Richard Ranasinghe de Vulpian (2024)

Prejudice isn’t a question of preference but one of whether you are offering other human beings the bare minimum courtesy of treating them as human.

Richard to Seigi, Volume 1.

Richard Ranasinghe de Vulpian (リチャード・ラナシンハ・ドヴルピアン, Richādo Ranashinha Dovurupian^?) is the titular character and a protagonist of The Case Files of Jeweler Richard series.

He is the owner of Jewelry Étranger. His legal name is Richard Claremont.

Appearance[]

He is referenced (directly or indirectly) by most people to be a very conventionally attractive person.

The most famous and consistent one being Seigi himself. Other named people include Homura, and even Akashi herself. Even the customers at a coffee store also craned their necks at the same angle, like dominos falling, to follow Richard's form with their eyes.

According to Seigi, he has never laid eyes on such a beautiful person in his life before. Richard has high cheekbones, a straight nose, wavy golden hair, and smooth white skin. He has shades in his blue eyes, that the former felt like he could stare at them forever.

He is a creature who seemed to have gathered all of their parts from the world's most beautiful people. They harmonized together with a miraculous balance. Even time, air, and dust particles flowed around him in a different rhythm. He is beautiful not in his appearance, but also mannerisms. Seigi also compared Richard to a model, and also still finds Richard "amazingly handsome" even when the former frowns.

Seigi struggled to find the right phrase to describe Richard, stating that words like "hunk, handsome, pretty boy, Adonis" don't fit the latter. Richard gives off a feeling of "Just being there is enough", that he was perfect no matter what angle you looked at him from. Seigi settles on calling him a "Living Jewel", like a clear jewel lying at the bottom of a lake.

He tends to wear formal clothing including a light pastel lavender-colored suit over a blueish collared shirt underneath with a purple tie. Also according to Seigi, Richard looks about 30 when he is silent. However, he looks a little younger when he smiles.

Personality[]

Richard is a gentle, cultured and fairly open-minded person. He did not mind Mami and Akashi's relationship. He also made Seigi promise him to "Not hold prejudiced views or make discriminatory remarks on the basis of a person’s race, religion, sexual orientation, nationality, or any other quality."

He reminds Seigi not to make careless praises. That no matter how innocent and beautiful the words may be, it may not be taken as intended. If one repeats such careless insensitive words and deeds, one will end up in a situation where they will have to pay a large sum of money.

Richard never makes any persistent sales promotions. He always just smiled and bowed with perfect manners, saying that he looks forward to seeing his customers again. He cares more about his customers than immediate profits. Something like a "Sometimes the best gain is to lose" kind of thing.

According to Seigi, he has a little bit of a narcissistic and snide side to him. In the novels, he makes sarcastic comments quite frequently, and while he has knowledge on most things, it often requires a bribe from Seigi in the form of sweets for him to share early on. He can be quite childish and petulant in the right circumstances and around people he trusts.

According to Mami, he looks quite "cool", but he is quite passionate. She hopes to become a rich person like him as well.

Occupation[]

Richard is a gemstone appraiser, a jeweler with a diploma in gemology and a FGA. He works under the company Ranasinghe Jewelry and most of his customers are acquaintances of the company's owner and whom he considers his master, Saul Ranasinghe. The way Richard works is somewhat unorthodox, when a customer contacts him, he travels to the meeting place no matter where it is and tries to fulfill the customer’s request no matter how peculiar it may be. He carries with him a black velvet suitcase containing the items he will negotiate. That said, Richard works this way except for weekends, when he is at Jewelry Étranger, Ranasinghe Jewelry's base in Japan.

Jewelry Étranger is no ordinary jewelry store either, it has no counter or display cases, it is just a rented space on the second floor of a building in Ginza. Saul asked Richard to take over this new base and to treat the store as his own, after Richard had problems at the previous base in Hong Kong. When customers come to Étranger they go partly to do business and partly to chat with Richard. Richard's talks are not only about his products, being a great connoisseur of many varied topics, having very good conversational skills and being an engaging person, his customers always enjoy his company.

The function of the store is to be a meeting place to discuss with customers, but if someone is passing through and wants to have a look around they are just as welcome. If a customer is already booked or being served, the visitor is asked to come in later. Although they have a safe, no jewelry stays in the store, all the gemstones Richard handles are brought in and taken away in his black suitcase. The items inside are mostly single colored stones that he calls "loose", which are the most expensive, plus some accessories such as rings and earrings.

Richard refers to Jewelry Étranger as his "castle" where he can provide a safe haven to customers from the prejudice and judgment of the outside world and instead delight others with the beauty of gemstones.

Suffice it to say that if a customer asks for something in particular Richard will do his best to please them, but if they are disgruntled or have complicated feelings about the piece in question, Richard will ask them to consider it better - as he sincerely believes that stones guide people down the path they truly desire, whether it is good or bad, and that you have to have a place in life well decided in order to appreciate their beauty properly.

Funny thing is that, although he himself has admitted that he doesn't need one, at both bases he was in charge of (Hong Kong and Tokyo) he had a young assistant with similar duties such as cleaning the store and serving snacks and tea. In both cases Richard wanted to keep them close because he liked them and wanted to be friends with them.

The snacks in question are luxury sweets from reputable brands that Richard carefully chooses on his own. He has admitted that he partly chooses according to his own tastes but the priority is to order many varied sweets so as to satisfy the tastes of each customer and to bring up conversation with them. When Seigi questions him as to why all the sweets are so expensive, Richard tells him that he can't wait for a customer to make the effort to travel all the way to Ginza to discuss a luxury product like jewelry to be greeted with cookies from the convenience store that they can find in their own home. Likewise, Seigi asks Richard how he knows which snack the customer will prefer without even asking, to which he lets him know that through each conversation and interaction with the customer he can learn what he needs to know about the customer's tastes, and the same applies to his intuition with sales.^[1]

Richard remembers every piece of jewelry he has sold and to whom he has sold it. He says he couldn’t make good sales if he doesn’t remember what the customer likes or dislikes.^[2]

Above all, Richard loves his job as it has offered him the opportunity to do what makes him happy, which is to share his love for gemstones, he’s also grateful that it has allowed him to meet people who are now precious to him.

Abilities[]

• Multilingual: Richard is able to fluently converse in multiple languages. As a result, he is Saul's right-hand man when it comes to serving clients around the world.
• Knowledge: Besides having a first-class education from a young age, Richard has always had a love for books and immense curiosity, which led him to grow up as a man extremely knowledgeable in many varied subjects. Not only does he use this to his advantage in his sales talks at Étranger and in conversations in his daily life, also when a strange case comes into the store, most of the time it is his knowledge that helps to clarify the situation.

Trivia[]

• Richard is a quarter Sri Lankan from his grandmother, Leah, who was a white woman born there.^[3]
• Richard loves eating sweets, especially luxury brand sweets. But even with his refined tastes, his favorite dessert is homemade pudding made by Seigi.
• He’s a big fan of a special black tea called Royal Milk Tea.
• The “Ranasinghe” in Richard's name is the surname of his master, Saul Ranasinghe.
• Richard has an English father and a French mother. De Vulpian is Richard's mom's last name.
• He is a graduate of Cambridge University and holds a Master's degree.^[4]
• Richard has a degree in linguistics and holds several professional certificates on the field.
  • He can speak English, Japanese, French, Spanish, Mandarin, Cantonese, Tamil, Hindi, Tagalog, Italian, Sinhala, German, Arabic, and likely Portuguese, Korean, Thai, and other languages.
• Before the heir incident occurred, his dream was to become a language teacher. Specifically, to teach English to Japanese students.^[1]
• "Ricky" is a nickname of his. Only his family and his ex-fiancée, Deborah Şahin, called him by that.
• He has been boxing since he was fourteen years old. He has said he prefers boxing to any other sport.^[2]
• His first pet was a dog named Taro. According to Jeffrey, when Taro passed away, Richard locked himself in his room and cried for a whole day.^[5]
• Currently, together with Seigi, he takes care of two dogs named Jiro and Saburo. Which Seigi named partly after Richard's late Taro.^[6]
  • "Taro" (太郎) means first son, "Jiro" (耳郎) second son and "Saburo" (三郎) third son.
• He knows how to waltz, thanks to having had lessons as a child. Besides the waltz, Richard doesn't know any other type of dance.^[7]
• From elementary school through high school he spent summer vacations with his mother in a villa inherited from the de Vulpian family in Provence, France.^[8]
• He can play the violin.^[8]
• Richard is absolutely terrible in the kitchen. To the point that he had to rely on restaurants and hotel food for most of his adult life to avoid cooking for himself.
• Since his childhood, he often calls his mother by her first name. This is because Catherine herself told him to do so. However, this changes at the end of Volume 8.^[8]
• When Richard is in Japan, he drives a green Jaguar. It was given to him by the Ranasinghe Jewelry company.

References[]

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