The thing about Madi, Flint and Silver is that Madi is the truest leader amongst them because:
Silver cares about the well-being of the men and women he believes are under his responsability, and will do things (lose a leg!) to protect them from enemies’ brutality or the whim of others people in power, but he doesn’t care about the principles of what they are fighting for, not because he is evil but because of cynism; he believes that a better world isn’t really possible so he will only fight for himself and finding a better future with and for the people who are closest to him or believe are his responsability. The men trust Silver because they know that even if he is a self-serving liar shit most of the time, he will not let them starve to win a war. They don’t trust Flint in the same way, and given s1-2 they have theirs reasons. But this is a double edged sword, because if Silver cares about the men he is the leader of more than he cares about the cause (and the men istinctively trust him more than Flint because of that), what will happen when he’ll find people he cares about more than both the cause AND the men and wonen fighting for it? Just when Silver has learned to put the well-being of others men before himself, he fell in love with Madi AND get closest to Flint in a way that he isn’t completely comfortable about, and that (having people get so close to him in a way he isn’t used to) changes his priorities again.
Flint cares a lot, maybe is the only character who cares as much as Madi, about the principles of things, he genuinely believe in the future as long as there are men and women to fight for it, and he is always fighting and hoping for a better world in which everyone’s well being and happiness will be possible, but in the meantime he doesn’t care that much about the well-being of the men and women who are fighting for him because he just doesn’t care about them or respect them a lot as individuals (which is why his men follow Silver and not him, despite Flint being the mind and face of the revolution), he is still deep down the Navy officer that will sacrifice the pawns without theirs consent if he thinks this will benefit his noble goal, no matter everyone’s else opinion.
For Madi, the principles and ideals she is fighting for AND the well-being of her people are the same thing: she is fighting FOR them (in a way Flint isn’t, truly- his issues and flaws as a revolutionar is always that he is fighting for a better society without caring or connecting a lot with the people who should and would build this future society) and WITH them (in a way Silver is only on the surface, not in spirits, because he doesn’t share the same hope and see only the utopia of the ideals, not the urgency and necessity behind them.)
She is not torned between her loyalty to her people and her cause, because due to being the child of enslaved or formerly enslaved parents leading mostly others formerly enslaved men and women toward their freedom, her cause for which she’ll join Flint’s war IS the well-being and future of the people she is leading. Those are not two separate issues for her as they are for both James and Silver.
Madi's people trust her to care about their well-being (like Flint’s men trust Silver and not Flint to do) and if they’ll die in a future battle they’ll do it because they’ll believe it is the right thing to do, maybe the only possible thing to do, it will be their choice and not Madi’s unilateral decision to sacrifice them or not (as people suspect Flint does, because even as his most noble and self-sacrificing he is still a general and a close-off solitary hero), and they trust Madi to believe and fight for the same cause (in a way Silver ultimately doesn’t).
