The normal understanding of the Jaya has the Pandavas as the good guys and the Kauravas as the bad guys. Of course there are parts of India where Duryodhana is worshipped - there’s no rule to which we don’t find an exception. Digging a bit deeper, we find that the Pandavas aren’t all that good and the Kauravas aren’t all that bad.
In fact, they are both fighting over the same prize. It’s Yudhisthira who orders the burning of the Khandava forest. It’s Yudhisthira’s crowning himself chakravartin in Indraprastha that precipitates the fratricidal struggle: Duryodhana might have been happy if Yudhisthira was merely a fellow king, but he couldn’t stand him as an emperor.
All of which prompts a question: what if both sides are the bad guys?
If so, we have an entirely new picture of divinity. When Krishna says the famous words “yada yada…” we take it to mean that he will take birth on earth to vanquish adharma, by which we understand the greed of the Kauravas. What if he took birth to vanquish adharma in the form of both the Pandavas and the Kauravas, or more generally, the imperial drive?
We know that the war ends with seven survivors out of millions of combatants. Was that bug or a feature?