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The parallels between Code Geass and Hamlet

In the first episode of R1, when Lelouch and Rivalz go back to Ashford Academy after the former defeated a noble in a game of chess, Lelouch reads a book. For a fraction of a second, we see that this book is Hamlet, a tragedy written by William Shakespeare between 1599 and 1601 and it is his most recognized work (some would define it as the quintessential Shakespearean and I personally call it the epitome of Baroque). This is a detail that called my attention because it wasn’t necessary to give the book a title. They could perfectly invent one or leave it empty. Instead, the creators of Code Geass opted to choose a real and distinguished work of English and world literature. I read Hamlet a few years ago and it’s fresh in my mind, at least I remember it more than other books I’ve read, and I drew parallels between the two as I reminisced and came up with some interesting results that I’d love to share with you.

To do this, I have to gut the play of Hamlet. Therefore, if you are one of those who don’t like spoilers, or stop wasting time and go read Hamlet, which is on the internet, or, if you are lazy, go see the Kenneth Branagh film, which is Hamlet word for word (hence it is an even longer movie than Avengers Endgame) or continue reading my comparative analysis and I will convince you to give this great work a chance.

Hamlet is the story of a Danish prince who has just returned home to attend the funeral of his father, the king, who recently passed away. But then he hears that a ghost with a striking resemblance to the late king appears in the castle at night; so Hamlet is encouraged to investigate and manages to meet with the ghost that, in effect, is real and it is about his father who has crossed the threshold of the afterlife to entrust him with a mission: to kill his uncle Claudio; for it turns out that he killed his own brother to ascend the throne and marry Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude. This is the first act of the play and constitutes the premise of it; as well as establishing its two main themes: revenge and madness.

Immediately, we distinguish several parallels between Lelouch and Hamlet: both are princes who decide to take revenge for their deceased parents against a member of their family, who is precisely the monarch of their kingdom, after receiving a supernatural summons (the ghost of their father, for Hamlet; the Geass, for Lelouch); however, none of them imagine that on this journey they will lose themselves and the beings they love. Throughout the plot, Lelouch and Hamlet will be assisted by C.C. and Horace respectively. Horatio is Hamlet’s friend and, like C.C., is the voice of reason and is Hamlet’s greatest confidant. He is present in most of the scenes in the play, always accompanying Hamlet and conversing with him. Even in his soliloquies, which are the moments when Hamlet bares his thoughts, he is there; as well as C.C. who remains on Lelouch’s side. Neither Horacio nor C.C. take actions in the plot, they limit themselves to being simple spectators and both, additionally, wanted to kill themselves, but they were stopped by Hamlet and Lelouch who wanted them to continue living, for different reasons that I won’t go into details.

Both Hamlet and Lelouch are gray characters that critics and fans of their respective works like to argue about by raising the classic debate: is Hamlet/Lelouch a hero or a villain? In any case, the conclusion is the same for both: they are two of the most human characters both in Shakespeare’s work, in the case of Hamlet, and in the anime industry, in the case of Lelouch (if you want an answer , don’t think too much about it: both are undoubtedly tragic heroes).

As someone who loves Shakespeare and Code Geass equally, I think Lelouch is a hybrid of Hamlet and Macbeth (another great Shakespearean character). This is because Lelouch and Macbeth live tormented by their crimes, however, they continue to justify themselves that the blood spilled would be in vain if they stop. On the contrary, Hamlet is a bit more pusillanimous and very indecisive (he’s not an action type, he’s more contemplative and thoughtful).

Although Hamlet has sworn an oath of vengeance in the first act, he doesn’t take action right away because he doesn’t fully believe the ghost’s accusation or so he says (in my opinion, it’s because he’s afraid to act); so Hamlet decides to check if his uncle is the murderer of his father and find out who are his allies and his enemies by faking his madness (yes, like Lelouch, Hamlet has acting skills) . Of course, his alienated attitude causes strangeness at court, especially it baffles Polonius, who is the king’s adviser and an impertinent bootlicker for Claudio, and that motivates him to investigate. At a certain point in the play, Gertrudis, worried about her son, confronts him alone in her room, while Polonius, who is a gossip, hides behind the curtains to spy on them. Hamlet spots Polonius’s feet and, believing that he is his uncle, savagely stabs him, only to discover that he wasn’t who he thought he was. This stupid mistake will affect the children of Polonius, which will lead to the great tragic ending of the work.

On the one hand, there is Ofelia, the sweet and innocent youngest daughter of Polonius (well, I presume that she is younger). She is in love with Hamlet and has had affairs with him, they have even consummated sexual relations; but ever since he assumed the role of his madman, Hamlet has been cold and somewhat cruel to her, on the grounds that he believes she is part of plot. Returning to Ofelia, the pain caused by the murder of her father at the hands of the man she loved drives her crazy and leads her to commit suicide. In a sense, her tragic fate brings me back to Shirley.

Like Ofelia, Shirley is in love with Lelouch, due to which she suffers from the barriers he imposes and she is left disoriented, while being curious about his strange behavior (Hamlet’s feigned madness, on the one hand, and the Lelouch’s efforts to hide his double life, on the other). Her feelings are conflicted when she finds out that her lover is the murderer of her father. It’s worth noting that neither Hamlet nor Lelouch had the intention of killing the father of their respective love interests. It was all a unfortunate accident. From here on, Shirley and Ofelia’s paths diverge, but they end at exactly the same point: dead and Lelouch/Hamlet are indirectly guilty, or at least that’s how they both feel, because, despite everything, they did love Shirley/ Ophelia.

On the other hand, there is Laertes, the impulsive and bellicose eldest son of Polonius. Laertes has a brief but forceful introduction that is, at the same time, a prelude. Laertes warns his sister that she should be careful around Hamlet because he fears that his love for her is insincere and he is only taking advantage of her. And he adds something like this: “if I find out that Hamlet hurt you, I’ll kill him” (of course, Shakespeare says it in a more sophisticated and beautiful way than me; that gentleman did know how to use language properly). Saying that, Laertes leaves for France. When the news of the terrible deaths of his father and his sister reaches his ears, he returns to Denmark to take revenge on Hamlet and I’m inevitably thinking of Suzaku.

Like Laertes, Suzaku was immersed solely in his own business, but when Lelouch kills Euphemia, Suzaku turns to revenge by vowing to kill him (Shakespeare is known for his love of building narrative parallels between two characters, and Code Geass is rife with this kind of parallelism, the most obvious being that of Suzaku and Lelouch: one way or another, they end up becoming the other in the second season). Needless to say, Euphemia’s death was an irremediable event as a result of a foolish joke, like Polonius’s death that was a mistake. Two tragic accidents. (By the way, coincidence that Suzaku went crazy over Shirley’s death afterwards? I don’t think so). Suzaku and Laertes are blinded by pain and anger and, although Lelouch and Hamlet try to reach a middle ground, both flatly refuse to listen to reason; which pushes them into a confrontation that, to a certain extent, is sponsored by the enemies of the respective protagonists. Claudio, who already knows that his niece has discovered his crime and intends to end his life, manipulates Laertes to get rid of Hamlet. Charles never deliberately uses Suzaku’s anger for his benefit, but Suzaku serves him and his empire, which works to their advantage in a certain way.

In the end, the poison of hatred corrodes Laertes in a literal and metaphorical sense, since he ends up perishing in the duel against Hamlet, being wounded by his own poisoned sword, although he doesn’t leave without first revealing the conspiracy he was hatching with Claudio and make peace with Hamlet, as he understands that his judgment was clouded.

And, to all these, what happens with Hamlet?

Well, he is killed by Laertes in said duel of swords (yes, they kill each other). As is Lelouch dies impaled by the sword wielded by Zero (Suzaku) in the Zero Requiem. Just like Laertes and Hamlet at the end, Lelouch and Suzaku also manage to settle their differences and make peace for the good of the world. And, just as Lelouch kills Charles, Hamlet gets revenge on him by murdering his Uncle Claudius.

See that Hamlet and Lelouch have in common that, though driven by a desire for justice, both are both victims and responsible agents of the misfortunes that befall them, their loved ones, and their nation, as Denmark falls into the hands of of a foreign king and I’m not going to dwell on the consequences of each battle of the Black Knights and the Zero Requiem, I trust that you remember in broad strokes how many losses and how much havoc there was in the world.

Also see that both characters are haunted by death. In addition to the deaths that I mentioned and that are attributed to Hamlet, we must add those of his mother and his two childhood friends who succumb to the hatred and pain that Hamlet feels since his friends obeyed orders from his enemy and he believed that his mother was in cahoots or, in any case, that she didn’t love her father because her mother got married quickly because she got married quickly, which, in his eyes, was a betrayal (yes, a lot of people die in this play and, in fact, I think it is the play that honors that Shakespeare meme that wanders Facebook saying that he has no idea how to finish his play, so he kills to all the characters; although it isn’t quite like that either, Horacio survives, a few characters who don’t appear again and Fortinbrás, who is the foreign king. Basically, it’s like in Code Geass, all the important characters die except for C.C., the UNF members and the background characters).

I must say that in a certain way it reminds me of Lelouch because he blamed all of his family, not only his father, for the misfortune that fell on him, his mother and his sister (this is because they didn’t respond for them). Lelouch hates his siblings as well and was equally responsible for the death of his mother, although he is more directly involved as Getrudis commits suicide and Marianne disappears on Lelouch’s orders.

Hamlet and Lelouch suffer more from the consequences of their own actions than those of others, that includes their enemies. Their vendettas consume them and make them lose themselves in madness; for until the damage is done, Hamlet and Lelouch are unable to see the destruction they leave behind.

We could say that Hamlet and Code Geass address the stories of two great men who fight to keep their sanity, if not they have already lost it.

I dare say that Hamlet is the most prominent tragedy in general culture (I think if I asked you to talk about tragedy you would think of Shakespeare and this play specifically) and I think it’s great that they introduced this detail in the first episode of Code Geass because it’s a subtle statement of intent: none of us knew what we were going to find in this series, so it ended up surprising us. Code Geass is properly a beautiful tragedy and no one better than Shakespeare to present it to us. I don’t rule out at all that Hamlet has been inspirational material for Code Geass. I perfectly imagine Okouchi in his house thinking: “hey! What if Laertes and Hamlet had been childhood best friends? That duel would have been more intense! Oh yes!”

Joking apart…

Maybe Shakespeare influenced the good reception that Code Geass had in me. I love tragedies. I love tragic characters. I love Shakespeare. I consider myself an admirer of his work and I recognize his influence on my writing. Hamlet isn’t my favorite work by the English playwright, although I enjoy the story and how things are handled, I find it hard to connect with Hamlet; unlike Lelouch, to whom I already professed eternal love. Anyway, I still have a lot of Shakespeare plays to read and fall in love with.

I hope you liked this analysis. I loved writing it, even though it took me longer than I had calculated. You should turn it into a video so that it lasts forever and ever. Let me know in comments the opinions of him. We will be reading soon.

PS: no, it’s no coincidence that the Lelouch from my fanfic, Code Geass: Bloodlines, is a Shakespearean fanboy. I must even say that to build the dynamics of my Lelouch and C.C. I was inspired by Macbeth and his wife; just as I was inspired by the character of Brutus, from the tragedy of Julius Caesar, for my Suzaku.

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