The Duke is the one who helped the mage reverse time but the reasons he does so is NOT out of guilt, sadness, remorse for Keira. His motives were completely selfish.
Btw The Duke always knew in the first timeline that Keira was his daughter but he still treated her the way he did by publicly declaring her a "fake" to her face while he was arm-to-arm with "Cosette" whom he declared the only daughter of Parvis.
This backfires on him because the Spirits are angered that Keira who was indeed the Saintess was executed. Furthermore, the daughter he declared "real" was actually a demon and shows her true colors by unleashing hell onto the world. The Duke is blamed for all this for his active role in executing Keira and declaring Cosette who turned out to be a demon his demon. This leads to his disgrace and ruin of house Parvis. That is why he reversed time. He couldn't care less about Keira in the first timeline.
The reason the Duke shows favourability to "Cosette" and not to Keira is for the reason you said. It comes down to who their mothers were.
"Cosette" (keep in mind the real cosette is long dead it's just a demon now) is the daughter of the wife he still has a lingering attachment to and clearly favoured more than the 2nd wife whom he was more or less bullied into marrying due to her family's powerful influence and sway within the empire. He had no feelings for Keira's mother apart from most likely begrudging her for being the daughter of Duke Edinburgh whom he despised and part of a family that ruined his marriage to the first wife. Keira is the spitting image
of her mother a fact, that is used against her in the first timeline.
Although, the Duke is partly to blame for Rowena's (1st wife) fate because when she pleaded with him to take action against the 2nd wife family that were harrrassing her and spreading lies that she was "barren" to drive her out the house. He wouldn't intervene due to the "neutrality" policy.
Marquis Edinburgh exploited this to advance his daughter's position as the sole Duchess by wiping out the Weinbergs so Rowena would no longer have any status or protectors and sending assassins to kill her when she got pregnant. This is how the current "Cosette" came to be. After giving birth to (fraternal twins?) a baby it dies and in despair and anger Rowena makes a contract with a demon to save her baby in exchange for her life.
The baby(ies) aren't revived but the demon slips into the body of the dead baby girl and thus this is the "Cosette" we see.
Its kinda sad when Keira defeats the demon and it leaves Cosette's body, the first thing she does ask to give her "sister" (original Cosette was her biological sister) a decent burial.
We forget that Keira lost a sister and it was all down to the evil schemes of her grandfather and cowardice of their father to protect his first wife and their baby(ies).
Jesus…. I take back what I said lmao the dad is completely useless. Keira literally can’t even be slightly happy because her dad is so worthless. I’m mad the author wrote in those moments where it seemed the dad actually cared. I guess he just can’t possibly think of losing a pawn to something as simple as love. This man can eat shit (╯°Д °)╯╧╧
Also thank you for the explanation it cleared up so many questions I had lol
declaring her to be his *daughter.
Btw I don't know if I mentioned it already but remember how I said he knew she was his daughter in the first timeline?
Well, I forgot to mention something that makes it worse. There was a ballot vote to decide Keira's fate and "Mr. Neutral" the duke voted in favor to Keira - whom he knew was his daughter but chose "Cosette" as the "real" one instead. He voted YES to have Keira executed this is one of the main reasons he gets blamed for the calamity that was caused from Keira's execution because he took an active part in the decision to have Keira executed.
*in favor of executing Keira. He voted yes to have her executed.
Oh my god! He takes the whole “ima hate the kid since I can’t hate the other parent” trope to another level. How can you hate your kid so much that you’re willing to kill her off for no good reason (╬￣皿￣)凸
I dont think he hates her. Worse he didn't care for her at all. He was completely Indifferent. Her parentage didn't help.
Cosette being the first wife daughter was always going to be to her advantage.
Whereas Keira looking like her mother was a disadvantage.
Yikes… almost every parent in manhwas similar to this don’t deserve to be parents
Does keira forgive the duke?? Throughout the novel? Cause if it was me FK HIM I WOULD NEVER FORGIVE
In the main story - no. She leaves with her brother because she was fed up with the Parvis household and still processing all the crap that happened. At that point, they decided to sever ties with the Parvis household and live their lives for themselves.
At the end of the side stories - yes. - She returns to the Parvis estate (much to the Duke's shock) and says "I'm finally home".
Which really pissed readers off.
Actually, she lost a sister AND brother. Since Rowenna was expecting fraternal twins. The demon just happened to take over the body of the dead baby girl.
Oh lord this is so much information to process… lol seriously thank you for it all but damn I need like my own time to process XD
Also I’d be pissed too if she went back and there wasn’t any actual resolution between her and the duke
I just keep remembering the fact that the dad is the one who seems to have went to the blonde wizard or whatever. He had to have changed time because is Keira… is he going to do it again? All for the sake of helping one girl he doesn’t know? Is there no way to check if she’s truly your daughter dude? Like you know Keira is. She looks like her mom. If you kept pictures of your wife up maybe she wouldn’t be looked at as if she’s some curse. Agh…. Men and their false sense of duty.