Originally Posted by
Dzetoun
Yes. This actually is something that King, rather than Seeley, has emphasized. I have heard a couple of podcasts where King has said he really prefers a chronology in which Dick comes to live with Bruce at 12 rather than 16, precisely because it emphasizes one aspect of Bruce's character that gets lost if you don't allow the Bruce/Dick interactions to spread out and establish deep roots. That is the truly remarkable fact that somehow, someway, this deeply scarred individual took in a traumatized child and managed, somehow, to keep him from becoming scarred in turn. Somehow, Bruce was able to step back and analyze his own darkness and see to it that Dick never became infected with it.
To put it in terms of Snyder's overarching narrative, Dick represents the one time in his life Bruce was able to look Gotham in her bony face and say, firmly, "NO." It is even more remarkable if you consider that he wasn't able to do that for Jason, or Tim, or even Damian. To explore those other relationships it outside the bounds of Grayson, but once again it emphasizes the heavy aura of the Silver Age that surrounds Dick and Bruce.
And it also illustrates why, as long as the Snyderesque view of Gotham and Batman's relationship to the city holds, it is so very important that Dick stay outside of the city. Snyder likes to say that Batman loves only one thing ... Gotham. Seeley and King seem to be saying ... "Well, now, I don't know about that." As long as Dick stays away from the city, the two interpretations don't come into conflict, allowing everybody to have it their own way.