I'm not trying to take sides about the Sabo and Fuji topic here but it is interesting, their actions at Dressrosa did kinda confuse me and it's funny how both were big players in the Reverie incident later and Fuji ended up letting slaves escape and never trying to truly capture and take down Sabo either. He was always sandbagging based on his own personal justice/beliefs and morals too ofc.
The thing I wanted to mention actually, someone pointed out Sabo used a chess themed move against Imu.:
I love that. I'm not sure what it means as I'm not a chess fan but I love the idea of Dragon being the chessmaster and Sabo is inheriting that too somewhat? It explains Dragons reluctant to take action and being so passive and suits its pacifist nature too. He's more like a modern commander general /king that would rather sit back and command others to fight for him and take risks, make sacrifices rather than the generals and kings who would go out and fight, risking their own lives in ancient history. If that makes sense?
But Oda is probably trying to symbolise something bigger here too. I don't think Sabo will always be loyal to Dragon and he's got a much darker, more savage and wrathful side as he showed vs Bastille and Burgess in Dressrosa. I was really hoping Oda would elaborate on that but alas. Sabo being hailed as the Flame Emperor and having such infamy worldwide, people revering him and seeing him as a hero just like Luffy, both of them being major liberators of oppressed countries and Sabo having huge banners of him put up to celebrate him in some countries, I feel this will have greater pull/consequences in future somehow.
I asked AI to help me explain this better too: