This fic takes inspiration from Monsignor Robert Benson's "Lord of the World". It is one of the early dystopias. From a modern view, it occasionally dips into Catholic schizo ramblings. The priest's name is the same as the book's protagonist.
The salon was small- perhaps too small to really deserve the name salon- and decorated with that sort of cheap faux-Roman decor that was all the rage in Europe about three decades ago. Still, a three-decade old building was pretty good, and the low evaluation meant the taxes weren't too bad.
It was derivative, but most modern style was derivative. The great blocks of concrete Europe had briefly flirted with in the past were practical, but they weren't comparable to what Britannia and the Chinese Federation were doing. An edifice of concrete, seemingly dropped from a mathematics textbook, was in its own sort of way awe-inspiring, but Europe could not stand to look inferior when compared to the rest of the world. So they revived the old, looked to Renaissance revival and Neoclassical styles. They bragged and boasted about the wonders of old Europe and attempted to mimic Saint Peter's and ancient Rome.
It was a disheartening thing, to walk the halls where the fire of God once burned in the hearts of men, and to know that it was just a museum. The crowds would shuffle through and marvel at the artistry: the brushstrokes, the marble, the lives directed towards these places, but would leave it at that. These places were not holy to them- it was just a particularly impressive delusion.
Sometimes, Father Percy Franklin wondered if they would ever be able to make something like that on their own… but perhaps he was just underestimating European architects. He did live in a miserably poor part of town, after all.
Outside, a political speech of some kind was going on, some local politician chattering away about his platform. Or maybe he wasn't a local politician. Maybe he was a very big deal. Percy couldn't tell you, and he doubted most of his neighbors could. He knew the name of the president, surely, but no one had that much of a respect for the politicians anymore. All the same, all striving to satiate Britannia until their terms ran out while bleeding the country dry.
No politician would ever loom over the continent as that great Corsican general did. All of Europe's prime ministers seemed to fade into a mass, the same great, heaving mass that filled her streets and crowded in her public places. Voter turnout was low, hope was lower. He could not imagine living in the secular world as it was now.
Well, until Zero.
It was as if he set the world on fire. Despite Britannia straining to hide him, to keep his rebellion in occupied Japan a secret, word spread. Europe loved him. Here was the revolutionary man in his prime, throwing off the reactionary yoke with style!
Did people think he would win? Not really. Rebellion against Britannia was notoriously prone to failure and led to some of the bloodiest crackdowns in history. Europe and China would raise a fuss alongside tariffs, but nothing would come of it.
(The Papacy had, for a few desperate moments, considered moving the Holy See when the Cristeros put up their last, glorious fight against Britannia. Before any such plans could come to fulfillment, the partisans for Christ had been slain almost to a man. Many martyrs for the faith were recorded during those bloody days when the light in the west sputtered and died to an ideology even more acrid.
For all their faults, the European humanists could see the speck of God's light in man. They did not necessarily recognize it as being from the same God who had once walked in Galilee, but they saw the universal dignity that all deserved. Britannia refused even that.)
Percy thought Zero… well, a bit dramatic, but not misguided, necessarily. He met most of the requirements for a just war: the damage inflicted by Britannia was incalculable, and there was no real chance of reform. Violence would be the only method to realistically provoke change. But there was another condition for just war: legitimate hope of success.
That was the problem that always pulled at him, kept him from thinking Zero's crusade truly right or just. It was Britannia. How could they possibly win against Britannia? What navy did they have to defend the seas? Could they fight off two continent's worth of determined attackers?
The answer was crushing. They could not. Zero disappeared into the ether, the rebellion collapsed, the Britannian bootheel fell on Japan again, and all that excitement melted away, like butter in the sun. The people were mercurial. They moved on to something else.
And then he was reborn, like Lazarus. Zero came again, and his revolution spread even further before. The news came so swiftly it was hard to believe at times. China falling in with Zero, the creation of Worldwide Federation… The hearts of men were inflamed again.
But that wasn't the only sudden return the coming age would bring. Lelouch vi Britannia, the famed prince of the Empire, had not only survived his time in Japan, but came to take the throne. And somehow, he succeeded. (The fatal wound had been healed, and the world was filled with wonder…)
Perhaps it was only fair, in some strange way. An age that produces great saints would produce great sinners in equal measure, and there had never, in all the world's history, been a despot quite as successful as that Emperor of Britannia. How had he taken power so quickly, gained so many legions of loyal followers? How could he be stopped?
They did not have good answers for either of those questions. Lelouch swept through the world like a storm, crushing all opposition no matter what weapons were brought to bear against him. Even the FLEIJA, that great and terrible weapon of the modern age, could not stop him. In fact, it became the ironclad foundation of his rule, the weapon that liberated him from pandering to the worries of common Britannians in his imperial core.
If such a thing existed, he was the perfect tyrant. His despotism surpassed all despotism, his absolutism was a thousand times greater than more meager princes of the past could dream of.
And yet, he could die like any man would.
His evil was put to rout by Zero's triumphant return, a magnificent, almost seamless transfer of power into the hands of the Black Knights and their allies. And that was the thing that got Percy thinking. Such a perfect transfer of power, to a hostile group of rebels…
It seemed impossible. How had the world not splintered into feuding factions fighting over the shattered pieces of the world-empire?
Why did the Demon Emperor not even bother to flee? To turn and run? Percy had studied the footage, seen how he waited. Did he… did he want to perish that day? There was that infamous image of the Emperor dying next to his sister, a great streak of his blood stretching up the ramp. Paired with the Britannian coat of arms decorating the float, it made a sort of macabre mimicry of the cross.
Well, he said it was a macabre copy, but the cross was already macabre. Despite himself, Percy's mind kept racing, chewing through the possibilities. Maybe the sacrifice was intentional. The cross thing was probably a coincidence (although God had a sense of humor when it came to coincidences) but it gave him pause.
The world seemed very oddly alive, aflush with the vigor of new life. People seemed to care more, the news was no longer filled with stories of war or fearmongering about Britannia. And all it had taken was one man- no, more a boy than a man- dying with all their fury heavy on his shoulders.
Was this not, in a sense, the end of all things? Britannia, the Middle East, Asia, Japan, Europe, all separate threads brought together, spun together into one single strand. All unified in their hatred for that terrible Lord of the World.