In episode 23 of Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion R2 (Sunrise, 2008), Schneizel el Britannia lays out to his sister Cornelia what he has done and what he will do. One episode earlier, from Damocles, a floating fortress armed with FLEIJA bombs, he wiped Pendragon, the capital of his own empire, off the map with its inhabitants inside. Now he wants to position Damocles so that it can strike any warring nation and force the world into peace under the threat of annihilation. Cornelia objects and is shot. The prince everyone considered the ideal heir, polite, calm, prime minister and admired diplomat, has done a sum: a few cities in exchange for the end of all wars. Criminology has a name for that reasoning: moral cost-benefit.
// The theoryThe good of many and the harm of a few
The utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill judges actions by their consequences: the good action is the one that produces the greatest good for the greatest number. Criminology has studied how this moral cost-benefit reasoning serves to justify crimes and atrocities: the perpetrator acknowledges the harm but offsets it with a greater benefit he expects to obtain. It is one of the forms of what Albert Bandura called moral disengagement, the moral justification of harmful conduct, which allows ordinary people to commit terrible acts without feeling guilty.
Chess with cities
Schneizel applies the utilitarian calculation with absolute coldness. If razing a capital shortens the war, the equation works. If a permanent threat over every city in the world guarantees there are no more wars, terror is a reasonable price. It is moral cost-benefit in its purest state: each life is a piece, and only the final result matters. What makes that reasoning criminal is that Schneizel decides alone, without anyone’s consent, who pays the cost.
// The subjectA man without desires
Code Geass presents Schneizel as a character empty inside. Lelouch sums it up at the end: he desires nothing, has no ambitions of his own, he only responds to what others expect of him. That is why he can be so cold. He does not hate his enemies or love his allies; he uses them. His kindness is not hypocrisy but indifference. That is what makes him more dangerous than his father: Charles at least had a dream, however delirious. Schneizel only has a calculation.
The series builds him on the chessboard. In the episode of the wedding in the Forbidden City, he plays against Zero and demands that, if Zero loses, he remove his mask; his style defines him: he does not mind sacrificing pieces if he wins the game. The FLEIJA bombs, capable of wiping out an entire city, are developed under his patronage, and one of them, fired by Suzaku, destroys much of the center of Tokyo in episode 18. In episode 19, Schneizel reveals Zero’s identity and his Geass to the Black Knights and convinces them to betray him: he does not need to fire a shot to take Lelouch’s army from him. When Lelouch proclaims himself emperor, Schneizel rebels from Damocles. Lelouch defeats him in episode 24 and, with his Geass, orders him to obey Zero; the man who desired nothing ends up serving, without knowing it, someone else’s plan.
Schneizel el Britannia
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// The crackUtilitarianism is not Schneizel
It would be unfair to equate utilitarianism with Schneizel’s plan. Mill defended individual liberty as one of the conditions of well-being, and a regime of permanent terror would be for him one of the worst possible outcomes. Schneizel keeps the form of the calculation and abandons its content.
The series is also ambiguous about Lelouch himself, who also calculates with lives and ends with his “Zero Requiem” plan, in which he becomes the tyrant hated by all to unite the world against him. Code Geass does not condemn moral calculation in itself, but who makes it and for what.
Deterrence and its limits
Schneizel’s plan recalls the real doctrine of nuclear deterrence: peace guaranteed by the threat of mass destruction. The debate over that doctrine has stressed that its stability depends on several powers restraining one another, and on none holding power without checks. Damocles was the opposite: one man, without counterweights, with his finger over every city in the world.
Three key ideas
- Moral cost-benefit, in line with Bentham and Mill’s utilitarianism, justifies harming some for the good of many, and is a form of Bandura’s moral disengagement.
- Schneizel razes Pendragon with a FLEIJA and plans to impose peace from Damocles, threatening to destroy any city that rebels.
- The crack: Mill defended liberty as part of well-being, and the series itself shows Lelouch making similar calculations for another end.
Sources · further reading
- Mill, J. S. (1863). Utilitarianism. Parker, Son and Bourn.
- Bentham, J. (1789). An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation. T. Payne.
- Bandura, A. (1999). “Moral Disengagement in the Perpetration of Inhumanities”. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 3(3), 193-209.
- Schelling, T. C. (1966). Arms and Influence. Yale University Press.
Case-file questionsFrequently asked questions
Who is Schneizel el Britannia?
Schneizel el Britannia is a villain from Code Geass, analysed on KRIMINIS through the lens of criminology. He never raised his voice and never lost his smile.
Why does Schneizel el Britannia become a villain?
Moral cost-benefit lets people cause atrocious harm in the name of a greater good. Code Geass’s Schneizel does that sum with whole cities, and settles it without losing his smile.
Which criminological theory explains Schneizel el Britannia?
Schneizel el Britannia's case is analysed through Moral cost-benefit. Moral cost-benefit describes reasoning that justifies harming some for the benefit expected for many, in line with Bentham and Mill’s utilitarianism. Schneizel el Britannia, of Code Geass (Sunrise, 2006-2008), is Britannia’s second prince, a strategist and diplomat admired by all. In the second season he takes hold of FLEIJA, a weapon capable of destroying an entire city, and plans to control the world from Damocles, an aerial fortress armed with those bombs, with which he razes Pendragon, the imperial capital, imposing peace through terror. He is moved not by hatred or ambition but by the conviction that people prefer security to freedom.
