So. How its Canon Gilver?
In all brutal honesty: I have no fucking solid idea.
I don’t think it was actually Vergil for several reasons, but it’s always — even in summary form — referred to as:
And in the DMC1 novel, that is what happens. Kamiya’s Vergil is actually a really manipulative, cruel, nasty piece of work. Itsuno’s Vergil is the anti-villain that while... extremely morally gray, most of the time, is not evil and malicious just ‘cause.
Most of that novel can work — not just Nell, .45 Art Warks, the mercenary work, etc. — as long as Vergil isn’t Gliver. And that’s what’s generally accepted, as far as I know (or am concerned). Because that novel is the only thing really clashes with Itsuno’s DMC series (2-5), and it’s far easier to throw out 90% of a novel that was hard to find and not that popular versus bits and pieces from different games that, for the most part, were smash hits.
If you want my two cents:
You can take the DMC1 novel (or some version of the major events in it) as basically canon, especially since it’s set before DMC1, as long as Vergil =/= Gliver and has no affiliation with Gliver.
Before the Nightmare confirms that Vergil didn’t assume a false identity and thus had to fend of demonic hit squads from Mundus — however, he had the Yamato, so he was able to do it. Dante was protected to some extent by the Tony Redgrave alias.
IMO, if you changed that novel around and had had Dante think Gliver was Vergil (who would have, canonically, been missing for nearly a decade at that point) and then have the reveal prove him wrong instead of revealing Gliver as Vergil, you could have a throwaway villain dude/demon named Gilver fucking shit up for Dante.
Trish said Mundus found out about Dante while Dante was using the TR alias in Before the Nightmare, so there is like... an opening... there to tie in a non-Vergil, Mundus affiliated, one-off villain named Gliver into the story.
Also IMO, not only is the Gliver thing really, really OOC for Itsuno’s Vergil, but it would put him in a really bad position with most of the main and supporting characters, which isn’t what you’d wanna do if you’re trying to pull a heel-face(-ish) type turn for someone like Vergil.
TL;DR: basically if you go off of what Before the Nightmare says and also really squint, the DMC1 novel happened with the same major outcomes/deaths, but Gliver isn’t Vergil.
