Chapter 63.
• Lessons in Sophistication: Her stepmother tried to have Kallen trained in proper Britannian etiquette as the sole daughter and heir to Earl Stadfelt whenever she was at the manor, but she responded by training martial arts in her room and of course sneaking out more.
• Like Mother, Like Daughter: Kallen realizes that she has even less of a reason to criticize her mother's life choices given that she also ends up falling in love with a Britannian noble — a prince, on top of that. Chapter 39 takes a dark spin on it, with Kallen pretty much claiming that both she and her mother are easily enslaved by their love regardless if they become bad people, just as long as they can by their loved ones' side. She even darkly jokes that given how her mother became her ex-husband's literal servant, paychecks and all, calling herself Lelouch's "slave" just seemed fitting.
• Living a Double Life: She has to put on an act of being sickly at school, in contrast to her significantly more daring true self.
• Love Martyr: Kallen bitterly realizes that she herself is one after recognizing too much of herself in Shadow Shirley. She even proceeds to prove it by rejecting Lelouch's offer to giving themselves some time apart or even breaking up despite knowing that the fact he reciprocates Shirley's feelings is bound to make things painful for her once the other girl joins the team, if not outright leading to a Destructive Romance.
• Mistaken for Romance: It's a Running Gag where people assume Lelouch and Kallen are in a relationship. That is until they do get together in Chapter 28.
• Not So Above It All: When the girls (and Lelouch) have to disguise in Fanservicey dancer outfits, Kallen is less than amused. However, when she notices the looks Lelouch is giving her in her costume, she tries (and fails) to fight down a triumphant smirk.
• "Not So Different" Remark:
  • Kallen gets called out by her stepmother's Shadow, who says that the way Kallen treats her mother is not much better than her own treatment.
  • In chapter 39, Kallen realizes this about her and her mother. How both have been enslaved by their romantic feelings for their significant other.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Increasingly Subverted. The more members of the Student Council get to know Kallen's real personality, the harder it is for her to keep her ill girl Ojou act around the rest.
• Old Shame: She sees the time she held a knife at Lelouch as this later on as a result of falling for him really hard, outright saying it would have destroyed her.
• Please, Don't Leave Me: A major fear of hers, especially after realizing how much she takes after her mother who never really moved on after her husband abandoned her. It's hinted that one of the reasons why Kallen agreed to share Lelouch with Shirley is because the constant fear of him leaving her for Shirley, who undoubtedly would have accepted him in a heartbeat, was really getting to her.
• Power Dyes Your Hair: Downplayed with Kallen, whose hairstyle changes to her iconic spiky look when her Thief Suit materializes itself.
• The Power of Love: Deconstructed. At the beginning of the story, Kallen had secretly decided to die a death worthy of her brother's fighting Britannia despite knowing how little she was likely to accomplish for the cause until then. Lelouch providing her with an actual way to change society and her own ever-growing romantic feelings for him pulls her out of that self-destructive path. Months later, however, Shirley's Palace incidentally shows her the Awful Truth of how exactly this happened. Unbeknownst to Kallen, her love for Lelouch slowly but surely upends her priorities in life. That is, while her drive to free Japan from Britannian rule and avenge her brother are still there, they became secondary to her desire to remain by his side, now understood within the context of her relationship with him rather than directing her decisions like before. Worse, Kallen recognizes much of herself in Shadow Shirley, making her realize that if she's ever given a Sadistic Choice between Japan and Lelouch, she is going to pick him. This is actually very similar to her canonical self's Character Development, but lacking a Lelouch with a Guilt Complex willing to Break Her Heart to Save Her from his own self-destructive path, Kallen has little choice but to follow him anywhere regardless of consequences and she knows it.
• Property of Love: In a bittersweet, self-aware example. She realizes thanks to Shadow Shirley that her love for Lelouch makes her feel "no better than a slave to him" in this manner, which is a damn bitter pill to swallow for both herself and him. His first reaction after realizing she's serious about this is giving her an amiable (if privately reluctant) out of their relationship, which prompts Kallen to pretty much say he's missing the point: she's not going to leave him even in cases where she knows for a fact doing so is objectively better for her.
• Really Moves Around: Played for Drama in Kallen's backstory. In the time leading to and after the invasion of Japan, the widespread hate against everything Britannian made Kallen's mother the target of public scorn and Slut-Shaming just because she had a daughter with a Britannian man, something that Kallen's foreign looks made all too obvious, prompting them and Naoto to constantly move out.
• Sensual Spandex: Her Thief outfit is the pilot suit she wore in the first season with a crimson-lotus mask, and is certainly form-fitting enough for Lelouch to immediately notice her figure.
• She Cleans Up Nicely: Lelouch is used to seeing Kallen in either her school uniform, her Thief Suit, or dressed inconspicuously in pragmatic clothes, so the sight of her in an elaborate party dress for their Black-Tie Infiltration gives him quite a pause, to the point he has to fight down a Luminescent Blush.
• Ship Tease: To a higher degree than in canon with Lelouch — amongst other things, he is there to comfort her after she has to take her mother to the hospital to save her from a refrain overdose. In Chapter 28, she gives him a Love Confession and is implied to have had sex with him.
• Skewed Priorities: While ruminating on her life with the Black Knights the night before she and the Glinda Knights attack the Psience research base, she notes on how all the escalating threats have intruded on her time with Lelouch, and vows to eliminate them all so that they can properly focus on their love life.
• That Came Out Wrong: When Lelouch visits the Stadtfeld Manor instead of Milly, Kallen opts for receiving him in her room for privacy. Only after the words have left her mouth does she realize how that sounded.
• Violently Protective Girlfriend: To Lelouch, although she would complain He Is Not My Boyfriend if asked. At least until their Relationship Upgrade in Chapter 28.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Lelouch calls out Kallen for letting her home situation fester for no good reason other than Pride. He also points out the Hypocrisy in allowing her birth mother-turned-servant to be maligned and abused by her stepmother, even belittling her herself, despite normally condemning any kind of discrimination against Japanese people.
• Wild Card Excuse: Kallen excuses her displays of martial skill in her ill girl Ojou public persona as a result of an adrenaline rush. Played With in that it gets less and less convincing as time goes.
• You Remind Me of X: In praising Kallen, Lelouch compares her to his mother, Marianne the Flash, and says she best represents the former Knight of Six's legacy in both skill with a Knightmare and spirit. When Nemo starts pointing out Marianne's darker traits to Lelouch, though, he begins having second thoughts about this comparison.

Tama

Arthur/Tama

Arcana: I. The Magician
Persona: Master Cat

The Team Pet of the Black Knights. A former stray cat who gained sentience after following Kallen's brother into the Metaverse.

---

• Ascended Extra: He gets one of the best upgrades in the story, going from the student council's mascot in canon to this continuity's equivalent of Morgana.
• Cuteness Proximity: The cause of it for Nunnally and her friends.
• Embarrassing Nickname: He wanted a better Code Name than "Tama" — a generic name for a cat in Japanese.
• From Stray to Pet: Naoto used to give him food when he was a stray and one day he followed him into the Metaverse, which turned him into an Uplifted Animal. Then Kallen took care of him after her brother's passing, but nowadays Arthur mostly hangs out around the Clubhouse.
• Mentor Mascot: Discussed. In Chapter 54, Nunnally/Nemo compares him to a Magical Girl's Mentor Mascot and comments the two of them would have played the genre completely straight had he partner up with her instead of Lelouch.
• The Reliable One: Level-headed on the job and enemies tend to ignore him until it's too late, which allows him to shift from support to offensive and back unencumbered.
• Street Smart: Comes with the territory as a former stray cat.
• Uplifted Animal: Arthur's backstory. He was originally a stray cat who Naoto fed; eventually, he accidentally followed him into the Metaverse and gained the ability to use the power of Persona.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Lelouch reassures Tama that being a cat is an asset for the team rather than the liability the latter thinks that it is. After all, he can easily spy on people without raising any suspicion even when spotted, and many a Shadow has made the mistake of losing sight of him until he hits them when they're least expecting it.

Diamond

Milly Ashford/Diamond

Arcana: X. Wheel of Fortune
Persona: Medea, Hecate

The Student Council President of Ashford Academy, and the daughter of former nobles loyal to Empress Marianne. The last member to join the Black Knights during the first Palace job.

---

• Absurdly Powerful Student Council: Subverted. In this story, Milly can't get away with nearly as much stuff as her canonical self due to Coach Villetta and the SSDF. Things go slowly back to normal after they are defeated.
• Adaptational Badass: She ends up becoming a member of the Phantom Thieves in this universe, with her combat role being comparable to Ann/Panther.
• Ambiguously Bi:
  • Milly is a bit too skilled at seducing the Cognition of a girl who the Palace's Ruler believes has a crush on the blonde.
  • When Kallen complains about potential Outdoor Bath Peeping in the Hot Springs Episode, Leila gives Milly a sidelong glance and quips she "wouldn't worry so much about peeping Toms." Milly immediately objects the remark.
• Ascended Extra: Milly gets for once involved in the main plot of the story as early as the first Palace and on.
• Batman Gambit: Deserves kudos for being able to pull one on Lelouch of all people, even though it was in a relatively minor matter. In Chapter 51, she assigns the same task to Kallen, Shirley, and Lelouch because she knows that the two redheads wanted to talk something important with him, and then she simply listened in from the other side of the door and waited for it to happen. She soon hits the jackpot when the girls propose a threesome to Lelouch's cautious agreement. He then tries to keep the whole thing under wraps for the moment to avoid complications, but she takes that as her cue to announce herself to them.
• Better as Friends: The end result for her crush on Lelouch, as he just couldn't see her as a potential love interest.
• Composite Character: Relative to Persona 5. Milly incidentally combines Makoto's position as the Student Council President, Haru's Arranged Marriage problems, Ann's role as the resident Heroic Seductress (although not nearly as unwillingly) as well as her skill set and similar Evolved Persona, and Ryuji's role as the loud blonde who inadvertently exposed the group to a future teammate by announcing their name.
• Cool Big Sis: To both Ashford Academy's Student Council and the Black Knights. Gone Horribly Right in Lelouch's case, who can't stop seeing her as an older sister figure after discovering that she's been in love with him for years in Chapter 69, and officially turns her down in Chapter 71.
• Cosplay Otaku Girl:
  • Loves to don a costume just like in canon. Even her Thief Suit is based on a Cat Girl outfit of hers.
  • This trait of hers is conspicuously absent during the Masquerade Ball. Lelouch guesses that her parents must have insisted on her wearing a cocktail dress instead of one of her signature wacky costumes.
• Damned by Faint Praise: Dame low-key disses Diamond's Thief Suit — basically a Playboy Bunny outfit with a cat theme instead — when the latter tries to hype it as "just the sort of thing a classy cat burglar would wear in a movie."
• Deadly Prank: Downplayed. In the Hot Springs Episode, Milly orchestrates an Accidental Pervert moment by setting up the guys to get walked in by the girls. Being the Shameless Fanservice Girl that she is, Milly was only aiming for a funny off-color anecdote to look back at fondly in the future, but the other girls don't find it funny at all and the whole thing almost comes down to blows until she confesses.
• Even the Girls Want Her: She's popular with both guys, as it's so obviously the case with Rivalz, and girls according to Shirley's suspicions that her dormmate Sophie Wood may have a crush on the Student Council President. Regardless of whether Shirley actually had it right about the latter or not, her Cognition of Sophie in her Palace definitively is into Milly, something the Black Knights take advantage of to make the Cognition open the door of their shared dorm room in Shirley's Palace.
• Exact Eavesdropping: Invoked via Batman Gambit. Milly assigns Kallen, Shirley, and Lelouch to the same task for the student council because she knew that the girls wanted to talk about something important with him, and then she just waited in hiding until it happened.
• Flaw Exploitation: Self-Invoked. Everybody in the student council knows how random their president's proposed activities are, so no one bats an eye when she suggests a Scavenger Hunt for them to play in pairs during the Camping Episode. In reality, this is just a ruse to team up the members of the council that aren't in the Black Knights together and keep them busy while the rest sneaks into the Metaverse unnoticed.
• Genre Savvy: Milly assumes that there should be something hidden in the library of Villetta's Palace because that's just how things go in stories about castles or large mansions. Probably because the Metaverse runs on people's cognitions, she's proven right when they unlock a Bookcase Passage.
• Heroic Seductress: She only has the looks and personality for it, but her Persona knows the Marin Karin skill too.
• High-Class Gloves: She wears "opera gloves" for the Masquerade Ball.
• Large Ham: To a point, all Persona users are this in the Metaverse, but Milly really takes the cake, like when she pulls a Dominatrix act to match her Persona learning the Marin Karin spell.
• Lovable Sex Maniac: Milly gets a lot more chances to indulge in her trademark Dirty Old Man humor in the Metaverse.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Milly is The Tease and a Loveable Sex Maniac, but when Shirley and Lelouch have their final Relationship Upgrade in Chapter 79, she decides to Leave the Two Lovebirds Alone with only a parting smile. Given that she's had to put up with Lelouch ignoring Shirley's feelings for years and had to spend weeks watching Lelouch deliberately push Shirley away in a misguided attempt to save her (while in turn sacrificing her own feelings for him for the orangette's sake), she clearly overjoyed that they finally became a full couple and wants them to enjoy some privacy
• Shameless Fanservice Girl: Diamond's thief suit leaves little to the imagination and she rolls with it with gusto.
• Spy Catsuit: Milly's thief suit is a more Stripperiffic version of this, with emphasis on "Cat".
• The Tease: Milly is an even worse case than in canon who takes full advantage of her Stripperiffic thief suit. Milly starts to get disapproving looks to outright glares from Kallen and Shirley for teasing Lelouch after the point the redheads sorted out their feelings for him.
• Truer to the Text: Hecate resembles her more classical triple bodied self rather than going with Ann's Hecate or the various incarnations of her within the MegaTen franchise. Word of God also mentions her being the Goddess of Crossroads is a natural fit for the Fortune Arcana.
• Wardrobe Malfunction: Discussed. Lelouch observes that her dress for the Masquerade Ball is clearly tailored to flatter her Impossible Hourglass Figure and just "one move away from having a major wardrobe malfunction". This and the fact she uncharacteristically forwent the chance to wear a funny costume instead makes him think that the outfit wasn't really of her own choice.
• You Didn't Ask: Milly is an unintentional example. Nunnally asked her to pull some strings to get Alice a place in Ashford Academy, but Milly never commented on it to Lelouch because she assumed he already knew.

Later Members (Spoilers)

Bishop

Leila Breisgau/Bishop

Arcana: II. The Priestess
Persona: Joan of Arc, Freyja

The daughter of deceased nobles, and the fiancée of Viceroy Clovis. She secretly continues her parents' work as a spy for the European Union.

---

• Adaptational Backstory Change: In canon, Leila's family defect from Britannia to Europia United, and eventually severed ties with Britannia altogether. Here, while they still changed sides, they elected to stay in Britannia to be moles for the E.U., at least until they were caught and killed by the Black Mask on Clovis' orders. It's implied that they somehow came across information about Britannia's Cognitive Psience research and considered keeping tabs on it more important than their plans to defect. It's unknown if this has anything to do with Leila's potential as a Persona User or her having access to the Metanav.
• Alcohol-Induced Idiocy: Subverted. Lelouch observes that while Leila has zero tolerance to alcohol, she's at least the good-natured kind of drunk that finds everything funny before soon passing out, meaning no problematic drunken shenanigans to worry about. That is, until she wakes up in the middle of the night and drunkenly acts on her attraction to Lelouch by making a beeline to his bed.
• Anchored Ship: With Lelouch. She accidentally reveals her feelings when she doesn't correct her butler when he calls him her boyfriend. Lelouch, unusually oversensitive to this kind of thing after the debacle with Shirley's Palace, immediately asks Leila point-blank if she is romantically interested in him. Her blush and pained tone of voice give her away, so Leila instead assures him that she has no intention of getting in the way of his relationship with Kallen, or making the issues with Shirley more complicated. This counts more as an example of Anchored Ship rather than Ship Sinking because — either due to his romantic inexperience, subconscious attraction, or to spare her an open rejection — Lelouch neglects to properly turn Leila down and instead just accepts her Better as Friends offer.
• Benevolent Boss: Deconstructed. Her parents aimed to be this as much as they could to their Japanese employees while running their several businesses in Area 11, but they had to be careful to not look as "Eleven" sympathizers to the rest of the nobility. Leila wants to continue where they left off, but just keeping other board members from undoing her parents' efforts is the best she can do for now.
• Better as Friends: Leila suggested this after Lelouch figures out she was crushing on him in Chapter 40, knowing that Lelouch already had a girlfriend. Given their mutual attraction, it didn't last.
• Big Fancy House: The Breisgau Manor is basically a small castle modeled after the Breisgau Family's ancestral home in the eponymous region of real-world Germany — Castle Weisswolf. This is actually an Invoked Trope, as the façade of opulence and extravagant spending helped the Breisgaus to achieve their actual goals.
• Cannot Spit It Out: Justified. She has very good reasons to not let Lelouch know she was romantically interested in him, starting by the fact she's very well aware he's dating someone else and at the center of a Love Triangle with Kallen and Shirley. Subverted when the Clueless Chick-Magnet tried to be less Oblivious to Love and ended up giving her an Armor-Piercing Question that prompted her to admit to her feelings for him, which of course made everything more complicated.
• Canon Immigrant: Leila originated from the movie Spin-Off/Interquel Code Geass: Akito the Exiled. Over there, she was named Leila Malcal, while Leila Breisgau was her birth name; in this continuity, her parents didn't openly defect to the EU, so she was never adopted by the Malcal family.
• Can't Hold Her Liquor: Her Student Council welcoming party reveals that a mere sip of wine is enough to get her tipsy, and a glass is enough for her to pass out drunk.
• Chekhov's Gun: She gets a naginata in the Third Palace, but barely uses it because her Persona is geared as a Sensor Character and a Psy-attacks spell slinger. It wouldn't be until two Story Arcs later that she would use the weapon to try to release Kallen's Guren from the Cognitive Shen Lu's electrified Slash Harkens.
• The Chosen One: Subverted. Igor wanted Leila to be the Trickster meant to stop Ragnarök, but her Persona powers didn't develop as he expected, forcing him to look for an alternative or three.]]
• Composite Character: Relative to Persona 5. She has Ann's problems as the target of the unwanted attention of an older man she can't openly reject due to external factors, joins the team seeking to avenge her parents' not-so-accidental death similarly to Futaba, suddenly becomes a majority stockholder of a seizable corporation by inheritance despite being still in high school like Haru, and she's the book-smart girl of the group, de facto Number Two, and likes Cool Bikes just like Makoto.
• Compressed Hair: It's a wonder how she manages to tuck her voluminous hair into her motorcycle merely by tying it up with a pink scarf.
• Conspicuous Consumption: Leila's parents resorted to this to better fit in with the rest of Britannian nobility in order to facilitate their activities as spies for the EU. For example, the family estate is a Big Fancy House that it's more like a small castle than a big mansion, including a Cool Garage hosting her father's car collection. Leila herself follows in his footsteps by owning a high-end Cool Bike that she mostly uses as stress relief.
• Cool Bike: Hers◊ looks like a motorcycle manufacturer tried to build Shotaro Kaneda's bike with KMF technology, including state-of-the-art steering and balance systems to make it possible for normal people to tame a beast like that. Leila rides it as stress relief and Lelouch guesses the Kallen would love riding on it too as it's even painted in her favorite red.
• Cool Garage: Her Big Fancy House includes one hosting her father's car collection.
• Coordinated Clothes: With Shirley, her plus-one at the Masquerade Ball. To wit, Leila wears a winged black butterfly-themed costume, matching/contrasting Shirley's gold-and-emerald fairy queen getup with dragonfly wings.
• Cunning Linguist: She's a Britannian and French native speaker, fluent in German and Japanese, conversationally fluent in Mandarin, and knows Latin, some Greek, and how to read a bit in odd languages like ancient Hebrew from her personal studies.
• Didn't Think This Through: In her desperation to save Kallen in Chapter 59, she tries to cut the cables restraining her teammate's Persona while overestimating what electric insulation her naginata was likely to offer her. Subverted thanks to Lelouch who figures out what Leila's trying to do and the high probability of an electric arc hitting her regardless of her weapon's wooden shaft, or that the shaft itself may explode into sharp splinters in her hands just like it can happen to trees and telephone poles during a thunderstorm, so he summons a Persona that is both small and resistant to Zio-type attacks (Neko Shogun) and makes it hit the live wire Leila was about to cut with one of his knives in order to force the current into his Persona (and himself by Synchronization) instead to a mostly harmless effect.
• Drives Like Crazy: Downplayed. She's a responsible driver most of the time, but if she finds herself on an empty highway while riding her very fast Cool Bike, well, what's the harm?
• Dumb Blonde: Inverted. She's blonde and by far the most brainy girl in the Black Knights.
• Everything Sounds Sexier in French:
  • Discussed. Bishop can talk in a very convincing French accent because her parents were fully bilingual and raised her to be so as well. Diamond naturally clues her in on this trope right away.
    Diamond: Say, [Bishop]. I bet if you sprinkled some French or even just the accent into your everyday speech, the guys would be all over you! Of course, Queen and our newest member might not like it if you started putting the moves on our leader.
  • Invoked in Chapter 50. She deliberately plays up her accent as part of a larger Distracted by the Sexy plan to gain access to the 5th Palace.
  • Lelouch, in particular, thinks so, or at least his subconscious and Lilim do based on the Erotic Dream his Persona gives him in Chapter 51.
• Fangirl: Cognitive Leila Breisgau in Clovis' Palace. Queen makes a point of destroying the double at the start of the Boss Fight simply because the sycophant annoyed her that much.
• Fell Asleep Crying: In Chapter 58, when she finally lets herself openly grieve over the death of her parents.
• Femme Fatale: Downplayed. Leila allows Prince Clovis to think she is interested in him because she (correctly) suspects he ordered her parents' murder and needs to be close to him to have a chance of proving it, but she doesn't play the seductress role to get it done.
• First-Name Basis: Invoked. Predicting that her classmates wouldn't be sure how to address her given that she's a student and of a higher station as a Countess with a substantive title, Leila explicitly gave them and the teachers permission to forgo formalities.
• Genre Savvy: Lelouch finds her knowledge of mysticism and other esoterica useful for the team's supernatural adventures, especially because he never learned much on the subject himself as he deemed it irrelevant to his goals before becoming a Persona user. With her help, Lelouch even discovers the name of a certain important figure in Gnosticism way ahead Persona 5 canonical events.
• Grade-School C.E.O.: Much like Haru in Persona 5, Leila becomes the majority shareholder of a large corporation by inheritance following the death of her parents. A Deconstructed Trope in the sense she can't oversee the day-to-day operations despite being remarkably competent for her age because she's still a high school sophomore and an active member of the Black Knights, and mostly uses her influence to prevent other board members from undoing her parents' efforts to give their Japanese workers a fair treatment and become just like any other Britannian company in Area 11.
• Hangover Sensitivity: DownplayedTrope. Leila Can't Hold Her Liquor, but that also means that she doesn't get to drink much before passing out, and thus it doesn't take her body long to metabolize away the harmful byproducts. Dehydration is still an issue, though, so she wakes up the next morning with a very parched throat.
• Hot Gypsy Woman: Her Thief Suit's motif. She goes for a more Fanservicey version of it as a Distracted by the Sexy infiltration plan in the 5th Palace.
• I Don't Want to Ruin Our Friendship:
  • On top of his already complicated romantic situation, Leila decided to keep quiet about her feelings for Lelouch because he's her first real friend (and in many ways, only) and she understandably did NOT want to risk losing him in that capacity. That plan goes down the drain in Chapter 40 when he picks up on an odd choice of words that gives her away, so they instead take the That Didn't Happen route with... mixed results.
  • Played With later on. Leila thought Lelouch was avoiding having to meet her in private afterwards, due to a gap of several weeks between their regular chess matches. She's obviously relieved when it turns out this was just a series of sudden developments, both mundane and not, keeping him too busy to spend time with most of his other Confidants until Chapter 51.
  • And then Subverted when she starts dating him alongside Kallen and Shirley.
• Informed Ability: Subverted. Leila mentions she rides a motorcycle as a form of stress relief in Chapter 51, but she isn't shown riding until Chapter 62.
• Innocently Insensitive:
  • Bishop is insightful and means well, but her upbringing, family secrets and the Intelligence Equals Isolation trope kept her from making actual friends before the Black Knights and so she lacks the people skills to predict how her attempts to help them can have unwanted side effects.
  • Bishop has been on the other end of this trope too. Diamond jokes that Bishop should be careful of not using her sexy French accent on their leader, lest she makes Shirley and his girlfriend jealous. Milly doesn't know that Leila both likes Lelouch and regrets arriving in his life too late to have a real chance with him.
• Instant Fan Club: She has her own fan club in St. Lucy's Academy, although they admired her from afar and she didn't find out about them until she was about ready to leave.
• Intelligence Equals Isolation: Discussed. Lelouch thinks Bishop's intelligence "undoubtedly had an isolating effect among her peers".
• Internal Reveal: She's informed about Igor and the Velvet Room, and her could've-been status as a Wild Card, in Chapter 62. She meets Tsu and briefly sees a Velvet Room door the following chapter.
• In Vino Veritas:
  • Kallen puts it the best:
    Kallen: I get that she was drunk, and not quite in her right mind, but the first thing she does is to make a beeline to [Lelouch's] bedroom and literally throw herself into [his] arms? I'm not a psychologist, but that...
  • It's actually a little more complex than that, as seen in Questionable Consent below.
• Irony:
  • There's something to be said about the world treating Leila Breisgau as the de facto widow of Prince Clovis when in fact she only allowed him to court her because she needed to be close to him in order to prove he ordered her parents' murder.]]
  • The Breisgau Corporation "controls a third of wine production in Area 11", yet its majority shareholder Can't Hold Her Liquor at all. As in a sip of wine is enough to get her tipsy, and passes out after just a single glass.
• Jeanne d'Archétype: Leila as in canon. Even more literal here given that her Persona is Joan of Arc herself.
• Keeping Secrets Sucks: Leila Breisgau is the complicit daughter of her spies parents, who worked as moles in the Britannian nobility for the EU, which kept her from forming meaningful relationships with anyone out of fear of getting outed as traitors and likely executed. She finds her first real friends in the Black Knights, especially Lelouch who has the most in common with her.
• Keeping the Enemy Close: The only reason she allowed Prince Clovis and the rest of the world to believe she was interested in him romantically is because she knew of his involvement in her parents' death and needed to be close to him in order to prove it.
• Kindhearted Cat Lover: Bishop treats Arthur the best among the Black Knights. It's later revealed that she owns a cat named Eliza prior to meeting Arthur.
• The Lancer: Lelouch refers to her as his de facto second in command.
• Lethal Chef: Leila has the dubious honor of helping cooking up the fic's incarnation of Mystery Food X during the Kamine Island beach trip. Lloyd decides to take a bite and ends up puking it out into the ocean. Afterwards, Cecile is implied to also be a horrible cook when she offers to make something for Lloyd, who promptly states that one culinary near-death experience is enough for him.
• Let Me Get This Straight...: Her reaction when receiving the Internal Reveal about Igor and the Velvet Room in Chapter 62.
• Letting Her Hair Down: She has her hair down and forgoes her hair decs for her heart-to-heart with Lelouch in Chapter 58.
• Lingerie Scene: While her nightgown in Chapter 58 covers a lot and is long enough to reach her ankles, it is also very sheer, letting Lelouch notice that underneath it she wears a rather... abbreviated set of underwear.
• Love Confession:
  • Defied. In Chapter 40, Lelouch suddenly connects the dots and deduces, aloud and right before her, that Leila's fallen in love with him despite knowing he was already together with someone else, but then they carefully minded their words just so she wouldn't make a Love Confession that he'd have to turn down.
  • In Chapter 58, right after her Persona evolves into Freyja, Leila gains the resolution to properly confess to Lelouch. He sees it coming again tries to dissuade her by warning her about all the potential damage they could do to themselves if his already complex multi-partner relationship with Kallen and Shirley were too fair after trying to include her, to say nothing to the damage to her reputation as a Countess of any of that ever goes public, and the fact she would have to share him with other two women even if they do manage to somehow make their four-person Polyamory work. Leila agrees with each of his points and then just confesses anyway, telling him with utmost sincerity and conviction that she can't think of "anything else so worth the risk of having your heart broken".
    Leila: I love you, Lelouch. If this is the only path that will allow my wishes come true, then I won't hesitate to take it. Not anymore.
• Lovely Assistant: Jokingly referenced as such for helping Lelouch to pull off his Big Entrance in Chapter 62.
• Ma'am Shock: Happens to her, but not for the usual reasons. After the death of her parents, Leila gains substantive peerage under the title of Countess. This causes her some discomfort in formal situations like Clovis' state funeral in Chapter 22, because in her mind "Lady Breisgau" still refers to her late mother.
• Make It Look Like an Accident: How her parents are killed.
• Meal Ticket: Discussed. Leila is well-aware that she makes for a Gold Digger's wet dream: a young and recently orphaned Countess with a substantive title and a large fortune to her name and drop-dead gorgeous to boot. She preserves the illusion that she's still in mourning for Prince Clovis to keep potential "suitors" from approaching her for the time being.
• Missed the Call: Igor intended Leila to become the Trickster meant to stop Ragnarök and tried to help awaken her to the power of the Wild Card, but it didn't work as he expected and Leila instead grew to have a single Persona with both combat and Sensor Character capabilities.
• Mistaken for Cheating: Diethard thinks she has been cheating on Prince Clovis with Lelouch but doesn't try to make it public because he considers it trite tabloid drivel and instead sees in Lelouch a good secret source to both the young Countess and to the school where the Black Knights made their debut, which is his real interest. Lelouch decides against setting the record straight because Diethard is a bit too perceptive for his tastes and serving as his informant allows him to keep an eye on the journalist. It becomes a case of Right for the Wrong Reasons when Lelouch and Leila have a Romantic Fake–Real Turn, and then Relationship Upgrade in Chapter 61.
• Morton's Fork: Leila is either a perfect Trophy Wife for men of equal or superior social standing or the perfect Meal Ticket for those who are not. Either case, she has to keep pretending to be "in mourning" for Prince Clovis, especially to avoid being seen alone with Lelouch in public, because suitors and Gold Diggers won't leave her alone if they think she's on the market again.
• The Mourning After: Not really the case, but Leila pretends to be in mourning for Clovis because it keeps unwanted suitors from bothering her.
• Must Not Die a Virgin: She propositions her boyfriend for Their First Time in Chapter 62 after learning about the very real possibility of facing The End of the World as We Know It. Lelouch tries to reassure her that they won't let Ragnarök come to pass, but Leila refuses to take any chances even if they just had their Relationship Upgrade the previous chapter. It doubles as an example of Sex for Solace for the two of them.
• Nerds Are Sexy: Discussed. Lelouch considers that Leila's intelligence is one of her most attractive qualities and privately dislikes it when she has to hide it. Clovis is the opposite, who is fascinated by her good looks and his Palace shows he would rather her be a Brainless Beauty.
• New Transfer Student:
  • Discussed in Chapter 40. Lelouch gives Leila the idea of transferring to Ashford Academy, including how to Invoke this trope and her inclusion into the Student Council without making it too suspicious.
  • Although her transference wouldn't be confirmed until Chapter 51, Milly tells the rest of the student council in Chapter 46 that Leila is a potential transferee as an excuse to justify inviting her to their summer trip.
  • She finally transfers to Ashford Academy at the start of the new term in Chapter 58. She becomes an instant School Idol due to her fame, fortune, intellect, beauty, approachable personality, and the fact she's one of the few students with her own substantive high nobility title even in a school for the elite like Ashford Academy.
• Number Two: She's the Black Knights' de facto second-in-command.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: The Breisgaus play an Upper-Class Twit variation. They secretly held anti-monarchical sentiments despite being part of the Britannian nobility and showed their real political colors in subtle ways. For example, the garden of their manor in Area 11 is lined with native Japanese plans that have symbolic meanings for someone more familiar with Japanese culture than your typical noble. Like cherry trees, wisterias^note the crest of the Fujiwara clan, and hydrangeas^note double meaning; Victorians use the flower to represent boastfulness, bragging, or vanity, whereas Japanese people associate them to a heartfelt apology. Their daughter Leila has the airy line "because they grow well here, and they're pretty" rehearsed down to the tone for the occasional times someone does ask about them.
• The One Thing I Don't Hate About You: The only thing Leila is thankful of Clovis is that a Prince of the Realm publicly courting her forced all her other unwanted suitors back off. As she puts it, "at least there was only one of him".
• Paper-Thin Disguise: Played With. Leila is too distinctive looking and well-known in Area 11 to have any real chance to not be recognized at the Masquerade Ball, so she doesn't even bother trying to hide her identity and instead wears a costume obviously inspired by Widow's Weeds as a strong hint to would-be suitors to not make the attempt.
• The Poorly Chosen One: Chapter 61 reveals that Leila originally had the power of the Wild Card at a young age, which Igor wanted her to develop. However, due to needing to live up to the expectations society demanded of her (and to avoid suspicion regarding her own progressive views), her power atrophied until it eventually faded away. Her access to the MetNav app is the only remnant of her powers. For those familiar with Persona 5, there's a reason that Igor did this.
• The Proud Elite: The mask she wears around Britannian nobility.
• Questionable Consent: Thankfully Subverted. Leila unexpectedly passed out drunk after a single glass of red wine and her friends agreed that it was for the best to let the young Countess sleep it off in a spare room at the Clubhouse rather than risk Malicious Slander if someone (especially the press) saw her leaving for her place in that condition. During the night, Leila woke up and made a drunken beeline to Lelouch's bedroom, and literally jumped into his arms. Lelouch naturally refused to take advantage of her, but it was a close thing because they're both very much attracted to the other and Lelouch was well aware of her feelings for him. The mood was soon dispelled when Leila began to talk about how much she misses her parents, revealing that the alcohol lowered her inhibitions to look for a shoulder to cry on until she fell asleep again. However a stray half-line from her the next morning suggests that she wasn't that out of it to not realize how that night could have gone instead, implying that part of her was seeking another sort of solace from him, but in the end, she realized that the outcome she got was for the best.
• School Idol:
  • To her surprise, she was admired by many in St. Lucy's all-girl school. She even had her own fan club. However, she's thankful that she only learned of its existence when they got wind that she was transferring out.
  • She becomes an instant hit in Ashford Academy since her very first day. Leila appreciated how the more liberal environment made her feel less like people are putting her on a pedestal, but Lelouch felt the need to warn her that the student body is likely to follow into St Lucy's steps and she's going to be treated like a School Idol sooner than later.
• Sensor Character: Her Persona can sense its surroundings in the Metaverse through a form of extra-sensory perception. Compared to canon, it's quite a bit weaker at first than what Futaba can do, but it's compensated by the fact said Persona also possesses offensive skills similarly to Mitsuru's in Persona 3. Later on, she learns to detect an enemy's weakness, but she needs time and concentration to do it.
• Sex for Solace:
  • Implied to be the real reason her drunken self made her way to Lelouch's arms one night. Thankfully the implicit Questionable Consent was averted when she instead cried out her grief for the loss of her parents into his shoulder until she fell asleep.
  • Played Straight in Chapter 62, where learning about the Emperor's world-ending plans left Leila too unnerved to want to spend the night alone. That and the very real possibility of humanity having no future at all made her lose any hesitation about wanting to take her relationship with Lelouch to the next level despite how their Relationship Upgrade took place just a few days prior.
• She Is Not My Girlfriend: Chapter 40 has a notable Subversion when Leila doesn't correct the misunderstanding that Lelouch is her boyfriend because it makes for a convenient cover story. Lelouch doesn't buy it and directly asks her if she likes him, the question catching her badly off-guard and making her reveal that she does. Leila then reassures him that she's well aware he's with Kallen and in a delicate situation involving Shirley, so she quickly makes a Better as Friends argument for the two of them.
• Single Woman Seeks Good Man: One of the things she likes about Lelouch is how good a brother he's to Nunnally and Euphemia.
• Stealth Insult: Proficient at it as a well-read individual with years of experience having to play the aristocratic socialite to one Upper-Class Twit too many. She doesn't do it often in the story proper, but when the occasional suitable target presents themselves, her flowery compliments belying insults put a smile on Lelouch's face.
• Stylish Protection Gear: Her riding outfit consists of a one-piece racing leather suit custom-made to be both protective and fashionable if a tad formfitting. It even includes a Classy Cravat and frilly sleeves but is designed to be short enough to not interfere with the handling of her Cool Bike.
• Take Up My Sword: Leila decides to inherit her parents' democratic ideals by helping the Black Knights. A Subverted Trope later on, as her experiences with them have taught her that she has been romanticizing said ideals and that the world doesn't run in clear-cut Black-and-White Morality, finally deciding to pursue her own ideals to make a better future.
• That Was Not a Dream: In Chapter 58, after crying herself to sleep in Lelouch's arms, she wakes up in his bed and wonders about the strange dream she just had. Lelouch, who had to sleep on the floor for the night because of it, quickly dispels the misunderstanding.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Lelouch's girlfriend doesn't appreciate Leila making Lelouch admit that he's in love with both her and Shirley, especially not right in front of her, in addition to how this makes the fourth Palace run even more complicated, and had a very real potential to turn it into an unmitigated disaster.
• Widow's Weeds: Invoked. While not actually a widow, and nor really in mourning at all for that matter, Leila chose to wear black clothes and a matching veil to the Masquerade Ball. The reason is that she's widely considered the most eligible bachelorette in Area 11 due to possessing the right combination of wealth, ancestry, her own substantive nobility title, and stunning looks, meaning that the only reason she's yet to be all but hounded by unwanted suitors getting in the way of her secret life is because people believe she's in still mourning after Clovis' death.
• You Just Told Me: Leila tricks Lelouch into confirming he's in a polyamorous relationship with Kallen and Shirley this way. He agrees it was a well-played trick.
• You Killed My Father: Leila Breisgau correctly suspected that Clovis ordered her parents' death, and entered his Palace in order to prove it. Later chapters suggest that Igor perhaps pulled Clovis' strings to order the assassination in order to Invoke this reaction in Leila just so she would awaken to her power, or at least arrange things so she and the Black Knights would meet. Unnervingly, they have no way to prove or disprove this.

Noire

Euphemia li Britannia/Noire

Arcana: III. The Empress
Persona: Eilonwy

The Third Princess of Britannia and Sub-Viceroy of Area 11. Tired of being a mere figurehead unable to make a meaningful difference in the world, she goes out on her own to expose the crime lord known as The Black King, rediscovering her half-brother Lelouch in the process.

---

• Authority in Name Only: As Area 11's Sub-Viceroy. On the bright side, this makes sneaking out to join the Black Knights a lot easier to arrange. On the not-so-bright side, she has no real authority to help, as it is the case in Chapter 54 when she proposes she could request a formal audience with Gao Hai so he will see her in the secure areas of the Chinese embassy and disable his Palace's Cognitive barriers for her and thus the Black Knights. Lelouch dismisses her idea right away, pointing out the ambassador has nothing to win by meeting her in person and that's assuming Cornelia won't simply veto the whole thing the moment she gets wind of it.
• Brother–Sister Incest: Discussed. Milly wonders if this is the case with Lelouch and Euphemia after seeing how distraught the latter becomes after Milly tells her that Lelouch slept with Kallen. Lelouch actually has trouble denying that this is the case to himself because he did consider marrying her when they were kids.
• Composite Character: She has Haru's codename but takes Makoto's story role in getting blackmailed by a crime boss and having a fraught relationship with an older sister who's investigating her group.
• Cover-Blowing Superpower: The fact her clothes morphed into her Thief Suit as soon as she put a foot in the Metaverse gave away to Suzaku Kururugi that she's a Persona-user.
• Damsel in Distress: Briefly in Chapter 57, kidnapped by the Black Mask and immediately rescued by Suzaku. It counts as a win for the Black Mask because his objective was to Frame-Up the Black Knights for the attack, and as a side effect, Cornelia amped the security around her little sister, making it even harder for Euphemia to meet up with the Black Knights.
• Didn't Think This Through: Euphemia gets Suzaku to save a middle-aged Japanese man from getting beaten up by two thugs sent by a Loan Shark, but the guy all but spits in her face afterwards. He may sound like an Ungrateful Bastard, but he's not wrong in expecting even harsher retaliation from The Don after Suzaku defeated his goons.
• Incest Subtext: At times Euphemia acts more like she's Lelouch's girlfriend rather than his half-sister. She seems outright hurt when Milly wonders aloud if Lelouch and Kallen already had Their First Time, gets a not-quite-sisterly Luminescent Blush when he hugs her during the Camping Episode before and gets "unusually vehement" telling an almost naked Shadow Shirley off for trying to seduce him. Even Shadow Shirley picks up on the latter and knowing neither who Euphemia is nor that she and Lelouch are related, outright asks her whether he is going out with her as well.
• Innocent Fanservice Girl: Situationally so. Euphemia shows shades of this around Lelouch, like when she chooses to wear one of the lingerie-inspired swimsuits designed by Clovis in the Camping Episode and invites Lelouch to bathe with her in a natural pool — invitation he refuses by saying they're too old for it already. Not so much so at other times though, like the Outdoor Bath Peeping incident where she got just as upset as the rest of the girls.
• Lady of War: Noire's thief suit looks like a female dress uniform. Word of God confirms it's based on the outfit Cornelia had in the second season of the anime, a manifestation of Euphemia's admiration for her older sister.
• Locked Out of the Fight: Subverted. She almost misses the Boss Battle against Shadow Gao Hai due to Cornelia increasing the security around her following the kidnapping attempt against her, but she manages to make it in time by convincing her bodyguard Suzaku that Gao Hai and the High Eunuchs need to be stopped.
• The McCoy: To Lelouch and Bishop's The Spock. In fact, her genuine concern for the well-being of common people is what leads her to join the Black Knights in the first place.
• The Medic: Other than Lelouch's, her Persona is the only one in the team that knows revival skills.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: Li Xingke Lampshades that it takes more than her canonical "pair of sunglasses and a hat" look to hide her identity.
• Princess Classic:
  • Played With. Princess Euphemia is genuinely kind and beautiful enough to fit the mold to a T, but she's not naive enough to not see logic. For example, her first scene in the fic has her asking herself why would the Black Knights shoot themselves in the foot and kill Clovis before he finished confessing his crimes.
  • Also Discussed to the point of Deconstruction. Shadow Blake compares Euphemia to a porcelain doll. Something pretty to look at, but ultimately only useful as goods to be traded. That is, by marrying her off at the convenience of the Royal Family.
• Rebellious Princess:
  • Euphemia ditches her bodyguards twice. First, when she wants to see the ghettos outside the Settlement in order to learn how life was really like in Area 11. That's how she meets Suzaku who was actually ordered to follow and guard her without her noticing, but luck had it that she unexpectedly just went and interacted with him. The second time, she successfully sneaks out without anyone noticing in order to try and confront the Black King, a mafia boss making a lot of people suffer, which is both a very stupid thing to do, and the only reason she finds out that Lelouch was alive. Subsequent getaways to meet up with the Black Knights are better planned, where she visits either Kallen or Leila, both daughters of prominent noble families in Area 11, as her excuse to leave the Government Bureau with Jeremiah as her security detail, who of course is in on it too.
  • She also goes behind Cornelia's back and uses her position to authorize normal Japanese people to enter the festival grounds in Ueno Park. Cornelia realizes this in time to go there and try to arrest everybody, but holds her hand when she realizes that Euphemia herself is attending incognito, and fearing for her safety, she gives people 30 minutes to leave peacefully or else.
  • Euphemia outdoes herself in the Camping Episode, where using a concealed microphone she got from Jeremiah, she transmits her conversation with Schneizel and Lloyd about the ruins in Kamine Island to the rest of the Black Knights in real-time. Hearing about the Emperor's interest in the ruins and others like it around the world from Schneizel, Lelouch has a "Eureka!" Moment and figures out that the Kamine Island Ruins is the entrance to his father's Palace.
• Relative Error:
  • The Don known as the Black King thinks Lelouch and Princess Euphemia have a Secret Relationship.
  • The Shadow ruling the fourth Palace thinks Lelouch is seeing Euphemia/Noire on the side. The Shadow even thinks she should break it off before he breaks her heart.

Dame

Shirley Fenette/Dame

Arcana: VI. The Lovers
Persona: Maid Marian, Sigyn

A classmate of Lelouch's and a fellow student council member. After the events of the fourth Palace, she gains a Persona and joins the Black Knights.

---

• A-Cup Angst: Discussed. Lelouch observes that Shirley's choice of swimsuit in the Beach Episode draws attention to her breasts without being blatant about it. Given that she's not what one can call small at all, just less endowed than most of their female acquaintances including his girlfriend, Lelouch considers the possibility that Shirley got the idea he prefers big breasts and perhaps, subconsciously or not, she's trying to make up for it. His narration quickly veers to something else.
• Adaptational Badass: Probably the greatest example in the team. Bonus badass points for doing it the hard way: by confronting her berserk Shadow after facing and accepting the weak and ugly parts of her repressed self. The next chapter adds to it by revealing she was also suffering from internal bleeding and sleep deprivation at the same time.
• Adaptation Expansion: Code Geass mostly centers Shirley around her interactions with others, so we never learn too much about her. Here, we do get a few other details - the biggest one is that she is religious (Protestant, to be exact), which is apparently the norm in Britannia (since, as the author pointed out, beyond the issues of the Reformation, Britannia would want its primary religion to be one that recognizes the Emperor as the higest authority, which does match up with the intent of Henry VIII.
• All Girls Want Bad Boys: Shirley gets told to her face that she likes Lelouch because he's "the biggest rule breaker at Ashford Academy" rather than despite it, and that all her talk about wanting to reform him is just an excuse she tells herself because she just can't admit it. Her Shadow goes even beyond that and also says that discovering that he was the "most wanted rebel in Area 11" was a big turn-on for her, something that the real Shirley desperately tries to deny.
• Anger Born of Worry: Like Kallen, she's likely to get angry at Lelouch for not taking good enough care of himself. In her case, this includes mundane things like letting his grades drop when she knows he could do so much better. In Chapter 52, she and Kallen berate him in stereo for taking a Mudoon spell in Shirley's place without warning them he had a plan with over a 75% chance to let him survive it.
• Ascended Extra: She grows a Palace following a long Trauma Conga Line, becoming the fourth target of the Black Knights and eventually their seventh member.
• Asleep for Days: In the aftermath of her kidnapping and Persona awakening.
• Audience Surrogate: She's the closest the team has to a normal teenager among their ranks, so she's the one who needs Lelouch's Exposition on In-Universe international politics the most in order to understand his choice for the fifth Palace and the high stakes involved.
• Betty and Veronica: Played With a bit because Kallen pretends to be a shy ill girl at school, making her look like the "Betty" to Shirley's "Veronica", but the opposite is closer to the truth.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Shirley proves capable of violently stabbing her own Shadow in order to protect Lelouch. None of the people present knew she had in her, except for the Shadow herself who purposely put a knife in her hand as part of a Batman Gambit.
• A Birthday, Not a Break: Shirley gets kidnapped the day after Tanabata, which happens to be her birthday according to her official character profile.
• Broken Pedestal: She gets hit with this twice, with differing results.
  • She is horrified to discover her beloved crush Lelouch is, in fact, the leader of the Black Knights and the man who murdered her father. This is then increasingly subverted when she can't bring herself to stop loving him even in the face of these revelations, and finally totally subverted when she learns he wasn't really the one who killed Joseph.
  • Played fully straight when she learns her father was an amoral scientist whose experiments on the Irregulars were so bad that they simply tell her You Do Not Want To Know.
• Can't Hold Her Liquor: Downplayed. Leila's Student Council welcoming party reveals that she becomes visibly intoxicated after a mere sip of wine. However, unlike Leila herself, she is able to sit down, let the booze wear off, and return to her dorm under her own power.
• Change the Uncomfortable Subject: She tries this after getting a Luminescent Blush from hearing that Nunnally said "[Shirley] loves my brother almost as much as I do".
  Dame: Um, right! Steal from the corrupt!
• Clingy Jealous Girl: Shirley isn't happy at all that Lelouch is spending a lot of time with Kallen and Milly. It's later revealed that, just like in the anime, Shirley directly asked Kallen if she was interested in Lelouch. Kallen, being Kallen, instantly denied it. This sours Shirley's opinion of her, even more, when Kallen and Lelouch actually get together, later on, considering her a liar, on top of her bitterness over making her a Romantic Runner-Up.
• Coordinated Clothes:
  • Her Thief Suit looks like the Distaff Counterpart of Zero's, probably an indication that she modeled her ideal of a rebel after him personally. Kallen isn't too happy that Lelouch and Shirley now look like a matching pair in the Metaverse.
  • Her costume for the Masquerade Ball — a fairy queen sorta outfit with dragonfly wings and flower-patterned golden mask — makes a matching/contrasting pair with Leila's, who wears a dress inspired by a black butterfly and a black veil over her face.
• Covert Pervert: Justified by Jungian psychology. Shirley normally would never dare come on to Lelouch, but that doesn't mean that the idea of getting his attention with her body didn't occur to her. However, a person's Shadow embraces all of his or her suppressed thoughts and desires by their very definition, prompting Shadow Shirley to gleefully present herself all but naked to him, with only the Godiva Hair and Barely-There Swimwear tropes to protect her modesty.
• Did I Just Say That Out Loud?: During the Beach Episode, Shirley says that if Lelouch is going to apply sunscreen on one of the girls' backs, he'd have to do it for all of them so nobody has to fight. She doesn't realize she said it aloud until she notices the Stunned Silence. Notably, Shirley stands by her words instead of shying away, which almost pushes Kallen into Clingy Jealous Girl mode, but Nunnally defuses the situation by asking him to do her back too. Lelouch remarks that Shirley normally would have never said something like that aloud, much less own to it, before her Character Development. Oh, and yes, Lelouch does end up rubbing sunscreen on all the girls (sans Alice) thanks to that.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: The story seems to have it in for her even worse than canon, and that's saying a lot, but at least it doesn't throw a lethal Diabolus ex Machina at her by the end of it. By the fifth Story Arc Shirley is back on her feet and as a much stronger person than she ever was before, up and including Enlightenment Superpowers, even though she Did Not Get The Guy. Then played fully straight in Chapter 51, when she gets together with Lelouch after he and Kallen agree to multi-partner relationship for the three of them.
• Entertainingly Wrong: Very briefly done in Chapter 43. When Shirley learns Princess Euphemia li Britannia is Lelouch's half-sister, she immediately comes up with the family drama scenario where they have a mother in common that cheated on the Emperor and that's why her other children — that is, Lelouch and Nunnally — were sent to Area 11 in order to hide the whole thing. Lelouch immediately corrects her and points out he already said they have a father in common, which is when Shirley finally figures out he and Nunnally are royalty.
• Epiphany Comeback: Shirley's acceptance that her feelings for Lelouch are truly unconditional, no matter how pathetic or bad a person they make her, take the wind right out of her berserking Shadow's sails, weakening it enough for the Black Knights to subdue. Both developments leave her at the doors of awakening to her Persona, which she immediately uses to settle the score with Mao.
• Exact Eavesdropping: How she finds out Lelouch and half of her friends are members of the Black Knights.
• Finishing Each Other's Sentences: Begins doing this with Kallen come Chapter 52 just like the Tarot reading Shi did for Shirley had foretold. Lampshaded, of course.
  Leila: A merging of opposites into a new and harmonious whole.
• Forgotten Birthday: Her friends completely forgot about her birthday in the wake of the discovery of her Palace until her Shadow itself reminds them. They celebrate it after she's been rescued and joined the Black Knights.
• Friendly Rivalry: With Kallen, after they work out some of their issues resulting from their Love Triangle with Lelouch.
• Hopeless Suitor: For Lelouch. Further Played for Drama because her feelings aren't unrequited, but he doesn't realize this until well after getting together with another girl and he's not willing to end his loving (if complicated) relationship in order to pursue Shirley. Subverted in Chapter 51 when the girls tell Lelouch that he doesn't have to break up with Kallen to be with Shirley. Lelouch doesn't see that one coming at all.
• Insecure Love Interest: Shirley feels self-conscious after learning just how exceptional are the other girls in Lelouch's life, on top of the Internal Reveal of his past as a prince making her feel like the silly commoner schoolgirl crushing on a royal. Lelouch promptly cuts her insecurities short by throwing her words back at her and pointing out he didn't go sick with worry when Mao kidnapped "just Shirley" for nothing.
• In Spite of a Nail: Once again, Shirley has a major character arc revolving around her conflict over her love with Lelouch warring with his responsibility in her father's death, opening the way for Mao to make her issues even worse for his own gain. This time, though, Lelouch wasn't actually her father's murderer; that "honor" again goes to Black Mask.
• Internal Reveal:
  • Discovers the identities of the Black Knights by accident in Chapter 33.
  • Lelouch reveals his past a royalty to her in Chapter 43.
  • He then reveals his father's plans and Igor's role in things in Chapter 63.
• Incest Subtext: As with many small girls, Shirley wanted to marry her dad someday. Her Palace shows that her Electra Complex was stronger and more persistent than most cases. Leila speculates that Shirley suppressed her romantic feelings for her father when taught they were inappropriate until finding a safer and more age-appropriate target to focus them on. She also believes that's part of the reason why Shirley fell so damn hard when she finally fell in love with someone.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Subverted. Shirley doesn't take well at all that Lelouch is dating someone else. In her defense, her life was going to crap for several other reasons, so she wasn't at her best when they get together. Double Subverted after accepting her Shadow, and thus apparently including the realization that he's better off with someone not as madly in love with him — without knowing that Kallen would give a run for her money on the "[[DestructiveRomance unhealthily devoted" department.]]
• Love Hurts: Shirley didn't take it well when Lelouch starts dating someone else. Growing a Palace turned this trope up a notch.
• Love Martyr:
  • Discussed. The Persona Incubus pins Shirley as one and encourages Lelouch to take full advantage of it. Lelouch angrily has him silenced.
  • In a particularly ironic twist of the trope, Shirley's being a Love Martyr ends up playing in her favor and saving the Black Knights' and her own collective hides while ruining Mao/Medjed's plans at the same time. During the confrontation with her Shadow, Shirley is presented with the worst parts of herself but ultimately manages to truly accept the pathetic part of her being that keeps on loving Lelouch regardless of the fact that he's a Rebel Leader, in relationship with someone else, or anything else. Such a deep acceptance of her own flaws puts her on the fast track to awaken to her Persona, resulting in an EpiphanyComeback that ends up with her sword being pressed against Mao's throat.
• The McCoy: Subverted. Her emotions win over logic more often than not, and she's genuinely as kind and caring as Euphemia. However, some emotions are stronger than others. For example, when the team puts targeting the Chinese Federation ambassador to a vote, she doesn't hesitate to support Lelouch's side of the argument — or rather, support him — despite being told that could be the Spark of the Rebellion in the Chinese Federation, completely unlike Euphemia who didn't agree to enter the Palace until he told her they wouldn't steal the Treasure unless they couldn't come up with an alternative.
• The Mistress: Discussed and Defied. Lelouch arrives at the uncomfortable conclusion that Shirley has it so bad for him that she would accept "a 'lesser' position in his life next to Kallen just so he could be with him at all". This and the fact he's already in a relationship with someone else are why he's adamant about not letting her know he reciprocates her feelings.
• Princess for a Day: At the Masquerade Ball/Black-Tie Infiltration in Chapter 56, she can't help but Lampshade how much her dancing with a prince at a high society ball without anybody knowing she's actually a commoner is a dead ringer for the plot of Cinderella.
• Secret Relationship: Subverted. Lelouch tried to keep quiet about their Relationship Upgrade, which turned his relationship with Kallen into a Polyamory with her and Shirley, but Milly finds out right away (she was listening in) and it took most of the team perhaps a day to realize just why the redheads were basically taking turns berating Lelouch for (apparently) taking too big of a risk in battle, just like a girlfriend would.]]
• Sex Is Evil, and I Am Horny: Shirley's Palace reveals that she is attracted to both the kinder and the darker aspects of Lelouch's personality, with her Shadow shaming her for being downright turned on by the fact he's the most wanted rebel in Area 11 despite knowing he's believed to be her father's murderer.
• Single-Target Sexuality: Discussed for laughs. Milly asks her if she finds Lelouch attractive when Disguised in Drag. Shirley argues that she doesn't swing that way, but then Milly just changes the question and asks her what if Lelouch was instead born a girl, which makes Shirley too flustered to answer.
• Single Woman Seeks Good Man:
  • As in canon, Shirley falls for Lelouch when he accidentally revealed to his Hidden Heart of Gold by helping an old couple in a car crash without anyone else noticing. Interestingly, more than proving himself a Good Samaritan, the part that caught her attention the most was that the whole thing was really just Tuesday for him. He didn't boast nor laugh about it, and as far as Shirley correctly knows, he never brought it up afterwards. Her Shadow's voice points out there's more to it, though. According to it, Shirley was already very interested in Lelouch at the time, but his aloof and Brilliant, but Lazy persona at school kept her from admitting it to herself at the conscious level. Lelouch showing his Hidden Depths like that made Shirley's denial come down like a house of cards.
  • Inverted too, as she's also attracted to her darker aspects of his personality. See All Girls Want Bad Boys above.
• Token Minority: In a social standing sense, Shirley is initially the only member of the Black Knights to not be of noble/royal background (aside from the talking cat).
• Trauma Button: Chapter 58 has an unusual positive example of this. The method the Black Mask used to kidnap Euphemia at the Masquerade Ball instantly reminded Shirley of how Mao used the Metaverse to get in and out her dorm room and kidnap her unhindered and undetected. This allowed her to quickly pull out her phone, activate the Metanav out of sight, and follow them without any other party-goers noticing a thing. While Shirley didn't have to fight the Black Mask to save Euphemia — Suzaku and his Persona Lancelot took care of that — she witnessed the fight and her recounting of the events became critical intel for Lelouch to plan the team's next move.
• Trauma Conga Line: Shirley here has her rotten luck from canon. First, she gets much of Shiho's problems from Persona 5 by becoming a focus of Coach Nu's abuse, later on, her long-time crush starts dating someone else. Then her father is murdered by the Conspiracy and to make things even worse, she's the one to find his dead body. And then she discovers that said long-time crush and best friend are part of the Black Knights, whom she blames for her father's death. And just soon after, Shirley is abducted by Mao/Medjed, and then nearly murdered by her own berserk Shadow.
• Underrated and Overleveled: Discussed by Lelouch when she joins the party and displays a level of power far above what her level of experience should allow. He theorizes that either her total acceptance of her own flaws when confronted by her Shadow gave her an especially powerful Persona, or she's simply a prodigy (a theory supported by her father's previous assertions on the subject).
• Unrequited Love Lasts Forever:
  • After finally coming to terms with the fact Lelouch is dating someone else, Shirley decides to remain by his side as his friend despite still loving him. Partially Subverted in the sense he does love her back, but given that he also loves Kallen and neither is willing to end their relationship despite the complications, Shirley hasn't been told she's wrong about the "unrequited" part of the trope to prevent the situation from getting even more complicated.
  • Fully Subverted plus interests in Chapter 51 when the three of them agree to become a triad.
• Unresolved Sexual Tension: Played for Drama. Shirley's Palace plainly puts on display just how badly she has it for Lelouch, both as deep romantic longing and sheer sexual attraction. The Dungeon Crawling through it makes Lelouch feel even more responsible for her emotional distress and puts his girlfriend so on edge that Kallen violently snaps at him, almost punching him with her Persona-enhanced strength, when the Palace reveals that they kissed despite making it patently obvious that Shirley stole that kiss and was purposely guilt-tripping Lelouch into not rejecting her immediately by doing it right after her father's funeral. Kallen intellectually realizes that she shouldn't let Shirley's rampant subconscious feelings and desires get to her, but she just can't help it.
• Violently Protective Girlfriend: The closest thing to a Berserk Button she has is seeing Lelouch in actual danger, like the time she shoots Villetta in canon for saying aloud she wanted to arrest him. In this story, she outright stabs her own Shadow in the gut for threatening to kill him, which sadly was a Batman Gambit by her Shadow to gain lots of power from the rejection. Later on, her Persona allows her to give a very material form to that protectiveness.
• When You Coming Home, Dad?: Shirley's father is a geologist, which is why he's so little at home. Actually, this is only a cover to justify his long absences while working in Cognitive Psience in a secret lab located in the Narita mountains.
• Why Can't I Hate You?: The core of her issues. Shirley can't forgive herself for remaining in love with the man that she thinks killed her father. Her Shadow embodies both her guilt over this and her overwhelming desire to be loved by him, which is why Shadow Shirley is a crazy Mood-Swinger who shift from wanting to enact bloody retribution on Lelouch to wanting to jump his bones at the drop of a hat.
• Worth It: A non-humorous example. In Chapter 54, she tells Lelouch that being part of the Black Knights and trying to make a real difference in the world, to say nothing of having a Relationship Upgrade with him, made the Trauma Conga Line she went through worth it.
• You Killed My Father: Subverted. She mistakenly believes that the Black Knights killed her father, but even when she accidentally finds out who they are, she can't bring herself to turn them in, much less avenge him with her own two hands, because their leader turned out to be Lelouch. The fact that she's able to put the well-being of the guy she likes over any sense of filial duty wracks her with guilt, creating a Shadow that both treats him as the target of her affections and desires, and does her utmost to murder him.

Dragon

Li Xingke/Dragon

Arcana: IV. The Emperor
Persona: Zhuge Liang

A Chinese officer loyal to the Empress above all else (even her 'regents', the High Eunuchs). Desiring to free his Empress from the figurehead position she's bound to, he finds an unexpected ally in the Black Knights.

---

• Adaptational Wimp:
  • Slightly. In canon, his skills were on par with Suzaku and Kallen. In this story, his Persona having only recently awakened puts him closer in ability to those like Milly, Arthur, and Euphemia, with his martial training as a soldier and intelligence making up for his lack of experience in the Metaverse.
  • Also slightly shown in his tactics, as his first canon battle saw him use the environment on a massive and unconventional scale like Zero. In his first major Persona battle here, he's both surprised and impressed when Lelouch finds a way to cause an avalanche of gold to wipe out a terocatta army, with Word of God justifying it as canon Xingke appearing a year after the Black Rebellion and having studied Zero's tactics in that time.
• Badass Boast: By proxy through his Persona.
  Zhuge Liang: Then make this promise to me: I am thou... Thou art I... Fight with strength and strategy, and carve your way through the stars themselves if that is what it takes to steal back the Child of Heaven!
• Berserk Button: Gao Hai (and likely all the High Eunuchs for that matter) is a walking Berserk Button for him. Once he's certain Gao Hai is guilty of high treason, Xingke has to make a conscious effort to stick to the plan and not decapitate the guy with his sword here and there.
• Black-and-Gray Morality: It says a lot about how bad the High Eunuchs are that Xingke's Thief Suit taking after the Jinyi Wei, the secret police that ruthlessly served the emperors of the Ming dynasty in Imperial China without even paying a hint of courtesy to things like due process in their zeal to weed out traitors and corrupt officers, comes across as genuinely heroic.
• Empowered Badass Normal: He was a skilled soldier in the Chinese military before becoming a Persona user.
• Guest-Star Party Member: Only joined the Black Knights to change Gao Hai's heart, and leaves the group (for now) sometime afterwards to help the Empress run the newly-formed United States of China.
• Innocently Insensitive: After learning about Lelouch's love life, but still unaware of his lineage, Xingke wonders aloud if perhaps Emperor Charles and his Royal Harem made too much of an impression on his subject. As always, being compared to his father like this doesn't sit well at all with Lelouch.
• Lesser of Two Evils: He doesn't see eye-to-eye with the Black Knights, but when Lelouch presents him with the decision between sticking to his code of honor and have little to no chance of helping Empress Tianzi, or "throwing his lot in with thieves" and having a real opportunity to overthrow the High Eunuchs, he picks the latter.
• Mirror Match: Shadow Gao Hai uses Xingke's Cognitive double to fend off the real one. It's no longer enough to hold him back once Xingke awakens to his Persona.
• Shock and Awe: His Persona specializes in Zio skills.
• Sympathetic Inspector Antagonist: In charge of the security of the Chinese Federation Embassy in Area 11. He proves very competent at it to the point of becoming an obstacle for the Black Knights trying to infiltrate the Palace based on the location until Lelouch figures out where Xingke's true loyalties lay (Empress Tianzi), finally brokering an alliance in Chapter 57.
• Undying Loyalty: To Empress Tianzi. His awakening is directly tied to one of the High Eunuch's Shadows gloating about he is selling the Empress off to advance his status.

Knight (MASSIVE UNMARKED SPOILERS)

Suzaku Kururugi

Arcana: VIII. Justice
Persona: Lancelot

The son of the late Japanese Prime Minister, and Lelouch's childhood friend. Having somehow gained a Persona, he agrees to join the Black Knights in the hunt for the mysterious killer known as Black Mask.

---

• The Ace: The author's notes has described his Lancelot Persona as being roughly equal to Guren Jigoku in stats, but with a different build that matches with the canon Lancelot Knightmare. Specifically, it emphasizes physical and gun attacks at the cost of overall magical power, as well as trading Luck for better endurance while possessing Almighty spells and reflective shield spells. It is, however, weak to Curses.
• Adaptational Wimp: Subverted; he initially seems to be an ordinary high school student instead of a badass Knightmare Frame pilot, but Chapter 58 reveals that he is a Persona user and most likely has been since before he arrived at Ashford.
• Big Damn Heroes: At the end of the consulate party, he rescues Euphemia from being abducted by Black Mask.
• Enemy Mine: He doesn't entirely believe in the Black Knights' methodology, but is willing to work with them against Black Mask.
• Hypocrite: Arguably more so than in canon. While canon Suzaku would give token acknowledgment to Britannia's corrupt state while carrying out his quest, in this story he often seems to ignore the crimes that are being confessed and proceeds to be far more critical of Lelouch and the Black Knights for their methods than the criminals. Later, it turns out even he can't sustain his self-righteous beliefs when he lets Euphemia go to aid in the fight against Gao Hai, and agrees to cooperate to take down the Black Mask.
• Knight in Shining Armor: The motif of his Thief Suit.
• Mythology Gag: In canon, Suzaku ended up piloting a prototype Knightmare frame called the Lancelot. Here, that's the name of his Persona.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: Euphemia convinces him to let her slip away from her guards and help change Gao Hai's heart after an impassioned speech about how much damage he will cause if he isn't stopped.
• Secret-Keeper: After rescuing Euphemia from Black Mask, he deduces that she's a Black Knight. He keeps it to himself because he wants to talk her out of what he sees as her misguided path.

---