I'm not a fan of Rose ending up as a town bicycle, but I think it makes sense for the Duke to use her as a political pawn this way. If it gets him closer to power, and if it makes Rose's position weaker, then why wouldn't he? It would be interesting if Leto and Cyanna start hearing rumours through the grapevine about Rose though. Once you start playing around with the aristocracy, it only takes one person to start yapping before nasty gossip spreads around. Leto should start hearing whispers of Rose being a whore soon, and maybe even Cyanna too (considering she's been sucking off Ulrod behind curtains in one of the latest freeroams).
I do trust N_taii to not do that tbh. I can hardly imagine Rose to end up town bicycle except for like an extremely-bad ending variant maybe.
I think this is really the part of the story that I'm hoping to see soon, because it feels like it has been ages since Leto encountered any actual hints of corruption. He caught onto the Duke's conspiracy in the undercover mission, but doesn't seem that concerned about any of the ladies so far. Vaguely, in Rose's case, that he just doesn't like her being around the Duke, but even that comes off more like he just thinks she hates the man and is unhappy being trapped there, not that he is urgently worried about her safety. There's just not much sense of suspicion or dread from him yet, that he knows something is going on but can't find any hard proof that it's not just his own creeping paranoia — which has dulled some of the game's "mystery NTR" appeal over the past year. You still see things happening in windows and whatnot, but Leto feels so disconnected from it all.
I wouldn't even call him clueless as things are now, because it's not like he is missing blatantly obvious signs right in front of his face like with Noah. He's usually just... somewhere else, or totally passed out. Just in the dark purely by random circumstance, through no specific fault of his own.
Maybe this update we can find out a little more about the goings on since the King and Queen presumably died. Is "The Duke" really the only Duke in the kingdom? Every court has Dukes, Marquises, Earls, Counts, Barons, Knights and assorted suck-ups and hangers-on. It's unlikely the rest of the court is going to be happy with The Duke asserting himself as Regent. Rose is the Crown Princess after all, not just 'a' Princess.
Despite being the very lucky recipient of royal hospitality, Leto is still a commoner (IIRC at one point the Queen spells this all out to him) and what goes on with Rose is entirely out of his control, in a world he is not a part of. Rose could become very active in various court intrigues without the Duke, with Leto just a bystander. Here's hoping anyway.
Yea I think that is a very narrow path to walk. I definitely do enjoy the "hidden cheating" in NTR a lot, with an emphasis on
hidden, but it's definitely the hallmark of a good NTR game to thread that needle. And also, I feel like there is more than enough room in the story (considering the plot so far) to have Leto get more suspicious in certain ways without having him necessarily discover and hard suspect anything. I think him being "worried about the Duke's influence" (and the other antagonists in their respective routes) is definitely the way to go in that regard.
And I definitely think it would work well if we pushed for Leto to become more aware of the political side of the conspiracy. After all he already is on the trail. So it makes perfect sense, and it makes sense given the archetype he is too. He is just oblivious on a sexual/relationship level, he is not dumb or unobservant. He is smart about other things and relatively good at combat too. So he is the hero archetype, and I actually really liked that about his position in the story. That he is not helpless or weak. That he can defend himself and that it is just the manipulation of the antagonists and the insecurities of the FMCs that makes them try to "buy" his safety with various acts of depravity, despite it maybe not always being absolutely necessary, or the antagonists stacking the odds against him in a way so anyone would assume he can't make it out alive. But the story has done a great job convincing us time and time again that he would have had a really good chance non the less, cause even in cases where the "safeguards" the antagonists promised to our girls failed Leto prevailed, albeit by the breath of a hair. But yea, I like that about him, that he is not dumb, it gives depth to the story and the stuff that is happening behind his back.
It's also one reason I think that the cheating can't be fully revealed to Leto until close to the end, because the way I see him as a character he would not let it happen would he know about it, that just doesn't feel like it's him (unless was at the point where he had actually given up on himself and the world).
But yea, definitely hope to see more of him getting close to the actual conspiracy happening and getting more worried about the girls, albeit for non-sexual reasons. And would really be cool to see more of the goings on in the Kingdom and the court and whatnot in general.
As Twyfor said, there is more than ONE Duke, there is an entire Kingdom and quite a few nobles Id recon, so the intrique going on there could make for an interesting plot as we move further into the second half of the story.
