#anyway unverifiable headcanons ASIDE

[bestworstcase]

i actually think a lot about the possibility that salem got to him first.

for one thing, i’m not convinced ozpin has any actual authority vis-a-vis the other academies; even at beacon, he was subject to the elected council and they had the standing to boot him out if they didn’t approve of his performance. the independence of the mistral council from haven academy is also a plot point in V5 (though leo may have been exaggerating his political impotence to some degree). does ozpin appoint the headmasters? can he?

like qrow tells ironwood “you’re here because ozpin wanted you here” but that just means ozpin brought him into the conspiracy—which came first, ozpin’s trust or the headmastership? oz has loyalists in place at beacon and vale’s combat schools, but the heads of the other three academies don’t… have that. how much do the foreign councils take his recommendations into account?

and. well

the faunus revolution happened at Some Point in the last 80 years. it ended no later than about 15-20 years prior to V1 (the white fang was founded after the war + blake grew up in the movement). if lionheart’s 40-50s there is a… pretty decent chance that it happened in his lifetime.

and if it did—well, he’s a huntsman, and cowardly though he is, ozpin talks about his “lifetime of service” and all the good he did before, as ozpin sees it, salem got her claws into him. not to mention, he’s the only faunus professor we’ve met so far, and he was made headmaster in the kingdom notorious for being the worst in how faunus are treated.

if the revolution did happen at a point in his life where he was old enough to fight in it, he probably did?—and even if it happened earlier than that, lionheart will have been on the frontlines of the ongoing struggle for faunus equality simply by virtue of the career he chose to pursue, as a faunus living in mistral.

which means it was probably big news when the mistral council appointed him as headmaster, especially if he was The First faunus to reach that position. (<- extremely probable given that the academies have only been around eighty years) which means, in turn, that it might have gotten salem’s attention.

so, like.

consider the tea set. it’s green, black, and silver—ozpin’s colors. it sticks out like a sore thumb. it clashes wildly with lionheart’s aesthetic. that’s the kind of gift you get for a new acquaintance, right? mmmaybe as a gesture of goodwill and welcome to a well-known, respected huntsman-activist who’s just made history by being the first faunus ever appointed headmaster, but whom you don’t know except by reputation?

being headmaster isn’t an automatic “in” necessarily (“you’re here because ozpin wanted you here” etc). but ozpin can’t afford not to trust the other headmasters either; eventually he’ll have to bring them into the loop on at least the basics. it’s a matter of when and how much.

now!! imagine that you are newly the headmaster of haven academy, you’re the first faunus ever to hold this position, and you’ve spent your entire career—possibly your whole life—pushing forward through intense discrimination to get to where you are today. you know the other headmasters a little, but none of them well; your (mostly, possibly all human) colleagues—now subordinates—run the gamut from friendly supporters to openly hostile bigots, and the political and social reality of your situation may limit what you can feasibly do to clean house without losing your job. mistral’s track record on faunus equality is infamously bad. you cannot afford to be less than perfect.

aaand then a grimm lady strolls into your office one night to inform you that 1. the other three headmasters are part of a conspiracy to which you have not yet been invited; 2. their leader is beacon’s headmaster, and he will do everything he can to force you out of your position if you fail to earn his trust; 3. she has complete faith in your ability to win and keep ozpin’s trust; and 4. she can’t die but she can glue you to the ceiling with an idle flick of her fingers or summon grimm from nothing.

she’ll be in touch.

right? if ozpin didn’t maneuver him into this position, lionheart’s appointment would have been a golden opportunity for salem to insert a spy into the inner circle. moving quickly eliminates the risk that lionheart might be brave enough to refuse—he’s isolated and not at all secure in his position yet.

if this happened well before summer vanished, then salem might not even be planning to go for the relics yet and certainly wouldn’t be anywhere near ready to move. but having someone in place to keep an eye on what ozpin was doing, and whom she could perhaps use to covertly sabotage his operations here and there? like… oh, i don’t know, maybe by letting slip a few worries or unsettling hints to one of ozpin’s protégées when she starts asking too many questions? or perhaps try to subtly sow doubt in the young spring maiden’s mind as an opening-move-that-worked-too-well in flipping her to salem’s side?

there’s also… like. at the top of V5, lionheart has been out of contact for a while and he’s done some things contrary to ozpin’s in-case-i-die plan. specifically, he’s “left the relic unguarded” because mistral lost a lot of huntsmen in the aftermath of beacon and haven’s huntsmen faculty have been dispatched across the kingdom’s territory to do what huntsmen do. according to lionheart, he is not even the one responsible for making that call; the council is.

(this is such an ironclad excuse that would be so easy to expose as a lie if it were false that i’m inclined to think he didn’t lie about it, and that this is a situation where the council made a decision that happened to be convenient for him so he went along without a fuss.)

and from an objective standpoint, that is completely reasonable. “i’ve not checked in because there was no news before beacon fell, and now i’m slammed. the faculty’s out dealing with the grimm on the council’s orders. so sorry things aren’t going exactly according to plan, my hands are tied but i’m doing my best.” <- it’s not like he’s lying about things being a mess.

ozpin immediately—immediately!!—jumps to the suspicion that lionheart is a traitor and implies as much to the kids. “i don’t want to jump to conclusions, but i don’t want to rule out any possibilities, either.” he’s so funny

meanwhile, in the same period, ironwood… drops out of communication, recalls all his troops to atlas, enacts a dust embargo, and closes the atlesian borders; all of which actively causes political headaches and major security concerns for mistral at a time when the inner circle believes that haven is salem’s next target.

and ozpin doesn’t just not suspect ironwood of treachery; he specifically tells qrow to take the lamp to atlas so they can regroup with ironwood. never, at any point between V5 and V7, do ozpin or qrow entertain the notion that ironwood might also be a traitor. qrow is alarmed once they get to atlas, sure, but everyone takes it for granted that ironwood isn’t acting on salem’s orders, that he’s just doing what he thinks best in a shitty situation.

that’s really a shocking disparity in how ozpin treats these two, because if you look strictly at the behavior, ironwood is the one who ought to be raising red flags, not lionheart. and yet ozpin absolutely trusts ironwood’s loyalty, and goes right from “school is empty because lionheart got overruled by the council (because ironwood triggered a security crisis by pulling his troops out of mistral)” to “i don’t want to alarm anyone but lionheart might be a traitor and we’re going to keep him in the dark out of an abundance of caution.”

so it’s like. was lionheart ever truly part of the inner circle? ozpin suggests in 6.2 that they had at least one confrontation on the subject of why he didn’t trust lionheart. that also squares with lionheart being someone ozpin didn’t handpick for haven and perhaps never quite warmed to. and of course if salem got there first, lionheart would have had a compelling reason to be, perhaps, more aloof than ozpin would like.

also it would be hysterical. “you may have met professor lionheart, but you never met the man he was before salem found him”—did ozpin ever meet that man?

lionheart's inclusion in salem's plans genuinely interests me. like, he wasn't just a nobody, he was, presumably, ozpin's friend, someone ozpin trusted enough not just to include in his inner circle, but to appoint as the headmaster of haven.

that's not someone you just walk to with threats and hoping it works. salem would have had to been absolutely certain that lionheart wouldn't stand his ground, wouldn't take the first chance—or find his courage at any point—to inform ozpin of what was going on. it's not like they could have kept him under surveillance at all times, either; that's a lot of faith put into someone who could very easily step out of line, alert ozpin, and ruin everything they had worked towards at beacon.

we don't know how long lionheart had been working for salem—"leonardo's been sending salem all sorts of information for a very, very long time." says cinder—but to take that risk in the first place... salem would have had to be 99.9% certain that threatening leo would work. that leo valued his own life so much so that threatening just him and him alone would be enough.

how to know that, beforehand, if you haven't met the man before? to know that, you'd have to spent at least some amount of time with them to get a good read on them, to know what buttons to push.

"very, very long time" doesn't exactly say much, but considering that leo immediately informed salem of the spring maiden's whereabouts once he learned it from qrow, most likely leo met salem after spring had already ran, who disappeared over a decade ago.

which—did summer have something to do with it? did she make a list of "most likely headmaster to threaten into working for us"? raven did say she never thought leo would have the guts to betray ozpin, so leo not being the bravest of the bunch likely was a well known fact amongst the group.