Anthony Starr, now Anthony li Britannia, gazed up at the sunset painting the garden in shades of gold and violet.
A servant silently refilled his teacup.
Across the ornate table, Lelouch sat with a look of profound constipation on his face, his entire posture radiating the desire for Anthony to be anywhere else.
Anthony settled into the chair opposite him, the picture of casual ease. "What's wrong, Lelouch? Are you unhappy with my presence?"
He fixed his brother with what he believed was a warm, brotherly smile.
Lelouch did not see brotherly warmth. He saw a predator in his den.
He gulped a scalding mouthful of tea, his knuckles white around the delicate china as he restrained the powerful urge to hurl the entire cup at his jerk of a brother who was invading the one space meant to be safe.
"Don't you ever think of getting near Nunnally," Lelouch warned, his voice low and seething, naked hostility burning in his violet eyes.
Anthony heard this, paused, and then laughed—a loud, sharp sound that almost made him choke on his tea.
He swallowed it down hard, a teasing glint flashing in his own eyes as he looked at Lelouch. "Oh, look at the little, winnable black prince here. What are you gonna do? Gonna cry?"
That was the final straw.
A guttural growl of pure anger ripped from Lelouch's throat.
He shot forward, his hand snapping out to fist violently in the front of Anthony's shirt. "Enough, Anthony! I said get out!"
"Brother! What's happening?" A young girl's voice, laced with alarm, cut through the tension.
Nunnally came rushing toward them, her sightless eyes wide with worry, casting a disapproving gaze she couldn't see in Lelouch's direction.
Even Euphemia, who had been playing with them, ran over, her gentle face creased with concern. "What happened, Anthony? What did you do to make Lelouch so angry?"
"Nothing, sisters," Anthony said smoothly, his voice layering over the chaos.
The smile he aimed at Lelouch was a private, taunting thing, carefully angled away from Euphemia and Nunnally. "We were just joking around. Right, Lelouch?"
Lelouch's fury ignited anew.
He didn't explain.
For a boy his age, rationality was never his strong point.
All he knew was that this jerk was blatantly provoking him, smirking from behind a shield of feigned innocence.
So Lelouch acted on impulse. His fist flew forward, a clean, hard punch aimed straight at Anthony's smug face.
Anthony didn't flinch. He didn't try to avoid it.
The blow connected with a sickening, wet crunch.
Anthony's head snapped back, and a torrent of crimson immediately began gushing from his nose, staining his lips and chin.
He stumbled back a step, his expression morphing seamlessly into one of feigned weakness and profound sorrow as he lifted a hand to his bloody face.
"Brother!" both girls screamed in unison, moving to help him.
But Anthony raised a gentle, staying hand, pushing them back.
His eyes, swimming with a carefully crafted hurt, locked onto Lelouch. "If that's what you truly think of me… fine, Lelouch. I'll leave. I won't visit Nunnally again."
The last thing they saw was his utterly miserable expression—the perfect portrait of a wounded, misunderstood brother—as he turned and walked away, his steps deliberately heavy with dejection.
Euphemia, ever compassionate, didn't hesitate. She immediately chased after him.
Nunnally, however, turned her sad, unseeing face toward Lelouch. "Brother… was that really necessary?"
"Hmph. You don't know his true face, Nunnally. Just stay away from him. He's only acting," Lelouch snorted, the sound cold and dismissive as he wiped his knuckles.
This wasn't the first time Anthony had engineered a situation to make him look like the villain.
Lelouch told himself he didn't care what others thought of him, but this—this constant, blatant smearing of his name in the eyes of the few people he actually cared about—was profoundly and infuriatingly annoying.
At first, Lelouch truly believed Anthony was nothing more than a simple, garden-variety jerk.
The memory was sharp: a crowded mall, bustling with the noise of a royal family outing. All his father's wives and concubines were there, chattering and shopping. His own mother was among them, absorbed in the activity. The gaggle of children trailed behind the adults, a cluster of youthful energy and simmering rivalries. Anthony, with calculated precision, had positioned himself directly behind Lelouch.
It started subtly—a sharp, deliberate toe catching the back of Lelouch's shoe, again and again, a persistent, grating sabotage of his steps. Lelouch clenched his jaw, choosing silence, enduring the petty harassment. He would not give the jerk the satisfaction.
But then Anthony leaned in, his voice a venomous whisper only for Lelouch's ears. The comment was about Nunnally—something sly, something protective and possessive that crossed every line Lelouch had. Something inside him snapped. His patience, already a thin wire, vaporized. He spun around and drove his fist straight into Anthony's smirking face.
The sharp crack of the blow cut through the mall's noise. Adults turned, their expressions shifting from amusement to sharp-edged judgment. A sea of disapproving eyes fixed on Lelouch, the aggressor, standing over a now-staggering Anthony.
Lelouch offered no defense. At that age, to whine to the adults that he'd been provoked—that he'd been tripped—felt like the ultimate humiliation, a wound to his pride far deeper than any punch. So he just stood there, his small frame rigid, enduring the weight of their whispers and scornful looks. He met their gazes with a cold, defiant silence.
Anthony, however, played his part flawlessly. He straightened up, wiping a trickle of blood from his lip, that same infuriating smile plastered back on his face.
He stepped forward and threw a comradely arm around Lelouch's stiff shoulders, addressing the staring adults with a careless, charming laugh. "Don't worry! We were just playing around. Boys will be boys, right?"
The tension dissolved into relieved chuckles. See? Just a bit of roughhousing. Anthony was so mature, so quick to defuse the situation with a joke.
Lelouch violently shrugged the offending arm off.
"Stay away from me, jerk," he spat, his voice low and seething.
He turned and walked away, leaving a pocket of awkward, chilled silence in his wake.
From that day forward, the narrative was cemented in the court's gossip.
Lelouch vi Britannia became synonymous with the unreasonable brat, the volatile menace with a vicious temper. Anthony li Britannia, in contrast, was the cool-headed one, the gracious peacemaker who could laugh off violence and who effortlessly won the admiration of both his peers and the watching adults. It was a masterclass in social sabotage, and Lelouch had been its perfect, proud, and utterly outmaneuvered victim.
Euphemia, Nunnally, and the other girls within the Britannian court—who, in another life, might have become fawning admirers of a cool, calculating Lelouch, even dreaming of marriage—now saw him only as the violent prince, the one who defaulted to his fists. In the absence of watchful adults among the younger generation, he became a symbol not of intellect, but of brute force.
Even most of his half-brothers began to view him as unstable and dangerous, leading them to isolate him further, cutting him off from the fragile alliances of childhood.
Anthony's work was meticulous.
Using his princely privileges, he had quietly arranged for the deletion of the mall's security footage that had captured his initial, provoking tripping.
Even if a lingering suspicion clouded a few adult minds, there was no proof.
Without evidence, any accusation was mere impotent speculation.
Anthony's goal was brutally simple: he hated anyone who was better, smarter, or who naturally commanded a brighter spotlight than he did.
If he couldn't be number one by his own merit, he would drag number one through the mud and take his place.
So, he engineered a scheme to make Lelouch look perpetually uncool and violently unhinged in the eyes of their entire world.
His primary targets were the other children.
Adults were harder to fool long-term, and he wasn't arrogant enough to think a single mall performance would permanently sway them.
But children were beautifully simple.
They operated on raw emotion and immediate perception, not deep rationality or evidence.
They saw the punch, they heard the charming excuse, and they formed their judgments.
Anthony exploited this flawlessly, poisoning Lelouch's social standing sip by sip, ensuring the "black prince" could never reclaim an aura of cool composure in his presence.
Anthony stole the spotlight completely, casting himself as the gracious, wronged hero in every scene.
"Brother, wait!"
Euphemia's voice, laced with genuine concern, called out from behind him as he walked away from the garden.
Unseen by her, a chilling, sociopathic smile spread across Anthony's face, perfectly hidden the moment he turned his bloodied face toward her with a look of pained resignation.
Now, he thought, the game truly begins.