One of my favourite details from the original Red Rising trilogy, is that no one ever came close to guessing or even suspecting that Darrow wasn’t a gold.
It shows the inherent flaw in their sense of superiority. Octavia had Darrow right there in front of her, with an Oracle wrapped around his arm, and even though she suspected he was a Son of Ares, she never asked if he was anything other than gold, didn’t even come close.
Adrius and Virginia are geniuses, but still, neither of them could have possibly fathomed that Darrow was a red until they had the concrete evidence of his carving right in front of them.
To this day (in canon) the only reason anyone knows Darrow is a red carved to be gold, is because the video evidence of his carving was leaked (initially from Harmony, and later from others).
No one, no matter how intelligent, practical, paranoid, cautions, clever or skeptical, ever figured out about Darrow’s carving through their own suspicion or means of investigation. They were either in on it from the beginning (Dancer, Mickey, Quicksilver, etc) or they were shown video evidence. No one figured it out themselves or “unravelled the mystery” so to speak. Because no one even knew there was a mystery.
And before people say “it was extremely unlikely, they had no reason to suspect” Yes, Darrow’s carving was incredibly difficult and expensive, but the same procedure was performed on Titus not long after, so how rare or hard could it be? We even get a dialogue from Mustang in Golden Son in which she details that different colours go to carvers all the time to have “intrinsic” parts of themselves altered, far more often than the public realizes. So the possibility should have been on Octavia’s radar, but it wasn’t, because she simply couldn’t fathom it. It was too obscure.
How could a red be the spitting image of what gold society idealizes? How could a red be so tall, strong, and beautiful? How could a red graduate top of the Institute, become a peerless scarred, a Lancer, her own grandson’s celebrity hero? Neither her nor Nero or Lorn or even Adrius were capable of even entertaining the idea. It was not a thought that was ever going to occur to them naturally.
And I really love that, from a narrative perspective, because it says so much about how the Society operates and upholds itself. It says so much about how high on their own egos golds really are. It says so much about how the colours are not as different from one another as golds would have them believe.
Cassian Andor: What? To steal from the Empire? What do you need? A uniform, some dirty hands and an Imperial tool kit. They're so proud of themselves, they don't even care. They're so fat and satisfied, they can't imagine it.
Luthen Rael: Can't imagine what?
Cassian Andor: That someone like me would ever get inside their house, walk their floors, spit in their food, take their gear.
