BoM/TWS Message Forum

To be fair, not only do we not know if Blackwell or Hyde-White have had traumatic backstories, "Advice from a Dead Man"  has Blackwell state that he was bullied as a child, and that some of his earliest uses of magic involved getting revenge for it.

In the sense that Sydney hasn't yet commited acts of evil on par with Blackwell and Fane, you're absolutely right that she's not yet as evil as them. But left uninterupted, she's absolutely going to be. Sydney doesn't seem to have much in the way of a concept of 'going too far'. Seuzz said as much a few years ago when he said that "no step she takes looks like it's going to be the last one for her." We've only seen a taste of what kind of messed up things the Brotherhood of Baphomet are capable of, and even Blackwell seems to fear them, but Sydney seems to have no compunctions whatsoever about steaming right ahead and setting up her own Brotherhood, and stealing 8 people's lives to do it. That's not something that a person who isn't rotten would consider doing, and in my opinion, already puts her and Will in that route not far from Blackwell's level. I find it quite hard to believe Sydney has any intention of ever releasing the people she and Will turn into cultists, so I personally don't view it as so very different as planning on killing them.