Board Thread:Speculation House/@comment-14138255-20151206164217/@comment-10390252-20151210171840

@VeridianThrell,

(Sigh) Okay, if you want to put it like that:

1) Reaching the heart - You completely ignore the way she 'adopts' Penny within a few hours in volume 1 and couldn't care less that she's a Synthetic; you forget that she gets Blake talking, despite her desire to be alone within minutes in volume 1; you completely ignore the fact that she's so nice and empathetic that she's practically got Emerald foaming at the mouth about her (something that I think Mercury considers very funny);

2) Quality of being followed - What exactly was Weiss doing hanging onto the Nevermore's side? She was there at Ruby's suggestion, despite the fact that she had shown absolutely no indication that she trusted her judgement up to that point. Then, despite the fact Weiss was only barely able to tolerate Ruby's personality, she calmly and nearly-unquestioningly followed her quite complex combat strategy. Those are probably the most dramatic example of how Ruby somehow manages to persuade people to do things, sometimes by example and sometimes by her immunity to objective logic.

Yes, Ruby is young and sometimes headstrong. She's far from perfect and is still honing her skills. Because her qualities are subconscious, they're not expressed consistently. However, they would be a lot more effective qualities in a leader than you would expect form a spit-and-polish soldier.