The Truth matters, and the facts matter more
I've been seeing a certain misapprehension on various RWBY posts, so I feel I need to counter it by re-stating the facts.
This inaccuracy is that learning the truth about Salem's immortality is what drove Ironwood mad. In turn, this leads to people claiming that Oz was right to hide the truth in the first place.
That is 100% wrong. When Ironwood learned the truth, he was undoubtably unsettled by it, but managed to keep his head. I've already gone on length over Ruby's decision to hold off telling him already, so I won't go into it.
What causes Ironwood to fly off the edge and down that slippery slope to madness wasn't anything Team RWBY or their friends did (Althought Oscar's "The city in the sky is held to a higher standard" clearly didn't help).
This is what drives Ironwood insane. This little reference to his most public and greatest military defeat, where he lost control of his entire army and was rendered impotent. The black queen chess piece.
And it was placed there by Cinder Fall, the woman who orchestrated the Fall of Beacon, for the sole purpose of scaring him into revealing the location of the Winter Maiden.
Lionheart said that the Fall of Beacon amplified Ironwood's worst flaws. And reliving that trauma by seeing the black queen only increased those flaws more so.
Ironwood takes his impotence out on Team RWBY, raging at past actions he would have accepted because his out-of-control ego needs an easy target to go after. I'll argue that even if Team RWBY had done everything he wanted flawlessly, he still would have turned on them because Ironwood NEVER trusted the heroes, the kill switches on their scrolls being proof of them.
Ironwood's mental degeneration was caused by CINDER FALL. She was the one who poked Ironwood's trauma where it would cause the worst affect on his mind.
