the duke ignored the fl bc the saintess told him that if he were close to the fl and if they loved each other his overflowing mana would kill her, just like his father did. herdin in1st timeline loved her so much and he was cold toward his son bc he didnt want the son to have the same fate as him and his dad.
then the saintess and him pretend to cheat on each other so the fl would not love him anymore. when he found out she’s dead, he tried to turn back the time and asked for her to regain of the memories instead of him, so she could deliberately avoided him in another life.
Ummm he avoided her long before he was supposed to have met the saintess. Plus he blamed her when she forgot the fire incident believing her to be lying when there was no proof that she was deliberately and maliciously lying. He even carried that resentment into adulthood so we can't excuse it just by claiming he was too young.
Remember, he hates her as he believes she lied about the fire incident, BC the most likely culprit behind the fire was HER MOM. Mind you, his parents were already dead at this point, and his only remaining family was the empress, the ML’s aunt. He thinks she lied/stayed silent about it bc she saw her mom kill the empress or something, and her staying silent means they have no proof to put her mom behind bars. She is basically her enemy as a result.
Yes. And that's what I'm talking about. He has no reason to believe she lied let alone maliciously. Lying for her mom is not a malicious reason. Plus he wanted to protect his aunt. She wants to protect her mom according to him. If he believes that as a child she should know what her mom's like and not want to protect her then he should have expected himself as a child to know better than to make assumptions about what she's doing because they're absolutely based on things he has no way of knowing in any shape or form.
Chapter 128 is when he STARTS to gets his memories back, so we revive the first chapter where we saw fl’s pov switching to ml’s, and ofc it’ll also show when fl dies and his reaction to that, so start from 129 and read from there, or skip a few lines to see when Ruth tells him all crying that the duchess has died
OMFG THE DRAWINGS I LOVE IT SM, it feels familiar tho