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Semper Ad Meliora (Code Geass/Britannian Royalty Quest)

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mitchchris said:
Few things to note. I made Greta from Italy originally because it has access to a coast and her last name (and thus her father in the omake) are from Italy, and I made her mother German because Greta is a German name.
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I'd actually stated she was from Italy on a few occasions. I didn't consider her mother being German, but given the cosmopolitan nature of the EU, it's very possible.

I enjoyed it. Canon.
 
"Fetch me the first aid kit! NOW!"
"Greta, stop trying to make 'fetch' happen! It's not going to happen!"

Sorry, I had to do it to 'em.
 
You know, Lelouche is going to be doing a really weird Baron Munchausen. We didn't disprove any of the debauched rumors about ourselves and our vassal: We just blew pure oxygen onto that fire while adding in a lot of details that nobody else had even guessed. I mean, the bullshit that your average layman would get would be bad enough. But someone with just a little bit of real information would spin pure insanity.

We are going to be the most interesting man in the world, aren't we? The sex and intrigue-basted paparazzi porkroast they cook for us is going to be amazing.
 
Modus_Tollens said:
You know, Lelouche is going to be doing a really weird Baron Munchausen. We didn't disprove any of the debauched rumors about ourselves and our vassal: We just blew pure oxygen onto that fire while adding in a lot of details that nobody else had even guessed. I mean, the bullshit that your average layman would get would be bad enough. But someone with just a little bit of real information would spin pure insanity.

We are going to be the most interesting man in the world, aren't we? The sex and intrigue-basted paparazzi porkroast they cook for us is going to be amazing.
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You only live once.
 
Eh I imagine the rumors have switched from Lelouch seducing Kallen followed by blackmailing her to be his "knight", to Isaac "finding out about" his families treason and the "plot to murder him" and sends his daughter to seduce Lelouch in order to get his aid in stomping out his treacherous family members.
 
scionofrevan said:
Eh I imagine the rumors have switched from Lelouch seducing Kallen followed by blackmailing her to be his "knight", to Isaac "finding out about" his families treason and the "plot to murder him" and sends his daughter to seduce Lelouch in order to get his aid in stomping out his treacherous family members.
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It depends on how much is secret. It would be reasonable to expect your average layman to know pretty much nothing, and your court gossip knowing that shit went down but not EXACTLY what or why. Then you have the deeper court, like the buried Slaanesh-style cult we're shaking hands with, which would have better but still distorted ideas. Even those with near perfect details would get the context wrong, ascribing the wrong intentions to given actions and possibly assuming things happened beyond those recorded.
 
@Slayer Anderson So I expect this to be a touchy topic for many people, but it was brought up as part of Britanian society so I'd like to know more about it. Earlier you said that if we were to make Nunnally our Knight of Honor, everyone would think we'd be bedding her and Britanian culture at large would be okay with that. So I have to ask as a follow up to that, what is known about inbreeding in this universe and how is it traditionally handled?
 
bluefur87 said:
@Slayer Anderson So I expect this to be a touchy topic for many people, but it was brought up as part of Britanian society so I'd like to know more about it. Earlier you said that if we were to make Nunnally our Knight of Honor, everyone would think we'd be bedding her and Britanian culture at large would be okay with that. So I have to ask as a follow up to that, what is known about inbreeding in this universe and how is it traditionally handled?
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Probably with lots and lots of infanticide and tragic but inevitable accidents, whenever it looks like you sired a particularly weak link. Which, well, it works. You can work miracles with that sort of coldbloodedness... as little as we like to think about such things... and ours are a people of utter bastards.

They are clearly not letting the side effects fester the way Europe traditionally did ( ANGRY HAPSBURG NOISES ) and there is no strict 'heir and a spare' mentality, judging by Charlie.
 
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Modus_Tollens said:
Probably with lots and lots of infanticide and tragic but inevitable accidents, whenever it looks like you sired a particularly weak link. Which, well, it works. You can work miracles with that sort of coldbloodedness... as little as we like to think about such things... and ours are a people of utter bastards.

They are clearly not letting the side effects fester the way Europe traditionally did ( ANGRY HAPSBURG NOISES ) and there is no strict 'heir and a spare' mentality, judging by Charlie.
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Yeah, with Papa Charles, no one is even the Spare, their all Extras. Only the ones that manage to impress him get the distinct honor of becoming Spares.
 
Slayer Anderson said:
Slayer Anderson (QM): "Okay... so when you say 'destroy' what are we talking about here? Ideal scenario."

QM: "...you really don't want to do that."

QM: "Alright, so you realize that what you're advocating for would lead to a complete economic, military, governmental, social, legal, and... well, you'd basically have to restart the entire country from scratch, right?"

QM: "...and the consequences?"

QM: "Okay, so... it may not have occurred to you, but Britannia is the world's largest nation by landmass. They are the world's largest economy. They are the world's largest producer of food. They are the world's largest producer of advanced technology by gross (the EU beats them per capita). China beats them in population, and thus army size, but Britannia's military is by far the better equipped, trained, and logistically supplied. That's relevant, because as weird as it sounds, Britannia does do peace-keeping operations that lower the overall level of violence in the world, even if it is with an iron fist. Ethnic and religious warfare just doesn't happen when Britannia takes over."

"So, if you take Britannia out of the equation for even a few years, you are looking at an extremely likely global economic collapse, if not a social one also, the likes of which hasn't been seen since the end of the Bronze Age."

QM: "The EU does actually import stuff from Britannia, still, you know? Even if they didn't, there would be massive knock-on effects from the loss of their other major trading partner, the Chinese Federation."

QM: "But as bad as Britannia is, the CF is worse. Britannia exports a fuckton of food to China, because they're still using farming methods from two hundred years ago. The Eunuchs like it that way. It keeps their population on the brink of destitution and too worried about their next meal to rebel. But if you take away that next meal? The rebellion in canon will look like a peaceful demonstration. Even assuming Xingke manages to ride the wave into a revolution that doesn't horrifically destabilize the country for years, he's still going to be concerned with feeding the population and modernizing agriculture, if he can even manage that. Either way, the Chinese Federation is in turmoil for years to some degree, if not decades."

"Best case scenario? Europe manages to avoid a full scale economic collapse of it's own and recedes into a Great Depression as they try to fend off a refugee crisis."

"Worst case scenario? The destruction of Britannia drives both Europe and China into complete collapse and begins a new Dark Age where lifespans shorten, literacy drops, technology regresses, and the human species loses a century or two of progress, if not more."

QM: "...you're actually arguing that you can manage to reconquer an empire that took centuries to build in a timeframe small enough to prevent the hundreds of millions of deaths that will occur as food shortages happen and medical services fail?"

"That's, of course, discounting the many other people who will, by default, want to reform the empire and take the throne, just as a return to the status quo. As well as the many, many, many, bloody rebellions which will occur in the interim and likely bring tinpot dictators and nationalist extremists to power that embroil all of north and south America in decades of warfare."

QM: "Putting aside the psychic secret police that are probably a thing? Assuming you can find enough like-minded and skilled individuals to perform the largest coup-de-tat in history, keep it secret, and then succeed in it's execution in a way that leaves most of the governmental services intact? There's a good chance the people would rebel."

QM: "No, you'd be substantially changing a system they'd been using for longer than they'd been alive. Even in South America, there are only a few stubborn pockets of resistance. Paraguay is the worst culprit, but there are a handful more. Oaxaca is the only remaining resistance to Britannian rule in Area 1 worth mentioning. Mexico was conquered over a hundred and fifty years ago. The most recent South American conquest was seventy-five years old. There aren't many people alive today who remember a time before Britannian ruled the entirety of the American continents."

"Outside of those isolated pockets of resistance, you're looking at people who are... if not 'happy,' then 'relatively satisfied' by their life. If nothing else, Britannia manages to keep the food and medicine flowing to any region that isn't under active rebellion and provides it to anyone who has accepted at least Honorary Citizenship. There is an extremely good chance that you'd face wide-scale rebellion with that kind of takeover. If for no other reason than you just killed hundreds of thousands of the most influential politicians and lords in the country."

"That kind of thing scares the living shit out of people, because there's no reason beyond your word that you won't kill them too, next."

QM: "Assuming you manage to do all that without being caught or your political enemies bribing themselves out? Okay, that's going to take between ten and twenty years, assuming again that you can manage to find enough people to replace the ones you've removed who are ideologically compatible with your plan or mercenary enough to be bought out."

QM: "...maybe it would just be easier if you became Emperor and reformed the country that way instead of wasting time and resources that could be better spent on achievements and conquests which would ensure no one could question your rule or attempt to subvert your reforms?"

QM: "Do me a favor and go back to the top. Rinse and repeat until you get the point I'm trying to make."

*A/N: I understand that most people were just joking and bullshitting. I get that. I'm not angry. This is meant to be a joke as well, but one that you should take with some degree of seriousness. Simply put, there are a host of problems (even beyond Lelouch being OOC in this quest or whatever) with 'destroying' Britannia. As much as this is a joke, it's also an attempt to head any future problems off at the pass.
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So if I am reading this right the EU is incapable of self sufficieny. The Chinese are in a hellhole of their own making and Britannia is fueling its desire for safety with all the war.
 
You can be self sufficient... at a really meager level of existence. Devote more of your population and infrastructure to food production and you may be able to get by but there would be a significant loss off efficiency. People who could be making automotive parts are instead still involved in the production and processing of wheat. Or more likely rye. And your food quality goes down as you have to lean more on easy to produce staple crops while some things just fade to myth and legend. Enjoy your delicious soviet ryebread.

Even if you can become self sufficient with a really high level of existence, barely reduced, it takes time. You have to fuck over your own economy and war footing when just keeping trade blaring full blast helps you at least keep up with your enemy.

We very much are set up to be our own worst enemy. Once you stop having truly valid rivals, its a matter of time before politics stops looking like politics and starts looking like varying degrees of undeclared low-grade war. That isn't an opportunity so much as the looming threat that even Charlie, for all his might, has to be scared of and which we should be terrified of ourselves. You can only milk pretend enemies for so long before victory disease (a very real thing) starts its countdown and, then, its just a matter of salvage.

Of course he has pseudomagical brain-mojo shenanigans, and god knows what else, but even that only goes so far.
 
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Crazyone47 said:
So if I am reading this right the EU is incapable of self sufficieny. The Chinese are in a hellhole of their own making and Britannia is fueling its desire for safety with all the war.
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And the rest of the world (actually all of it) is afraid to start losing what they already have which in real life means everything is fucked. OR that's how politics seems after awhile because at some point you really have to consider just why we are still engaged in a proxy war in the middle east, actual war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a still ongoing civil war in china and korea. It just is depressing to think we are stuck with these problems and without drastic unpredictable actions or very long term solutions we are probably going to be stuck with these problems.
 
bluefur87 said:
@Slayer Anderson So I expect this to be a touchy topic for many people, but it was brought up as part of Britanian society so I'd like to know more about it. Earlier you said that if we were to make Nunnally our Knight of Honor, everyone would think we'd be bedding her and Britanian culture at large would be okay with that. So I have to ask as a follow up to that, what is known about inbreeding in this universe and how is it traditionally handled?
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Modus_Tollens said:
Probably with lots and lots of infanticide and tragic but inevitable accidents, whenever it looks like you sired a particularly weak link. Which, well, it works. You can work miracles with that sort of coldbloodedness... as little as we like to think about such things... and ours are a people of utter bastards.

They are clearly not letting the side effects fester the way Europe traditionally did ( ANGRY HAPSBURG NOISES ) and there is no strict 'heir and a spare' mentality, judging by Charlie.
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Admittedly, there is some of this, though the practice is dying out. Even then, it was far more common to contract an asylum or dedicate a room/floor to an 'ailing relative.' While disfigured or mentally handicapped children would be good gossip, they usually wouldn't be mentioned by polite society. This has an extensive real-life basis, such as what the Kennedy family did to Rose Marie Kennedy.

Generally, though, one response to a closely-inbred set of parents is for either the father and/or mother to take a second lover and have them produce a child. Usually the surrogate is chosen for physical resemblance so that the chil will appear to be authentic. It's fairly easy for a noble wife to go into seclusion for nine months due to a 'difficult pregnancy.'

These days, though, medicine has gotten to the point where genetic testing can rule out a lot of diseases or problems early. Eggs and sperm combined in lab conditions and the resulting embryos screened for diseases, then implanted either in the mother or a surrogate. This has become more proliferated over the past decade and there's a substantial push by some factions of the government/nobility to make it even more widely available and/or government-subsidized. The extremists of that group even want it to be mandatory.

Overall, inbreeding is a very well known dynastic threat to Britannian nobility and royalty and they've taken a number of precautions about it, still improving some into the modern day with new medicine and genetic techniques.

In fact, Social Darwinism is generally credited (though not actually responsible for beyond the broadest cause) the research into genetics and, well... eugenics. Which is one of the reasons it's still so popular an ideology, since the philosophy has been conflated so heavily and deeply with actual real science that the two are often mistaken for one.
Crazyone47 said:
So if I am reading this right the EU is incapable of self sufficieny. The Chinese are in a hellhole of their own making and Britannia is fueling its desire for safety with all the war.
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As posters above me touch on, true self-sufficiency at a modern level of government is very hard to accomplish. The Chinese owe their situation to governmental cliques that have worked very, very hard at keeping all the wealth localized at the top. Britannia... yeah, that's pretty much right.

In a larger sense, one poster called Britannia's economy 'conquest-based' and that's not too far from the truth. If you can keep a level head about it, pick your fights with strategic and logistic dedication, and don't lose sight of your actual objectives... war can be fairly profitable. Even then it breeds its problems, though...
Modus_Tollens said:
We very much are set up to be our own worst enemy. Once you stop having truly valid rivals, its a matter of time before politics stops looking like politics and starts looking like varying degrees of undeclared low-grade war. That isn't an opportunity so much as the looming threat that even Charlie, for all his might, has to be scared of and which we should be terrified of ourselves. You can only milk pretend enemies for so long before victory disease (a very real thing) starts its countdown and, then, its just a matter of salvage.
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...which this is one of. I'd even say it's one of the larger 'hidden' objectives of the quest. One of.
 
Slayer Anderson said:
Admittedly, there is some of this, though the practice is dying out. Even then, it was far more common to contract an asylum or dedicate a room/floor to an 'ailing relative.' While disfigured or mentally handicapped children would be good gossip, they usually wouldn't be mentioned by polite society. This has an extensive real-life basis, such as what the Kennedy family did to Rose Marie Kennedy.

Generally, though, one response to a closely-inbred set of parents is for either the father and/or mother to take a second lover and have them produce a child. Usually the surrogate is chosen for physical resemblance so that the chil will appear to be authentic. It's fairly easy for a noble wife to go into seclusion for nine months due to a 'difficult pregnancy.'

These days, though, medicine has gotten to the point where genetic testing can rule out a lot of diseases or problems early. Eggs and sperm combined in lab conditions and the resulting embryos screened for diseases, then implanted either in the mother or a surrogate. This has become more proliferated over the past decade and there's a substantial push by some factions of the government/nobility to make it even more widely available and/or government-subsidized. The extremists of that group even want it to be mandatory.

Overall, inbreeding is a very well known dynastic threat to Britannian nobility and royalty and they've taken a number of precautions about it, still improving some into the modern day with new medicine and genetic techniques.

In fact, Social Darwinism is generally credited (though not actually responsible for beyond the broadest cause) the research into genetics and, well... eugenics. Which is one of the reasons it's still so popular an ideology, since the philosophy has been conflated so heavily and deeply with actual real science that the two are often mistaken for one.

As posters above me touch on, true self-sufficiency at a modern level of government is very hard to accomplish. The Chinese owe their situation to governmental cliques that have worked very, very hard at keeping all the wealth localized at the top. Britannia... yeah, that's pretty much right.

In a larger sense, one poster called Britannia's economy 'conquest-based' and that's not too far from the truth. If you can keep a level head about it, pick your fights with strategic and logistic dedication, and don't lose sight of your actual objectives... war can be fairly profitable. Even then it breeds its problems, though...

...which this is one of. I'd even say it's one of the larger 'hidden' objectives of the quest. One of.
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One last set of questions on imaginary politics. Slayer Anderson said there is talks and a faction favoring relations with the CF. Why hasn't a military alliance come about? Is it because China is so underdeveloped and rural that they don't have much to offer or the administration is so incompetent they can't see the benefits? Would the EU favor the Imperialists to build up China to a military standing to counter Britannia or would they like the Foreign favoring factions to have more influence?
 
Crazyone47 said:
One last set of questions on imaginary politics. Slayer Anderson said there is talks and a faction favoring relations with the CF. Why hasn't a military alliance come about? Is it because China is so underdeveloped and rural that they don't have much to offer or the administration is so incompetent they can't see the benefits? Would the EU favor the Imperialists to build up China to a military standing to counter Britannia or would they like the Foreign favoring factions to have more influence?
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Feels like some kind of a mexican standoff between the major powers. Two allying with each other would mean trouble for balance, I'm guessing.
 
Slayer Anderson said:
In a larger sense, one poster called Britannia's economy 'conquest-based' and that's not too far from the truth. If you can keep a level head about it, pick your fights with strategic and logistic dedication, and don't lose sight of your actual objectives... war can be fairly profitable. Even then it breeds its problems, though...
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I imagine this has an odd effect on the civilian economy.

By this point in history, Capitalism had created more than a few major crises, Panics and Depressions. But if there's a constantly expanding and optimizing Military/Medical/Industrial Complex then you're existing in a society that would be able to sustain long periods of, even if it's not complete, full employment. At least so far as the core territories are concerned?

Maybe I'm talking out of my ass, but Britannia is huge, and it only keeps getting bigger. That it can function at all would take a massive mobilization of labour, that it functions in a way that is potent on all spectrums of economic/social/military activity (aside from Paraguay, god bless that little nest of condensed chaos) would suggest that it's firing on all cylinders.

I wouldn't be surprised if this is a "Charles' Era Golden Age" type of situation where the Empire is never more stable or powerful, but to get to this point at all....

It's interesting to think and ask questions about is all.
 
Slayer Anderson said:
Admittedly, there is some of this, though the practice is dying out. Even then, it was far more common to contract an asylum or dedicate a room/floor to an 'ailing relative.' While disfigured or mentally handicapped children would be good gossip, they usually wouldn't be mentioned by polite society. This has an extensive real-life basis, such as what the Kennedy family did to Rose Marie Kennedy.

Generally, though, one response to a closely-inbred set of parents is for either the father and/or mother to take a second lover and have them produce a child. Usually the surrogate is chosen for physical resemblance so that the chil will appear to be authentic. It's fairly easy for a noble wife to go into seclusion for nine months due to a 'difficult pregnancy.'

These days, though, medicine has gotten to the point where genetic testing can rule out a lot of diseases or problems early. Eggs and sperm combined in lab conditions and the resulting embryos screened for diseases, then implanted either in the mother or a surrogate. This has become more proliferated over the past decade and there's a substantial push by some factions of the government/nobility to make it even more widely available and/or government-subsidized. The extremists of that group even want it to be mandatory.

Overall, inbreeding is a very well known dynastic threat to Britannian nobility and royalty and they've taken a number of precautions about it, still improving some into the modern day with new medicine and genetic techniques.

In fact, Social Darwinism is generally credited (though not actually responsible for beyond the broadest cause) the research into genetics and, well... eugenics. Which is one of the reasons it's still so popular an ideology, since the philosophy has been conflated so heavily and deeply with actual real science that the two are often mistaken for one.
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Yay! Well, not yay about the Social Darwinism, but I expected any answer to be heavily be colored by it, so it's fully expected.

Right then, if there exists awareness of the problems and ability to handle them then I can safely support any such relation should it come about. As long as everyone is being nice and safe and responsible about things.

I am happy.
 
Well if Slayer is in the mood to answer questions there is one that has always bugged me about Code Geass...

The year is 1957 AD... but apparently Technology's progressed quite a bit faster than normal (possibly the Industrial Revolution went into overdrive at the close of the 18th century in this world), how'd this occur? Was it due to "noble patrons" of the sciences being absurdly lucky in sponsors, robber barons squeezing every bit of efficiency out of their factories, was Sakuradite discovered (well... utilitized as more than an idle curiosity) in the late 19th century and Brittania was Steampunk for a bit before bypassing Dieselpunk, Atompunk, and landing in a world of photovoltaics, hydroelectrics, winds, tidal and other forms of power all tied together by a Sakuradite wire electrical grid? Maybe a 19th century Emperor was a mad scientist?

In terms of Computers they have in 1957, early 21st century computers after all. That would require... well a a lot of even theoretical knowledge we didn't have until the 1940s.

Just how did Technology get a century ahead in the Code Geass world?
 
There's probably something to be said for the fact that Britannia is still in it's upswing after the recovery from Charles winning a messy civil war.

Royals are now coming of age to get things done, new territory still being added, and the Emperor's rule is absolutely unquestioned.
 
Blonddude42 said:
There's probably something to be said for the fact that Britannia is still in it's upswing after the recovery from Charles winning a messy civil war.

Royals are now coming of age to get things done, new territory still being added, and the Emperor's rule is absolutely unquestioned.
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Yeah, a zenith before a collapse. Or a plateau, or just a decline. Who knows.

OP said that there'd be no destroying of Britannia, but I'm kind of hoping that somehow that the house of cards starts a soft implosion once Papa Charlie kicks the bucket.
 
Tjakari said:
Yeah, a zenith before a collapse. Or a plateau, or just a decline. Who knows.

OP said that there'd be no destroying of Britannia, but I'm kind of hoping that somehow that the house of cards starts a soft implosion once Papa Charlie kicks the bucket.
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Wouldn't this work against our interests as Lelouch? I imagine that having the Empire behind us is doing us more good than harm.
 
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