Fanfic / Lelouch of the Wings of Rebellion

In an alternate world without Geass, Lelouch awakens to another power from the Collective Unconscious — Persona. Leading a band of phantom thieves through the Metaverse, he seeks to topple the Britannian regime, stealing one corrupt heart at a time.

—Official Summary

Lelouch of the Wings of Rebellion by Magus Zero is a Fusion Fic Crossover where the supernatural elements of Persona 5 replace those of Code Geass.

The story is notable for its clever approach as an Alternate Universe Fic, leaving most of Code Geass world-building and its cast's characterization and motivations intact as the addition of the Persona 5's Metaverse alters how protagonists and antagonists go about achieving their goals.

This characterization is more remarkable in Lelouch himself, who organically develops into an entirely different kind of Rebel Leader as a result of wielding a power that runs on The Power of Friendship.

Also on Archive of Our Own here.

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This work contains examples of:

Tropes A-K

• Absence of Evidence: Defied. Knowing that it would look suspicious if no changes of hearts occurred while the Student Council was away on their summer trip, Lelouch makes arrangements with the Irregulars to trigger a few during that period and preemptively throw suspicion off him.
• Accidental Truth: Shirley Fenette doesn't know a thing about Lelouch being a Noble Fugitive, yet his Cognitive double in their Palace is accurately cast as a prince.
• Actually Pretty Funny:
  • Lelouch initially finds the behaviors of Cognition versions of him and Kallen in Viletta's Palace funny... before his counterpart starts bragging about seducing multiple girls, including Nunnally.
  • Lelouch breaks into laughs when, after a lengthy and difficult investigation, the team discovers that the Black King's real name is Blake King.
• Actor Allusion: Some of the voice actors in the Code Geass canon had roles within the Persona franchise.
  • Lelouch is both Yu Narukami and Joker/Ren Amamiya.
  • Suzaku is both Makoto Yuki and Yosuke Hanamura.
  • Kallen is both Aigis and Nanako Dojima.
• Adaptational Early Appearance: Chinese Federation characters like Li Xingke and High Eunuch Gao Hai are introduced in the fifth Story Arc, with the latter being the Arc Villain as the fifth Palace ruler.
• Adaptational Heroism: There's an In-Universe example in Chapter 42. Diamond remembers Milady de Winter as a much less villainous character than she was in the original book. Bishop guesses that Diamond read or watched a Lighter and Softer adaptation of the story.
• Adaptational Karma: In Code Geass canon, Mrs. Stadtfeld never received any comeuppance for her mistreatment of Kallen's mother. Here, though, Lelouch and the Black Knights demolish her Shadow and, through it, get her to be nicer to Kallen. Sadly, they accomplish this too late to save Kallen's mother from her canonical fate.
• Adaptational Late Appearance: Lloyd and Cecile don't make an actual appearance until Chapter 47, unlike the series where their debut was as early as Stage 1.
• Adaptational Villainy: Joseph Fenette is a weird example. The original anime never outright portrays him as anything more than just a random Britannian mook. In the novelization, however, he's a member of Clovis' Code-R team which commits extremely immoral experimentation on C.C. His characterization in this fic is based on the latter interpretation, substituting in Personas and the Metaverse for C.C.
• Age Lift: The ending of Tanabata indicates that, since Codes and Geass don't exist in this universe, V.V. looks his actual age. Chapter 67 confirms this is the case.
• Air-Vent Passageway: Hilariously Justified:
  Kallen: An air vent? Isn't that cliché? And are we even going to fit? I know you can get through there easily [Arthur], but…
  Arthur: Of course it will work! The public's cognition is that, despite all evidence to the contrary, air vents are big enough for humans to crawl through. It'll be a tight squeeze, but you'll be fine!
• Altar Diplomacy: Discussed. Lelouch doesn't like the idea of Schneizel improving diplomatic relationships between Britannia and the Chinese Federation, especially if that ends with Empress Tianzi and a Britannia Prince in a political marriage to seal the deal. In order to keep Britannia from effectively annexing the Chinese Federation without a fight, Lelouch sets the Black Knights' cross-hairs on Gao Hai, the Chinese ambassador in Area 11, to make the negotiation fall apart.
• Alternative Calendar: The fic uses the pre-retcon A.T.B. calendar that starts in 55 BC, meaning that the present time in-story is an Alternate History 1963. Readers were caught off guard by this in Chapter 50 when Lelouch mentions world population numbers similar to those of the real world in the sixties.
• Ambiguous Situation: Anya's reaction to Lelouch being in a relationship with Kallen and Shirley heavily implies that, as in canon, she's possessed by Marianne's spirit, but how is left up to the imagination, since the powers of Geass have been supplanted by the power of Personas in this universe.
• Anachronism Stew: Discussed. The Black Knights observe that the fourth Palace borrowed the beautiful grand staircase from the RMS Titanic despite the ship being based on a galleon that’s centuries older. Zero is a bit annoyed by the historical inaccuracy, but Diamond argues that the Titanic is THE sinking ship in people's minds, so it makes total sense for stuff from it to appear in that particular Palace.
• Ancient Conspiracy: Chapter 62 reveals that Britannian rulers have been aware of the supernatural for generations. In fact, the very reason why Pendragon, the empire's capital, was built in the middle of a desert is because the ruler at the time wanted the Imperial Palace to sit right on top of a Thought Elevator for easy and discreet access to it. Furthermore, the research of the Precursors ruins during Charles zi Britannia's rule was what gave birth to the Applied Phlebotinum field known as Cognitive Psience.
• Appeal to Flattery: Discussed. Kallen's stepmother advises Lelouch to not forget to compliment his girlfriend's outfit for the Masquerade Ball. He may think he's just stating the obvious, and she's not particularly mindful of her appearance, but the implication is that honest flattery at the proper time is never wasted breath.
• Appeal to Force: Cornelia notes that Lelouch's initial interrogators were intelligence agents who answered personally to the Emperor and were initially unwilling to let her confront him. However, threatening to kill them sorted that out rather quickly.
  Cornelia: It doesn't matter if you have a benefactor who claims to speak for the Emperor, if they're not there to save you.
• Armor-Piercing Question:
  • Leila/Bishop gives Lelouch one in Chapter 19, after he beats her in a chess match. As the two discuss the game, she asks him if he would sacrifice the Black Knights just as easily as he did his chess pieces if it secured him victory. Lelouch can't really offer an answer to that.
  • She does the same in Chapter 37 when she gets him to admit that he actually returns Shirley's feelings despite deciding to pursue a relationship with someone else. Leila should have considered the time and place a bit better because his girlfriend was NOT happy to hear him say that.
  • He returns the favor in Chapter 40. Lelouch asks Leila point-blank whether she's romantically interested in him after noticing that she didn't try to correct her butler from mistaking him for her boyfriend. The sudden question catches her so badly off-guard that her Luminescent Blush and pained tone of voice immediately give her away.
• Armor-Piercing Response: Lelouch gets a couple of good ones.
  • His response to Tsu questioning the point of life. It kinda backfires on him too because it provokes her to spend time with him in the real world in a way that deliberately annoys him.
    Tsu: And like all men, he eventually dies no matter what he does. It's pointless. So why go on?
    Lelouch: I wouldn't expect you to understand. You're cloistered away from humanity here. There is so much to life that you've closed yourself off to.
  • His response to Cornelia threatening him and his accomplices with execution. While she responds forcefully, Lelouch notices the cracks in her self-confidence.
    Cornelia: It would be easy for me to order them to be executed for treason... the same sentence you could easily face if you don't cooperate.
    Lelouch: The same sentence Euphemia could face, if you're convinced of her guilt.
• Arranged Marriage: Discussed. Kaguya commented on her former engagement to her cousin Suzaku, arranged in order to strengthen the ties between the Kururugi and Sumeragi families, which went down the drain when Britannia invaded and annexed Japan. In hindsight, she also observed that her 7-year-old self was a total bully to Suzaku most likely because she resented the engagement, but the "Oni" (Lelouch) indirectly convinced her to stop.
• Asshole Victim: Neither Shirley nor the Black Knights know that her father conducted illegal human experimentation as a researcher in Code-R, meaning that to a point he had it coming when he's killed by mental shutdown. Still, despite all that he did, he still genuinely loved his daughter.
• Assurance Backfire: Played for Laughs when Diamond tells the other Black Knights that there are fanfics of the Black Knights, including Lemons.
  Queen: Did someone actually write that?
  Diamond: Yup! That stuff's mild compared to some of the steamier stuff that's out there now. But don't worry. They've got almost all of the details wrong, so it's not like they're actually writing about you.
  Queen: Not helping!
• Attack Its Weak Point: In the fight against the Cognitive Shen Hu, its second form sprouts wings in a way reminiscent of Shido's winged lion, and proves too difficult an enemy to defeat in the time allowed. Lelouch simply bypasses the Shen Hu to target the Cognitive Xingke riding as its pilot, in a maneuver with Shirley much like Joker and Yoshizawa's Showtime in ''Persona 5 the Royal'. Both Cognitions go down almost instantly.
• Back-Alley Doctor: Discussed in Chapter 53. The Irregulars considered visiting one when they started to get sick after they Escaped from the Lab, but finding one without references would have taken time they didn't have. Also, a Back-Alley Doctor is more likely to hide in the ghettos, and four obviously non-Japanese ill girls walking into one definitely wasn't going to end well.
• Batman Gambit:
  • Kallen complains that bringing Princess Euphemia to a Palace with them is a bad idea because it will be dangerous for the person in question and a liability for the team, yet Lelouch insists despite not really refuting her arguments. Lelouch fully expected that seeing the injustices committed by a crime lord like the Black King through his Palace would stir up Euphemia's sense of justice, and hopefully even incite her spirit of rebellion and awaken her to her Persona. And even if the latter doesn't happen, he still gets an ally outside the Metaverse who will be more committed than before to change the world for the better.
  • How Shadow Shirley gets their original to reject them. The Shadow gives Shirley a dagger and goads her to kill Lelouch. To everyone else's surprise, Shirley instead suddenly turns and stabs her own Shadow without further hesitation. Despite her bleeding injury, the Shadow laughs madly, satisfied after proving her point about how Shirley is capable of killing anyone "who would harm her Lulu, even herself", as the Shadow's power skyrockets from such a strong rejection.
  • Milly manages to pull one on Lelouch of all people, even though it was in a relatively minor matter. She assigns the same task to Kallen, Shirley, and Lelouch because she knows that the two redheads wanted to talk about 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 Marry Them All scenario for the three of them 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.
• Battle Couple: Lelouch/Zero and Kallen/Queen in the Black Knights since Chapter 28. Upgraded to Battle Triad with Shirley/Dame's Relationship Upgrade in Chapter 51, and upgraded to a full-blown Battle Harem in Chapter 58 with Leila's.
• Beach Episode: The Student Council has theirs in a Deserted Island during summer break. It doubles as a Camping Episode.
• Becoming the Mask: Discussed when Lelouch and Nunnally talk about how "Lelouch and Nunnally Lamperouge" have become a real aspect of their personalities.
• The Bet: During the Black-Tie Infiltration at the Masquerade Ball, Lelouch and a similarly masked Britannian noblewoman around his age, who turned out to be quite a skilled chess player, gambled that the loser of their rematch game should reveal their identity. Lelouch won, and she revealed herself to be Princess Marrybell mel Britannia attending the party disguised as a regular member of the nobility, something that saved him and Kallen from getting arrested by the Chinese government.
• Big Entrance: Lelouch indulges in one for his meeting with two members of the Glinda Knights in Chapter 62, making himself suddenly appear sitting at the other side of the table much like a professional Stage Magician would. It was just a practical joke for his half-sister where he waited for the other party in the Metaverse version of the room and then had Leila bring Marrybell and Oldrin to him by activating the MetaNav, with the actual objective of having their meeting with as much privacy as possible.
• Big "WHAT?!":
  • Dame, when Noire casually reveals she's Lelouch's half-sister.
  • Lelouch/Zero's Inner Monologue at Kaguya Sumeragi's Wacky Marriage Proposal.
  • All the girls in the Black Knights sans Diamond in Chapter 49 when she tells them their in-universe fandom think all five of them are their leader's harem.
    Diamond: At least everyone's talking about us now. "The dashing yet mysterious phantom thief Zero, leader of the Black Knights, pledges to steal our hearts, assisted by a bevy of shadowy beauties, his lovers by day and femme fatales by night!"
    Queen, Bishop, Noire, and Dame: [in perfect unison] WHAT?!
• Birthday Episode: The eponymous "Birthday Bash" in Chapter 43, where the Student Council celebrates Shirley, Suzaku, and Rivalz's 17th birthdays, and Milly's 18th, in one big joint party because the former two took place during Shirley's kidnapping and the Race Against the Clock that was exploring her Palace and thus they were in no mood all for a celebration, and the latter two because their birthdays were just a few days away and making another party seemed like too much. Lelouch describes it as "utterly decadent" from the feast alone, but he means it with fondness because they are also celebrating the fact Nunnally just recovered her sight. It doubles as a Mythology Gag because the four characters do have their b-days within the same 16-day period according to canon: Shirley on July 8th, Suzaku on the 10th, Rivalz on the 20th, and Milly on the 24th.
• Black-Tie Infiltration: The Black Knights at the Chinese embassy's Masquerade Ball. Played With in that their real objective is in the Palace based on the embassy, so the extent of their plan in the real world is just for one of them to be seen by the Palace's Ruler inside the place in order to deactivate a Cognitive barrier, but given the possibility of a Boss Fight breaking out right away, Lelouch wants as many members of the team in the building just in case.
• Blindfolded Trip: Lelouch is taken to meet Taizo Kirihara in this manner, but it's Subverted in the sense he already deduced where he was going to be taken beforehand and was only agreeing to do it for their peace of mind.
• Blunt "Yes": Lelouch to Milly, when she asks him to hand-deliver Kallen's middle school transcripts to her place.
  Lelouch: I don't mean to be rude, Madam President, but isn't this something that you could handle yourself?
  Milly: [pouts] Do you really think I'm one to pull a fast one on you?
  Lelouch: Absolutely.
• Bonding over Missing Parents: An Implied Trope. It's likely not a coincidence that the members of the Black Knights that have lost loved ones to Britannia — namely Lelouch (his mother), Kallen (her brother), Shirley (father) and Leila (both parents) — tend to be closer to each other. And it's possible that this played a role in them forming a Polyamory.
• Bookcase Passage: Just like Kamoshida's Castle, Viletta's has one. The mechanism is a lot more complex than his, though, necessitating Lelouch to pinpoint her motivations in order to figure out that pulling all books about Nobility would unlock it.
• Boyfriend Bluff:
  • Done in an unusual way. Kallen pretends that Lelouch is her boyfriend when a Britannian Delinquent punches him in the face, while also revealing herself as a noble. This makes the bullies realize they can get in serious hot water with the law, so they turn tail before they can get arrested for assault.
  • Played almost straight when Kallen grabs onto Lelouch's arm to rebuff Gino Weinberg's advances, but they were boyfriend and girlfriend for real by then.
• Brainwashing for the Greater Good:
  • "Changing Hearts" just like in the game. Similarly to canon, Lelouch isn't one to hesitate to use a supernatural power to accomplish what he considers must be done. However observing the drastic effects of triggering a Change of Heart closely, in both the short and long term with Nina Einstein and Mrs Stadtfeld, respectively, in Chapter 55 fills him with self-doubts.
  • Also Discussed in Chapter 57, where Lelouch freely admits to Li Xingke that he considers the Black Knights' methods as the Necessarily Evil means to defeat a greater evil.
• Breather Episode:
  • Most of "Tanabata". Subverted by the end, where a series of revelations quickly turned it into a Wham Episode.
  • "The Birthday Bash" comes after Wham Episode Chapter 41 and its aftermath in the next one.
• Bribing Your Way to Victory: Summoning Personas from the Compendium costs money just like in the game. When Lelouch managed to hit Rank Max with the twins, that started to include the Picaro Personas can that came as DLC in Persona 5, each with a hefty price tag and risks attached due to their high levels. Despite Tsu teasing him about "paying to win", Lelouch still bought Ariadne Picaro because he found in this choice a nice balance of price, risk, and power.
• Brick Joke:
  • In Chapter 7, Tsu uses the money she gets from Lelouch to buy pizza. Almost forty chapters later, he sees her wearing a different outfit for once and quips to himself, "At least it wasn't all being spent on pizza."
  • The Black Knights' proclamation video from Chapter 49, one showing the masked Zero surrounded by the Sexy Silhouettes of his five female accomplices, accidentally starts the rumor that all of them are their leader's lovers. Ten chapters later, the newest member of the Black Knights sees two of them having a Clingy Jealous Girl moment and wonders aloud whether the rumors were actually true to Lelouch's immediate denial.
• Bullfight Boss: Invoked by Lelouch in Clovis' Palace. He goads Nue into tackling him and jumps out of the way at the last second in order to make the Shadow destroy the trap Shadow Clovis sprung on three of his teammates.
• But You Were There, and You, and You: Subverted. Kallen mentions the Or Was It a Dream? example below where her brother appeared in Chapter 48. Lelouch tries to say he had a similar dream himself, but he's interrupted by urgent business before they can realize there's more to it.
• Call-Back:
  • Lelouch reads The Queen's Necklace by Maurice Leblanc for Nunnally and Shi in Chapter 40. Eleven chapters later, his first Itemization gets him the very same Public Domain Artifact.
  • Lelouch has an Erotic Dream in Chapter 51 where each of his partners — notice the plural — is wearing a sexy outfit from a previous point in the fic: Kallen wears her Miko-inspired dancer outfit from the team's Distracted by the Sexy to gain entry to the fifth Palace, Shirley wears her bikini from the Beach Episode, and Leila is in the same Ready for Lovemaking getup she had in a painting Shadow Clovis made of her in the second Palace.
  • In Chapter 54, when Nunnally/Nemo wonders whether they could have indirectly gotten the Black Mask killed the previous chapter, Lelouch points out they're better off not making that assumption, citing Mao/Medjed's case of Disney Death as an example.
  • Bishop mentions that she hasn't forgotten the time when Marrybell basically played dress-up with her in Pendragon the day of Clovis' state funeral, even 40 chapters later. She brings it up when they finally meet again in Chapter 62.
• The Cameo: Marrybell mel Britannia and Oldrin Zevon make a brief appearance in Chapter 22. More specifically, on the day of Clovis' state funeral in Pendragon. Subverted in favor of the Chekhov's Gunman trope when they make an unnamed appearance under a disguise during the Masquerade Ball in Chapter 56, only to reveal themselves in the next chapter.
• Camping Episode: The Student Council has theirs in Kamine Island during summer break. Milly insists on doing things the "traditional way", like gathering firewood for a campfire instead of just bringing a portable stove, foraging for food, and Suzaku volunteers to fish.
• Canon Foreigner: The cast is comprised almost entirely of characters from Code Geass and its spinoffs; the only direct carryover from Persona is Igor.
• Canon Immigrant:
  • The Student Self-Defense Force from the Code Geass manga adaptation also appears. The SSDF is an unofficial club in Ashford Academy that overzealously enforces the school rules and holds prejudicial views against "Elevens".
  • A group called the Irregulars, seemingly imitators of the Black Knights at first, are based on their namesake from Code Geass: Nightmare of Nunnally. In that AU Spin-Off, they were a group of mech-riding war orphan girls trained as Britannian Agents and given artificial Geass powers. They were officially known as the "Britannian Special Honorary Foreign Legion", and were under the command of Colonel Madd. Here they were subjected to horrible experiments in order to give them Persona powers in Code-R, but managed to escape thanks to Mao's breakout and they changed Madd's heart because he was intent on recapturing them.
  • Same thing with the Glinda Knights, who were an anti-terror task force founded by Princess Marrybell mel Britannia in Code Geass: Oz the Reflection. Unlike the above, this Spin-Off is considered canon to Code Geass' main storyline.

• Casting Gag: Jun Fukuyama has voiced both Lelouch vi Britannia and Joker/Ren Amamiya.

• Can't Kill You, Still Need You: Very nearly Subverted. It's only thanks to Marrybell/West's stone-cold intellect telling them that changing Luciano Bradley's heart and forcing him to confess his numerous crimes was the better outcome that the Glinda Knights didn't simply kill his Shadow and made Mr. "Homicide Genius" brain-death or worse. And she was right. The aftermath of such a high-profile change of heart stirred things up so badly in Pendragon's secret spheres of influence that the Glinda Knights managed to pick up the trail of an Ancient Conspiracy in the heart of the empire from the involved parties' Shadows in Mementos.
• Cast Herd: Invoked by the characters for pragmatic reasons in Chapter 54. The combined numbers of the Black Knights and the Irregulars make them too large a group to be able to infiltrate Gao Hai's Palace efficiently, so they split into two six-person parties while keeping their pairs of Wild Card wielders and Sensor Characters in separated groups to maximize the effectiveness of both. Furthermore, both groups take turns as the vanguard/rearguard so half of them will have the chance to catch their breath and make more ground in a single Dungeon Crawling run.
• Cat-apult: Lelouch invokes this on his Persona Neko Shogun in Chapter 59 to stop Leila's ill-planned rescue of Kallen.
• Catapult Nightmare:
  • Lelouch in the summer trip, right after dreaming Suzaku say "I'll now proceed to pleasure myself with this fish". Lelouch is thankful his startled awakening went unnoticed by his roommates.
  • Again in Chapter 51, where Lelouch violently wakes up from an Erotic Dream involving Kallen, Shirley, Leila, and himself (by courtesy of Lilim) that was interrupted just as violently when a dream version of Nunnally suddenly appears.
• Catch-22 Dilemma: Happens in the fourth Palace. Shadow Shirley is doing its utmost to get the Black Knights killed because the real Shirley mistakenly believes they murdered her father, but they can't explain to her it was really a Frame-Up because Medjed kidnapped her and brought her somewhere deep within her Palace, where they can't get to because her Shadow keeps hounding them down because the real Shirley mistakenly believes... you get the drill.
• Chaotic Stupid: Lelouch describes Shadow Selves as such. As the living manifestation of a person's unrestrained id, they are slaves to their impulses even when it would benefit them to exercise more prudence.
• Chekhov's Gun: Joseph Fenette's subtle test to measure a person's potential as a Persona User, which is how he discovered his own daughter Shirley has lots of it, ended up being applied in hospitals across Area 11 without the patient's consent and without the medical personnel actually knowing that the test is really for, all in order to find promising test subjects for their experiments.
• Chekhov's Gunman:
  • After hearing about the "Lockdown" service in the Velvet Room, Lelouch ponders whether he should put Shiki-Ouji in it so the Persona will overcome its only elemental weakness to nuke-type skills, and that way have a fine opening option against Shadows with attacks of unknown type, on top of Shiki-Ouji being already impervious to the ever-common physical attacks. This proves to be worth all the hassle in the battle against the sea monster Scylla in Shirley's Palace, where Shiki-Ouji and Kallen's nuke-wielding Personas are able to double-team the Shadow without issue.
  • The Pisaca Shadows, Mooks based on a type of preta ("hungry ghost" from Hindu lore) that lurks in the dark areas of fourth Palace, ends up (seemingly) delivering the Coup de Grâce to Mao/Medjed.
  • The Reaper out of all things becomes this in Chapter 53, after its first and until then only appearance in Chapter 22. Nunnally and her team ran away from the Black Mask in Mementos in a way that purposely led the latter to meet face to face with The Reaper, forcing him to drop pursuit and allowing the Irregulars to escape.
  • Princess Marrybell mel Britannia and her Knight Oldrin Zevon get Lelouch and Kallen out of a tight spot in Chapter 57 during the Masquerade Ball, after being only mentioned in Chapters 17 and 22. Further developments reveal that this wasn't exactly a coincidence.
• A Child Shall Lead Them: Empress Tianzi of the Chinese Federation, as in canon. Unlike canon, Shadow Gao Hai reveals this was horrifyingly contrived. Years ago he gave his senior High Eunuchs the idea of killing her parents with the right drugs that "can mimic a wasting illness or even death from a broken heart" in order to give themselves a Puppet King to rule China through as her Evil Chancellors.
• Clarke's Third Law: Namedropped by Lloyd when discussing the ruins on Kamine Island.
• Clothing Damage: Bishop loses large swaths of her long skirt in the Boss Fight against Alciel.
• The Conscience: Discussed in Chapter 57 when Arsene advices Lelouch against using the MetaNav to transport Gao Hai and his guards to the Metaverse and kill them there, as it would also drag two Innocent Bystanders needing silencing as well. Lelouch Lampshaded whether advice like that means Arsene now fancies himself his conscience, but then he realizes that the literary Arsène Lupin was indeed a Gentleman Thief with a strict no-murder rule.
• Continuity Nod:
  • Lelouch remembers the time he first met Milly according to the Audio Play Stage 0.911, where her middle school-aged self flaunted her already developed figure and encouraged him to ogle her.
  • Kaguya Sumeragi recognizes Lelouch on sight, however not as himself, but rather as someone she calls the "oni". This is a reference to a Sound Episode where a 7-year-old Kaguya got lost in the woods surrounding the Kururugi Shrine and ran into Lelouch, whom she mistook for the "oni"/demon the grown-ups warned her about to prevent exactly that from happening because his rare lavender eyes didn't look normal to her younger self. Kid Lelouch played along with her misconception and took the opportunity to give her "The Reason You Suck" Speech because at the time she was the same kind of Spoiled Brat so common among his half-sisters, lessons that she took to heart and helped her to become the improbably capable political player that she was in the anime.
  • In Chapter 57, Lelouch remembers Princess Marrybell as one of the few people who went to say goodbye to him and his sister when they were all but exiled to Japan. Doubles as a Mythology Gag of sorts because The Cameo in question is original to the compilation movies only.
• invokedCorpsing: During a scene where Bishop insults the guards in his Palace, Lelouch has to fight down a smirk to not break character.
• Covert Group with Mundane Front:
  • Subverted. Colonel Madd tried to set up a secondary site for Code-R in the underground levels of a well-respected hospital, but the Irregulars changed his heart before it could get really going.
  • By the end of Chapter 60, the student council is pretty much a downplayed example; only Rolo and Rivalz aren't either members of the Black Knights or knowingly collaborating with them, but they do still do actual student council things.
• Crossover: The story is based on Code Geass' setting and characters with its supernatural elements replaced largely with those of Persona 5, but with other elements of the Persona series as well, including Royal. Later chapters reveal that the world-building also borrows from Code Geass: Nightmare of Nunnally, an Alternate Universe Spin-Off setting in the Code Geass franchise with its own branch of the supernatural, for more than a few Canon Foreigners, as well as including mentions and appearances of characters from Oz the Reflection. Despite the number of different elements, the author manages to blend them all together practically seamlessly.
• Cruel Mercy: Mrs. Stadtfeld Lampshades it by telling Lelouch that laying out her sins, while freeing her emotionally, was one of the cruelest things he could've done to her as she must live with Kallen forever hating her no matter what she does, along with her husband discarding her. And now Lelouch wants her to act as she did before her change of heart when all it does is invoke some memories she feels would best be left forgotten.
• Cryptic Conversation: Played With. Lelouch and Bishop have a brief one after the latter shows she's fluent in French. Dame and the others don't catch the meaning in his words, but it's obvious for the audience that Lelouch's asking Bishop whether her parents raised her to be fully bilingual because they were planning on defecting to the EU where French is lingua franca and they wanted to ease up the transition for their only daughter, something that Bishop confirms as a very likely possibility.
• Cultural Posturing:
  • Endemic to Britannia's Patriotic Fervor and Written by the Winners policies. For example, Lelouch can't help but notice that the bust of Commodore Perry◊ in Shimoda was replaced by a large statue of the Britannian man that used Gunboat Diplomacy to force Japan to open the port to Britannian ships.
  • Also present in more subtle ways as Discussed during the summer trip. Lelouch's narration comments on the "bastardization of the ryokan experience" where the clothes, the food, and even the decoration have been modified to please a Britannian clientele, but people unfamiliar with Japanese culture would hardly notice something amiss.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Mao/Medjed is on the wrong end of two of these.
  • In the fight with him in Shirley's Palace, he barely gets to summon his persona before the Black Knights curb-stomp his ass with a single All-Out Attack.
  • In the fight in the Ashford Academy sewers, all of his attacks are completely nullified by Lelouch's Personas because the latter knew what Elemental Powers Mao's Persona wields from the previous battle. Mao does manage a Curb Stomp Cushion this time by pulling out a Megidola attack Lelouch didn't know he had, but once two of the Irregulars arrive to reinforce Lelouch it's all over for Mao.
• Dangerous Forbidden Technique: More like morally dangerous technique. The MetaNav can be used as an Escape Rope of sorts that allows a Persona User to flee from real-world danger by jumping into the Metaverse. The problem is that the app isn't too precise and will drag any friend or foe nearby to the other world as well, making it very likely for Lelouch to be required to get rid of transported enemies by force with his Personas in order to protect his identity. Similarly, concern for Innocent Bystanders the "Emerald-masked woman" and her bodyguard "Oz" made him hesitate to escape from the Chinese Federation embassy when Xingke and the ambassador himself caught them and Kallen in his office.
• Daydream Surprise: Lelouch has one about the student council's Beach Episode ahead of time, including Mythology Gags to both sides of the Crossover.
• Demoted to Extra:
  • Given that the Black Knights are this fic's equivalent of the Phantom Thieves of Hearts, and thus nothing like what they were in Code Geass canon, most of La Résistance members don't even appear here and it can be assumed their lives continued as they were before Zero entered the picture.
  • Lloyd Asplund is one of the main supporting characters in canon Code Geass. Here, he's just a minor figure in the background during Milly's Confidant and doesn't personally show up until roughly halfway through the story. He does get a bit more screen time during the summer trip by inviting Milly and friends to Kamine Island. This leads the team to the very plot relevant discovery of the location of the Charles zi Britannia's Palace.
• Deserted Island: The final stop of the Student Council's summer trip is Kamine Island.
• Didn't See That Coming: The Masquerade Ball kept on throwing curve balls at Lelouch's plans.
  • First, two Knights of the Round show up at the party, and given that the Emperor is the only one who can order them around, the fact he sent them to such a relatively minor event while most the Black Knights were in attendance immediately puts Lelouch in high alert.
  • Then none other than Schneizel himself shows up right afterward, and gives a New Era Speech that at one point directly addresses the Black Knights despite the government's tacit stance to underplay their importance. Not only the timing was incredibly suspicious, but the speech itself skillfully poisoned public opinion against them.
  • Related to the above, Euphemia got assigned a different bodyguard that the one Lelouch was expecting — namely Jeremiah, a Confidant and ally — which effectively got her stuck in her role as a guest of honor and thus depriving the team of their main healer and dedicated Psi-attack user. Worse still, said bodyguard hovering over her shoulder is Suzaku, someone whom Lelouch not only never expected to be there, but being a member of Ashford Academy student council makes Suzaku fully capable of identifying any of the Black Knights under their party costumes.
  • Elaborating on the above, Suzaku body guarding Euphemia lead to some further Paranoia Fuel for Lelouch. Knowing that she wouldn't have requested Suzaku there as his presence gets in the way of the Black Knights' Black-Tie Infiltration, nor Cornelia would have ever allowed a "Number" to guard her beloved little sister, Lelouch hypothesized that only Schneizel can be behind Suzaku's Rank Up, but he can't figure out what the Second Prince could hope to win with it other than observing that the obvious backlash from making an "Eleven" into a Knights means that the expected payout just has to be very substantial.
  • Last but not least, unwittingly or not, Schneizel directly interfered with the Black Knights' mission at the event by engaging Leila in conversation, thus keeping her from playing a crucial role in Lelouch's "Plan A" and forcing him to improvise.
  • Also a Discussed Trope. Lelouch makes a mental note of the unexpected complications and the Xanatos Speed Chess-level feat he has to pull off in order to get his plans back on track without getting caught, up and including an actual game of chess against an unknown but obviously skilled player as luck would have it. Being the high-stakes gambler that he is, he responds by basically daring "Lady Fortune" to Bring It.
• Did They or Didn't They?: The ending of Chapter 28 employs a literary Fade to Black after Kallen asks Lelouch to 'prove' that she is his queen, followed by a note that Lelouch arrived home late that night. All that being said, Incubus' comments imply that the two did have sex.
• Did We Just Have Tea with Cthulhu?: Played With. Lelouch has a moment of amused realization in Chapter 58 when he notices that he should be surprised about amiably having breakfast with his Ambiguously Human Wardens.
• Did You Just Have Sex?: Subverted. Sayoko notices that Lelouch has seemed happier in the last few weeks and assumed that he got himself a lover. The actual reason is the formation of the Black Knights.
• Dies Differently in Adaptation:
  • Instead of being shot by Lelouch at the start of his quest for revenge, Clovis has a mental shut down on live TV by the Black Mask to keep him from confessing to Code R.
  • Colonel Kusakabe is killed via mental shutdown before his faction in the JLF could take the convention center at Lake Kawaguchi hostage. The Black Mask is again suspected of this, but nobody else In-Universe knows for sure.
  • Joseph Fenette is killed by someone who is presumed to be the Black Mask to tie up loose ends from Code-R.
• Discontinuity Nod:
  • When Shadow Viletta learns that Kallen is half-Japanese, she says she could never fall in love with an "Eleven".
  • When the team wonders if they could make their own thief tools such as smoke bombs and stuff, Arthur excuses himself saying that a cat like him doesn't know a thing about the chemistry.
  • Milly considers "Panther" as her Code Name, but she finally goes for "Diamond".
  • The scene where Lelouch stops a group of Britannian Delinquents from harassing a Japanese street vendor happens here. Without his Geass to make them go away, though, Lelouch "stops" them by getting punched in the face, and then they flee when Kallen reminds them that they can get sued for assaulting him.
  • Shirley steals a kiss from Lelouch after her father's death like in the anime, but the context is very different this time around because she did it despite knowing that he's dating someone else.
  • At one point, Lelouch has a nightmare of Arthur forcing him to go to bed at the cost of his social life, mirroring a controversial mechanic in Persona 5.
  • Lelouch gets the chance to destroy Shirley's Treasure, namely her memories of him, which would have given her Laser-Guided Amnesia about him and everything involving the Black Knights including the Metaverse, at the cost of removing her from his life. Unlike his canon self, he doesn't go through with it.
  • Suzaku becomes a Knight assigned to Euphemia's protection. Unlike canon, this wasn't her choice and thus he's not sworn in as her Knight of Honor.
• Do Not Taunt Cthulhu: Discussed. Tsu warns Lelouch to stop back-talking at Igor, but he argues back that it would just be silly to expect an Insufferable Genius with Parental Issues like him to not act rebellious against a parental authority figure like how Igor presents himself. C.C. realizes that Lelouch got a point in that acting as the Spoiled Brat he's being taken for is paradoxically the prudent course of action for their plans, but she doesn't let the chance to call him just that slide, because how could she not.
• Double-Meaning Title: Chapter 36 is titled "Between Scylla and Charybdis", which is a saying from Classical Mythology that basically means "between a rock and a hard place" representing the team's situation by the end of it. It's also the name of the two sea monsters they have to fight right after entering Shirley's Palace.
• Downer Beginning: Like in the game, the story begins with Lelouch in the custody of Britannia and seemingly with no way out, forcefully drugged on Refrain as Cornelia interrogates him.
• Do Wrong, Right:
  • Sayoko Shinosaki congratulates Lelouch for how quickly he hacked his way into a secure elevator, even stating that they would have been hard-pressed to do it as quickly as him. High praise coming from a modern-day ninja.
  • Discussed. Bishop believes Lelouch when he says he didn't attempt to engage in Outdoor Bath Peeping — not because she trusts him to not do it, but rather because she would have expected him to come up with a better plan, including having an escape route or two handy.
• Dragged into Drag: Lelouch is forced to disguise himself as a female dancer in order to infiltrate Gao Hai's Palace. As in canon, the in-story consensus is that he looks gorgeous as a she.
• Dramatic Irony:
  • Nina talks about her scientific projects with Lelouch, but given that nothing like an atomic bomb exists in Code Geass' Alternate History, he doesn't recognize its potential as a weapon of mass destruction. He instead sees her brainchild as a possible alternative energy source, and later on, he even lets Lloyd know about it in hopes of helping Nina to get the grants, equipment, and the Sakuradite samples she needs to continue her research.
  • It's already a pretty big reveal In-Universe when Lelouch is told that the first known case of Mental Shutdown was Genbu Kururugi seven years ago, but given what Code Geass fans know of the canonical version of the incident, this strongly hints that Suzaku Kururugi is the Black Mask. One of them, to be precise.
  • There's a humorous example in Chapter 47. In a chat over breakfast in a Ryokan Inn, Suzaku mentions that "a cousin of his" wants to have her honeymoon in one, unaware that Lelouch just got a Wacky Marriage Proposal from Kaguya just a few days prior.
  • The Black Knights are an Outside-Context Problem for Cornelia, which can lead to this trope. For example, in Chapter 49 the Black Knights release a proclamation video depicting themselves in possession of Knightmare Frames. Lelouch's only objective with that is altering people's Cognition of them so Cognitive duplicates of the Frames will appear in Mementos for their use. However, Cornelia doesn't know a thing about the Metaverse and instead thinks the Black Knights are making a thinly veiled terrorist threat. While Lelouch knew this would happen beforehand, he really needed to procure a way for the team to traverse the vastness of Mementos in a relatively safe manner with stuff like The Reaper lurking around.
  • Lelouch is quite impressed to hear that the current Knight of Six Anya Alstreim is so good a piloting a Knightmare Frame that she's said to have the potential to be "the second coming of Marianne the Flash", which is likely to get a giggle/snort out of many a Code Geass fans.
  • There's a small example in Chapter 57. "Oz" covers her mouth to hide her amusement when she mistakenly thinks Lelouch is hitting on her boss. Given that the latter is actually Princess Marrybell mel Britannia and very likely lesbian, it's not surprising she thinks so little of his chances with her.
    • In the same chapter, Lelouch briefly considers activating the MetaNav to escape Gao Hai arresting him and Kallen, but decides against it because, among other reasons, he would have to kill two innocent bystanders to protect their identities as the Black Knights. Several chapters later, we learn that said "innocent bystanders" are themselves Persona users scouting out Gao Hai as a target for a heart change.
  • Princess Marrybell's recollection of the events leading to her mother and sister's deaths doesn't quite match what the reader may know about V.V.'s involvement in the incident in canon and what the Switching P.O.V. has shown of the Black Mask's mysterious boss in Chapter 55. Namely, the bomber's description matches V.V.'s canonical appearance, but the Black Mask's boss is an old man after just seven years in-universe, which could mean that V.V. is just one or perhaps neither of them, or something else entirely is going on.
• Draw Aggro: Unwanted but not unwillingly done. Lelouch quickly realizes that Shadow Shirley is so fixated on him that it's pretty much impossible for him to get anything done covertly, so he settles himself in a diversionary role to at least take advantage of the situation.
• Dream Intro: Chapter 47 begins with a Daydream Surprise about the student council having a day at the beach. Then it gets self-referential and weird.
• Dream Weaver: As her demonic namesake that inspired the myths of Succubi and Incubi in medieval times, the Persona Lilim can give Lelouch elaborate Erotic Dreams, something he didn't know until right after he fused her in Chapter 51.
• Dropping the Bombshell:
  • Noire casually mentions she's Lelouch half-sister to Dame. Cue Big "WHAT?!" from the latter.
  • Milly too, when she mentions she's engaged to marry Lloyd. Played With in that only Rivalz seems surprised because he somehow didn't get the memo.
• Dual-World Gameplay:
  • A non-video game example. Outside distortion-filled locations like Palaces and Mementos, the Metaverse is simply a carbon copy of real world devoid of people that can be entered at one point and exited at another, making it useful to bypass real-world obstacles unnoticed just like Mao did in order to kidnap Shirley, and later on Nunnally.
  • Used to great effect in Kamine Island. The Black Knights jump to the Metaverse to evade the soldiers watching the perimeter around the ruins, and then back to the real world to avoid fighting the powerful Shadows roaming the place.
• Dude, Not Funny!: Lelouch's reaction when he discovers in Viletta's Palace that the coach actually thinks he and Nunnally might be having an incestuous relationship.
• Duel Boss: The second fight against Mao/Medjed starts out as a duel with Lelouch, but it's subverted when Sayoko, Alice, and Nunnally jump in on Lelouch's side.
• The End of the World as We Know It: Lelouch finally discovers what "Ragnarök" entails in Chapter 62, when Marrybell tells him what she knows about their father's plans to use the Metaverse to remake the world.
• Engaging Conversation: What prompts the Wacky Marriage Proposal in Chapter 44. And it's a damn short one too. It goes almost directly from Lelouch saying he's the leader of the Black Knights to Kaguya stating "You're going to be my future husband!" Justified in the sense she liked him already, she's enough of a Teen Genius to figure out dozens of other things about him from that Internal Reveal alone, and by the fact Kaguya is canonically just odd like that.
• Entertainingly Wrong: In Chapter 55, Xingke noticed the Black Knights' suspicious movements around the Chinese Embassy, but simply assumed they were just privileged teenagers misbehaving for the thrills. He was only concerned because two of them — Euphemia and Leila — were important enough to cause a diplomatic incident if they got caught near the embassy so he just let them go with a warning to do their thing anywhere else.
• Erotic Dream: Lelouch has one in Chapter 51 that ends in Catapult Nightmare before it could leave PG territory. This is actually Invoked by his latest Persona, Lilim, and he gets mad at her for it. Lilim argues back she's his Persona and thus "also [him]", meaning that she only gave shape to what is already in his subconscious, and the guilt he feels for feeling himself attracted to Kallen, Shirley, and Leila at the same time manifested an interruption in form of an angry and disappointed Nunnally catching all four of them making out.
• Escaped from the Lab: One of Code-R's test subjects awakened to their Persona and caused the breakout of several of them from the lab in Narita. They are later revealed to be Mao/Medjed, who managed to break out of confinement on his own, and the Irregulars, who took advantage of it to escape themselves.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Joseph Fenette designed a test to measure someone's potential as a Persona User as part of his work as a head researcher in Code-R. He ran it on his daughter disguised as a regular health checkup as a control sample and accidentally discovered that her potential was leaps and bounds better than any of his experimental subjects. He immediately destroyed the results and any evidence she was ever tested in order to keep the rest of Code-R from even getting the idea of using her in their experiments.
• Everyone Has Standards: Lloyd Asplund may be a questionably sociopathic Mad Scientist who lives for his experiments, but even he's not willing to create a chemical weapon out of Mystery Food X.
• Everything but the Girl: By Chapter 71, Milly has managed to get out of her Arranged Marriage deal to Lloyd, has begun to mend her relationship with her mother, and is even expecting to pursue her chosen career after graduating high school. However, Lelouch turns down her Love Confession as she expected despite the high likelihood that the girls he's in a polyamorous with will agree to welcome her into it.
• Everything's Sparkly with Jewelry: Subverted. Tsu teasingly suggests Lelouch to Itemize a Treasure Demon into an accessory to give to "one of the girls who fancy [him]", but he instantly vetoes the idea when he gets it. It turns out the "Queen's Necklace" is just as ridiculously opulent as its historically-relevant namesake, meaning that there's no way he can give it to any girl without being "interpreted as a strong gesture of courtship". Even his girlfriend isn't an exception because wearing it in public would make people most likely assume she's the soon-to-be "trophy wife of an incredibly wealthy older and higher ranking noble", an implication that she would definitely resent.
• Exact Words: During the eighth interrogation sequence, Cornelia wonders if Nunnally is a Black Knight, and Lelouch immediately denies it. He does not deny that Nunnally is a Persona user or an Irregular, though.
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!:
  • Lelouch, when Milly explains her Honey Trap infiltration plan for the fifth Palace in Chapter 50
    Milly: Most males, and especially soldiers, are the hot-blooded type. They see a pretty girl, and some of those higher brain functions shut down, while more primitive parts take over. They'll be eager to please her. If they see six pretty girls... then we're home free.
    Lelouch: There are only five of you... [Beat] No, you can't be serious!
    Milly: [cackling] Time to take one for the team, Zero!
  • A more serious one happens in Chapter 62 when Bishop sums up what Lelouch just told her about her being Igor's first choice for the Trickster meant to stop Ragnarök when she was a kid, but she unwittingly failed to develop said potential. Leila wonders whether Igor could have pulled strings and indirectly influenced Clovis to order her parents' death as a last-ditch ploy to make her awaken to her power in order to avenge them.
• Fainting:
  • Kallen's Cognitive double in the first Palace after Cognitive Lelouch kisses her. It would be an understatement to say the real Kallen was annoyed at the sight.
  • Shirley faints when she realizes she's been crushing on the missing prince of Britannia.
• Fairy Tale Episode: The Fourth Palace is based on Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid. Specifically, it's shaped like the Wedding Ship from the last act. Probably a bad thing if you remember that this fairy tale doesn't have a Happy Ending.
• Fairytale Wedding Dress: The one Lelouch and Shirley Fenette see on display in a bridal shop at the mall in Chapter 54 serves as a conversation starter about how she used to wish to marry her father as a child and how much she misses him now that he's gone.
• Fantastic Racism: While Britannia's prejudice toward numbers is already rather obvious, this comes into play in Chapter 17 when Kallen takes the Black Knights to Shinjuku to show them what they're fighting for — all of her other friends are rather cold at best toward the other Black Knights, simply because they're Britannians.
• Fantasy Keepsake: If Lelouch visits the Velvet Room in his sleep and gets an item there, it will appear by his bedside when he wakes up.
• Fastball Special: Twice during Chapter 59's Boss Battle.
  • Lelouch first has Shirley's Persona launch his Neko Shogun at an electrified cable in order to use its resistance to Zio to cut it before damaging himself too much.
  • Moments later, Lelouch orders Kallen's Persona to throw one of the severed slash harkens high into the column while he holds fast to the connected cable. At the same time, he wraps his other arm around Shirley as they are pulled by the line, instructing her to trust him with their improvised flight and focus sorely on shooting Cognitive Xingke dead the moment their swinging trajectory around the column gives her a clean line of fire. She nails the shot (multiple times), destroying Cognitive Xingke and leaving the Shen Hu to descend harmlessly to the ground without its pilot.
• Father, I Want to Marry My Brother: One time Euphemia remembered how she and Nunnally used to discuss which of them was going to marry Lelouch. This earned her really odd looks from his girlfriend.
• Faux Horrific: Lelouch once imagines the "nightmarish scenario in which Milly and Kaguya were the best of friends" and almost loses his appetite. If you're wondering why would he have a problem with the idea of the two sweet Genki Girls ever meeting and becoming friends, consider that the former is a Ms. Fanservice who loves pranking and trying to get a reaction out of Lelouch, and the latter is his number one Fangirl who not only wants to marry him, but she's also worryingly okay with the possibility that she would not be his only significant other, plus others hints suggesting she's just as happily perverted as Milly beneath her Yamato Nadeshiko appearance.
• Feed It a Bomb: Lelouch puts a grenade in the "food" a Mini-Boss Shadow eats to heal itself. Given that said food is the Cognition of a person, most of the party gives him What the Hell, Hero? looks even though they understand no harm to actual people was done.
• Festival Episode: Chapter 34 depicts how the Tanabata is like under the Britannian regime.
• Flawed Prototype: For once not a Knightmare Frame, but in fact a person. In Chapter 61 Igor tells Lelouch that he intended Leila Breisgau, "the offspring of a pair of dissidents, rebels against their society", to be the Trickster meant to stop Ragnarök and tried to awaken her to the Wild Card when she was a child. But she Missed the Call and her potential as a Persona-user "ossified" into the specific form of the High Priestess Arcana as she grew up. Even today Igor seems annoyed that he was forced to look for an alternative, opting for a The Chosen Many approach instead.
• Food as Bribe: The Groveling variant. Milly buys a fancy breakfast for the student council and their guests the next morning after her failed prank at the hot springs.
• Foreshadowing:
  • In Chapter 29, there's a conspicuous pause between words when Warden Shi says "Miss Nunnally". It'd take an additional 13 chapters to be confirmed that she intended to call her "Miss Inmate" at first.
  • Bishop forces Lelouch to admit to his feelings for Shirley right in front of his girlfriend Kallen. At first, this looks like this is because Bishop's too Innocently Insensitive and goal-oriented to pick a better time and place for it, and to a point this is really the case, but it's later revealed that Leila is growing to like Lelouch that way too, and thus had her own reasons to want to hear his answer.
  • Nunnally asking Lelouch to read her about Queen Elizabeth the Third. Chapter 41 reveals the latter is the basis of her Persona.
  • The tarot reading that Shirley gets in Chapter 47, more precisely the "merging of opposites, into a new and harmonious whole" foreshadows she, Kallen, and Lelouch becoming a triad by the end of Chapter 51. Leila actually calls back to this line when she notices the signs that the three are in a relationship one chapter later.
  • Played for Laughs about Leila's awful cooking skills. In Chapter 40, Leila's butler looks concerned when she says she's going to take care of her and her guest's lunch. In Chapter 47, she mentions her staff politely keeps her from going anywhere near the kitchen. She finally gets the chance to cook in Chapter 48, only to help bring the culinary abomination known as "Mystery Food X" into the world.
  • Lelouch notices that Kallen and Shirley are getting along better after the events of the fourth Palace, and deduces they have been hanging out outside the scope of his narration based on the Coordinated Clothes they had when the whole gang wore costumes in Chapter 50. It's revealed in the next chapter that Kallen came clean to Shirley off-screen, not only telling her that Lelouch reciprocates the latter's feelings for him, but also that Kallen herself is just as utterly devoted to him as her Shadow showed Shirley is. This and Leila forcing Lelouch to admit he loves Shirley too in Chapter 37 led the redheads to actually consider a One True Threesome as a possibility for three of them, something that they propose to Lelouch in Chapter 51 to his cautious agreement.
  • Speaking of Chapter 51, somebody should hand Nunnally a phone because she freaking called a certain important development here whole forty chapters and around 220,000 words before the fact. In Chapter 11, Kallen introduces herself to Nunnally and the latter takes the opportunity to directly ask her if the rumors about her and Lelouch dating are indeed false as he told her. When Kallen confirms that's just gossip, Nunnally says that's a bit of a shame because she was actually looking forward to either her or Shirley becoming her sister-in-law someday, which sorta happens in Chapter 28 when Kallen and Lelouch hook up. Heck, Nunnally goes as far as to say she wouldn't mind if the two of them get together with him at the same time as long as she can still spend time with her brother, which naturally prompts a Big "WHAT?!" out of the girls as Lelouch groans and silently wonders if her upbringing as a princess born from a Royal Harem — or simply spending too much time around Milly — put strange ideas about relationships in his sister's head.
  • The "Emerald-masked Woman" at the Masquerade Ball wears an elegant period costume inspired by Witch Classic apparel. If you happen to know that a stylized witch-riding-a-broom motif is right on the insignia of the Glinda Knights, an anti-terrorism unit founded by her in Code Geass: Oz the Reflection, then you're likely to figure out her identity ahead of time.
• Fourth-Date Marriage: Parodied in Chapter 44. Kaguya gives Lelouch a Wacky Marriage Proposal during what's literally the fourth time they ever meet.
• Freudian Excuse: All of the Black Knight's major targets, and even most of the minor ones, have revealed some underlying reason for their behavior to varying degrees of sympathy. See the trope below for the less accepted ones.
  • Shadow Villetta Nu reveals her Envy was caused by being overlooked and passed over in favor of members of the Nobility even after she worked harder.
  • Shadow Clovis saw himself as a hero avenging the death of Lelouch, Nunnally, and Marianne, and bought more and more into his Vanity to justify his inhuman experiments and treatment of Elevens.
  • Shadow Black King reveals that he was born poor, and climbing his way up to the top of the food chain led to his Gluttony.
  • Shadow Shirley was subjected to a long, loooong Trauma Conga Line. It starts off with her being abused by Coach Nu, then she witnesses her father's death by mental shutdown and comes to believe that the Black Knights killed him, only to discover that their leader is the boy she's been crushing over for years, and to her horror, she realizes that she can't let go of her love for Lelouch even though she believes he killed her father. And then she's kidnapped and dragged into the Metaverse by Medjed/Mao, being forced to come face-to-face with her Shadow, and learns that her father was responsible for conducting inhuman experiments. Needless to say, her excuse is by far the most sympathetic yet.
  • Shadow Gao Hai offers the fact he was born to petty criminal parents and had to sacrifice his manhood as his defense for his unrestrained Greed.
• Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: Most of the Shadows get this treatment from the Black Knights after their Motive Rant. For example, when the Black King's Shadow reveals that he grew up poor and had to claw his way to "the top of the food chain", Kallen instantly retorts that a crappy childhood doesn't give him the right to ruin so many lives.
• Friendly Rivalry: Lelouch doesn't miss how Kallen and Shirley, subconsciously or not, compete against each other because of him despite the fact he's made his choice clear already, but the girls respect each other enough for this to be an incentive to improve themselves as Persona Users in the Metaverse. He also notices they take cues from each other's fighting styles to improve their own. For example, Shirley gains the confidence to fight Shadows at closer range like Kallen does, and Kallen adds elements of Shirley's dance-like maneuvers and becomes more efficient in the process.
• The Friends Who Never Hang: Half-sibling variant in the backstory. Lelouch, Nunnally, Marrybell, and possibly her sister Julia didn't hang out much as kids, but they were all very fond of Euphemia and occasionally crossed paths that way. This is brought up by Marrybell in Chapter 62 when trying to remember how he and Nunnally used to be when they were still royals.
• From Bad to Worse:
  • The situation with Shirley Fenette's Palace was bad enough on its own, but then Medjed appears, traps her in her own Palace, and then publicly challenges the Black Knights to save her before a deadline or he will kill her and reveal their identities to the authorities. Then the Black Knights manage to accidentally pop a booby trap in the Palace itself and shorten their deadline from 13 days to 3.
  • Lelouch's love life. A Love Triangle between Kallen, Shirley, and Lelouch at the center is bad enough on its own, especially because both girls' feelings for him go way beyond the level of a simple crush. Then it turns out Leila is secretly crushing on him and kept quiet about it in consideration of his already complicated love life until a knee-jerk reaction of his makes her give herself away. Worse, Leila's circumstances are far from ideal too because all the secrets she has to keep (plus other tropes) makes Lelouch the only guy she could feasibly have an actual relationship with despite all the above, and neither of them is sure how much this effective isolation could make feel situationally attracted him. Then Kaguya declares him her future husband just for an added kick in the teeth. Fortunately for him, Kallen and Shirley agree to share him and they all enter a triad.
• Fusion Fic:
  • The story takes away the supernatural elements of Code Geass from its plot and replaces them with those of Persona 5, with prince-in-hiding Lelouch becoming the Trickster instead of a Geass User, and leaving everything else pretty much the same. The Code Geass cast is also mostly the same in characterization and personality, but their circumstances are just different enough to keep things interesting. After 40+ chapters, the existence of the Kamine Island Ruins still bearing the Geass symbol implies this is not as simple as the premise led the audience to believe.
  • There are numerous parallels between the roles of Persona 5 characters and the Code Geass cast. For example, Viletta takes the role of Kamoshida, being both the first Palace target and the swim coach at Ashford, while Arthur, as previously stated, has taken on the role of Morgana. Additionally, C.C. takes the role of Caroline and Justine as Igor's assistant and appears as two Literal Split Personalities of herself: Shi and Tsu.
• Gender-Restricted Gear: An unusual example. The famous diamond Koh-i-Noor is said to be a Bad Luck Charm to any man who wears it. Lelouch doesn't know if the Itemized version of the Treasure Demon based on the gem has such an effect, but given how Cognition works, he opted for not bothering to test it. Furthermore, the accessory boosts Bless-type attacks, so it was a perfect fit for Dame and her Persona anyway, thus making the potential problem a non-issue.
• Genre Shift:
  • An odd case. By replacing the supernatural elements from Code Geass with those of Persona 5, the story pretty much does away with the former's Mini-Mecha and Military Science Fiction elements as most of the plot-relevant combat follows the Urban Fantasy game mechanics of the latter. That is, while the fic can be considered a Genre Shift as far as Code Geass is concerned, it's business as usual for the Persona 5 side of the Crossover but with a different cast.
  • Inverted in Chapters 66 and especially 67, where the story pays full homage to its Code Geass roots by putting heavy emphasis on Knightmare Frames and military combat in the real world, when any and all combat up until this point had been based in the Metaverse.
• Gentleman Thief: Discussed. Nunnally comments that her brother must have a fondness of kaito characters from the way he read The Queen's Necklace by Maurice Leblanc for her and Shi. Lelouch deliberately picks an Arsène Lupin story to indirectly discern whether she would approve of his actions as a phantom thief of hearts.
• Gladiator Games: Princess Carine ne Britannia's (off-screen) Palace is described as "a vast arena complex, like the Colosseum of Rome and the Hippodrome of Constantinople mashed together, along with more modern venues dropped on top of them featuring every sort of bloodsport you could imagine."
• Gone Horribly Right: While it was always in Lelouch's plans to get caught trespassing in Gao Hai's office in other to change his Cognition, he never expected the target himself to show up and find them there. While this removed the Cognitive barriers in the Palace better than what Lelouch had in mind, it also would have gotten him and Kallen arrested under Chinese Federation laws (due to extraterritoriality) were not for Princess Marrybell's presence there making it a dicey political move for the ambassador to take.
• Government Conspiracy:
  • Code-R was one under Clovis, involved in illegal human experimentation, mass kidnappings, and more.
  • Lelouch suspects the Emperor has an even larger going on based on how much Igor wants him to stop whatever Charles' "Ragnarök" is. Lelouch strongly suspects at least a few of the Knights of the Round are on it, and finds it incredibly suspicious that he would send two of them to the Masquerade Ball at the Chinese embassy in Area 11, and even fears they could be Persona Users.
  • It's confirmed in Chapter 57 that the Britannian government has issued gag orders to keep information of the Black Knights' exploits contained to Area 11. It's not a perfect ban by any means, largely thanks to Reid's and the KnightWatch website, but the government has been successful at having most people underestimate the threat they represent.
  • All the above pales in comparison to Chapter 62's reveals. The "Holy" Britannian Empire is actually a theocracy run by a shadow government with the Emperor at its head whose objective isn't merely to Take Over the World but instead remake the world to suit their objectives through supernatural means, and it has been so perhaps since its foundation. The whole visible apparatus of the state — government, army, nobility, even most of the Royal Family — are just Unwitting Pawns working for goals they know nothing of. An incredulous Lelouch comments that not even conspiracy nutjobs go that far, only to be told that an Apocalypse Cult with actual apocalyptic supernatural technology is indeed running things in Britannia.
• Graceful Loser: In Chapter 57, the "Emerald-masked woman" — later revealed to be Princess Marrybell mel Britannia in disguise — gracefully admits defeat in her rematch chess game against Lelouch and covers her bet on it by removing her mask, which gets him and Kallen out of trouble after getting caught in Gao Hai's office by the Consul-General himself.
• Gratuitous Latin: Bishop recites the names of the classic Seven Deadly Sins (plus two) in Latin when discussing the motif in both Palaces and their Rulers. Kallen calls her a show-off, while Milly remarks that Bishop really was raised Catholic.
• Groin Attack: Princess Euphemia to one of the delinquents that attack Nina in Izu.
• Hand Wave: When Igor introduces the "Public Execution" (Network Fusion in the game) feature of fusing Persona, he casually mentions how one of the Personas is being supplied from an alternate version from another dimension. Though Lelouch's mind boggles at the implications, Igor brushes them off while making literal hand-waving gestures.
• Haunted Castle: Luciano Bradley's (off-screen) Palace is based on a vampire's castle, and both Marrybell and Oldrin find it revolting just remembering the place. Let's just say that Kamoshida from Persona 5 has absolutely nothing on the sanctioned war criminal known as the Knight of Ten and leave it at that.
• Have We Met?: Lelouch can't shake off a sense of déjà vu when talking with the "emerald-masked woman" at the Masquerade Ball, and vice versa. It's implied that she's no other than Princess Marrybell mel Britannia, who was at the airport to say her goodbyes when Lelouch and Nunnally were sent to Japan as political hostages eight years ago.
• Hero of Another Story: Implied with the Glinda Knights, another group changing hearts that have targeted shady characters such as Princess Carine and Luciano Bradley. Confirmed in Chapter 59 when they show up in Gao Hai's Palace to steal his Treasure just barely after the Black Knights did it themselves, while also proving that they're the same Glinda Knights from the Code Geass: Oz the Reflection. Later in Chapter 62, Marrybell reveals that her group has made arguably greater strides than the Black Knights at piecing together the Emperor's plans to remake the world. This is also when Lelouch and Marrybell decided that their teams should collaborate in other to stop their father, thus Subverting the trope to a point.
• Hidden in Plain Sight: Major spoilers for Chapter 62 and on: The word "Holy" in "The Holy Britannian Empire" isn't a propaganda element, but actually the sole publicly-visible indication of the fact that the empire is secretly a theocracy, one ruled by an Cult under the Emperor's leadership that has been researching Lost Technology left behind by Precursors in the form of the ruins currently known as Thought Elevators.
• Holding Hands: How Kallen calmed Lelouch down when his brain went into overdrive considering the implications of two Knights of the Round attending the Masquerade Ball at the Chinese embassy in Area 11, probably because a Cooldown Hug would have been too conspicuous at the time.
• Hollywood Hacking: Averted. Lelouch didn't even try to hack into the Chinese Embassy's security system from the outside. Instead, he had Ninja Maid Sayoko use her impressive infiltration and impersonation skills to enter the building and compromise the system through physical access. Then he had Nina familiarize herself with the system in preparation for their Black-Tie Infiltration to avoid complications.
• Honor Before Reason: In a bit of Shown Their Work trivia, Chapter 57 has Lelouch and his opponent talk about Hypermodern Chess, which was a real-world school of chess that came to prominence in the 1920s in Central Europa. Given that Code Geass' Alternate History puts "Europia" and Britannia as competing superpowers, hypermodernism is looked down on in the Empire, and Lelouch exploits Britannian players' willful ignorance of the related tactics to give himself an extra edge when gambling.
• Hope Spot: The Black Knights change Mrs. Stadtfeld's heart to make her stop abusing Kallen's mother. Then Kallen comes back home to finally make up with her mother, only to find her OD-ing on Refrain.
• Hospital Gurney Scene: Invoked. Colonel Madd had the briefly recaptured Irregulars transported like this because it is a common enough sight in a hospital and he wanted to avoid drawing attention to them.
• Hot Springs Episode: Chapter 46 has this, with the girls walking into the guys at the hot springs and everything, with Milly tricking the boys into walking on the girl's side, who all have Naked Freak Outs despite all wearing Modesty Towels. Milly herself is the one who isn't embarrassed and even poses for the boys, causing a few Nose Bleeds. Although, unlike Persona 3 and especially Persona 4 where Failure Is the Only Option, the misunderstanding is cleared up before the girls attack the guys. In the original version of the scene, the girls still attacked the guys with the author intending for the girls to apologize at the beginning of the next chapter, but things didn't go as planned so the ending was revised to cut the attack short and have Milly apologize for setting the whole thing up.
• Human Traffickers: Code-R brings about a few. They ran innocuous-looking tests on hospital patients without their knowledge nor consent to measure their potential to become Persona Users, kidnapping the promising ones via Faking the Dead in order to make them into specimens for illegal human experimentation. And that's on top of Japanese people getting kidnapped straight out of the ghettos by the mafia in order to be sold to Code-R as guinea pigs, plus illegal Chinese immigrants who were tricked by human trafficking rings to go to Area 11 under the promises of a better life, only to suffer the same fate just like Mao.
• Hustling the Mark: One of Lelouch's go-to gambling tricks. He gauges a new opponent's skill at chess while deliberately playing at their level and subtly leading the match to a draw or a seemingly narrow victory for him. This usually leaves the opponent with the false impression that they were very close to beating him, making them likely to double down and propose a higher-stakes rematch game, which is when Lelouch stops holding back and goes home with a much larger profit than by going all-out from the beginning. This tactic becomes very important during the Black-Tie Infiltration at the Masquerade Ball, where he needs to goad a skillful chess player to agree to a private rematch game in order to change Gao Hai's Cognition after circumstances ruined his original plans for it.
• Identically Powered Team: Any team of Persona Users is this by default.
• I Knew It!: An In-Universe example. Shirley always suspected that Lelouch and Kallen Stadtfeld could be dating, and is devastated when her belief eventually becomes true.
• Inappropriately Close Comrades: The non-consensual version. Knight of Ten Luciano Bradley treated his direct subordinates in the Valkyrie Squadron as Sex Slaves in private until his Change of Heart put a stop to his crimes.
• Indy Ploy: When his plan to play chess with Leila in public as part of a larger plot to change Gao Hai's Cognition went down the drain in Chapter 56, Lelouch had to improvise and get another guest at the Masquerade Ball to take her place. On the bright side, as an Unwitting Pawn said person wouldn't have to fake ignorance of what was going to happen later, which was a plus. On the not-so-bright side, Lelouch has to carefully consider his every word and action in order to get the other party to willingly do what his plan requires.
• I Need to Go Iron My Dog: Milly is usually better at fast-talking her way out of trouble, but when Xingke asks the group what they're doing sneaking into alleyways around the Chinese Embassy, she can only come up with "sightseeing" and convinces exactly no one.
• Infraction Distraction: Lelouch wants to get caught trespassing in the off-limits areas of the Chinese embassy, and nothing more serious than that, in order to change the Cognition of the ambassador who believes his inner sanctum is truly impenetrable, which is keeping the Black Knights from infiltrating the deepest areas of his Palace.
• Innocently Insensitive: Lelouch observes that Gino Weinberg seems to be a good enough guy, but his good looks and privileged background have made him too used to getting away with Chivalrous Pervert antics that wouldn't come off nearly as charming from anyone else.
• Insatiable Newlyweds: Discussed. Suzaku mentions that Kaguya's honeymoon plans when she was little were built around this trope and also involved a month-long stay in a Ryokan Inn. Shirley gets a bright Luminescent Blush when she hears the anecdote and Lelouch goes pale because this happens just a few days after Kaguya gave him a Wacky Marriage Proposal.
• In Spite of a Nail:
  • One of Lelouch's first objectives as Zero is to prevent Suzaku from being punished for a crime he didn't commit.
  • A target's televised death sours people's opinions of our thieves due to him dying mid-confession. The only difference is how deep into the thieves' career their target died on them.
  • Once again, Mao comes back from his apparent death to abduct Nunnally and confronts Lelouch alone in the Ashford Academy sewers.
  • Euphemia saves Nina when the latter's xenophobia almost gets her attacked by Japanese men, making a very big impression on the girl. There are two divergences, though. First, the men are random delinquents rather than hostage takers from La Résistance. And second, Euphemia doesn't resort to a Take Me Instead to do it — she simply bitchslaps and knees the one that approaches her with a switchblade, and then Kallen helps her with the rest.
  • Chapter 47 reveals that Inaba and the Amagi Inn still exist in this continuity, which makes sense considering that Yukiko's family is said to have run Ryokan Inn for many generations and that the current time in-story is an Alternate History 1962-1963.
  • Genbu Kururugi dies around the same time his canonical self did to an almost identical aftermath, but from a mental shutdown this time around.
  • Despite not meeting Kallen as an Ace Pilot like in canon, Gino Weinberg still finds her Fiery Redheaded nature attractive and hits on her as soon as he meets her.
• Internal Reveal:
  • In Chapter 16, Leila finds out that Lelouch was a Britannian prince. She had her suspicions, but the events of that chapter confirm them beyond a doubt.
  • In Chapter 33, Shirley finds out the identities of the Black Knights. The shock of the reveal, combined with the recent Trauma Conga Line capped off with her father's murder (allegedly at the Black Knights' hands), causes her to develop a Palace.
  • In Chapter 41, Lelouch tells his maid/bodyguard Sayoko about the Metaverse. In addition, his sister Nunnally finds out he's a Black Knight.
  • In Chapter 43, Lelouch reveals his past as a royal to Shirley. At first, she doesn't believe him, and when he convinces her he's not pulling her leg, she promptly faints and later on she has to be convinced that no, That Was Not a Dream.
  • In Chapter 44, Lelouch reveals himself as the leader of the Black Knight to Kirihara and Kaguya in order to obtain their collaboration.
  • In Chapter 47, Kallen/Queen is told about the Velvet Room.
  • Lelouch gives Leila/Bishop a full disclosure about Igor, the Velvet Room, and what he knows of Ragnarök in Chapter 62.
• Interrogation Flashback: Similarly to Persona 5, the Framing Device of the story is Lelouch being interrogated by Cornelia.
• Interrupted Intimacy: The Erotic Dream-turned-Catapult Nightmare variant happens to Lelouch in Chapter 51.
• Intimate Lotion Application: 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 this out aloud until she notices the Stunned Silence from the others. Karen protests against the idea (due to her jealousy) but eventually relents and Lelouch goes through with it.
• Irony:
  • The more Lelouch tries to protect Shirley by keeping his distance from her, the worse her issues become, to the point that she develops her own Palace.
  • Sayoko thinks Lelouch is a regular client of a Dominatrix, when in fact Tsu visits his room because sleeping close to him helps her with her nightmares.
  • The Breisgau family are Britannian Nobles who secretly collaborated with the EU. Taizo Kirihara is a Fake Defector who pretended to betray Japan in order to remain in a position of power to secretly help La Résistance. They would have made perfect allies for each other, but with both hiding their true loyalties, they ended up opposing each other on several matters. Lelouch takes steps to fix this by arranging a business meeting between Leila and Kirihara in Chapter 55.
• It Always Rains at Funerals: Joseph Fenette's funeral takes place under the rain.
• It Makes Sense in Context: In Chapter 54, Lelouch's plan to attend a Masquerade Ball as Mrs. Stadtfeld's plus-one. It makes complete sense for the Black Knights' Black-Tie Infiltration the way he explains it, but that doesn't change the fact he is going out on a date with his girlfriend's (reformed) Wicked Stepmother/Mrs. Robinson, so it's still awkward.
• Jack the Ripoff: More than a few groups try to imitate the Black Knights following their success in changing the heart of the notorious crime lord known as the Black King. Among them, only two seem to have access to their methods: The Irregulars, who operate in the Tokyo Settlement as well and targeted a Britannian military officer called Madd, and the Glinda Knights who appeared in Pendragon and are suspected of changing the heart of Princess Carine ne Britannia, and later on, Knight of Ten Luciano Bradley.
• Japanese Politeness: Discussed. Lelouch observes that Kallen is noticeably more polite and patient with Kaguya Sumeragi than with most other people, despite the Genki Girl's unending enthusiasm and uncomfortable questions getting on the Fiery Redhead's nerves. He guesses that Kallen's Japanese upbringing taught her to be especially respectful toward a member of a family as important and distinguished in Japan's history as the Sumeragi, on top of the fact that Kaguya and the Six Houses of Kyoto are secretly helping La Résistance.
• Kimono Fanservice:
  • Nunnally, Kallen, Leila, Euphemia, and Kaguya during the Tanabata festival.
  • Kaguya wears a long pink kimono for the Masquerade Ball.
• King Incognito:
  • Euphemia is fond of going out and dressing as a commoner to remain incognito. Especially after joining the Black Knights.
  • Princess Marrybell mel Britannia does the same for the Masquerade Ball at the Chinese embassy in Area 11, but dressed as a young noblewoman in costume.

Tropes L-Z

• Laborious Laziness: Shirley thinks that the only thing Lelouch worked hard at was avoiding hard work. That is, until she learns he deliberately underplays his talents because he's a Noble Fugitive.
• Lady and Knight: The "Emerald-masked Woman" and her female bodyguard "Oz" at the Masquerade Ball seem to have this going on in Chapter 56. The next chapter confirms it when they're revealed to be Princess Marrybell mel Britannia and her Knight Oldrin Zevon, respectively.
• Lame Pun Reaction: Squared in Chapter 50.
  Arthur: I'm sure Dame will make you look purr-fect.
  Lelouch: Was the pun really necessary, Tama? You're still on thin ice after you ratted us out at the onsen.
  Arthur: [frowns] And you aren't above such puns in turn. I already said I'm sorry for that.
• Last Chance Hit Point: The Endure passive skill allows a Persona User to survive one otherwise fatal attack once per battle. This is a plot point because this is partially what allows Mao to pull off a Disney Death.
• Last-Second Word Swap:
  • In Chapter 29, there's a pause between words when Warden Shi says "Miss Nunnally". It's confirmed thirteen chapters later that she intended to call her "Miss Inmate" because Nunnally is also a "guest" in the Velvet Room.
  • Jeremiah Gottwald gets really close to calling Lelouch "Your Highness" in public, but a warning look from him turns it into this trope instead.
• Lethal Chef:
  • Shirley and Leila have the "honor" of cooking up this 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.
  • Amusingly, if you go by Kallen's character notes for her Japanese VA mentioning the redhead is a Lethal Chef too, it turns out that, by Chapter 58, all of Lelouch's girlfriends are awful cooks whereas he's pretty much a Supreme Chef.
• Let Me Get This Straight...:
  • Shirley gets told Lelouch is a prince. Subverted at first because she draws a slightly less surprising Entertainingly Wrong interpretation, but then faints when she gets told the truth again.
  • Almost a Running Gag with Cornelia in the Interrogation Flashback interludes.
• Let No Crisis Go to Waste: The Glinda Knights want to get to a Cognitive Psience research facility hidden in a remote location in the middle of the Taklamakan Desert, but that's within Chinese Federation territory and breaking into their airspace in a Britannian airship like theirs would surely cause an international incident. That's why they decided to wait for Gao Hai's change of heart and public confession to take advantage of the ensuing nationwide rebellion to carry on their plans while the Chinese government was too busy to deal with them, and that's assuming they noticed they were there at all.
• Like Brother and Sister: Lelouch considers that Milly is the closest he will get to a positive older sister in his life. This is a big part of the reason why he can't reciprocate her feelings after he discovers she's been in love with him for years now in Chapter 69.
• Locked Out of the Loop: By the end of the fourth arc, the only members of the Student Council not actively conspiring with the Black Knights are Rolo, Suzaku, and Rivalz.
• Look Behind You: Subverted. Shirley Fenette warns Mao/Medjed to look behind him. He refuses to "fall for it", but it turns out something really is behind him. It's a Pisaca Shadow, who despite being just a Mook it spells Mao's doom because its protection against Curse-type attacks makes it immune to his Persona's sole way to deal damage.
• Loose Lips: Lloyd casually mentions that Prince Schneizel and Princess Euphemia will be visiting Kamine Island. Cecile complains he really shouldn't reveal sensitive information like that.
• Love Confession:
  • Kallen to Lelouch once she comes to terms with her family situation. He doesn't see it coming at all.
  • Kallen confesses again after clearing the fourth Palace, after realizing how much more deeply in love with Lelouch she is now compared to before. If this sounds like a heartwarming romantic Meaningful Echo to you, it mostly isn't. See her entry under The Power of Love in the Character page.
  • Kaguya skips the Love Confession and goes straight to giving Lelouch a Wacky Marriage Proposal.
• Love Martyr: Discussed. The Persona Incubus pins Shirley as one and encourages Lelouch to take full advantage of it. Lelouch angrily has him silenced.
• Love Triangle: Lelouch and his girlfriend are in a relationship and Shirley is the Hopeless Suitor to him. Or not so hopeless. The events in the fourth Palace made Lelouch admit that he does love Shirley back, but he's not going to leave Kallen for her, much less cheat on one with the other. Eventually, the situation progresses to type 8 when the three enter a triad.
• Magical Girl: Discussed in Chapter 54. Nunnally/Nemo makes a convincing argument that Persona Users are one Magical Accessory away from a Magical Girl story as they hit many staples of the genre, including but not limited to Arthur as the Mentor Mascot. Lelouch steps in to interrupt her before she can get going, though, to prevent Milly from getting any more crossdressing ideas.
• Magic Enhancement: All Persona Users are capable of physical feats in the Metaverse well beyond what they can do in the real world. Most notably, Nunnally is able to walk on her own two legs again in the Metaverse.
• Marry Them All: Deconstructed in multiple ways as of Chapter 61. Despite Lelouch, Kallen, Shirley, and Leila agreeing to form a Polyamory centered on him, this is just another stage of their romantic problems. Among other issues:
  • Circumstances made it so Kallen was the first to get a Relationship Upgrade with Lelouch and the only one publicly known as his girlfriend, meaning that Shirley and Leila have to keep their relationships with him a secret lest they will draw unwanted attention to themselves. On the other hand, this also makes Kallen the one who had to give up the most by agreeing to go from being Lelouch's sole significant other to one of three.
  • Shirley has the not-unjustified impression she's by far the most unremarkable of Lelouch's Love Interests. She's not a Hot-Blooded secret fighter of La Résistance turned Persona-user (with an Impossible Hourglass Figure), nor she's a wealthy Countess and an intellectual peer to Lelouch (also with an Impossible Hourglass Figure). She considers herself "just Shirley", an Ordinary High-School Student commoner girl who got together with the Noble Fugitive she was unwittingly pinning for, as if only due to some karmic reward from the underserved Trauma Conga Line she went through.
  • Given that the girls have quite distinct personalities from each other, Lelouch was logically bound to get along at least a bit better with one of them than the rest. In their case, Leila is the one who has noticeably better chemistry with him due to several commonalities in their personalities and interests, which none of his other significant others missed nor are entirely comfortable with. On the flip side, her high social standing makes Leila the one that stands to lose the most were her unusual love life to come to light, which was one of the many things Lelouch warned her about right before their Relationship Upgrade.
  • Speaking of Lelouch, there's a strong component of guilt tainting his feelings for his girlfriends. Not only because even he seems to think it's unfair that three extraordinary girls would have to share the guy they love, but also because each of them is a Love Martyr for him in one way or another. Not only he's afraid of making things worse and second-guesses himself in every boyfriend-like action he takes, but at times it seems that it's only thanks to his Personas giving voice to his inner desires that he doesn't end up alienating himself from his girlfriends.
• Masquerade Ball:
  • The Chinese embassy in Area 11 hosts one as a "pre-reception" of sorts for the local upper crust, specifically to make up for the fact that the invitation for a real reception for the wedding between Empress Tianzi and Prince Odysseus eu Britannia in Luoyang are strictly limited. The Black Knights see this as an opportunity to get past a Cognitive barrier in the ambassador's Palace and arrange for as many of them to attend for a Black-Tie Infiltration.
  • Lelouch Lampshades this by commenting that Masquerade Balls fell out of fashion in Britannia in the last century and are not at all a Chinese tradition, but given that the ambassador is just looking forward to rub shoulders and networking with the rich and powerful of Area 11, the whole thing is just an attempt to appeal to Britannian sensitivities.
• Mega Maelstrom: The Fourth Palace has one that works more like Unrealistic Black Hole due to people's widespread Cognition of this trope.
• Mêlée à Trois: It's revealed during Interrogation 5 that three other groups of possible Persona users appeared. Two of them, known as the Irregulars and The Glinda Knights, stole the heart of a military officer by the name of Madd and Carine ne Britannia, respectively. The third, by the name of Medjed, would use the Metaverse to kidnap, murder, and blackmail individuals. Medjed and the Irregulars both bother the drug-addled Lelouch signifying that they may not be sympathetic to the Black Knights' cause, with the former proving his antagonistic nature the very next chapter by kidnapping Shirley and trapping her within her own Palace, and giving the Knights a two-week deadline to rescue her or Shirley will be killed and their identities released. The Irregulars prove to be a subversion, however, as they support Lelouch against Medjed and hash out a rough non-aggression pact with the Black Knights afterward.
• Menacing Stroll: Discussed. In Chapter 57, Lelouch guessed that something about the way Kallen carries herself must have betrayed her martial arts background to the detriment of their cover story, given how her presence alone put "Oz" the bodyguard (later revealed to be Oldrin Zevon) on edge at the Masquerade Ball.
• Minor Crime Reveals Major Plot:
  • While human trafficking is hardly a "minor" crime, tracking down one of such operations that the Irregulars think was responsible for bringing Mao to Japan led them to discover that Japanese people are now being taken to China for something likely similar to Code-R, and worse still, it looks like a larger collaborative project between the Chinese Federation and Britannia.
  • A Royal Princess trying to discredit another in a throat-cutting Decadent Court like Britannia's is hardly even news, but Carine's heavy-handed actions would drop the first domino piece in a sequence of events leading to Marrybell discovering an Ancient Conspiracy planning on using Cognitive Psience and the Metaverse to remake the world In Their Own Image.
• Missing White Woman Syndrome: Invoked in Chapter 57. Whoever tried to kidnap Euphemia at the Masquerade Ball and framed the Black Knights for it, seems to have done with this trope in mind as her popularity across social classes helped to quickly sour public opinion against them.
• The Mole: After changing his heart and revealing himself by his real name to him, Jeremiah starts firmly collaborating with Lelouch from his position in the Britannian military. Among other things, it's thanks to Jeremiah that Euphemia can move freely enough to meet up with the Black Knights, and he's the one Lelouch turns to in order to do a background check on Alice after becoming suspicious of her.
• Money Spider: Lelouch comments that Dungeon Crawling in the Metaverse is more profitable than his illegal gambling on chess matches. He suspects the Irregulars have been living off from it, which makes sense because they're lab escapees from an illegal project sponsored by Prince Clovis himself and at least one of them is Legally Dead.
• More Teeth than the Osmond Family: The Shadow based on Charybdis the sea monster in the Fourth Palace in all its Lovecraftian horror.
• Morton's Fork: Lelouch considers grabbing Nunnally and going into hiding after one of the Black Masks insinuates he knows who they are and how to find them. However, leaving in a hurry would alert their resident Private Detective and, in a worst-case scenario, bring the authorities' attention to them. In the end, Lelouch dismisses the idea.
• Motive Decay: Shadow Madd reveals that Code-R started with the best intentions, a scientific research trying to further the understanding of how the human mind actually works, but the discovery of Personas and what can be done with them turned the project an amoral Government Conspiracy intended on producing Artificial Persona Users at any cost necessary, including but not limited to illegal human experimentation and mass kidnapping.
• Murder Is the Best Solution: Discussed and Defied by Lelouch for pragmatic reasons in Chapter 54. Despite having a pretty good idea of who the Black Mask is, Lelouch comments they can't give the assassin a taste of his own medicine until they can get rid of his unknown employers too. After all, if Lelouch is truly right about who Black Mask is, then his employers must be aware of the Black Knights' Secret Identities and killing their hitman would only prompt them to either try to capture them to replace him, or just pass the information to Cornelia and get them arrested.
• Mutual Masquerade: It turns out that Nunnally is also part of her own group of Persona Users in secret from her brother, but neither she nor Lelouch knew about the other's double life until Mao kidnapped her and brought her into the Metaverse.
• Mythology Gag: It has its own page.
• Necessarily Evil:
  • Lelouch doesn't shy away from the moral implications of changing someone's heart but also doesn't hesitate in resorting to it as a weapon against a greater evil.
  • Nunnally tries to argue against it on principle, but she really can't refute the fact Lelouch has to kill Mao. Alice agrees with him, so she decides to deliver the Coup de Grâce herself, Double Tap and everything, on the unconscious Persona User in order to keep Nunnally from having to watch her brother become a murderer like she already was.
• New Era Speech: Schneizel gives one during the Masquerade Ball in Chapter 56, portraying the treaty between Britannia and the Chinese Federation through the Altar Diplomacy royal marriage between his older brother and Chinese Empress Tianzi as the beginning of a new era of world peace and prosperity to the deafening applause of everyone in attendance. For the Black Knights, it's something else entirely:
  Lelouch: [narrating] Schneizel had just outlined a vision of world domination in which freedom would be surrendered in the name of security, swept Clovis' monstrous crimes under the rug, and poisoned public opinion against the Black Knights, all while encouraging people to blindly trust in Britannian authority. It was the antithesis of everything that they believed in.
• New World Tease: The Black Knights discover Emperor Charles' Palace on Kamine Island during their summer vacation, but since they have no idea what the distortion is and are horrifically outclassed by the Shadows roaming the premises, they are forced to back down.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: The mastermind behind Flora and Julia mel Britannia's deaths (heavily hinted it was V.V., but unconfirmed so far) tried to get rid of Princess Marrybell too by manipulating a third party to do it for them, but said patsy was so heavy-handed about it that it only served to tip off the target and allow them to pick up the mastermind's trail. Not only that, but this also started a series of events that would lead Marrybell to discover the Metaverse, form the Glinda Knights, change the hearts of both Princess Carine and the Knight of Ten, allowed them to begin to unravel an Ancient Conspiracy at the core of Empire with world-ending ramifications, and finally share their findings with Lelouch.
• Nosebleed: Diamond gives one to the Cognitive version of Sophie Wood in the fourth Palace.
• No-Sell:
  • Mao "dies" in Chapter 38 because he's caught from behind by a Pisaca Shadow, who's immune to Curse-type attacks, his Persona's main way to deal damage.
  • Diamond tries to attack Bishamonten with fire in Chapter 50. Emphasis on "tries".
    Diamond: Don't worry... I'll give him something to think about! Medea! Agilao!
    Bishamonten: [heals from the attack]
    Diamond: [sheepishly] Well, maybe not.
• No Such Thing as Bad Publicity:
  • Invoked. It doesn't matter whether the Black Knights become more celebrated or more infamous, as long as they keep getting more famous, more areas of Mementos will be available to them as some of Lelouch's plans require. Even the Frame-Up incriminating them for the kidnapping attempt against Euphemia helps them this way.
  • One thing The Irregulars regret about their Heroic Neutral stance is having their hunting grounds in Mementos limited like that.
• "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.
  • Kallen realizes this about her and Shirley when it comes to Lelouch. Kallen initially just wanted to liberate Japan from Britannia and had nothing outside of that. In comes Lelouch and all of a sudden when Kallen falls for him he becomes her entire world just like Shirley, not even the liberation of the country or avenging her brother mattered to her as much as being by Lelouch's side.
• Not What It Looks Like:
  • Upon seeing Lelouch talking to Kallen, Shirley thinks the two are dating. Lelouch had just exited the Metaverse with the former girl and was talking about their experiences there, but then again, this is Shirley we're talking about, who was under exactly the same misunderstanding in canon.
  • More like "not what it sounds like", but one morning Sayoko overhears a conversation coming from Lelouch's bedroom where a female voice imperiously calls him an "inmate". The Bunny-Ears Lawyer of a Ninja Maid naturally assumes her master got himself a Dominatrix. Lelouch tries to tell her that it really wasn't like that, but Sayoko doesn't believe a word he said and, to his chagrin, reassures him that no explanation is necessary.
  • During their summer trip, the girls in the Student Council plus guests find the guys waiting for them at the Hot Springs. It turns out Milly tricked them with the wrong men-only/women-only times at the onsen in order to contrive an Outdoor Bath Peeping incident for good memories' sake. None of her friends saw the humor in that.
• Not Worth Killing: Zero's opinion of Medjed when Shirley has his neck at sword's point. Although it's implied that his reluctance to stain her hands with his blood weighed more in his decision to spare Mao. He comes to regret it when Mao pulls off a Disney Death and kidnaps Nunnally.
• Offscreen Karma: Knight of Ten Luciano Bradley gets a much-deserved change of heart offscreen sometime before Chapter 49 at the hands of the Glinda Knights.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: The Cool Versus Awesome fight between Sayoko the Ninja Maid versus Alice and her high-agility Persona User to a technical standstill before they figured out their objectives overlapped. They even compliment each other after the fact.
• Oh, No... Not Again!: Lelouch's reaction when discovering that a fourth girl — Kaguya — fancies him too.
• One-Hit Kill: Hama and Mudo spells are straight-up lethal here if the Persona user doesn't get revived fast enough.
• One-Man Army:
  • Subverted. While it is certainly possible to play the protagonist like this in Persona 5 after getting over the Early Game Hell, Lelouch concludes that the long runs of exploration and numerous battles necessary to clear a Palace or progress into Mementos make this trope impractical and suboptimal. As he sees it, a Wild Card like him serves better the team's overall effectiveness by being prepared to shift into momentary combat roles as required for each battle.
  • Played Straight with Black Mask, who seems to have followed the opposite philosophy out of necessity. That is, to devote everything to grind a single Persona to ridiculously high stats and rely on Non-Elemental attacks to get past Shadows' elemental resistances.
• Or Was It a Dream?: It's implied that the main characters go in a Persona Q2-esque off-screen adventure during a stormy night in the Camping Episode, but they only vaguely remember it as a dream after waking up.
• Outdoor Bath Peeping:
  • The girls walk into the guys in the Hot Springs Episode and immediately assume the latter did it on purpose. It was actually Milly's prank, and who comes clean about it before the whole thing ends in Pervert Revenge Mode.
  • Defied in the Camping Episode. The student council finds a waterfall with a natural pool during the Camping Episode, prompting Lelouch to make a mental note to go nowhere near it if he suspects the girls could be bathing in there.
• Out-of-Character Alert: Bishop found it odd for Lelouch to get caught while engaging in Outdoor Bath Peeping. Curiously, it's not the usually Celibate Hero being suddenly a perv that was out-of-character of him in her eyes, but instead the fact he got caught doing it, as she holds his planning and infiltration skills to a higher standard.
• Overt Rendezvous: Played With in Chapter 62. Lelouch and Bishop have a secret meeting with Princess Marrybell and her knight Oldrin Zevon in an upscale chess club, counting on their known predilection for the game to keep people from suspecting anything else happened. The trick to keep their secret meeting, well, secret was to reserve two separate private rooms so both groups would never be seen together. Lelouch then used the MetaNav to enter the other room undetected and had the other group shift into the Metaverse with Bishop's help. Given that there's no normal way to observe what happens in the Metaverse, the confidentiality of their meeting was as secure as it could be.
• Pædo Hunt: Discussed briefly when Lelouch idly muses that, in hindsight, Sayoko would have mauled him if it had been the younger-looking Shi who commandeered the other half of his bed instead of Tsu.
• Pervert Revenge Mode: Mercifully subverted. Lelouch, Rivalz, Suzaku, and Rolo nearly get used as punching bags by the girls for allegedly trying to Invoke a not-so-Accidental Pervert moment in the Hot Springs Episode, but Milly confesses to setting them up before things turn violent.
• Plausible Deniability:
  • The Black King provided Clovis with the experiment test subjects for Code-R, but made sure to never ask too many questions so as to not fall victim to the He Knows Too Much trope and to cover his ass in case the whole thing came to light someday. Later chapters confirm that being Properly Paranoid about this is the only reason he wasn't killed alongside Clovis.
  • Lelouch makes a point of having a plausible explanation when the team decides to change the heart of a person relatively close to them just in case. It works nicely when he instructs Nina Einstein to say they posted a request to change their own heart on the KnightWatch website. Not so much with Mrs Stadtfeld, who didn't buy it at all.
  • The Black Mask's boss — strongly implied to be a non-Code Bearer version of V.V. — needed plausible deniability to kill Nunnally as just another member of the Irregulars in the Metaverse. Going directly after her in the real world is not an option for him because Charles would notice and he doesn't want him to become distracted from their plans for "Ragnarök," and of course, Mental Shutdowns can't be triggered on Persona Users.
  • Discussed. Kallen's stepmother let her get away with the excuse she's sick to justify her frequent absences from class because, if something ever happened to Kallen in the ghettos, there would already be a perfect cover story in place to explain away her untimely death.
• Please Put Some Clothes On: Lelouch to Bishop in Chapter 58, as a condition to accept her proposal of a quick game of chess one morning while she is still dressed in her rather transparent nightgown.
• Point of Divergence: The Arranged Marriage between Chinese Empress Tianzi and Crown Prince Odysseus eu Britannia is proposed and arranged a lot earlier than in canon. After all, without the canonical Black Knights making Britannia look weak enough for the Chinese Federation to dare "lend" troops to Atsushi Sawazaki to invade Kyushu, the relationship between both global superpowers is a lot more amiable this time around and Prime Minister Prince Schneizel doesn't hesitate to take advantage of the High Eunuchs' ambitions to annex China without a fight.
• Polyamory:
  • Discussed and Defied. It becomes increasingly obvious in Lelouch's narration after the events of the fourth Palace that this is the relationship he actually wants with Kallen, Shirley, and likely Leila too, but it strikes him as too similar to his Archnemesis Dad and the Royal Harem schemes that he still thinks are responsible for his mother's murder, and thus he strongly refuses to even consider a non-standard relationship like this. Of course, his subconscious and Personas aren't that easily dissuaded.
  • To make matters worse, there are several hints that his girlfriend and Shirley would agree to become a triad if Lelouch can just be honest with himself and them as both girls are in a unique position to truly empathize with each other. Interestingly, Lelouch is perceptive enough to realize this but considers he would be taking advantage of their feelings for him if he ever hints he wants to date them at the same time and so he never does.
  • The deadlock would remain unbroken until Chapter 51 when it's instead the girls who propose a Polyamory after Kallen comes clean to Shirley off-screen and lets her know several important truths about Lelouch and herself. However, this is not without further Deconstruction. Instead of immediately agreeing to their offer despite being exactly what he wants, Lelouch's brain comes up with several possible underlying motivations Kallen and Shirley could have to suggest something like that, none of them good. Finally, it's only the fact he can tell the girls truly care for each other and the realization he should go for the Lesser of Two Evils that convinces him to accept: On the one hand, rejecting pretty much ensures that Shirley will be miserable no matter how well she could be able to hide it, which in turn would mar whatever happiness Lelouch and Kallen could have by remaining together. On the other hand, Lelouch realizes that there are many, many ways a mutually consensual three-way relationship could go very wrong, very fast, with only a small chance of happiness. So, between certain misery and possible but unlikely happiness, Lelouch knows he has to pick the latter.
  • Later, in Chapter 58, it's revealed that Leila indeed figured out that Lelouch, Kallen, and Shirley are all in a relationship together despite their (rather poor) efforts to keep quiet about it. More importantly, she has been actually considering joining their Polyamory and wondering how to let her intentions be known without damaging their relationship or her friendship with each of them. To that end, Leila approached Shirley first, who she correctly predicted would be the least reluctant to the idea because Shirley herself was once a Romantic Runner-Up to Lelouch too. Not too long later, and emboldened by the personal breakthrough she achieved in her Rank Max Confidant Event, Leila tells Lelouch about her conversation with Shirley and finally gives him a proper Love Confession, unlike the time when he simply deduced she likes him and they agreed to a tacit Better as Friends deal. Lelouch tries to warn her against it, citing both potential and unavoidable problematic issues about joining their Polyamory, but Leila remains steadfast in her conviction that she wants a romantic relationship with him regardless of the shape it may take. Realizing that she means every word, to say nothing of the fact he actually reciprocates her feelings, Lelouch accepts her Love Confession without quite wording it like that because he still needs Kallen to approve a Relationship Upgrade between him and Leila.
• Posthumous Character:
  • Kallen's brother, but differently from canon. Naoto discovered the Metaverse before Lelouch and was the first partner of Morgana's counterpart, Arthur. He managed to figure out a connection between the Metaverse and the psychotic breakdowns, but he ended up killed by Shadow Viletta before he could get further with his investigation. He did, however, account for the possibility of his death in his plans and introduced his sister Kallen to Arthur and the Metaverse just in case. She tried to continue things where he left off, but having only partially awakened to her Persona similar to Haru in the game, she and Arthur didn't manage to achieve much until Lelouch entered the picture.
  • Everything that it's known about Leila's parents comes from her interactions with Lelouch during their Confidant events.
• Propaganda Machine: Like in the series, there's no such thing as a free press in Britannia. For example, the Festival Episode in Ueno Park is reported as an unlawful riot that was quelled by Viceroy Cornelia, who "in a show of clemency let most of the Elevens present leave peacefully." What actually happened is that Euphemia went behind Cornelia's back and lifted the ban forbidding Japanese people from participating in their traditional Tanabata. The viceroy eventually figured it out and ran there to arrest everybody, but then she let them disperse peacefully instead when she realized that Euphemia herself was attending the festival incognito and that she could get hurt in the confusion if she simply ordered her soldiers to break it up.
• Public Domain Artifact: Lelouch is very surprised when Itemizing the Queen's Necklace treasure demon got him the actual necklace from the infamous Affair of the Diamond Necklace associated with Queen Marie-Antoinette, or at the very least at very convincing duplicate of it.
• Public Domain Character: Several OC Personas:
  • Arthur/Tama's Persona is Master Cat.
  • Kallen/Queen's Persona is Suzuka Gozen, a prominent legendary figure from Japanese folklore from the Kamakura period. She was an Oni princess and celestial maiden, who also engaged in daring thievery under a different name. She collaborated with the king of Japan's Oni — Akuro-Ou — to overthrow the country but ended up falling in love with a human and switching sides. Odd that.
  • Diamond's Persona is Medea from Classical Mythology.
  • Bishop's Persona is Joan of Arc.
  • Shirley Fenette's Persona is a bow-toting Maid Marian.
  • Mao/Medjed's Persona is Momus, the god of satire and mockery from Classical Mythology, and looks like a demonic jester.
• Punch-Clock Villain: It's pretty obvious to Lelouch in Chapter 55 that Li Xingke hates his boss, the ruler of the Fifth Palace, but he doesn't let that in the way of his job protecting the place and thus becomes an obstacle for the Black Knights. Despite this, Lelouch takes notice of it just in case he can use the military man's lack of real loyalty toward the current target to his advantage.
• Punny Name: The website where people post requests for the Black Knights is called "Knightwatch".
• Puppet King: Empress Tianzi as in the series, so much so that her Cognition appears as a porcelain doll in Consul-General Gao Hai's Palace. His Shadow admits this was an Invoked Trope all along, with his masterminding the seemingly natural deaths of her parents and letting the most senior members of the High Eunuchs, with more to win from it, to dirty their hands with their blood.
• Purely Aesthetic Glasses: Marrybell and Oldrin wear them in Chapter 62 to avoid being recognized.
• Race Against the Clock: A rare villainous example. After the uprising in the Chinese Federation, the Director informs Cornelia in no uncertain terms that the Emperor wants the Black Knights arrested within the month.
• Railroad Tracks of Doom: Invoked by the heroes, unusually enough. While they are being chased by The Reaper in Mementos, Lelouch makes Kallen drive their Glasgow on the rails, and then eject and self-destruct the Frame at just the right time. This does Scratch Damage to the Superboss, but keeps it distracted long enough for it to be run over by an oncoming train.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Shadow Clovis to Bishop, surprisingly enough. Shadow Clovis all but calls the Breisgau family Hypocrites given how for all their anti-aristocracy sentiments and collaboration with the EU, they never once married outside the nobility. He also decries Europia's democracy as a de facto aristocracy where members of the same families are elected time and time again because people are too dumb and apathetic to do anything else.
• Recurring Boss: Subverted. The Black Knights thought Villetta was going to be one, but she's a pushover in her second appearance in Shirley's Palace.
• Recursive Fanfiction: There's a non-canonical What If? side story called Wings of Rebellion Gaiden by a different author.
• Relationship Upgrade:
  • Lelouch and Kallen/Queen to the joy of all their shippers from Code Geass canon.
  • Lelouch and Shirley in Chapter 51, upgrading the above to a triad.
  • Lelouch and Leila in Chapter 58, upgrading the above to a full harem. Also an unsuccessfully Defied Trope. Lelouch tries to make Leila reconsider before giving her Love Confession to him, but instead, she convinces him she has considered the problems ahead and remains certain she wants a Relationship Upgrade regardless.
• The Remnant: Code-R pretty much disappeared after Clovis' change of heart and the Black Mask getting rid of anyone too involved with the project, a few conspirators and collaborators of the Government Conspiracy still remain. The Irregulars target these people's Shadows just in case someone could be using them to restart the project.
• Restricted Rescue Operation: Neither Milly nor Bishop can leave the Masquerade Ball and follow Euphemia into the Metaverse when Black Mask kidnaps 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, is just a masked commoner mingling among the elite incognito, so she is able to sneak out after them unnoticed.
• Retcon:
  • The original version of the story states that Cornelia's interrogation takes place six months from the start of the fic. The author changed it to "about half a year" in order to provide more flexibility in pacing.
  • The original version of Chapter 47 had the girls outright attack the guys for an Accidental Pervert moment at a Ryokan Inn, in reference to Persona 4. After much fan backlash (here, as opposed to being a genuine accident, Milly deliberately arranged things for her own amusement), the author modified it so that Milly reveals the truth in time to spare the guys.
• The Reveal: Chapter 72, Love and Faith, reveals that, as implied by the ruins of Kamine Island, Geass and the Code Bearers actually existed in the story, but disappeared some time prior.
• Revealing Cover-Up:
  • Kamine Island is a Deserted Island with nothing interesting on it except some ancient ruins, yet it's kept out of modern maps, and access to it is heavily monitored by a Britannian military base on the nearby and larger Shikine Island.
  • Double Subverted by the Kururugi administration before the invasion, who tried to quietly make people forget about Kamine Island. However, the interrupted attempt now hints to Lelouch that the late Japanese prime minister knew something about the place, perhaps including the reason why the ruins are important to Charles.
  • When speculating about what Princess Marrybell was doing at the consulate party, Shi suddenly becomes visibly uncomfortable and Tsu declares that what she's worried about is "confidential". Lelouch immediately twigs to the almost-certainty that Marrybell is involved with the Velvet Room just like he and Nunnally based on how the sisters tried to keep quiet about the latter before. This and the obvious pattern that the two other "inmates" have been at the head of their own team of Persona-users leads Lelouch to the hypothesis that Marrybell is likely the leader of the third known group capable of changing hearts: The Glinda Knights.
  • In Chapter 62, Marrybell tells Lelouch that her first real clue to her mother's murderer came from Carine's poor attempts to have her and Oldrin discredited, and when that failed, killed. While Carine is far from a nice person, her out-of-character actions clued Marrybell in on someone else pulling Carine's strings to get rid of them through her.
  • In Chapter 69, Nunnally's subconscious self — a.k.a. Nemo — tells Lelouch that she recognized Anya Alstreim as the girl that stayed a few days with them at the Aries Villa, something that he and Nunnally herself had absolutely no recollection of despite happening the previous days to their mother's murder. The fact their memories were altered to hide such a seemingly unimportant circumstance immediately told Lelouch that his father's Cognitive Psience research was almost certainly involved and that there must be a very important reason about or around her for them to do it.
• The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized: Discussed. The Black Knights realize that they could spark a rebellion if they actually steal their fifth main target's heart. Lelouch considers it unavoidable if the status quo is to change at all but compromises with Noire to not take the Treasure if the insight on the target provided by the Palace offers them an alternative — not that he expects any and he's proven right soon enough.
• Right Behind Me: In Chapter 58, a classmate badmouths Lelouch to New Transfer Student Leila Breisgau, warning her to be wary of him due to his Urban Legend Love Life.
  Lelouch: [smirking] Were you speaking about me?
  Male classmate: [panicking] Huh?! For how long have you been there?
• Right Hand Versus Left Hand: Both Kirihara "the Traitor" and the Breisgau family were secretly working against Britannia, but they were a little too good at hiding this from the other and ended up opposing each other several times. It took until someone trusted by both Leila Breisgau and Kirihara, namely Lelouch, to make the introductions for them to start working together.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Discussed in Chapter 53 when Nemo awakens to her Persona; Shadow Nunnally warns her that if she dies in the Metaverse, Lelouch's vengeance will be terrible and bloody.
• Romantic Fake–Real Turn: Lelouch lets Diethard think he is in a Secret Relationship with Leila Breisgau in Chapter 19 to throw him off, as it makes for a convenient cover story for some Black Knights-related activities. They don't get their Relationship Upgrade until almost 40 chapters later.
• Romantic Spoonfeeding: Lelouch's girlfriend to him in Chapter 43's "Birthday Bash". This being a tad out-of-character of her, he suspects she Invoked this trope to either reinforce this covers, lay a claim on him, or likely both. Then Kallen makes it an Indirect Kiss too by rather smugly using the same fork to eat cake herself, thus prompting Lelouch to blush. Gotta hand it to her — even as a Clingy Jealous Girl, Kallen is thorough.
• Royal Harem:
  • Discussed. Lelouch comments on the political functions of one from a historical perspective, but he personally hates the concept because his father combines it with Britannia's institutional Social Darwinism as a way to justify pitting his many children against each other in order to "cull the weak", enabling the kind of Decadent Court dealings that he thinks got his mother killed. This is also why Lelouch resists even considering dating both Kallen and Shirley despite loving the two of them and suspecting they could agree to it if that would end the strain between them in the aftermath of Shirley's Palace.
  • Also Discussed in Chapter 59 when Xingke/Dragon mentions that the same applies to Chinese emperors of old who had harems that could have over a hundred women in it, commenting on the politicking involved and on its strict inner hierarchy that went from concubines, to consorts, and up to the Emperor's official wife, the Empress.
• Running Gag:
  • People just keep assuming Lelouch and Kallen Stadtfeld are an item.
  • People assuming Lelouch is The Casanova and/or that the girl next to him is her current girlfriend. Most people in Ashford Academy think he's dating one of the girls in the Student Council, Diethard mistakes him for Leila Breisgau's secret boyfriend (as does her butler later on), the Black King thinks he and Princess Euphemia are having an affair, and absolutely everyone who's ever seen him together with Kallen gets the idea they're a hot item.
  • If Lelouch isn't entering the Velvet Room in his dreams, he's having a Mythology Gag-filled dream of some sort.
  • Sayoko mistaking Lelouch for a Lovable Sex Maniac, and his chagrin at her approval of his alleged lifestyle.
  • Wholeheartedly Defied by Lelouch and his girlfriend. During the Student Council summer trip, they discover they briefly met as kids in a rather sweet manner and immediately realize their story together now sounds like a romance novel featuring the tropes Meet Cute, Forgotten First Meeting, Fate Drives Us Together, and First Girl After All. He proposes to never let the others find out lest they get teased for it until the end of times.
  • One of Lelouch's Personas bringing his most perverted subconscious thoughts to the fore.
  • Characters that know Lelouch is a prince instantly assume he's taking after his father when they see him surrounded by beautiful young women.
• Ryokan Inn: The Student Council stays in one in Izu during their summer trip. The characters comment on how different such places are under Britannian occupation.
• Sacred First Kiss: Discussed. Lelouch comments that "stealing somebody's first kiss without their consent was an especially serious taboo in Japanese culture." This is right after an elated Kallen suddenly kisses him, only to then realize that could have been his first kiss.
• Sarcastic Clapping: Cognitive Schneizel in Chapter 59, "congratulating" the Black Knights and the Irregulars for defeating Shadow Gao Hai.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!:
  • Lelouch plans on Invoking this by taking advantage of Leila Breisgau's name and nobility title in order to get caught trespassing in Gao Hai's office and have the whole thing written off as a teenaged stunt because he doesn't intend to commit a more serious misdemeanor than that, much less an actual crime, in order to to unlock the inner areas of the ambassador's Palace by changing his Cognition. It fails because unforeseen complications get Leila stuck making small talk with Schneizel and thus force Lelouch to go ahead with the plan without her involvement as a security net.
  • It becomes a Double Subversion when the person that Lelouch convinces to follow him to Gao Hai's office to sell his cover story about wanting to play chess in private turns out to be Princess Marrybell mel Britannia, who seamlessly lies and says it was her idea to have their match there, thus making it hard for Gao Hai to arrest them without also arresting a Royal Princess, which would undo much of his work currying favor of his Britannian guests.
  • Bishop comments that highway patrol officers don't pull her over even if she were to go way above the speed limit on her Cool Bike simply because anyone can tell only a wealthy member of the nobility can afford a ride like that. So unless the transit violation is really, really serious, most Commoner cops won't risk angering a Noble just to give them a ticket for speeding.
• Secret Diary: Shirley's plays a crucial role in the fourth Palace. Or rather, the Cognition of her diary reveals the deep of her feelings for her father and Lelouch, information that allowed him to guide Shirley into accepting her Shadow and turning the tables on Mao/Medjed.
• Secret Relationship: Subverted. In Chapter 51, Lelouch tried to keep his multi-partner relationship with Kallen and Shirley a secret right after agreeing to it, only for Milly to cheerfully jump out of hiding and shamelessly confess she listened in the whole time because she saw the juicy bit of gossip coming better than him.
• Secret Secret-Keeper: Possibly. Shirley's mother seems to have an idea of what actually got her husband killed, the circumstances of her daughter's disappearance, and Lelouch's role in her safe return. She begins to say more to him, but quickly thinks better of it and decides to instead make him promise to keep Shirley safe. Lelouch is intrigued by this and wants to know how much Mrs. Fenette knows about her husband's secret job and whether she's aware of the connection between Shirley, Medjed, and the Black Knights, but he realizes that it is safer for the two of them to play dumb.
• Seven Deadly Sins: Naturally, given the influence of Persona 5 on the Code Geass storyline.
  • Viletta Nu represents Envy, as her resentment of Britannian nobility for being spoon-fed prestige while commoners like her have to fight tooth and nail for the scraps leads her to develop a desire for personal advancement at any cost.
  • Clovis la Britannia represents Vanity, as his desire to avenge Lelouch and Nunnally's presumed deaths has warped into a delusion of himself being the director of a play with all of Japan as his audience.
  • Blake King represents Gluttony, as his childhood in poverty drives him to ruthlessly extort anyone and everyone so he never has to want for anything.
  • Shirley Fenette represents Lust, as her conflicted feelings over Lelouch combined with the revelation that he is a Black Knight and may have had a hand in her father's death, exacerbated by Viletta's abuse, drive her to believe that all of Ashford is a sinking ship with her trapped on it.
  • Gao Hai represents Greed.
  • Cornelia's sin is implied to be Wrath.
• Sex for Solace: In Chapter 62, Lelouch and Leila/Bishop decide to spend the night together partially out of sheer need for reassurance after learning his father is plotting The End of the World as We Know It. It doubles as Their First Time.
• Sexy Man, Instant Harem: While not actually the case, the ruler of the fourth Palace has such a high opinion of Lelouch's attractiveness that his Cognitive double is surrounded by the besotted Cognitions of his female friends at his own wedding to Cognitive Kallen; and notably Cognitive Milly is the most amorous of the bunch. Heck, the Shadow outright calls his female teammates his "harem".
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: Subverted. The Black King was going to release the blackmail material he had on Lelouch and Euphemia regardless of whether they paid him off on time for his silence or not. However, Lelouch never believed for a moment that The Don wasn't petty enough to do just that, so no effort to gather the payment was made.
• Ship Sinking: In Chapter 71, Lelouch gently turns down Milly's Love Confession, which is something she expected from the start, so it happens in amiable terms, to the point that bringing closure to her crush helps her to awaken to her Ultimate Persona Hecate. They do agree to remain as friends, though.
• Shoot the Dog: Both Lelouch and Alice/Speed agree that Mao/Medjed is simply too dangerous to be allowed to live since he knows his Secret Identity and has proved himself willing and capable of attacking his loved ones just to hurt him, to say nothing of all the people he's already killed or kidnapped using the Metaverse and undoubtedly will continue doing the same if allowed to. Alice/Speed is the one to actually pull the trigger.
• Shout-Out:
  • Diamond's Persona — Medea from Classical Mythology — is described as a "figure draped in a long purple robe, and its face hidden by a black cowl that extended into a cloak that swirled in the wind", which sounds a lot like Caster from Fate/stay night.
  • A portrait of Leila that shows up in Clovis' Palace in Chapter 18 is based upon the "draw me like one of your French girls" Signature Scene from Titanic. While not a nude, the subject of the painting is still thoroughly mortified when she sees herself in full Ready for Lovemaking getup. Also something of a Stealth Pun — after all, Leila's Persona is a French girl.
  • Shirley's Shadow and Palace are based upon The Little Mermaid.
  • In Chapter 42, there are several in the scene where the team decides on the Code Name of their newest member, Shirley Fenette.
    • Diamond proposes "Milady" from The Three Musketeers because she remembers her as a cool female character that dressed in black and wore a mask. Lelouch shoots it down because Milady de Winter is a "textbook psychopath" and Bishop follows up by pointing out Diamond probably knows a Lighter and Softer version of the character. It doubles as a Mythology Gag and a Take That! to Persona 5 for portraying Milady more like a heroine.
    • "Zorro" is briefly considered too — also based on the matching black outfit, mask, and now the sword. Interestingly, the character is a lot less known In-Universe because the stories' marked anti-establishment themes don't fly well in Britannia. Doubles as a Mythology Gag to Morgana's Persona.
    • Diamond liked the Two-Person Love Triangle subplot involving Zorro and his main Love Interest, but withdraws her suggestion the moment she hears his Love Interest is called "Lolita Pulido", pointing out that "Nabokov ruined that one."
  • Speed/Alice from the Irregulars has Bradamante from Orlando Furioso as her Persona. A double Shout-Out because the Persona itself resembles her namesake's design in Fate/Grand Order — specifically when in her Second Ascension◊ outfit as a Lancer-class Servant.
  • The Black Mask going by the code name "Agent Nebiros" is both a reference to the Ars Goetia and a Mythology Gag to the second compilation movie.
  • Shirley/Dame can't help but compare her dancing with a prince at a ball without anybody knowing she's a commoner in a fancy dress to Cinderella.
  • Done In-Universe to Oscar Wilde at the Masquerade Ball:
    Emerald-masked Woman: The truth is in short supply these days. It makes your honesty refreshing.
    Lelouch: [in costume as well] You would trust a man in a mask? I'm anything but honest.
    Emerald-masked Woman: Man is least himself when he talks in his own person...
    Lelouch: [recognizes and completes the quote] "Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth."
    Emerald-masked Woman: It seemed fitting for the occasion and the company.
    Lelouch: [wryly amused] Touché.
• Shower of Awkward: Lelouch and Kallen's moment from Stage 3 happens here in Chapter 11, but with a twist. By this point they already know each other's secrets, so Lelouch can't resist snarking at her, which provokes the Fiery Redhead into jumping at him without thinking. Her bare feet slip on the shower floor and Lelouch tries to catch her, but he can't keep his balance and only manages to cushion her fall with his own body, leaving a wet and very naked Kallen sprayed all over Lelouch and with her lips hovering just a few inches above his.
• Shown Their Work: The summer trip includes detailed descriptions of the locations the student council visits according to their real-world touristic interest while noting the differences in a fictional Japan under Britannian occupation. For example, natural attractions are still there and are appreciated as such, but the changes in the geopolitical map can be felt everywhere else, where the scarcity of domestic tourists because former Japanese people now lack the money and liberty to travel leisurely, which conditions tourism-based businesses to please a predominantly Britannian clientele down to the food they serve.
• A Simple Plan: Technicalities aside, Lelouch's plan to infiltrate the Chinese embassy was actually pretty straightforward: attend to the Masquerade Ball, meet up with Leila, and play a few chess matches in public as a cover story, then sneak into one of the off-limits rooms and let themselves get caught playing another match in there. On the surface, that's just a minor misconduct of two party-goers looking to play in private, but their presence in there should be enough to unmake the ambassador's Cognition of his private chambers being inviolable to outsiders and allow the Black Knights further access to his Palace. Of course, complications such as Prince Schneizel engaging Leila in conversation force Lelouch to improvise.
• Sliding Scale of Gameplay and Story Integration:
  • It's implied that Mao/Medjed manages to survive his Disney Death in Shirley's Palace in part thanks to his Persona possessing Endure, a Last Chance Hit Point passive skill.
  • In Chapter 57, Kallen/Queen manages to survive Merciful Clergyman's Holy Wrath, which makes a lot of sense considering Lelouch has a Rank Max Confidant with her, meaning that she most have learned Endure in a previous Confidant Rank Up event.
• Slut-Shaming:
  • Kallen tells Lelouch that, around the time of the invasion, her mother suffered this kind of treatment from Japanese people just because she dared to love and sleep with a Britannian man. Further Played for Drama because her daughter's obvious foreign looks quickly gave away their family history and she, Kallen, and Naoto had to move out a lot to avoid the scorn they got from escalating into actual violence.
  • Played With in Chapter 62. His half-sister Marrybell makes Lelouch a loaded question about how "casual" his relationships with several of his female friends are, making him angry at the implied slight toward them. Although it's heavily implied that this was merely a calculated move to get a better insight into his character and circumstances.
• Smashing Watermelons: Milly has Sayoko bring watermelons and a wooden Japanese sword to reenact the suikawari Japanese tradition properly at the Beach Episode.
• Smoky Gentlemen's Club: Being a very popular pastime in Britannia, Lelouch sets an Overt Rendezvous on a chess club that caters to high society so a princess like Marrybell visiting it won't look suspicious if caught. A downside of this is that noble gentlemen do like their expensive cigars, leaving the place with a lingering stink of tobacco, but Lelouch saw this one coming so he reserved a non-smoking private room for the occasion.
• Something Only They Would Say: Invoked. In Chapter 62 Lelouch says something only an "inmate" of the Velvet Room would recognize in front of Princess Marrybell. The latter's immediate reaction to his words confirms his suspicions she's another of Igor's guests.
• Spared by the Adaptation: Things are shaping up for this for Nagata, Kallen's partner from the very first episode of Code Geass — the story starts a few months before the events of that episode, and with Lelouch already set to steal Clovis' treasure, it's unlikely he'll be in any danger...at least from what we know.
• Spark of the Rebellion: Discussed. Noire balks at the possibility that changing Ambassador Gao Hai's heart could start a rebellion in China that would cost many lives no matter how it will go. Lelouch insists that more people by orders of magnitude will suffer in less obvious ways if they do nothing, but compromises to not take the target's Treasure if exploring the Palace provides them with an alternative.
• Spit Take: Narrowly Subverted. Lelouch almost choked on his coffee when he heard from Suzaku that his "precocious cousin" once told him that her honeymoon plans consisted of a long stay in a Ryokan Inn. Not surprising considering that he learns of this just a few days after Kaguya gave Lelouch a Wacky Marriage Proposal.
• Stating the Simple Solution: A wordless example in Chapter 54. Lelouch took careful notice of the Palace Guards' movement patterns and ranges of vision in order to come up with a meticulous progression plan to stealthy traverse a long path without being seen once. However, when he gives Queen and Speed the go-ahead, they take advantage of the surprise factor and simply summon their Personas to snipe every Shadow in the back without raising the alert level or even stopping running, thus making Lelouch's planning efforts useless after the first few seconds.
• Steven Ulysses Perhero: Lelouch eventually discovers that the mob boss known as the Black King's real name is... Blake King.
• Stupid Sexy Friend: It takes a while and lots of Defrosting, but by Chapter 46+, Lelouch finally starts to notice just how attractive his female teammates are as more than an objective assessment and without something like the Incubus Persona stirring up his libido. Also Deconstructed. The fact he's dating one of them and knows for certain that the other two are attracted to him despite it makes things really awkward for everybody involved.
• Succubi and Incubi: Some of Lelouch's Personas. He rather dislikes them because they tend to act as mouthpieces for his repressed libido.
  • The Persona Incubus instantly picks up on Shirley's attraction to Lelouch and pins her as a potential Love Martyr, encouraging him to take advantage of it in every sense of the word. Lelouch quickly gets rid of him.
  • Later on he fuses Lilim in order to take advantage of his high Confidant Rank with Diethard, but the Dream Weaver demon ends up giving him an Erotic Dream that ends in Catapult Nightmare due to his guilt.
• Surprise Incest: More to the reader's expense than anything else. In Chapters 56-57, the interactions between Lelouch and the "Emerald-asked Woman" over a game of chess has some Pair the Smart Ones overtones, but she's soon revealed to be one of his half-sisters attending the Masquerade Ball incognito.
• Switching P.O.V.: Downplayed. The narration very occasionally switches to a point of view other than Lelouch's. For example, Chapters 14, 24, and 31 introduce the new Story Arc from the perspective of Leila Breisgau, Princess Euphemia, and Shirley's father, respectively. Also, The Stinger of Chapter 55 focuses on the Black Mask and his mysterious boss, and Marrybell mel Britannia is the one to narrate the first part of Chapter 62.
• Synchronization: A Persona is connected like this to its user, just like a Shadow Self to its original unless the latter rejects it first. Shirley stabbing her own Shadow counts as a rejection, but not fast enough for the Synchronization to not hurt her as well, if just not as severely. The doctors are quite puzzled as to how someone could have an injury perfectly consistent with a stab wound while lacking an entry wound.
• Take Our Word for It: Readers never get to "see" Luciano Bradley's Palace, only hear the Glinda Knights' description of it. Likely a good thing because the guy is a Sadistic Blood Knight Psycho for Hire and a Serial Rapist that targeted both PoWs and his own subordinates.
• Take That!: Lelouch takes shots at H. P. Lovecraft in Chapter 68, calling Lovecraft a virulent racist who often used minorities (Numbers in the fic's universe) as the worshippers of his malevolent deities.
• Talking Is a Free Action: Subverted in a Mini-Boss fight in the fifth Palace. When Kallen shows her surprise at seeing Bishamonten in a Palace modeled after Imperial China. Bishop tries to explain that Bishamonten is one of the Four Heavenly Kings in Chinese tradition and actually originated as a Hindu god, but Arthur interrupts her because they are indeed in the middle of a Mini-Boss fight.
• Talking to Themself: Lelouch can hold conversations with his Personas, and has done so with Incubus, Mermaid, and Lilim.
• Tarot Motifs: Would it be a Persona fic without them?
  • Lelouch Lamperouge represents 0. The Fool and his Fool Confidant is Igor.
  • Arthur represents I. The Magician.
  • Leila Breisgau represents II. The Priestess.
  • Euphemia li Britannia represents III. The Empress.
  • Li Xingke represents IV. The Emperor.
  • Sayoko Shinozaki represents V. The Hierophant.
  • Shirley Fenette represents VI. The Lovers.
  • Kallen Stadtfeld represents VII. The Chariot.
  • Suzaku Kururugi represents VIII. Justice.
  • Nina Einstein represents IX. The Hermit.
  • Milly Ashford represents the X. Wheel of Fortune.
  • Kyoshiro Tohdoh represents XI. Strength.
  • Jeremiah Gottwald represents XII. The Hanged Man.
  • C.C., or rather Shi and Tsu, represents XII. Death.
  • Rivalz Cardemonde represents XIV. Temperance.
  • Diethard Ried represents XV. The Devil.
  • Taizo Kirihara represents XVI. The Tower.
  • Nunnally Lamperouge represents XVII. The Star.
  • Rolo Haliburton represents XVIII. The Moon.
  • Kaguya Sumeragi represents XIX. The Sun.
  • Cornelia li Britannia represents XX. Judgement.
  • Marrybell mel Britannia represents Faith.
• Tarot Troubles:
  • Noticing the Tarot Motifs in their Personas, Bishop looks up the tarot cards and proposes to give Lelouch a reading one day. Cynic as always, Lelouch refuses because he doesn't believe in either fortune-telling or destiny, but he relents when he is asked to humor her. As with real tarot, Lelouch doesn't fail to notice Bishop is in fact trying to use a Cold Reading from his reactions to the cards' alleged meanings.
  • Shirley gets a three-card reading from Warden Tsu during the summer trip. The Six of Swords card represents the ordeal she overcame in the near past, the Chariot tells her about the "victory within her grasp" in the present if she has the will to act, and the Temperance promises a harmonious future through "the merging of opposites into a new whole." This Foreshadows Shirley and Kallen starting to date Lelouch at the same time from Chapter 51 and on.
  • Lelouch gets a three-card reading in Chapter 63. He draws Reversed Faith, Reversed Judgement, and the Ten of Swords; Leila interprets this to mean Lelouch is being deceived but is blindly charging forward and refusing to acknowledge this, which will ultimately lead him to be betrayed.
• Tempting Fate: Kallen should really know better than indulging in this. It doubles as an example of Saying Too Much by revealing Lelouch's real identity.
  Kallen: Some rebel group we are: Two nobles, two ex-nobles, one of whom is an ex-prince, and a cat. And only I'm at all Japanese. What's next, a Britannian princess to round things out?
• That Was Not a Dream: Shirley faints when she's told Lelouch is a prince. Then he has to tell her again because she convinced herself she must have dreamed it.
• Their First Time:
  • Lelouch and Kallen have their first time right after their Relationship Upgrade in Chapter 28.
  • Lelouch and Leila Breisgau have theirs in Chapter 62. It doubles as a mutual example of Sex for Solace.
  • Lelouch and Shirley are next to have their in Chapter 79.
• They're Called "Personal Issues" for a Reason: Discussed. After getting to know him more, Kallen admits that Lelouch has very good reasons for most of his secrets, but is also adamant that his tendency to keep sensitive information to himself leads to Poor Communication Kills and so she keeps her eyes open and confronts him when she catches him trying to hide something from the group.
• This Explains So Much:
  • A lot of oddities about Lelouch finally make sense to Shirley when she learns he's a Britannian prince who prefers the world to think he and his sister are dead.
  • The circumstances surrounding Suzaku Kururugi, especially those during the Masquerade Ball, finally made sense to Lelouch in Chapter 58, when Shirley tells him that she saw Suzaku summoning a Persona in Gao Hai's Palace.
• This Is Wrong on So Many Levels!: Lelouch has this reaction when Milly attempts to flirt with two anthropomorphic horse-headed Shadows. Granted, she was trying to get one to attack the other, but still.
• A Threesome Is Hot: The Persona Lilim gives Lelouch an Erotic Dream in Chapter 51 involving him, his girlfriend and two of his other female teammates. He's pissed when he wakes up and realizes what she just did, but he's even less amused when she tells him she just gave shape to what was already in his subconscious.
• Threesome Subtext:
  • Discussed. Lelouch muses that anyone watching him shopping with two very attractive girls such as Kallen and Milly would likely assume something along these lines is going on. Especially if that someone is an Ashford Academy student privy to the rumors painting him as The Casanova.
  • More specifically, Queen×Zero×Dame gets teased too. It's even in the girls' choice of Code Name as Diamond points out In-Universe.
    Bishop: La Dame, or Dame for short. It means "lady" in French, but the latter used to be used in Britannia for a woman of equal rank to a knight. It also is the name of the Queen piece in French chess.
    Diamond: Ooh, now you can have two queens, Zero! What a naughty boy!
  • Ultimately subverted when the three of them enter a triad, meaning the subtext is now just plain text.
• Throwing the Distraction: The Black Knights resort to a high-tech variant of this during the Black-Tie Infiltration at the Masquerade Ball. Namely by hacking into the security system and having the embassy guards check on "false, low-level alerts elsewhere in the consulate, as well as a number of inexplicable mechanical failures" that indirectly left the corridor Lelouch needed to take mostly protected by the automated security that they had already compromised.
• Timed Mission:
  • Like in the game, Palaces usually have a deadline.
  • The Mini-Boss Battle against the Scylla and Charybdis Shadows in the Fourth Palace, where every moment fighting the former draws them closer to the latter's Mega Maelstrom. Lelouch cheats by placing Diamond at the helm so she can steer the ship and gain more time for the rest to finish Scylla and then throw everything they have a Charybdis from a safe(-ish) distance.
  • The whole fourth Palace is one, given that the ship is slowly taking in seawater and threatening to self-destruct. Worse, accessing one area containing a critical item to keep advancing triggers a trap that more than doubles the rate the Palace is sinking.
• Time for Plan B: Defied. Whatever his Plan B for the Masquerade Ball is, Lelouch doesn't like it because "the girls in the Black Knights would never let him hear the end of it" if he goes for it and instead opts for playing Xanatos Speed Chess in order to get Plan A back on track.
• Tournament Arc: Downplayed. Similarly to the Casino in Persona 5, Lelouch has to win the Battle Arena in the Black King's Palace in order to get to the Treasure Room.
• Trap Is the Only Option:
  • The Black Knights realize that Medjed using Shirley as bait to lure them into her Palace is a painfully obvious trap, but they can do nothing but playing along because they really have no way to save her except by entering the Palace.
  • The fourth palace also has a trap the Black Knights have to trigger in order to keep advancing. Specifically, one that cuts down the remaining time for the Timed Mission of a Palace to about a third.
• Travel Cool:
  • The Black Knights explore Mementos onboard the Cognition of an old Knightmare Frame, but as cool as their ride is, it does get pretty cramped with two extra passengers (and a cat) in the cabin. They lose the Glasgow in their first run-in with The Reaper.
  • They replace it later with a squad of Cognitive Burais, courtesy of manipulating the public's Cognition of them.
• A Truce While We Gawk: The Boss Battle against the fifth Palace Ruler stops to a grind for a moment while both sides just stare at the results of Lelouch's plan to disable the Longdan's main cannon. Lelouch has to remind them not to let up the attack and miss the opening he just created.
• Undying Loyalty: Exploited. In Chapter 55, Gao Hai's Cognition of Xingke makes it obvious that the former is using the latter's loyalty to Empress Tianzi for his own purposes.
• Unique Protagonist Asset:
  • Subverted. Unlike in the game where only the Black Knights and the Black Mask had access to the MetaNav, more than a few people in this story have got it on their own. This includes Naoto Kozuki, Bishop, Medjed, the Irregulars, and the Glinda Knights. Lelouch thinks Igor made the app available to as many Persona Users as feasible in order to increase the chances of averting "Ragnarök".
  • For another Subversion, both Lelouch and the late Naoto Kozuki wielded the Power of the Wild Card. Later on, Nunnally is revealed to be one too.
• The Unreveal: We don't get to learn what Lelouch's "Plan B" for the Black-Tie Infiltration at the Masquerade Ball was. Only teasing hints are given, such as Lelouch blanching at the idea of falling back to it because "girls in the Black Knights would never let him hear the end of it."
• Urban Legends: Mementos is shaped by public opinion, and thanks to the not-so-fictitious conspiracy theories about La Résistance operating old stolen Knightmare Frames through the abandoned Japanese subway system, the Black Knights run into a functioning Cognition of an old Glasgow that they use to move around in the tunnels.
• Visual Pun: Lampshaded. Prince Schneizel doesn't wear a mask for the Masquerade Ball, unlike most guests. Lelouch quips that said person has such a Silver Tongue and Manipulative Bastard skills that their regular face is enough of a mask already.
• Vomit Discretion Shot: Lloyd runs away to puke offscreen after tasting "Mystery Food X", pudding edition. After he recovers, he starts considering how to weaponize it.
• Wedding Smashers: The stage of the final Boss Battle of the fourth The Little Mermaid-themed Palace is a chapel hosting the wedding between the Prince and the Temple Maiden — that is, the Cognitive versions of Lelouch and Kallen.
• Wham Episode:
  • Chapter 33, "Blooming Villain": Shirley sees Lelouch and the Knights leaving the Metaverse, with Milly throwing an errant line that reveals them as the Black Knights. This, combined with seeing Lelouch falling for Kallen, causes her to form her own Palace over Ashford in the Metaverse, and given how much repressed jealousy she has, her Shadow is bound to be powerful and have a personal vendetta against the Black Knights, unlike previous Palace rulers.
  • Followed by "Tanabata", which ends with a series of startling revelations: Shirley has a Palace, she represents the Deadly Sin of Lust, the Black Mask works for someone that sounds and acts as V.V., they know who the Black Knights are and where to find them, and the only reason they haven't killed or captured Lelouch yet is because Emperor Charles decided that Lelouch will serve their objectives better if he's left alone to grow into a stronger Persona user.
  • Chapter 41, aptly named "Revelations". Hoo boy, where do we even start... Mao survives Shirley's Palace and comes back to kidnap Nunnally. Lelouch is forced to come clean to Sayoko about the Metaverse in order to recruit her help. Lelouch loses the rematch fight against Mao, but two members of the Irregulars save his life. The two Persona Users turn out to be Nunnally's suspicious friend Alice and Nunnally herself, who not only has been visiting the Metaverse in secret just like her brother but is also able to see and walk in there. Then Lelouch decides to straight up murder the knocked-out Mao, but Nunnally strongly opposes him. Alice, however, completely agrees with Lelouch that there's really no other choice, and puts a bullet in Mao's heart and head before the siblings can stop arguing. And then the Black Mask arrives, thanks them for killing Mao for him, and reveals he's a government sanctioned Professional Killer who triggers mental shutdown on Britannia's orders. He also says the only reason he hasn't killed the Black Knights and the Irregulars is because he's yet to receive an official order to do so, but warns them that he will eliminate them if they cross paths with him in the Metaverse again. As a parting gift, the Black Mask also reveals he's not the same "Black Mask" Clovis was talking about before the prince got Killed Mid-Sentence, meaning there's another Serial Killer using the Metaverse to commit murder with impunity.
  • In Chapter 51, Lelouch, Kallen, and Shirley start a consensual three-way relationship.
  • Chapter 57's ending. The Black Knights are framed of managing to briefly kidnap Princess Euphemia while Lelouch and co. were busy fighting a Mini-Boss in Gao Hai's Palace.
  • Chapter 62 finally reveals what the fic's version of "Ragnarök" is about. It's the end goal of an Apocalypse Cult/Mystery Cult with the Emperor himself as its leader that has been researching the ruins known as Thought Elevators for decades — and even having the Empire start wars to secure their access to more of them — in order to find the way to affect major changes in the Collective Unconscious and in turn remake the real world In Their Own Image. Furthermore, Cognitive Psience seems to merely be an offshoot of this research.
• Wham Line:
  • "Destination Confirmed" in the first non-Lelouch interlude, proving that Leila can enter the Metaverse.
  • The MetaNav saying "Destination acquired. Sinking Ship of Lust. Commence Navigation?" is this. Double whammy because it not only proves that Shirley Fenette of all people has a Palace, but also that their cardinal sin is nothing like one would expect of this particular character.
  • "Do you honesty believe that the realm of the gods is a dingy old subway?", which reveals to Lelouch that Mementos has to be an artificial construct of some sort.
  • Chapter 41 gets a good one. "You appear to be laboring under a delusion, Black Knight. Whoever said that there was only one Black Mask?"
  • Chapter 44 has Taizo Kirihara saying to Lelouch that the first victim of the murders via mental shutdown was Genbu Kururugi, the last prime minister of Japan and Suzaku's father, seven years ago.
  • Squared in Chapter 55 with the following line, not only revealing the identity of the Black Mask if you're familiar enough with Code Geass lore but also hinting that Nunnally's unusual Persona powers could be beneficial to the bad guys' plans.
    Black Mask's Boss: Truly remarkable. I will have to revisit my notes... but it seems birds of a feather truly flock together... you did well to tell me that, Agent Nebiros.
  • The above scene also includes this Cliffhanger of a line right before the Black Knights' Black-Tie Infiltration.
    Black Mask: Very well. I shall take my leave then, My Lord. I have a party to attend.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Euphemia gives one of these to Suzaku Kururugi in Chapter 59, asking how he can do nothing about a monster like Gao Hai despite seeing the man's true nature in his Palace, and for letting Schneizel Frame-Up the Black Knights while knowing it just make no sense for them to kidnap one of their own. It works well enough for him to look the other way and let Euphemia meet up with the Black Knights and change Gao Hai's heart.
• Whole Episode Flashback: The first half of Chapter 53 details how the Irregulars escaped from Code-R and how they met their leader Nemo/Nunnally.
• Written by the Winners: Discussed. Kallen chastises Shirley for believing what Britannian history books say. She also comments that reading them feels like "losing brain cells by the second" due to all the deliberate lies in them that she has to memorize to keep up her good grades just so the school won't mind "sickly Kallen Stadtfeld's absences".
• Yank the Dog's Chain: When Euphemia temporarily lifts the ban on Japanese people visiting the local shrine so they can celebrate the Tanabata festival, she says she's worried that Cornelia will probably reinstate the ban and end the festivities as soon as she gets wind of it. Sure enough, that's exactly what she does.
• You Are Too Late: Played for Laughs in Chapter 51. Lelouch asks Shirley and Kallen to keep quiet about their recently established Polyamory for the moment to avoid complications, and likely lots of teasing from Milly, which is exactly when she decides to jump out of hiding and reveal she listened in since the start of their conversation.
• You Do NOT Want To Know:
  • When Dame asks the Irregulars if her father Joseph was really the amoral scientist Mao said he was, they answer affirmatively and strongly insist she does NOT want to know the details.
  • When Lelouch claims the fifth Treasure, he cracks open the jar containing it to find what is heavily implied to be Gao Hai's severed balls and wee-wee. Nemo asks what the Treasure is, and Lelouch responds thusly.
• You Must Be Cold: Lelouch hands over his jacket to Leila in Chapter 62, commenting that her Stylish Protection Gear for riding her Cool Bike doesn't look particularly warm. This is a bold-faced lie. What actually bothered Lelouch was his half-sister Marrybell's lingering stare on Leila in her formfitting outfit (particularly her chest) and wanted to put a stop to it.
• Your Days Are Numbered: Joseph Fenette realizes that, with most of his coworkers having been killed off to tie loose ends, he's not likely to be around much longer, and thus decides to spend his last few days with his family. Unfortunately, mere minutes after he decides upon this, the conspiracy offs him.
• You Remind Me of X: An attendee to the Masquerade Ball — dubbed as an "emerald-masked woman" in his narration — keeps reminding Lelouch of Euphemia. The next chapter reveals that's because she's their half-sister Princess Marrybell mel Britannia. He would likely have figured sooner were not for Marrybell being in a party costume intended to hide her identity.
• Your Mind Makes It Real:
  • As in the game, altering how a person sees the world alters their Palace to match. For example, the Metaverse equivalent of Clovis' office is inaccessible in his Palace because he's convinced that no unauthorized person can get in there. The Black Knights get around this by having their newest member at the time simply ask him to let her enter for a moment. His agreement makes it so his office in his Palace becomes accessible to her for the time being, which is all they need to progress.
  • Lelouch pulls off a much larger change of Cognition in Chapter 49. He releases a video of the Black Knights to the Internet — carefully crafted to hide their identities, of course — where he as Zero declares that they will continue changing hearts, Medjed was just a psychotic Serial Killer, and that they know Genbu Kururugi didn't commit suicide and was actually killed by mental shutdown. A parallel objective of this is showing them surrounded by a squad of Burais in a location easily recognizable as the old subway system, thus introducing the idea that "The Black Knights have Knightmare Frames somewhere in the tunnels" into the public's minds when the video predictably goes viral. This results in a change of Cognition at the collective level that alters the Palace of the Public which in turn creates functional replicas of the Burais in Mementos, which they use to explore the tunnels a lot more safely and efficiently than on foot. On the downside, KMFs in the hands of an anti-Britannia outlaw group is not the kind of threat that Cornelia will take laying down given that she doesn't know they don't really have that kind of armament in the real world.

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