major spoilers (about the incest thing/motivation) but not events:
ONLY PHILIP KNOWS THE TARAN FAMILY SECRET and he is obsessed with continuing the Taran line. Even ML doesn’t fully know how they make babies. He is not “evil,” but ML hates him bc ML doesn’t want to continue the Taran line. Tarans can only have a male child with their close relative (half sister ). They can only have a female child with a woman who started taking a special medicine as a young girl (so it can’t just be any random woman, but one Philip groomed for the position since childhood).
Philip made sure Damien was born (by hiding his existence from ML). He also “procures” poor girls and gives them the medicine in hopes that he can convince ML to get them pregnant. Then he would raise the daughter and get her and Damien to have sex to continue the family.
In the novel, the alternate universe side stories about him are actually pretty sad. He dedicated his whole life to the Taran family, and when they eventually die off he just wanders around with guilt/regret...he also meets Lucia at one point.
None of them are cousins xD, what the family does is the heir is always a boy with the blood of the family, but the boy is born from his father and his aunt, so than the boy has ho have sex and have a child with his half sister that is born from the father and a girl that has taken a specific medicine that makes her infertile since she was young and then takes the antidote and if they are lucky a child is born, and that child is always a girl, that girl will have sex with him and a boy will be born out of that and then he will have to have sex with another girl that has taken that medicine and a girl will be born, and that girl will have sex with her half-brother that was born before, it's always been like that until the ML and his twin brother was born, a lot of problems arose because of that, and first they abandoned one of the twins, but then brought him back, and ended up trying to make the twins fight to the death to decide who would sucide in becoming duke, this ended up in the ML's twin killing himself so that he wouldn't have to hurt his brother, but before that he killed everyone that ever tried to hurt or actually hurt his brother and him, before he died tho, they made him have sex with their half-sister, and that is why Damion exists, because Philip took advantage of how the ML's twin was very kind and made him have sex with their half-sister. It was a big tragedy. And this why the ML hates Philip so much, because even tho his masters, the duke or the duke's family, didn't want to continue maintaning that screwed up bloodline, Philip continued making them do it, and controling everything behind the scenes, btw he's that obsessed with it because he has served the family for many many many years and wants the family to continue, and is following the old duke's wish, even though now the ML is the duke............. I really hate him, because he forced brothers and sisters to try and kill each other and to have sexual relationships even tho they didn't want......
Also if I remember right, the duke's half-sister, Damion's mother either killed herself or died giving birth, because they were still a bit young when Damion was born, at least she was, she hated it, it was like Philip forced the ML's twin ti raoe their half sister, so it's like he raped both of them kind of.
Can someone spoil me about doc phillip :D