Did Mundus kill the previous Demon King?

[Cosmefulanito94]

https://imgur.com/dT9Qnnj

So, apparently, there was a Demon King before Mundus who was killed in a conspiracy. The source is an official guide made by BradyGames, but the curious thing is that when I try to find another reference about this (specifically in other Japanese material from the DMC1 era), I find nothing.

So, was there a king before Mundus?

In my opinion, this is a misinterpretation by the person who wrote this guide, as he mentioned in the mission section that the Demon World was exploding in the last mission. This claim was never stated again in any other guide from the same era, and Kamiya himself denied the destruction of the Demon World via Twitter.

 

[berto]

No, not really a misinterpretation, just the way they do it over there. This is actually a pretty common thing in Japanese interpretations of demon kings. The old demon king, the current demon king. Maou. In Japan they seem to take it as any stand in character can take the crown so there're like hundreds of them in manga and anime and video games. It's a position, very much like that of a king. No different than how you'd read a story about a king from a place that much resembles England but isn't Arthur. In this case the king of hell is just a king. It's not like myth or religion where the lord of the underworld is a specific person, like Hades or Osiris. It's a crown. It's interchangable.

Mundus was born in the demon world which means it existed before he did and there was an old demon king. As for the demon world exploding, well, no, the castle and the island were exploding. Dante travels to the demon world all the time and demons come out it all the time. Pretty active for a place that blew up.

 

[V's patron]

interesting.

maybe they could be the next villian?