Euphie was the noblest character in Code Geass?

09/17/09 infinitycubed.
We are kind of getting off the track with a discussion of whether patriotism is good, as you believe, or evil, as I believe. Because of the great difficulty in persuading people that patriotism is evil, I intend to avoid discussing which side is more good and which side is more evil, and return to pointing out that almost everyone who had any kind of job in the Britannian or Black Knight organizations was too tolerant of the evils committed by the others on his side, even if he did not personally participate in those evils.

The Britannian invasion of Japan certainly seemed to involve a lot of unnecessary death and destruction. The ruined skyscrapers in Tokyo certainly indicate unprofitable levels of destruction, destroying what would otherwise have been ready-made offices and habitations for Britannian colonists. (Lelouch did the same thing by destroying part of the Toyko settlement during the Black Rebellion, instead of finding a way to preserve all of it and not just part of it for the use of the Japanese. Like evil father, like evil son). And apparently many Japanese live in the ruined skyscrapers. If many thousands live in them without adequate sanitation they must be a breeding ground for diseases, decimating the Japanese labor force and threatening to spread to the Britannian settlement. The public health system of Area 11 must have a very big job keeping diseases down to a merely bad level.

And of course the destruction in Tokyo indicates there was probably a lot of unnecessary killing as well, since the workers and apartment dwellers in those high rises might not have evacuated them before they were destroyed. And then there are the flashbacks to the attack on the Kururughi Shrine, with burning buildings and bodies everywhere. If the metropolis saw wanton destruction of valuable skyscrapers with the implied deaths of countless thousands, and the isolated rural Kururughi Shrine was attacked with death and destruction despite two of the Emperor's children living there as hostages, we can only imagine that hundreds of thousands or millions of Japanese were killed in one month of war, and that many times that number would have been killed if Suzaku had not killed his father.

If between 100,000 and 10,000,000 Japanese were killed in the month of the conquest, the rate would be 1,200,000 to 120,000,000 per year. If Japan had a population of about 50,000,000 to 200,000,000, then the Japanese would have been totally exterminated in five months to 166.666 years if the rate of killing in the war continued. In "Attack Cornelia" one of the Brittanians planning the Saitema Ghetto massacre calculated how much it would reduce production (of what? In all of Japan or in a smaller area?).

If you tenitively assume that the Britannians set an upper limit of killing ten percent, or one percent, or 0.1 percent, of the Japanese in any one year to crush rebellion, then the Britannians would kill 5,000,000 to 20,000,000, or 500,000 to 2,000,000, or 50,000 to 200,000 Japanese per year and would have exterminated the Japanese in ten years, or one hundred years, or one thousand years, (not counting the births of new Japanese and assuming that they always killed up to the upper limit.).

Of course the total number of Japanese actually seen being killed by Britannians, or whose dead bodies were actually shown lying on the ground, In the years 2017 and 2018, after the surrender of Japan in 2010, was probably only a few hundred or a few thousand. If we actually saw only 200 to 10,000 Japanese killed during two seasons which might have had a total duration of one month to two years,, the minimum rate of killing would be 100 to 120,000 Japanese per year after the conquest.

Thus we see that the rate at which Japanese were killed during the one month of war could have been only 0.06 as great as the rate they were killed during the peace which followed (which wouldn't make much sense) or as much as 1,200,000 times as great as the rate they were killed after the conquest was over (that doesn't make sense either -- that the Britannians could or would avoid killing more than such a small number of Japanese after the conquest). Not very precise statistics, but probably the most precise that you will find relating to the fictional world of Code Geass.

If you suppose that Britannia has been at war between ten percent and one hundred percent of the time during the ten years or 120 months from 2008 to 2018, and that between 10,000 and 100,000,000 people were killed per month of war, the total number killed in 12 to 120 months of warfare would be somewhere between 120,000 and 12,000,000,000! But if you assume that people were killed at the same rate as in the invasion of Japan, then 1,200,000 to 2,400,000,000 people were killed! I would assume that a reasonable estimate would be between 1,000,000 and 100,000,000, which is not a very precise figure.

There is no evidence that any of the Britannian characters in the story did anything more than not shooting any victims themselves during massacres and other atrocities. There is no evidence that any of the Britannian characters charged others with crimes, or wrote letters to the newspapers, or protested atrocities before they began, or threatened to resign, or did anything else to prevent specific incidents or prevent more atrocities from happening in the future.

It is true that in episode 22 General Darlton asked Euphemia what was going on when the geass command made her order the Fuji Massacre, and she shot and wounded him. But I think that in "Get Cornelia" General Darlton was among the officers planning the Saitema Ghetto Massacre, which indicates that Darlton was not an anti-massacre type of general. Darlton was probably surprised and annoyed that Euphemia had gone against proper procedures by either planning a massacre with Cornelia and/or the Emperor without informing him or deciding on the spur of the moment to order a massacre.

(to be continued)
(continued 09/19/09)
But at the Battle of Narita the Britannians fought in a much more civilized way than the conquest of Japan would indicate. The only place they attacked was the underground mountain base of the Japan liberation Front. And the Britannians evacuated the civilians living in the town of Narita (population over 90,000 in our universe) and the countryside. They might have done this to protect the civilians from getting caught in the crossfire and/or for some military advantage.

If the Britannians wanted to get some military advantage from moving the civilians, they would have probably forced them out of their homes and workplaces at bayonet point. but such a process was not shown in the episode "Gueren Dances". Instead, when the town of Narita was already almost deserted, we saw nightmares rolling down the empty streets broadcasting messages to evacuate the town (which some of the remaining people did not obey). And I do not remember threats of punishment if anyone defied those orders -- someone correct me if I am wrong. In sort, the little that was shown about how the evacuation was carried out did not indicate that it was a much harsher process than that which the Japanese Defense Force carries out in so many Godzilla movies.

So if Britannian army procedures had been reformed to some degree during the last seven years to make them somewhat less brutal, the Britannians might carry out an evacuation merely to protect the lives of the civilians in the area, but they would not be as fanatical and thorough about the evacuation as they would have been if there was some military advantage to be gained from it.

It might seem impossible that some of the civilians did not warn the JLF minutes or hours before the JLf was taken by surprise by the Britannian attack. There should be thousands of people living within a few miles who would notice Britiannian military equipment headed for the hidden but not exactly secret JLF base who might have cell phones and a desire to warn the JLF. We would expect that the JLF would have received hundreds of warning messages whether the Britannians evacuated the civilians or not. So the Britannians probably jammed the phone frequencies in the area or programmed the computers controlling the message routing service in the area to not transmit anything toward the Narita Mountains or blew up the local phone transmission towers..

(to be continued)

(09/24/09) In the 1995 movie Village of the Damned, based on the 1960 movie and the John Wyndham novel The Midwich Cuckoos, strange, exotic, alien, children with telepathic powers are born in the village of Midwich, California. They are led by the ruthless Mara Chaffee (Lindsey Haun), daughter of the protagonist Dr. Alan Chaffee (Christopher Reeve). One of the children, David McGowan (Thomas Dekker) is kind and friendly, because he has Human emotions and in this type of movie Human emotions lead to goodness -- after all, the human race has never produced anyone as evil as Hitler, or Stalin, or Genghis Khan, or Tamerlane, etc. etc. etc.

Anyway, the children and the resentful villagers do not make good neighbors and there is a scene where Mara leads the other children to teach the Humans a few lessons. Poor little David, telephaticaly aware of the slaughter and destruction, cowers and huddles helplessly, unable to stop the violence or even shut it out of his mind.

How did Euphemia react as she grew older and found it harder and harder to ignore the evidence of cruelty and evil in the world, much (though far from all) of it caused by her fellow Britannians and much of it caused by her fellow members of the imperial family, people that she loved? Did she always cower helplessly like David McGowan, trying to shut the horror out of her mind, or did she take actions to reduce the total amount of horror?

I think that Euphemia was very timid about confrontations and arguments with the people that she loved. But she certainly reacted instantly to any kind of violence or injustice in her presence. So I think that knowledge that evil, cruelty, oppression, and violence existed anywhere would eventually drive her to take some kind of action no matter how reluctant she was to criticize or antagonize or argue with her family.

I think that the reason why Euphemia was at the Battle of Narita was an effort to see that it was fought in accordance to the laws of war and that there would be no excessive, unnecessary, or gratuitous violence.

So was this Euphie's first attempt to limit the violence of Britannian warfare or had she already saved millions of lives by reducing the death and destruction in previous Britannian wars?

Since Euphemia 1) was the close full sister of Cornelia Li Britannia, a top Britannian commander and supposedly the commanding general of the entire Britannian army and 2) sometimes had sufficient influence over Cornelia to overcome Cornelia's superior authority over her -- Euphemia was at Narita despite Cornelia's superior authority and reluctance to have her there simply because she was "unusually stubborn" -- she could have influenced Cornelia to use her command authority to reduce the amount of death and destruction in previous battles, campaigns, and wars by an unknown amount.

(to be continued)I believe that Euphemia probably got Cornelia to promise to cut down on the killing and destruction in her wars, to find ways to get as much or more victory with less killing. And Euphemia was probably very upset by the Saitema Ghetto Massacre in "Get Cornelia". She probably believed that Cornelia was using the struggle against criminal civilian terrorists hiding in the Saitema Ghetto to get away with excessive slaughter that she had promised to avoid in warfare.

So Euphemia may have made Cornelia promise to follow the rules she had agreed to follow in war even when fighting civilian terrorist criminal groups instead. And then Euphemia may have insisted on going to Narita to observe the fighting, in order to be certain Cornelia did not exterminate the JLF or the civilians in the area.

In "Gueren Dances" Cornelia told her knight Gottried that Euphemia insisted on coming to experience actual combat, and also that Euphemia was being unusually stubborn. Probably Cornelia did not want to admit to her knight that her little sister could sometimes get the better of Cornelia in an argument. And probably Euphemia had explained her reasons to Cornelia as tactfully as she could. But I think her main reason for going to Narita was to observe to make sure Cornelia did not go overboard killing the enemy.

(to be continued)
(09/26/09) Before talking to her knight Cornelia talked to an unnamed officer on the radio telling him that Euphemia would provide logistical support from the G1, and ordered the officer to put Euphemia in command of the medical team. This indicates that Euphemia would supervise from the G1 at least some of the people and machines that were moving objects around the battlefield. Thus Euphemia was helping to provide supplies such as ammunition that the warriors would use to fight -- and fighting would involve killing some people.

Since Euphemia later said that she couldn't kill, she must have believed that she had not killed at the Battle of Narita. Thus she probably believed that directing the flow of business supplies to peoples whose business is killing (as well as wounding, capturing, and chasing away ) other people is not exactly the same thing as killing people. Or Euphemia may have believed that if she was present to make sure that the killing was kept to a minimum she would be saving more lives than she would be killing by delivering ammo to the fighters.

(continued 09/28/09) Then when Lelouch unleashed a landslide which cut off Cornelia from communication with the other Britannians, Euphemia's officers advised moving the G1 forward to assist Cornelia. I suppose that nobody knows enough about the technical specifications of the G1 to discuss the military merits of that suggestion. Euphemia turned it down saying that one of their military hospitals was ahead and the area where they had move all the local civilians to. And then she added something that military men would care about more, saying that Cornelia had ordered her not to move the G1.

Apparently Euphemia feared that if the G1 moved through the area full of civilians the enemy would fire artillery and/or start another avalanche, endangering the civilians.

So Euphemia refused to do what she desperately wanted to do, charge blindly ahead to help her sister Cornelia, because such a move might cause the enemy to respond in a way that might endanger civilian noncombatants.

If every war leader in the world of Code Geass fought with as much care not to harm noncombatants war would not be such a terrible ting in the world of Code Geass and there would be no need to abolish all nations and unite the world to prevent future wars.

In a world which is divided into separate countries and where wars sometimes happen nobody can be a perfect pacifist. At the most they can perfect their personal pacifism and hope to influence others to follower their example, but that means taking no direct
action to prevent other people from doing what they consider evil. Or they can support military efforts by the party which seems most likely to bring about peace and end war, but that involves breaking their rules at least a little bit and possibly a lot if they get carried away.

tt seems to me that in the world of Code Geass, where wars are going to happen with or without Euphemia's permission, and Euphemia has rare opportunities to exercise military command and thus reduce the amount of violence in specific conflicts, she is being as pacifistic as she can be in her situation.

So I think that it is clear that Euphemia was the good person on the Britannian side, that she used her authority and influence to save lives and reduce the level of violence at least once and possibly many other times. Other Britannians may have individually fought as honorably as they could, but I know of no evidence of any Britannians arguing with their superiors against evil orders, or writing angry letters to the newspapers denouncing the crimes of the army and suggesting reforms to prevent future massacres, or threatening to resign, or doing anything else to reduce the probability of future massacres.