Duke is a character who believes that heroism and the Robin mantle can exist entirely separate from Batman himself.
Scott Snyder[Duke] is the same way that Harper Row is a character who doesn't want to know who you are beneath the mask, and that makes her interesting. She'll show up and help Batman, but she never wants to know if he's Bruce Wayne.
Scott SnyderYou take the thing that is the worst thing that could have happened to you, the worst challenge in your life, and you turn it into fuel. You don't give up. And that's what Gotham is about.
Scott SnyderHaving that North Star for every story [about Batman] is really key for me. It allows me to go farther and farther off the reservation.
Scott Snyder[Bruce] sees a lot of himself in [Batman], you know? You could argue that something even worse than what happened to Bruce happened to [Duke's] parents, who are now Joker-ized*. They're not just gone or irretrievably lost. And I'm NOT curing them, so you can put that out there! There's no relief from that.
Scott SnyderI think thing that makes Batman so endlessly interesting is that he's one of the most flawed and deeply human characters, even though he seems completely the most inhuman and infallible in costume. Psychologically he's one of the most complicated in both his strengths and his weaknesses. For me, one of his great strengths and weaknesses is that confidence. His emotional self-protection is one of the things that makes him heroic and sacrificing; he doesn't have a personal life. He sacrifices those to be the best hero he can be.
Scott Snyder