I love that everybody betrayed John. He absolutely deserved it, and in addition to being tragic, it’s very, very funny. He resurrected his friends and wiped their memories and turned them into disciples, Lyctors who would never leave him, who would live forever and be forever his. And then we, as readers gradually find out how badly his control has frayed, how thin he has worn the love and loyalty of his friends. Judith Deuteros blurts out that there’s a traitor aboard the Mithraeum, and we spend a good third of Harrow the Ninth wondering who it could be, but then surprise, it’s everybody. Everybody betrayed the Emperor. Cytherea betrayed him to Blood of Eden long before her rampage at Canaan House. Augustine betrayed him, and Mercymorn betrayed him, and Augustine and Mercymorn worked together to betray him and sell him out to his worst enemy. Gideon Prime fell in love with the same worst enemy, but didn’t exactly commit treason, however Gideon Prime’s secretly conscious cavalier Pyrrha did. And then in Nona the Ninth, we find out that Cassiopeia already betrayed him millenia ago, in a methodical, well-thought-out and quintessentially Sixth way that took her entire House with her. Et tu, Kiriona?