BoM/TWS Message Forum

All the more reason why I say she's more evil. We know Blackwell's a terrible person as he's craven and ambitious, but his defining aspect is his cravenness. He bends the knee if someone (like Aidan) shows more power, and while he thinks he can eventually outsmart them, the moment that someone proves there's no way to outsmart them, he folds. He has shown willingness to kill in order to get rid of unwanted "pests" and often does so to make it look like accidents, which attests to his evil. He has shown some creativity, which can make him dangerous. And he shows no remorse for his actions or respect for human life, doing things to further his own ends.

Why do I say Sydney's more evil? Because Blackwell, for all the evil he is, is also jealous. Blackwell is the evil that ultimately ends itself because it's unwilling to cooperate. All the branches where he tutors Will in magic? His ultimate goal is to see how he can use him, or else, he gets rid of him. He's evil, but we know he's evil, and the people in the story can probably figure it out because of the aura of smugness and loathing he projects.

Sydney, on the other hand, doesn't already start as a villain. She hasn't killed someone, or sequestered them against their will. She's only dimly aware of magic existing and tries to pursue it, but knows nothing until she finds the Libra. However, once she starts swapping faces and delving into the latter spells of the book, she does so with aplomb. Sure, it seems innocent when you only have the masks and mind bands, but she's the one that has no qualms using the corpse-golem spell - she already has a target. Once she gets to the mask-golems? She starts planning the best way to use them, only to further her goal of creating a Brotherhood of her own. And we haven't seen her with the anima bands - it's more than obvious she'll slap a few of them, holding her own anima, on her targets to further her own ends. And once she knows how to copy and divest imago and anima? Well, I'm quite sure she'll go fully creative on it.

More than her willingness to use, and creativity when using, the spells of the Libra, what makes her more evil than Blackwell is that she drags others into her plans. It's easy (and actually pretty fair) to say that Blackwell's more evil because he has already done some deplorable stuff, but he already has a head start. Once Sydney's running her plans to make the Brotherhood, she exhibits many of the same traits Blackwell has, except for his cravenness. She replaces that with the opposite - she may use some people to further her goals, but she also cares for those she likes. And while that may seem like a positive (good cares for the well being of others, evil only cares for the well being of themselves), the fact that she overtly leads them to evil makes it worse.

To put it in simpler terms - Blackwell's a serial killer that has already started, Sydney's a cult leader about to rise. One is already evil but doesn't lead others into evil - and when it does, jealousy and fear make him eager to dispose of them. The other leads people into evil by eroding their moral compass towards debauchery while undergoing her own path into evil. (And for contrast, Hyde-White is a mix between a mad scientist and a soulless corporate executive - an entirely different kind of evil.)

And, to make things worse, while Blackwell and Hyde-White are flagged as evil to the readers, Sydney is thrown in as more sympathetic. She's designed for you (as a reader) to have sympathy for, so that when she starts to delve into debauchery, you find ways to defend her. That, to me, is her true evil - that she's designed with that "yeah, but..." defense in kind. The only arguable defense is that none of her plans has advanced as much, but it's only a matter of time before it happens