Angela and Douglas' marriage failed, by their own admission, due to their mutual obsession with their careers. So Angela, despite her astuteness, could have missed an affair for Douglas, she was so busy. (His tryst with beautiful, evil Jacqueline was, after all, established by the beginning of Season 2).
The move five years later to have Richard revealed to be Angela's biological son almost made some biblical sense -- and, as such, I was fine with it -- except that the explanation lacked the proper detail, and they didn't adjust what we'd known about the backstory properly.... Since Angela and Douglas maintained such an amicably divorced relationship, then the writers needed to convince us that Douglas had had "a reason" to conspire with Jacqueline to kidnap Baby Richard, and yet to then later return to his fondness for his ex-wife, Angela, for the next several decades.
Just tell us why! Yes, Jacqueline could have told Douglas anything at the height of their illicit affair, like convincing him that Angela's baby was sired by another man other than Douglas (e.g., Carlo Agretti, Henri Denault, Johann Riebmann, Frank Agretti, Peter Stavros, or even Ronald Reagan) thus inspiring Douglas' complicity in the scheme. But after the affair cooled, Douglas' sense of Jacqueline's duplicity crystallized and clarified. And he'd then realized he'd been duped... But what to do with young Richard now, sold to a nazi so desperate to be a daddy?
Douglas' guilt and sense of responsibility would cause him to "protect" Richard from a distance, nudging him in this-or-that direction professionally, and then leaving Richard a sizeable chunk of Douglas' empire upon death.
But just write it, dammit!
