system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
[The Black Company]If the Taken are magically forced to serve The Lady, how can some of them defy her orders and even attempt to kill her at one point.

If they can disobey her, why would they switch to her side? And it is said that when she was "taking" the former leaders of the resistance, some of them would rader die then become Taken, but they still did, so it isn't just fear of dying either.
gpt
First, the Ten Who Were Taken were originally loyal to the Dominator rather than the Lady. We shouldn't imagine they were any more enthusiastic about being Taken by the Dominator than the rebel was to be Taken by the Lady, and therefore were willing to aid Her because she kept their personal weakness at bay while individually fearing Her power and scheming against one another. That they served the new empire at all is due to the Lady's political skill, not the Dominator's magic.

Second, in the Annals of Croaker there is a description of some of the Taking of Whisper. It isn't accurate to think of this as magic mind control; rather it is a kind of extreme conditioning. Magic is used to achieve impossible suffering, and perhaps also impossible pleasure. The loyalty stems from the understanding that the Lady's whim governs which. If provided confidence that the Lady could not exert this power over them again, we may expect this loyalty to erode.