So, I watched KHx Back Cover today and I saw a lot of people complaining that we still don’t know who the traitor is yet, so I thought I’d share my opinion with you:
There is no traitor.
At least not among the five union leaders. The Master of Masters manipulated his pupils to play “their roles” in starting the keyblade war. So if anyone, it’s him.
Of course I don’t have actual decisive evidence of it, but there’s a lot to go by:
First, the talk about a traitor first came up when Ira found the Nightmare Chirithy. As we know, Chirithy was literally invented by the Master of Masters and he made extra sure to explain in detail what a Nightmare version of it would mean. For him, it would be the easiest thing in the world to plant the Nightmare in the castle, and also, he’s certainly capable of creating the bangles for the players.
Second, the whole incident about a traitor is not mentioned in the Books of Prophecy, the only written record is in the one page, which the Master gave to Gula. If you think about it, it wouldn’t make much sense for the Master to have taken this page out of the finished books, so I guess this one is either a complete fabrication – which might actually be the case, Gula mentions that the page is entirely cryptic and vague, so I assume the rest of the book is rather exact about it’s predictions – or he had a special reason for it. Like spreading distrust among his pupils by sharing information unevenly.
Which brings us to the next point: The way he assigned the roles for the different pupils. Apparently, they are not aware that the Master of Masters gave special – secret – missions to most of them. You can see that for example by Invi, Gula and Ava’s surprised looks, when Aced used the “May my heart be my guiding key” saying. Also, each of those missions, the roles, every word the Master said to his pupils in their “cases” was carefully chosen to cause conflict among them and destroy their trust in each other, so that eventually, yes, the keyblade war was inevitable.
The exception is, of course, Ava. Her role wasn’t to cause the keyblade war, but to make sure some remnants of the world would survive. The Master of Masters didn’t want to destroy the world. I assume, that much like Xehanort, he wanted to see what was beyond the end.
Or, knowing Kingdom Hearts, it’s probably all Xehanort’s doing in some way or another, but that’s just speculation.