Sideline Leaders
Pop Culture References Explained
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"Play that again."
"Huh?" Rebecca turned back to Kallen. "What was that?"
"The news just now." Kallen said, before remembering her cover. "I heard something just a minute ago that sounded interesting, and I wanted to hear it again."
"Well… okay." The girl shrugged and tapped a few buttons on her tablet. Kallen listened closely for anything of importance.
"…And speaking of which, tonight at seven local historian Jennifer Grace will be appearing on the Tonight show about the symbol the Black Knights have been using and it's historical value. Next, we have our own…"
"Is that good?"
"Y-yeah, thanks." Kallen gave a small smile. "I-I'm kinda into history, so I thought it might be fun."
"Really, Kallen? History?" The girl sighed. "Well, I guess when you're in the hospital all the time it's nice to have something that never changes so you don't have to keep up with it."
"Yeah…" Kallen agreed mindlessly, while her so-called friends went back to jabbering on about the cutest boy in school and other mundane topics.
As far as she knew, the symbol they used didn't have any "historical value". Unless you counted C.C as "historical," since despite looking her age they really they had no idea how long he'd been around.
So she found an advertisement for some chess competition that evening and "dropped it" in her room, remembering how he'd shown up unannounced at her school once and expected him to let himself out. The rest of it was just pulling Ohgi and the others together to watch that program.
The first fifteen minutes of it was useless Britannian propaganda, about how "important" their country's national history was, and all this "analysis" of what it meant to have "elevens" use a symbol from Britannian history as part of their resistance.
By the time the historian got around to the actual history, Tamaki had gone searching for beer in the fridge.
"Well, the story takes place between 1642 to 1700, and it uses this symbol-"
Somebody swatted Kallen's arm. "Ow!" She yelped. Inoue pointed- on the screen was the Geass symbol, almost exactly as she'd seen in the mirror.
"- which, as you can see, is very similar to the symbol the Black Knights use."
"Something's actually happening." Minami muttered, before being hushed. On the screen, Dr. Grace continued her speech.
"The story begins before then, in 1632, when Queen Elizabeth became pregnant out of wedlock. The Edict to Ensure Proper Succession hadn't yet been passed yet, and because of the social mores of the time she was forced to hide her pregnancy. She gave birth to fraternal twin boys on December 5th of that year, one who later became Henry XI and the other the infamous Witch King."
Kallen vaguely remembered her history lessons, both as a child and as an adult. The Witch King was a definite historical figure, but thanks to all of the stories and legends very few facts about his life were ever confirmed. Most of the time he showed up in supernatural novels or fantasy books, not the sort of thing Kallen was into.
"According to the records, Elizabeth I gave birth in private and had her sons sent to a covenant, where she rarely visited, until they were ten. That we can confirm. What we can't confirm is that Elizabeth was ultimately bewitched into bringing her sons back to the castle. That's part of the myth behind the Witch King."
The whole story was more interesting then the propaganda, certainly, but it was nothing Kallen could see the point in telling. But soon enough, Dr. Grace brought up the Black Knights.
"You see, there was a symbol that the Witch King used as his own personal insignia. This document, for example-"
The screen switched, instead showing an old document passing some law or other. That was all that Kallen could tell, because Jennifer Grace's speech was drowned out by the shouts of her comrades- and her own yell of surprise.
At the bottom of the page, right next to a smudged signature, was the same Geass symbol reflected in Kallen's own eyes.