I'd like for people to ignore Britannia being the system here for a moment. I believe that it would work best if we define the 'system' to be more an 'assumed just or fair system of law' before we treat it as the actual Current Law of Area 11. For all we know the majority of Brittannian law, as written, is actually quite good in concept and idealized usage. It could simply be that due to culture and the people involved, it's hugely exploited and no one who matters cares enough to stop or limit this.
To really get into the meat of 'written law' we would need to know more about the actual laws as they are. But Suzaku hides behind a front that 'wishes to enact peaceful change by working within the system' which is a kind of ideal he lives up to with his very life. Everything he does is a form of redemption. This is the most long lasting a painful. It's not that he doesn't want these things though, so try not to flanderize him too much... Anyway, with the concept of the system instead of the literal system it's easier to see what Suzaku might mean. Or what he's trying to say here.
By playing the vigilante we are posing ourselves as above the law/system. Even if the law/system is shitty in reality the idea of this law and system is part of what binds civilizations together. Not only are we completely chaotic to this function, we are provoking worse behavior from the ones who enforce it. Nothing about our actions are showing a side of 'peaceful protest'. Unfortunately, even in canon CG shit like this was only seen from a literal princess. She had little backlash due to her sister being a fucking badass. The best option there would be easily seen messages via graffiti or online activism.
Don't get me wrong. I'm well aware that peaceful protest alone in a situation like this is worthless. It might be the only kind remembered in the broad sense, but radical speakers and aggressive acts have their place in any civil rights movement. It's an ugly place. It's a downright horrible place. There is a reason why we say growing pains.
Britannia is used to this shit. It has experience shutting down the idea that humans are humans and not numbers. That was canon.
Here we have worse shit against us.
To some extent we need to follow a code of law. We need to set and enforce it among our people. But what are those laws? Who decides them and is it our right to even do so?
Suzaku regrets and hates the fact that he took the same role the Black Knights are. He killed his father to prevent something horrible only to walk through miles of corpses with his two best friends anyway. For all he knows he just made things worse. By killing his father he stepped outside of the law to try and save people he cared about. He went beyond the system and ruined everything by doing so.
I already knew Suzaku loathes himself to a very strong degree. How does your post address the issue that Suzaku's doomed self-appointed Quest is pretty much for his own gratification rather than anything else?
Hold on man I'm trying to explain Suzaku's point of view and shit.
Why didn't you bring up the other thing I talked about though?
Back to the above, Suzaku is projecting onto the Black Knights and Zero. He hates himself. But it isn't a burning rage hate at all moments of the day. He wants to atone and find redemption as well as genuinely help his people. This time without taking things into his own hands, because his hands are filthy with blood. Yay trauma.
If you think about these things, well, it is different. Lelouch wants to get revenge and kill his father. Suzaku wants to atone and die for his sins after making things better for the people he betrayed. By killing his father. He just doesn't want things to get worse. It's funny, because one killed his father and hates himself for it, and the other hates his father and wants to kill him!
So yeah. What was I saying...
Suzaku thinks that the Black Knights will fuck things up and make it worse because he sees himself within them. He has logical points that justify this too.
As for the question we must respond to, he is again not wrong. Morals/ethics/law is a complicated topic though, and what he is asking verges on philosophic navel gazing by Greek/Roman guys. And history.
We could quote academic tomes of oldness at him if we wanted, but in the end what matters perhaps MORE than any of that is understanding Suzaku. Understanding his motivations, the ones he represses, and the ones that our opinions/dislike have clouded or warped. No matter how much educational or rational smack down we use, or pretty words that Lelouch uses, we can only get through to Suzaku by understanding both what he wants and needs to hear.
Waiting until he's ultra super jaded and broken ala the end of R2 is shitty and useless. Killing him is not only a waste of potential resource but a narrative/thematic failure.
Doing the bestgoodplus speech here isn't going to instantly get him. In the first season the first opportunity to get him on Lulu's side for sure was when Mao kidnapped Nunnally, because Nunnally is one of his few remaining touchstones. Lelouch is too. He'd die for them both in the end. Going through the shit they did together kind of seals the deal. The road to Suzaku joining up with Lulu is going to be hard as fuck and it'll be damn worth it too.
I've lost sight of what I'm trying to explain but I guess it's ultimately a case of trying to explain Suzaku himself. Like I said, we have got to understand the kind of shit that he's gone and going through. Up until recently he didn't even know if Lulu or Nuna were even alive. That certainly plays a part in how fucking willing he is to be beat into the ground. There was no one there. Maybe if the three of them had met up sooner we wouldn't have Suzaku being this bad off but rest in pepperoni his sanity.
If you really fucking despise him then just pretend that you're a less oblivious Lelouch or something. Or really hypnotize yourself into being Nunally and remember Suzaku as that other-brother who helped carry you past a weeks worth of wartorn Japan and corpse stench infested
hell. Hate him all you want but that doesn't remove that fact that Suzaku wasn't totally wrong even when he was being a hatefilled suicidal-but-cannot-die douche. Freyja? Yeah, maybe he shouldn't have gotten geassed to not die totally his bad.
I'm stopping now because otherwise this will continue to expand.
