?

The top is really weird. He's hard to categorize.

The premise is that the players are pulled into the game, and if they die in the game, they die in real life. Like inception or Sword art online.

But I think the Duke may have remembered his past iterations where the Player (King) failed him?

Either way, the king ran away from his empire soon after he was pulled into the game world and the Duke is at the very least salty about it. Because if the King dies, the empire dies by default.

So like, we do see that the Duke likes him. And he gets jealous on occasion, but not over every little thing.

It's a lot of love hate, but the top has an emotionless face and barely talks.