![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
[ meta ] Suzaku's attachment to Lelouch
So, there is this really common idea in fandom that Lelouch is more invested in Suzaku than vice-versa.
I do not agree, really. I think that Lelouch is the Point of View character, so we hear more of it from him, but that they are parallels in this way... and that it becomes fairly obvious, if you look at Suzaku's actions throughout the series.
This is not a nicely-formatted essay, be warned. It is really just a list of 'evidence'!
- In the first Sound Episode, before they were even friends, tiny!Suzaku is so distracted by (agitated) thoughts about Lelouch that Toudou is forced to call him out on it in the middle of a match. This is a pretty huge deal, considering that (the novel enumerates) Suzaku pretty much idolized Toudou. Any time spent with him, let alone being trained by him, was extraordinarily precious. But Suzaku couldn't get Lelouch out of his head.
- Like Lelouch, Suzaku didn't have any other friends -- either before or after him. The novels indicate that other kids his age avoid him and are often actively afraid of him, because he's so strong it's kind of scary, and because he's the Prime Minister's son and a Kururugi, which were quasi nobility before the war.
- Suzaku recognized Lelouch instantly after seven years. Lelouch's repeating the promise was helpful, but Suzaku clearly recognized him before that point.
- The dub for some reason tried to make Suzaku's line "I won't shoot a civilian", but in the Japanese it's more like "if it's a civilian -- if it's *him*, I can't shoot."
- Suzaku became Lancelot's pilot to save Lelouch's life. His singleminded focus as he takes down the terrorists throughout Shinjuku is to stop the fighting and find Lelouch (and also "that girl").
- The sight of the "let's talk in the attic" signal gives Suzaku all the dokis. He has so much emotional eye-wobble.
- Stage 6 is filled with Suzaku fretting about Lelouch. He wants to know what name he needs to use. He wants Lelouch to pretend not to know him. And even as he resigns himself to never talking to Lelouch again, his eyes brim over with tears as he says, "I'm so glad we got to meet again."
- (Suzaku's emotional reaction to seeing Nunnally is interesting and sad. He seems to steel himself for the possibility that she won't recognize him :<)
- Suzaku has all of these really intense, vivid memories of Lelouch. Every time they talk in R1, Suzaku makes another reference to something from their childhood. "You've always been like that. Remember the time with the bird?" and Lelouch fluster-scowls sometimes.
(One of these instances, from a Sound Episode: "You remember stuff like THAT but you forget everything else!!"
"What have I forgotten?"
"Like our secret code!"
".....Lelouch you made a code with over 500 different signals, no one could've remembered that."
"I did!"
"Uh-huh. But you eventually made a simpler one, didn't you."
"BECAUSE THERE WASN'T ANY POINT IN THE FIRST CODE IF YOU COULDN'T USE IT.")
- From the novels: Suzaku feels guilty about it, but, when Euphy starts talking about missing Lelouch, he chooses not tell her that her siblings are still alive. His narration is pretty torn up about this, because it makes him feel tremendously disloyal to her, but -- while he's very sure Euphy would never deliberately hurt either of them -- the world of politics is that of an ugly, tangled spider's web. Even one person knowing the truth could eventually get Lelouch and Nunnally killed. So he keeps it to himself.
- Suzaku figures out Lelouch is Zero pretty early on, and sometimes addresses him with that in mind, but at the same time desperately did not want to believe it, and so forced himself not to.
- Frankly shippy interlude: When Shirley tries to describe how she feels about Lelouch, she says that she didn't like him at first because he seemed so disaffected, so cold -- like he didn't give a damn about anyone else. Then one day there was a car accident, and everyone else was gawking at it, and she saw Lelouch get out of Rivalz's sidecar, go up to the people who'd had the accident, and sort everything out. He helped them, called an ambulance (or something). Then he got back into the sidecar and they drove off.
Shirley notes that he did it all without his expression of bored disinterest ever changing, and she started wondering what made him tick, and paying more attention to him...
And Suzaku says, in a distinctly knowing tone of voice: "And in the process of trying to figure it out, you fell in love with him."
(Shirley squawks and flusters and wants to know what gave him that idea, but slowly admits that... she supposes that's what this feeling is, yeah.)
It really is the same trajectory that Suzaku's own friendship with Lelouch took, though: at first you think he's this arrogant jerk, then you spot him caring about someone or something, and you get way too invested in figuring him out...... (Again, Toudou had to dress Suzaku down for not paying attention in their match because he was too fixated on Lelouch.)
Hard not to find this a little bit significant, sorry!
- In "The Final Inivitation" (a sound episode), Suzaku went to Lelouch before the SAZ, and asked him to work with Euphy. Lelouch immediately becomes hostile about how Euphemia must have put Suzaku up to this, and Suzaku insists he's there on his own behalf.
Together we can do anything, he tries to say.
(Lelouch cuts him off cruelly. "We're old enough now to know better.")
- In his 50 Questions interview, Suzaku picks "those summer days with Lelouch and Nunnally" as where he would return to if he had a time machine.
- The final R1 Picture Drama is full of happy happy memories of Lelouch and Nunnally with Suzaku in the present. Suzaku morosely notes that he wanted these moments to last forever.
- Even in Stage 25, and as angry as Suzaku is, he's also on the verge of tears and shaking so badly he needs both hands to point his handgun. Suzaku is so strong, and obviously a skilled marksman; he's probably never needed to use both hands before.
- Shirley more or less tells us that Suzaku has forgiven Lelouch in his heart, and just isn't ready to accept it yet. (When she asks him if he loves* Lelouch, he says yes, reluctantly, in the past-tense.)
* Official subs tried to translate this as "like", but it's love when Shirley repeats the exact same word for herself, and even when she asks the same question of Rolo, so. You don't get to have it both ways, folks!
- The yearbook that Gino brings to Kallen, which is full of pictures of Suzaku with Lelouch, belonged to Suzaku. He kept it, squirreled away at Ashford, after removing photos of Kallen from it because, in Gino's words, he couldn't have photos of himself palling around with a known terrorist, right? So: Suzaku made a very deliberate choice to keep photos of Lelouch, and to keep them safe, after Stage 25.
And Gino, looking at the photos, says that he's never seen Suzaku smile like that before.
- one of Suzaku's top three burning questions for Lelouch in "The Taste of Dirt" is why he gave him the "live" geass. Unlike his questions about Euphy and Shirley's death, this one is... just between the two of them. He wouldn't have asked it if he didn't suspect, and didn't want to hear Lelouch admit, that it was done out of caring for him.
- Lelouch refuses to actually explain anything in "The Taste of Dirt" and is in fact still lying about Shirley and Euphy's deaths being intentional and Suzaku's geass being to save himself, but just knowing that they're self-hating lies is enough for Suzaku to give him another chance, even as caveated as it is. (Like Shirley more or less said, he wanted to forgive Lelouch; he was looking for permission to do so.)
- After "The Taste of Dirt", Kanon observes that Suzaku has known Zero's identity for sometime yet said nothing, choosing to meet with him in private instead. Why?
- During Zero Requiem, Suzaku keeeps asking Lelouch if there's no other way. He cries as he kills him.
- And then, afterwards, in both post-series PDs, Suzaku is so unhappy and unfulfilled. He says it pretty much point-blank: the world is at peace and everything worked and it seems like they got everything they wanted...
...and it's still not completely worth Lelouch's death, for him personally.
Ultimately, I feel like Lelouch thinks he's much less important to Suzaku than vice versa, and fandom believes it. But I don't think it's actually true.
I do not agree, really. I think that Lelouch is the Point of View character, so we hear more of it from him, but that they are parallels in this way... and that it becomes fairly obvious, if you look at Suzaku's actions throughout the series.
This is not a nicely-formatted essay, be warned. It is really just a list of 'evidence'!
- In the first Sound Episode, before they were even friends, tiny!Suzaku is so distracted by (agitated) thoughts about Lelouch that Toudou is forced to call him out on it in the middle of a match. This is a pretty huge deal, considering that (the novel enumerates) Suzaku pretty much idolized Toudou. Any time spent with him, let alone being trained by him, was extraordinarily precious. But Suzaku couldn't get Lelouch out of his head.
- Like Lelouch, Suzaku didn't have any other friends -- either before or after him. The novels indicate that other kids his age avoid him and are often actively afraid of him, because he's so strong it's kind of scary, and because he's the Prime Minister's son and a Kururugi, which were quasi nobility before the war.
- Suzaku recognized Lelouch instantly after seven years. Lelouch's repeating the promise was helpful, but Suzaku clearly recognized him before that point.
- The dub for some reason tried to make Suzaku's line "I won't shoot a civilian", but in the Japanese it's more like "if it's a civilian -- if it's *him*, I can't shoot."
- Suzaku became Lancelot's pilot to save Lelouch's life. His singleminded focus as he takes down the terrorists throughout Shinjuku is to stop the fighting and find Lelouch (and also "that girl").
- The sight of the "let's talk in the attic" signal gives Suzaku all the dokis. He has so much emotional eye-wobble.
- Stage 6 is filled with Suzaku fretting about Lelouch. He wants to know what name he needs to use. He wants Lelouch to pretend not to know him. And even as he resigns himself to never talking to Lelouch again, his eyes brim over with tears as he says, "I'm so glad we got to meet again."
- (Suzaku's emotional reaction to seeing Nunnally is interesting and sad. He seems to steel himself for the possibility that she won't recognize him :<)
- Suzaku has all of these really intense, vivid memories of Lelouch. Every time they talk in R1, Suzaku makes another reference to something from their childhood. "You've always been like that. Remember the time with the bird?" and Lelouch fluster-scowls sometimes.
(One of these instances, from a Sound Episode: "You remember stuff like THAT but you forget everything else!!"
"What have I forgotten?"
"Like our secret code!"
".....Lelouch you made a code with over 500 different signals, no one could've remembered that."
"I did!"
"Uh-huh. But you eventually made a simpler one, didn't you."
"BECAUSE THERE WASN'T ANY POINT IN THE FIRST CODE IF YOU COULDN'T USE IT.")
- From the novels: Suzaku feels guilty about it, but, when Euphy starts talking about missing Lelouch, he chooses not tell her that her siblings are still alive. His narration is pretty torn up about this, because it makes him feel tremendously disloyal to her, but -- while he's very sure Euphy would never deliberately hurt either of them -- the world of politics is that of an ugly, tangled spider's web. Even one person knowing the truth could eventually get Lelouch and Nunnally killed. So he keeps it to himself.
- Suzaku figures out Lelouch is Zero pretty early on, and sometimes addresses him with that in mind, but at the same time desperately did not want to believe it, and so forced himself not to.
- Frankly shippy interlude: When Shirley tries to describe how she feels about Lelouch, she says that she didn't like him at first because he seemed so disaffected, so cold -- like he didn't give a damn about anyone else. Then one day there was a car accident, and everyone else was gawking at it, and she saw Lelouch get out of Rivalz's sidecar, go up to the people who'd had the accident, and sort everything out. He helped them, called an ambulance (or something). Then he got back into the sidecar and they drove off.
Shirley notes that he did it all without his expression of bored disinterest ever changing, and she started wondering what made him tick, and paying more attention to him...
And Suzaku says, in a distinctly knowing tone of voice: "And in the process of trying to figure it out, you fell in love with him."
(Shirley squawks and flusters and wants to know what gave him that idea, but slowly admits that... she supposes that's what this feeling is, yeah.)
It really is the same trajectory that Suzaku's own friendship with Lelouch took, though: at first you think he's this arrogant jerk, then you spot him caring about someone or something, and you get way too invested in figuring him out...... (Again, Toudou had to dress Suzaku down for not paying attention in their match because he was too fixated on Lelouch.)
Hard not to find this a little bit significant, sorry!
- In "The Final Inivitation" (a sound episode), Suzaku went to Lelouch before the SAZ, and asked him to work with Euphy. Lelouch immediately becomes hostile about how Euphemia must have put Suzaku up to this, and Suzaku insists he's there on his own behalf.
Together we can do anything, he tries to say.
(Lelouch cuts him off cruelly. "We're old enough now to know better.")
- In his 50 Questions interview, Suzaku picks "those summer days with Lelouch and Nunnally" as where he would return to if he had a time machine.
- The final R1 Picture Drama is full of happy happy memories of Lelouch and Nunnally with Suzaku in the present. Suzaku morosely notes that he wanted these moments to last forever.
- Even in Stage 25, and as angry as Suzaku is, he's also on the verge of tears and shaking so badly he needs both hands to point his handgun. Suzaku is so strong, and obviously a skilled marksman; he's probably never needed to use both hands before.
- Shirley more or less tells us that Suzaku has forgiven Lelouch in his heart, and just isn't ready to accept it yet. (When she asks him if he loves* Lelouch, he says yes, reluctantly, in the past-tense.)
* Official subs tried to translate this as "like", but it's love when Shirley repeats the exact same word for herself, and even when she asks the same question of Rolo, so. You don't get to have it both ways, folks!
- The yearbook that Gino brings to Kallen, which is full of pictures of Suzaku with Lelouch, belonged to Suzaku. He kept it, squirreled away at Ashford, after removing photos of Kallen from it because, in Gino's words, he couldn't have photos of himself palling around with a known terrorist, right? So: Suzaku made a very deliberate choice to keep photos of Lelouch, and to keep them safe, after Stage 25.
And Gino, looking at the photos, says that he's never seen Suzaku smile like that before.
- one of Suzaku's top three burning questions for Lelouch in "The Taste of Dirt" is why he gave him the "live" geass. Unlike his questions about Euphy and Shirley's death, this one is... just between the two of them. He wouldn't have asked it if he didn't suspect, and didn't want to hear Lelouch admit, that it was done out of caring for him.
- Lelouch refuses to actually explain anything in "The Taste of Dirt" and is in fact still lying about Shirley and Euphy's deaths being intentional and Suzaku's geass being to save himself, but just knowing that they're self-hating lies is enough for Suzaku to give him another chance, even as caveated as it is. (Like Shirley more or less said, he wanted to forgive Lelouch; he was looking for permission to do so.)
- After "The Taste of Dirt", Kanon observes that Suzaku has known Zero's identity for sometime yet said nothing, choosing to meet with him in private instead. Why?
- During Zero Requiem, Suzaku keeeps asking Lelouch if there's no other way. He cries as he kills him.
- And then, afterwards, in both post-series PDs, Suzaku is so unhappy and unfulfilled. He says it pretty much point-blank: the world is at peace and everything worked and it seems like they got everything they wanted...
...and it's still not completely worth Lelouch's death, for him personally.
Ultimately, I feel like Lelouch thinks he's much less important to Suzaku than vice versa, and fandom believes it. But I don't think it's actually true.
no subject
Okay so: Lelouch's own words about Suzaku that end the first picture drama are saying that, "Having grown up surrounded by only rivals and retainers, Suzaku was my first friend." Nunnally echoes it in the third childhood sound episode (adding that she thinks Lelouch was also Suzaku's first friend, just a Feeling she got, and which Suzaku also confirms in the last R1 picture drama).
But I think Lelouch's line, about how he views everyone else in his life prior to Suzaku, is important in understanding why he got so attached.
- because Suzaku's first response to Lelouch in his home was ARROGANCE, ANGER, and BURIKI. (Racial slur is not the right word, because Lelouch is white and also an imperial oppressor, but it is certainly not a nice word.)
Lelouch had just come from a world where he had thought he was respected, cared for, and loved -- only to have that illusion violently torn down by the hostile rumors of the court after his mom's death and his own father's indifference.
(Lelouch of course calls Charles あの男 "that man" and not any variation of "father", but when I listened to "The Imperial Siblings" I noticed that he's far from alone in being impersonal; Schneizel, Cornelia, Clovis, they all referred to Charles as "the emperor", not "our father".
But as a child, I think, perhaps persuaded by his mother's more personal and tender relationship with Charles, Lelouch did for a while believe that Charles was his 'father', and while objecting to Charles's cruel dismissal of Nunnally's condition and Marianne's death, Lelouch slips and calls him "father" (父上), right before the guards bar his path and it is made clear that he was Wrong.)
So, Lelouch was both accustomed to deferential treatment and extremely mistrustful of it. He had learned in a very harsh way that servility, even kindness, were always lies. Suzaku's open hostility was completely new, and -- frankly -- preferable. Because Suzaku made no effort to disguise how much he hated and resented both Britannia generally and Lelouch in particular, he was immediately more obviously honest (and therefore, trustworthy) than anyone else in Lelouch's life save Nunnally.
(Lelouch's opinion at the time that everyone who had ever claimed to love him was a two-faced liar is not fact, but it's very much what he believed, and IMHO the reason why he apparently wrote Euphy exactly one (1) letter, after he'd befriended Suzaku (because in it, he mentions that he'd made friends with "a Japanese boy"), was because Suzaku proved to him that the world wasn't completely out to get him... so maybe Euphy really did care?)
But back to that first meeting. Suzaku being arrogant and hostile, calling Lelouch a liar, literally beating him up. He only stopped because Nunnally begged him to. Noticing that she was blind, Suzaku paused. (I'm pretty sure he was putting two and two together, here -- realizing why exactly Lelouch had lied about the state of the storehouse they were to live in.)
That plus having a blind girl in a wheelchair beg him not to hurt her brother filled Suzaku with so much shame, he could only mumble an apology to Lelouch and run away.
FIRST MEETING YAY.
- because the second time they speak, Suzaku drives off a group of bullies who were attacking Lelouch, and happens to choose some Very Important words to explain his actions when Lelouch asks:
"I just -- can't stand seeing the strong pick on the weak."
Lelouch has kind of a fixation on the concept that the world eats the weak. Charles told him so, and Lelouch knew that meant there could never be any place in the world for Nunnally. Over and over, throughout the show, he challenges this idea: is being strong such a virtue? Then, is being weak a vice? A character flaw...?
They weren't friends yet. Suzaku didn't even like him, and made that clear. But he also showed himself to be the kind of Strong Person who rejects that pecking order and is willing to stand up in defense of the weak, even if they're someone he hates. Enormously important for Lelouch.
It's also important that Suzaku chooses to categorize Lelouch as weak in this conversation -- and that Lelouch accepts that. Suzaku says something like.... you shouldn't get into fights if you're weak. (He's still ticked off that Lelouch refuses to eat the food they give him; Lelouch got attacked because he was out shopping for his own food. "We aren't going to poison you!!!!" Lelouch knows that, though; at this point he just can't bring himself to let himself 'owe' anyone else anything, to be a 'parasite' like Charles accused him of being.)
And Lelouch replies, "Weak, huh? I guess I am. <laughter>"
(Suzaku scowls at him. Why are you laughing at me? And Lelouch says, "I wasn't laughing at you, I was laughing at myself. Self-derision?" (Suzaku dots, because we are nine.) "...a loser's laugh, that's all.")
Watching Lelouch pick up his partly-ruined groceries (which he was protecting from the bullies with his body) and pick up a discount card from the local market... a prince, dusting off that discount card like it's something precious... fills Suzaku with mixed feelings. He's irritated, angry, and... "very, very ashamed".
- to recap: still not friends, still not on good terms, Lelouch is still refusing to eat and aggravating Suzaku with his presence -- but already he has done two things to make Lelouch more inclined to trust him.
- and then Nunnally vanishes.
She flees the Kururugi shrine because she learned she was expected to marry Genbu. (And despite not liking either of them at all, Suzaku still tried to offer himself as a substitute in this arranged marriage, because seriously dad what the fuck.)
It starts to rain, and Lelouch is in a panic.
Suzaku wants to help, and he and Lelouch get into a shouting match. Because again, accepting help from anyone else = failing to live by his own means = might as well be dead.
But Suzaku doesn't understand that and doesn't care. "I'll save whoever I want to save!" he shouts back. Lelouch can't order him around! If Lelouch won't work WITH him, then he'll just find Nunnally by himself!!
And Lelouch is still upset but he exactly can't STOP Suzaku, so they just tear off in different directions.
But here it is again. Lelouch, at this point, thinks everyone who's ever been nice to him was a lying snake, currying his favor while it was worth their time, ready at any second to stab him in the back as soon as it isn't.
And here's Suzaku, determined to find Nunnally even if it pisses Lelouch off and isn't what he wants. It's the opposite of currying favor.
(Lelouch actually runs into C.C. during this sound episode; she is cryptic at him, and then disappears before he can get her name. But during their conversation, the rain stops.)
And when the rain stops, Lelouch realizes he can hear singing.
He follows it to find Nunnally and Suzaku, inside a hole in the ground. (Suzaku says it's his "secret base" and if Lelouch is going to call it a hole then he can't come in :| )
Nunnally is smiling. Laughing. And Lelouch is floored, because he hasn't seen her smile since the accident.
He asks her why, quietly, and she tells him that she's smiling because Suzaku is smiling. She was scared and lost but he helped her take shelter from the rain and he started laughing and.. it made her want to laugh, too.
Suzaku murmurs, "Haven't you noticed, Lelouch? ...You haven't smiled since coming here either," and Lelouch realizes he's had the cause and effect backwards: Nunnally's sorrow has been exacerbated by his own, which until now he hadn't even noticed.
(In the novels, we go into it a little more, and Lelouch talks about how the isolation in Japan was taking a toll on Nunnally psychologically. She was having fits whenever they were separated where she would destroy things, and then just sit there when he came back as if nothing had happened.
He talks about how important making friends with Suzaku was for her, how it opened up the closed world he had created for the two of them. And he emphasizes that this is why, in R1, he never withdraws from school. He felt that giving Nunnally the opportunity to be around people her age was more important than pure safety.)
- but this is how Suzaku worms his way into Lelouch's previously closed heart.
He was openly hostile when they first met, which made the later kindness he showed more trustworthy. He protected Lelouch from some bullies and said he doesn't like seeing the strong pick on the weak, which is one of Lelouch's major buttons. He saved Nunnally, OVER Lelouch's protests, and made her smile for the first time in ages -- another major button, done in a way that reiterated how Suzaku alone of the people in Lelouch's life had no ulterior motive.
He was a brat even after they became friends, further cementing that there was no artifice here. For so many reasons, Suzaku was someone Lelouch could look at and think, "he has nothing to gain by being kind to me," with the added continually reinforced knowledge that "whenever I do anything he doesn't like, he lets me know."
Lelouch's single biggest fear as a child was that the world was out to get him and Nunnally, that no one in it could ever be trusted again. Guilelessly, Suzaku proved him wrong.
In the first Picture Drama, Lelouch carried Nunnally up all those stairs to reach the Kururugi shrine because he very literally did not trust anyone else to touch her.
By the end of their summer together, you can see him letting Suzaku carry Nunnally all the time.
- So yeah, this is why Lelouch gets so attached. He was at such an angry vulnerable point, and Suzaku was relentlessly trustworthy, and saved Nunnally. Suzaku also turned out to be funny, and smart in other ways if not book-smart to Lelouch's active prodigy level. He gave back as good as he got with teasing, and he was just so... genuine, and so fun to be around, and so SAFE to be around.
Lelouch's little tsun heart did not stand a chance.