Hello.

This idea was inspired by my mother, actually. I was watching Code Geass, and she'd watched a little, too. As I tried to explain things to her (it's not very easy), she said, "Are the other characters stupid? How could they not know that Lelouch is the same Lelouch as the prince? He didn't even change his name!"

I thought about this. She'd actually made quite a good point, so to defend the intelligence of the characters I thought that surely there were other Lelouchs in Britannia. Then the name wouldn't really stand out.

Anyway, this is my first Code Geass fic, so please treat it kindly. (But you can feel free to give suggestions).

Disclaimer: I do not own Code Geass. Obviously.

December 5, 1999 a.t.b.

The people of the Britannian Empire had no way of knowing that a demon had just been born into their midst---and he was on their side.

Certainly, 'demon' was the farthest word from the mother's mind to describe her newborn child. It was her firstborn, a son.

She was tired, as could be expected, but happy that it was over, and eager to see her child. A few minutes later, the doctors placed a bundle of blue blankets into the new mother's arms.

He was a healthy baby boy. She could see that he had inherited her dark hair. His tiny fists were clenched.

The bonding didn't last long. The doctors took him from her a few minutes later, to give the newest member of the Britannian Imperial Family the best care possible.

The newborn's father was nowhere in sight.

...

Shortly after that, in another part of the Britannia, a family waited in the checkout line at a local grocery store. The woman, heavily pregnant, was reading the tabloids.

"I don't see why you even waste your time", said her husband, "It's not even worth the paper it's printed on." He glanced at the headline of one. 'KNIGHT OF EIGHT---MENTALLY ILL, OR MISUNDERSTOOD CROSSDRESSER?' He looked away in disgust, muttering, "What rubbish..."

This Britannian couple was expecting their fourth child. After three boys in a row, they were kind of hoping for a change of pace. Like, say, a girl. Or at least, a boy who wouldn't play tug-of-war over a bag of candy at a grocery store.

"Hey, hey, stop that", the father scolded. He snatched the bag away from his sons and put it back on the shelf. "How many times do I have to tell you to stop touching things?"

"Daddy, can't I have it?" asked the middle child.

"No."

"Daddy, why?"

The father, who could sense whining from a mile away and had no tolerance for it, replied, "Because I'm your father, and I said so."

"Mum", said the youngest, tugging on her skirt, "Mum, will you buy me some candy?" She didn't seem to hear him as she continued to read.

"Oh, Marianne the Flash had a baby", she announced to her husband, though he didn't particularly care. "A boy." They moved up in line slightly. "Apparently the paparazzi's had a hard time. Since the baby's royalty, and all. There's pretty heavy security and things. Apparently pictures of the prince are worth a lot right now."

"I don't see why you waste your time", her husband said again, "It's not as though commoners like us will ever have anything to do with the royal family anyway."

"Oh, but apparently the only thing they could learn of the baby was its name", said the wife, who didn't seem to be listening, "Lelouch." She put the tabloid back on the magazine rack as their family's turn approached. "Lelouch. It is on the rarer side, isn't it?"

"I suppose", replied her husband.

She decided right then and there what she wanted to name her child if it was another boy. Her husband had been mistaken. The tabloids hadn't been a waste of time.

A couple of months later, this woman became a mother as well, for the fourth time. When her water broke and she began going into labor, she and her husband went to the hospital straightaway. The grandmother, her mother, came to watch the older ones.

It was a boy. And so this Lelouch, named for another Lelouch in a different part of Britannia, came into the world.

From now on, we'll follow the two Lelouchs in alternating chapters. The chapters might seem short at first but they will get longer as we get further along and things start happening (like the canon events of Code Geass).