Smile, yes that was exactly what I thought as well when recently replayed update 3.6 until now. That devs might be holding their cards a little to close to their chests and chars too ambiguous, making it a bit to hard too move forward and for players to plot a course. Also making it slightly to hard for us to make choices at the moment since really no idea if carmenmarked and lauriemarked will be good or bad for them in the end or will depend on your relation with C.
Another thing I noticed is that the shortness of the updates, may help hiding things for us, by not seeing them in the greater context of the story.
Hildegardt Well Sharon has been a bit of an enigma from start. Just replaying from update 3.6 (slight save problem) and doing meeting Marcius again, but also her own remark they have a bullseye on their backs before meeting up with Frank, makes it quite clear she indeed is a power player (if maybe not the most powerful one) and has been for awhile. Also that she has been a voluntary part of a coterie with Marcius and Astrid, at least for a while. This might explain why Sharon wakes so late, but not MC. We know he did nothing bad if we chose so and still wakes late. So either he has an extreme strong bloodline as the reason why he would wake that late (though Fabian whom we expect to be really strong does not), implying if that is the reason Sharon does as well or the other option might be is that feeding as Sharon and MC do with bottled blood is the reason or something is wrong with that blood.
Since that blood is the one thing they share or could it have to do with the part bond with Sharon? Or there is a reason we are still unaware of, but it is weird it is something Sharon and MC share, since we have only Fabians remark and Sharons knowledge though as parameters to guide us it could be anything. Will be interesting to know when C wakes.
Like I said devs have been very good at hiding clues and keeping cards close to their chests also by showing us and giving us the information until now through colored glasses, mainly Sharon and Andrew's concerning the vamp world.
Well another thing that is getting clearer is that most or all sharonsavesLaurie points come from choices where MC is good to Sharon and makes her care even more for him. Showing that it will not be from goodness of Sharon's heart she will save Laurie likely, but completely depends on how she feels about MC, combine that with the Ivy scene where Sharon happily is willing to destroy her mind and we can be quite sure that she is not a paragon of virtue and is more a true vampire.
One last thing about Sharon that is my guess and that Arigon might not like, since it may weaken his theory. Somehow I have the suspicion that Sharon might be Virgil's and that both the princeps and Virgil actually knew already more about the temple nd even served it for quite a while, they would be pretty incompetent if knew nothing about it while in their territory for quite a while and many others around them do. The Temple does not seem to be a real secret it exists, but more what it is about, and yeah I would not be surprised if the blood Sharon drank contained C's blood instead of Virgil's or that of the princeps. Hopefully some hints or questions will be answered about the mysteries in rest of this chapter so story can unfold.
PS: what the hell last scene with VG, seems we will not be able to hope grandma any times removed will be on our side either.