- "Will you listen, Black Cross, or will you let blind obedience... smother all understanding?"
- ―Soong Ching-ling to the Black Cross, 1927[src]
Soong Ching-ling (宋慶齡; 1893 – 1981) was the second wife of Sun Yat-sen, one of the leaders of the 1911 Xinhai Revolution which established the Republic of China. Like her late husband and Grand Master, she too was a member of the Shangai Rite of the Templar Order.
Biography[]
In 1927, she hired Zhang Damin, the shady member of a family she had ties with, to steal a sescret package destined for her husband's successor Chiang Kai-shek. She wanted to prevent its content, an offer of admission to the Templar Order as Grand Master of the Shangai Rite, from ever reaching him. Through her sister, who was married to Chiang, Soong had come to believe that Chiang was a megalomaniac with no loyalties to anything but his own ambitions and that he would betray the Templars' values the moment he seized their power. Zhang tasked his wife, Ruan Lingyu, to steal the box carrying the package from the young Templar courier Darius Gift, enlisting the aid of the Green Gang in the process, and Soong eventually obtained the box.[1].
However, the Black Cross, who was investigating the theft, discovered her involvement through her trusted man, Tsai, and came to her house to reclaim the box on behalf of Gift. After warning him that the Templars were unwise to put their trust into Chiang, Soong gave the box to her fellow Templar, revealing that it was in fact empty. The package, carrying the letter alongside the Templar ring of the late Grand Master Thaddeus Gift still wrapped around Thaddeus's severed finger, had been stolen by Lingyu. As it would turn out, Soong's intervention was unnecessary; she was right about Chiang's character, but these qualities compelled him to reject the invitation to the order outright when he learned of it through his ally, Du Yuesheng, the mob boss of the Green Gang.[1]
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