"Therefore, Mundus, day after day, year after year, looked for them. The elder brother was found first - Vergil. He did not hide where he came from and who, but simply wandered around the world. Mundus sent countless killers to Vergil, but they all died from the Yamato, the legacy of Sparda. Vergil masterfully handled the katana and did not leave any chance to the enemies. In addition, Mundus, locked in hell, could not send enough strong servants to the world of people to deal with the son of Sparda.
But the youngest son, named Dante, acted differently: changed his name and began to live an ordinary human life. Mundus did not find him immediately ― until ten years after the murder of Eva - and at first he simply suspected Dante of a certain person. That man was called Tony Redgrave. Mundus sent lower demons to him, and Tony wiped them into powder. This was the proof: Tony is Dante. Well, who else can deal with even lower, but demons? Then the emperor decided to create in the name of revenge a demon that would overshadow the power of all his minions.
And he created, but previously carefully studied how Dante, Vergil and Sparda fight. And the armor for the new demon was forged by the infernal smith Machiavelli. The created demon, hardened in hellfire and clad in strong armor, received the name "black knights". And they were not afraid of anyone.
The black knights hunted Tony Redgrave for a long time and already drove him into a corner, but nevertheless suffered a defeat.
Mundus continued his experiments and created time after time new black knights, but they still could not kill either Vergil or Dante, who was hiding under the name Tony."
This along with all of the stuff BTN shares with DMC1 novel (which is basically everything besides a mention of Gilver for a good reason) takes place before DMC3 and obviously DMC1 according to the narrarator and also at the end of the DMC1 novel, after Nell's death and Dante's fight with Gilver, Dante stops using the Tony Redgrave alias which is what happened according to Morrison's Letters in DMC5, Dante also stopped using Tony Redgrave as an alias after Nell's death but Morrison tells us he didn't know who caused murdered her.
These events happened 10 years after Eva's death and we already know DMC1 takes place 20 years after Eva's death so this happens in the time between pre-DMC3 and before DMC1.
Even with the BTN heavily using DMC1 novel to explain things, the amount of things it contradicts is a tough pill to swallow but the sheer numerous plot points brought directly from DMC1 novel is also hard to swallow.This could mean DMC1 novel is canon but just has a contradictions that are retconned by BTN or BTN and DMC5's numerous connections to the main plot points of the DMC1 novel are just taken from it for no reason.
Anyhow, this is stupid.Not that the writing is bad or anything but this entire point in Dante's history is like their trying to make DMC1 novel canon but at the same time ignoring it's contradictions to the canon and it's hard to wrap my head around this stuff to determine canon so I will just leave this as stupid, headache inducing food for thought.