Chapter 26. Grey, the Detective
My students often ask me a version of this question: “Do you think it’s possible to make good choices, be a hero in your lifetime, but still be remembered as a villain by history?
” I always answer that history is full of such contradictory characters, one thing in their moment and another through the lens of time.
In histories of social change, for instance, it can be tempting to gloss over the infighting, present retrospective accounts of movements that are smooth and frictionless, as if every member of a cause were on the same page, while the realities on the ground were often anything but.
In truth, one of the most dangerous threats to any cause is discord from within.
A point which brings me, as I’m sure you expected, to Isabel Cruz.
Plenty of ink has been spilled about Scout Sage, Cybele Laurent, Miranda Preston, and the other members of the order who would go on to accrue such fame.
But Cruz … if sources do ever break their silence about her, you’ll hear one of two refrains: First, that she was nothing more than a sidekick, a mere grunt.
Or second, that she was the true mastermind behind Our Ladies of the Dark.
Architect or peon, which do I believe? Neither. At the end of the day, I suspect Cruz was something altogether rarer: The ally turned enemy. The devotee turned snake in the grass. The woman who went rogue.
—Frances Vogel, “Our Ladies of the Dark: A History,” PhD dissertation presented to the UCLA Department of History