Rance/Characters/Rance and Sill

Rance

The main character of this story. No matter how you look at it, he is a violent criminal... no, excuse me... I mean a level 10 swordsman.

Rance is the protagonist of the Rance series. He's a loud mouthed brutish swordsman who goes on several adventures throughout the continent. Saving countries and many maidens on his way, but his most well known aspect is his insatiable sex drive. Sex is his greatest desire; he is willing to do anything for it and as a result ends up having his way with many unfortunate women. Rance often dislikes other men, particularly Bishōnen men, as he sees them as stealing "his" women. As a person he's very brutish and cruel, but he's far from the worst person. Notably, he gets nicer over the course of the series thanks to his slave, a mage known as Sill, who acts as his Foil.

Rance possesses Level 2 Skills in Sword Combat and Adventuring. The former allows him to create a special move named "Rance Attack". As an alternative he also has a stronger attack named "Brutal Attack", but it's said to carry dangerous side effects, so it isn't used too often. Furthermore, his Adventuring skill allows him to travel long distances without a party, but it's more convenient for him to take Sill or someone else with him. In combat, he usually fights with one-handed swords, and starting from Rance VI uses a cursed sword named Chaos, with the power of breaking the Invincibility Field of the Archfiend and their Fiends. He also has an infinite Level Cap which allows him to reach levels far above any other being on the Continent, if he was actually active in training. Because he gains levels so quickly he also loses them quickly when relaxing, and hetends to take long breaks between adventures. His infinite Level Cap is also hereditary, causing every one of his children to also possess it. Finally, he's also able to raise the Level Cap of people he has sex with.

Tropes exhibited by Rance include:

• Absurdly High Level Cap: Unlike other beings on the Continent, his Level Cap has no limits. The highest level he has ever attained was an unbelievable 560, which put him on par with higher-tier gods and let him overpower an Archfiend with pure force, but that was a special case and he lost those levels very rapidly afterwards.
• Accidental Hero: Much of the Horrible Judge of Character surrounding him comes from him accidentally saving the day only by following his instincts and desires.
• Achievements in Ignorance: He has stated he has no idea how Rance Attacks works, what causes it, and why only he can do it. He just knows it's a very powerful Razor Wind attack that he can do.
• Adaptational Heroism: Following the retcon of the Kichikuou Rance timeline, many instances of it can be found in the canonical games starting from Rance 5D onwards. The most notable exemples:
  • Befriends and develops many relationships with various high-ranked individuals all over the world, while in Kichikuou Rance most of them were forced to work for him after being conquered.
  • Prevents the suicide of Eleanor Ran by giving her a new purpose for living, while in Kichikuou Rance, she's forced into his harem and can kill herself if he forces her hand too much.
  • Consider Patton to be one of his friends by Rance IX, while in Kichikuou Rance, the mere thought of shaking hands with a man disgusts him.
• Allergic to Love: When faced with Uesugi Kenshin, the first woman to ever confess her love to him (aside from Lia, who is more of a stalker), he was very confused and could not bring himself to face her for a while.
• Always Save the Girl: His absolute rule when it comes to women, especially his loved ones. As seen in Rance VI, Rance Quest, Rance IX and Kichikuou Rance, much of his actions are motivated by his desire to save Sill at all costs.
• Ambiguous Innocence: As pointed out by Natori, his behavior is explained by his lack of moral understanding, meaning he isn't inherently evil, but incredibly self-centered albeit leaning towards good.
• Anti-Hero: He's still worthy of be called a "hero" since his actions actually set up peace in each country he visited, even though it was by accident.
• Anything That Moves: Subverted, he only wants to have sex with cute beautiful woman, but refuses to have sex with children and is against incest. After hearing that an orphanage turns children into prostitutes and scarred a girl he was bonding with, he immediately went to that orphanage and completely destroyed it in one day along with his party.
• Apocalypse Maiden:
  • Subverted. Rudrathaum let him live despite his Absurdly High Level Cap, because with his chaotic personality, he was hoping him to become an Evil Overlord. To his dismay, Rance leans more towards Chaotic Neutral than Chaotic Evil and he is kept in check by Sill.
  • Played straight in two endings of Kichikuou Rance: King of the World ends with him as the tyrannical King of the entire Continent, and Demon King Rance involves him becoming the 8th Archfiend after killing Miki Kurusu with Satella.
• Ascended Glitch: In-Universe exemple. His lack of Level Cap is due to an oversight of the Soul Administrator Quelplan, but he was ultimately kept alive by the Gods due to his mischievous and selfish personnality, who expect him as a future Big Bad or Evil Overlord.
• Attractive Bent Gender: Let him visit the gender changing temple in Sengoku Rance and she gets to be one of the hottest female in the entire game. It also leads to a Nonstandard Game Over.
  • Identical Stranger: Said Attractive Bent Gender also happens to look exactly like Nobunaga's dead wife.
• Authority Equals Asskicking: Ends up uniting the entire human race with him as the leader at the beginning of Rance X.
• Awesome Moment of Crowning: It could have happened with Lia of Leazus in Rance I or Magic of Zeth in Rance VI, but he ran away from both of those princesses.
  • In Kichikuou Rance, Rance marries Lia, the Queen of Leazas who was the princess of the first game in order to get Sill back from Helman and proceeds to conquer the WHOLE WORLD!
• Badass Cape: Always wears a cape with his armor. It was white for the first few games and then changed it to green from VI, onwards. His cape in IX and X have furs on it, making it look more regal.
• Badass Army: For the entire series, he had the occasion to command the armies of all major human countries: Leazas, Zeth, Nippon and Helman.
• Battle Couple: With Sill Plain.
• Berserk Button: Harming women and especially children can make him go ballistic, and anyone causing harm to Sill will usually die.
• Big Good: Becomes this in Rance X, after uniting all of humanity behind him to fight agaisnt the Monster Army. It's even more apparent when he becomes the Archfiend, which ends the Human Alliance and creates new conflicts in his absence.
• Blue and Orange Morality: Rance runs on a very peculiar set of standards and morals. Essentially, he believes that he's a hero purely because the world rewards him for it, even though he often has no altruistic motives for his actions and tends to ruin lives for petty reasons. Due to this, he does whatever he feels like as long as he dosen't get punished for it.
• Born Lucky: He has a luck reading of "Great Fortune" on his side. This is the highest level of luck a person can possess.
• Breakout Character: Rance's personality and quirks quickly made him into one of the most popular characters in the eroge market. Case in point, he made it through eroge polls, only to always ends at the first place, prompting the poll to be exclusively for female characters.
• Brilliant, but Lazy: His infinite Level Cap could allow him to become more powerful than anything on the entire continent, if it weren't for him not bothering to train at all or take a long rest after an adventure causing it to reset back to the tens.
• Bring It: His answer to the Blood Memories's power and transforming into every Archfiend basically boils down to this. He first says to keep fighting and defeat every Archfiend it transforms into while hearing about how horrible they were during their era which discourages even his children, he then one ups that in the Abel phase by saying that he doesn't care if his opponent is a Squidman or Dragon and somehow even one ups that by laughing at its final transformation into Kkulf Kkulf, because he realizes that it's playing its final trump card and that the fight is almost over.
• Brutal Honesty: Surprisingly on rare occasions, he's good at giving advice but he's often incredibly blunt.
• Bullying a Dragon: After being captured by the Dread Fiend Camilla in Rance VI, he isn't afraid in the slightest and even says to her face his intention to have sex with her. Bonus points since Camilla is an actual dragon.
• The Casanova: A successful ladies' man who doesn't care if he breaks other people's hearts and is mostly driven by his hormones? He qualifies.
• Calling Your Attacks: Whenever he uses one of his special techniques. Including his kicks, or in his first duel against Kenshin, Rance Cossack.
• Can't Hold His Liquor: Despite his general badassery, he's not that good at handling alcohol, and drinks more than he should to appear more impressive.
• Cassandra Truth: Because of his personality and reputation, no one ever believes that he has saved countries from destruction and has defeated a former Archfiend along with several Fiends.
• Character Development: Gradually over the course of the series, but especially in Rance Quest: between being without Sill and having the Morurun Curse placed on him by Pastel Kalar, which prevent sex with people below Level 35, he is forced to be somewhat more patient and calm compared to the previous games.
• Character Title: The series are named after him.
• Chick Magnet: A very successful one, needless to say. Though a fairly small amount of the women who develop feelings for him actually end up in his harem, due to circumstances including his own personal standards, the girls' lives and himself having little long-term interest in them.
• Cloudcuckoolander: His general behavior towards people and Insane Troll Logic makes him this, sometimes making meta commentary about role playing games in general.
• Collector of the Strange: His other hobby is collecting Shellfish shells, left behind from the era of the Round Ones. Finding a rare shell causes him greater happiness than even a beautiful woman, and he bursts into uncharacteristic childlike glee when he does obtain one. Probably the fastest way to become Rance's friend is to give him a rare shell. It was later partly explained in his backstory, where his mentor had one in the form of a necklace.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: He is most often referred to as "the guy in green" when people first see him.
• Combat Pragmatist: This is what makes him such a dangerous combatant. A good example would be when he was fighting against a Fiend that can shapeshift into someone's greatest fear. After learning this, he pretended that his greatest fear is a caterpillar, and immediately killed the Fiend when he transformed into such a weak form.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: In fact, he's so much of a moron that he can fall in very obvious traps (usually involving women), but always manages to escape these situations thanks to his abilities.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Suffers one in the Poisoned Ending of Kichikuou Rance, which is also relatively hidden and difficult to obtain. In this bad ending, Rance gets drugged and is raped until he dies of a heart failure.
• Dare to Be Badass: He delivers one to his own children when they don't have the will to fight against the Blood Memories by saying that acting scared like that is unbecoming for them to act that way. This causes them fight alongside their father in the final battle.
• Death Is Cheap: He died once in Rance 4.2 at the hands of Arnie Rolento, but was shorty revived by the Holy Gal Monster Wenlina, having fallen in love with him. Happens once again in Rance X, being killed the Hero Arios Theoman and also revived not long after.
• Defeating the Undefeatable: This is basically what he and sometimes along with his party do in every game since Rance III/Rance 03, but it was pretty much stated that Rance's help was necessary for their victory. That said, he also needed them to do it, even though he would not admit it at all.
  • Defeated and finished off the World's Strongest Man, Thoma Lipton. This was his first time he did something like this and everyone was shocked that he succeeded.
  • Defeating the Archfiend Jill in Rance III/03.
  • Defeating the Dread Fiend Camilla in Rance VI.
  • Reducing the Dread Fiend Xavier to a Blood Soul and defeating the Holy Beast Orochi in Sengoku Rance.
  • Defeating and reducing too many Fiends to count in the 2nd Fiend War, as being the leader of the Fiend Extermination Squad.
  • Killing the devil Neplacus with only one blow, while his first child, Dark Rance, who's also the strongest of his children, still had trouble fighting him before training in Poly Poly World.
  • Destroying the Blood Memories, thus completely ending the Archfiend System and cycle of suffering of the Continent.
  • Defeating the berserk Second Class Goddess La Vaswald on his own.
• Depending on the Writer: When he was written by Tori, Rance comes off a callous, brutish thug who has little emotional attachment to his harem and more often than not borders on an outright Villain Protagonist. After Dice and Yoidore became the series writers, Rance, while still an Anti-Hero, is far more of a Lovable Rogue and Jerk with a Heart of Gold, and lacks many of his more unsympathetic moments.
  • In both "Evenicle Rance" DLCs, wherein Sill isn't there to keep him in check, Rance goes full on Chaotic Evil turning the world of Evenicle upside down and wreaking havoc wherever he goes. His behaviour in "Evenicle Rance 2" is so morally repugnant, that it makes even the game's main villains realise the error of their ways, perform a Heel–Face Turn (complete with a Heroic Sacrifice), and unite with the heroes in order to stop Rance from taking over the world.
• Designated Hero: An invoked example: he's in the narrative position of a hero despite possessing few to no actual heroic traits. Frequently Lampshaded by the games.
• Determinator: He simply won't give up when he puts his mind on something, which is one of the reasons why he keeps succeeding at his goals, no matter how selfish or absurd they may be. This is why many people in the series have trust in his strength and commanding ability, as all of them witnessed beforehand what he can pull off, despite many still finding him troublesome.
• Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?: What does Rance do when the Blood Memories, an entity which empowers and corrupts the Archfiend, which is known as the most powerful being on the Continent, who even makes the Fiends under him and his children lose hope to fight and on top of that takes his form during his tenure as Archfiend? He screams at it, saying how much it made him (and the population of the Continent) suffer, and to top it off he says that he shall finish it off personally. He then fights and defeat it with help from his allies.
• Did You Just Romance Cthulhu?: Some of the women he had sex with range from very destructive to Physical Gods. Which include:
  • Two Lv3 Magic users, Miracle Tou and Anise Sawatari, who both have very destructive magic ability.
  • Nearly every attractive female Fiend.
  • The Archfiend Jill after defeating her.
  • And finally the 1st Class Goddess Quelplan.
• Does Not Like Men: He hates other guys, because he thinks they will steal his women. He does however still acknowledges the strength of some males and has a few male friends such as Rick and Patton. This mindset of him is gradually downplayed as the series progress.
• Doting Parent: He is this towards his daughter Reset.
• 11th-Hour Ranger: He's the last person who joins in Rance X: Part 2 at level 400^note . Curiously enough, the focus of the story goes back to him while Rance's kids, who have been the main point of view of the story, are there along for the ride.
• Everyone Has Standards: Even he is against pedophilia and incest, and isn't fond of sexual torture (a bit of BDSM is fine by him but he doesn't actually enjoy causing physical pain in women).
• Fatal Flaw: His obsession for beautiful women and sex, as it often causes a lot of damage around. It actually cost him his life in one specific instance of Kichikuou Rance, in this case the Poisoned Ending.
• Foil: While he's a major one to Sill, due to his infamous personality he's also one to many individuals in the Continent, but especially two fellow adventurers:
  • Kentarou Ogawa: Both of them happen to be brown-haired warriors and are protagonists from Alicesoft games. Furthermore, they are among the most powerful humans and have the two existing Fiend-killing sword in their possession, along with a pink-haired girlfriend who means everything to them. However, while both of them are Idiot Hero, Rance is infamously known for his sex drive and audacity, while Kentarou is pretty much a classical Nice Guy protagonist oblivious to romance.
  • Bird Lithfie: Shares the same skills as him (albeit at Level 1) and starts off as a potential rival to Rance, having fallen in love with Sill, only for her to reject him. While he does act as a Nice Guy around women and is an overall pleasant individual compared to Rance, it's a cover for his less positive traits when they come into light by several women who got to know him, and he's actually quite a womanizer albeit with less success.
• Friend to All Children: One of his main redeeming traits. As it turns out, he's not that bad around kids, especially orphans; he does get along with the kids of an orphanage, but he does not want to have children of his own. This is why he makes Sill cast contraceptive magic on him. When he actually gets kids such as Dark Rance and Rangi, he doesn't like interacting with them that much since he doesn't like the fact he's a father, but this changed once he meets Reset, since she's the first child that actually wants to spent time with him. As a result of the time they spent together, Rance doesn't mind having kids anymore. In fact, at the time of his death, his children amounted to 100.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Downplayed, as it concerns only other adult companions, with most of them finding his antics annoying and troublesome. By the end of the series, his Jerkass traits were also downplayed, making him much more likable overall.
• Freudian Excuse: He was born in the world without any parents to take care of him, and ended up adopted by the mayor of the neighboring village. Spending his childhood as a mere servant, he was denied further education after elementary school from his adopted father and kept under servitude. He was also acquainted with the two daughters of the mayor: the youngest one abused him due to his low status, while the elder one, more nicer and gentle, was a victim of Rance's antics and didn't want to punish him for it. It ends up in disaster during a fateful night where he was raped at 14 years old by the younger daughter, full of sexual curiosity and seeing Rance as a lowly dog. After watching the abusive daughter in a helpless state following their intercourse and having discovered the wonders of sex, it cemented on him the belief of raping women in order to make them more submissive whenever they mistreat him and most of all, his lust for them. After being severely beaten and banished from the village due to a sex spree of his doing, he wandered alone for some time until he met the Female Warrior, who took him under his wing after sensing his potential (despite his perverted traits) and acted as his mentor and mother figure for two years until her death during an adventure. Alone once again, he finally found a home and a job thanks to an old friend of his mentor, Keith Gold, and started his life as an adventurer.
• Giver of Lame Names: He's not really creative when making names. Such as calling his dick the "Hyper Weapon" and his semen "Imperial Juice", or his Signature Move called "Rance Attack".
• Harem Seeker: His ultimate goal, granted by the time of Rance X.
• Hate at First Sight: His first canonical meeting with the Hero Arios Theoman happened when there were on opposing sides. Furthermore, Rance's hatred for him grew even more after their first battle, which left him with grievous wounds.
• The Hedonist: On par with his Chaotic Neutral tendencies, he lives only for his own pleasure, but he's not malevolent at all.
• Heroic Comedic Sociopath: Most of his antics makes him one.
• He's Back: After giving up his Archfiend powers to the Great Beast Quelplan in Rance X: Part 2, he reintroduces himself to his family buck naked with Chaos in his hand and kills Neplacus with one blow.
• Hope Bringer: Anytime he leads his party, he ends up making things that should be impossible to happen, to actually happen. It's why by Rance X, everyone was willing to make him the leader of mankind to fight against the Fiends.
• Horrible Judge of Character:
  • Almost every heroic character in the Rance series manages to somehow misinterpret Rance as a heroic person despite obvious hints suggesting otherwise. The stand out example would be King Ragnarokarc Super Gandhi, who believes Rance to be the messiah! (Quite ironically, he's not wrong, as Rance's actions actually allowed humanity to unite behind him by Rance X).
  • On the other hand, he himself believes that every cute woman is a good person and has been more than once tricked by many of them, outright killed in some rare cases. Some exceptions happen, like in Rance VI where he's lured by a ghost and wants to free her despite his companions' warnings, until it's revealed she really was a good person.
  • This even applies to evil characters such as the Jerkass Gods that govern and created the world Rance lives in. The Top God Rudrathaum expected him to become an evil tyrannical king that would bring chaos, destruction and despair to humanity which is why he was allowed to live despite being a Balance Breaker, but instead Rance actually shortens the war he's involved with and minimizes the amount of suffering humanity has to go through.
• Hypocritical Heartwarming: He can be quite quick to protect Sill from harm, on the grounds that being his slave, no one can hurt her but him.
• Idiot Hero: Due to a combination of prideful stubbornness, a complete inability to manage himself outside of quests and his habit of thinking with his dick first, Rance ends up basically bumbling himself to a good many situations and also died once because of it. Ironically, more than a few characters end up under the mistaken belief of him being some kind of tactical genius.
• Insane Troll Logic: Likes to use it to create any excuse to sleep with women.
• Jerkass: Was one during the first games, with small redeeming traits.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Time and again, he will end up calling out the other characters on why they suck. They can't disagree with Rance's assessment when he does it.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: It's a very deeply buried heart of gold, but he does have some good traits deep down, more apparent by the later games.
• Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: Notably in Kichikuou Rance, which can bring the worst out of him. It includes things like killing Miki Kurusu to be the new Archfiend, drugging the already fragile Sheila Helman, and most of the time acting like a huge dick to his harem, which can cause death to some of them.
• Karma Houdini: For all of his actions, he gets away scot-free most of time, either because he also did (either intended or accidental) heroic deeds at the same time or sheer luck. Until the end of Rance X, where Sill is killed by a crazy Bird Lithfie, creating a chain of events where he becomes the eighth Archfiend in Part 2 and spends the following years fighting the bloodlust in him.
• Laser-Guided Karma: On the other hand, there have been some canonical cases throughout the series where he pushes his luck so far that even his Born Lucky status can't save him:
  • In Rance VI he stumbles upon a Sanakia that has been body-switched with a simple mook's body via a special magic device. So he goes on a quest to find this device and restore her. When he eventually comes across it, instead of immediatelly restoring Sanakia to her original state, he decides to use it to switch bodies with the mook in her body instead. The result? The mook, now in Rance's body proceeds to sexually assault Rance in Sanakia's. Rance: Is this how I normally act? God! I'm an asshole!
  • In Rance Quest Magnum, his sexual assault of Pastel Kalar, results in him getting a curse that essentially prevents him from mindlessly having sex. For a guy who is all about fornicating with women, this is a Fate Worse than Death, although it does make him more patient.
• The Leader: Usually ends up filling this role in his adventures.
• Leitmotif: Is he doing something hilarious? Then expect "My Glorious Days" playing in the background starting as early as Rance II (not the remake).
• Lovable Sex Maniac: Averted in all but the later games of the series, where he's much more nicer and accepting of consent.
• Love Confession: Finally gives one to Sill in Rance X: Part 2 after he unfreezes her as the Archfiend.
• Man Child: It explains quite a lot about his personality, especially due to his lack of upbringing. To put it simply, he's a man in his twenties with the mind of a really horny teenager.
• Mayfly–December Romance: Has this with quite a few long-lived girls such as Fiends or non-humans, but none moreso than Sill, who's still quite young when Rance finally dies of old age.
• Magnetic Hero: Despite his personality, he has a knack for attracting other people to join his side thanks to his positive attitude and determination, most notably other Balance Breakers like him.
• Moral Myopia: He's aware of raping and killing people on a whim are bad things, but since he thinks of himself as a hero, he doesn't think of his actions as bad (thus the biased narration regarding the sex scenes). Downplayed in the later games, when he begins to be more cautious about his actions.
• Morality Pet: Surprisingly, he's one to Lia Parapara Leazas; her love for him refrains her from her world conquest as she's afraid of losing him. Best demonstrated when Rance successfully prevents her invasion of Zeth in Rance VI and basically persuades her to collaborate with the other major powers at the beginning of Rance X.
• More Teeth Than the Osmond Family: His shark teeth are a signature look of his. His children also inherit this trait.
• Mysterious Past: For most of the series. It isn't until fairly late in that his backstory was revealed.
• Nominal Hero: And actually calls himself a hero even though everyone knows his antics. The game series narrations frequently call him someone in the position of a hero, despite not possessing any heroic traits.
• Odd Friendship: Many, if not all of his positive relations with men are many variants of it.
• Only One Name: Rance was an orphaned peasant: if he has a surname, he doesn't know what it is. When pressed for one on several occasions, he has given "Rance Clear", but it's pretty obvious he just made that up on the spot.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: You know that something is wrong when Rance stopped caring about his goal to have sex with beautiful women. A notable example is him killing Medusa after she raped and crippled Rizna, and killed Gandhi and Kaoru. He stopped caring about having sex with her and just killed her even when she tried to bargain sex for her life. Everyone was shocked to see him kill a beautiful woman without hesitation.
• Out-of-Character Alert: Several instances in the games.
  • Near the end of Kichikuou Rance, he suddenly hugs Sill and gently talks to her as they face the Creator God himself, showing intense fear for the first time of his life.
  • A sidequest in Rance VI features him kick out female bandits of their lair. Notably, he doesn't rape any of them, prompting his party to became worried. It later turns out he was saving it for the bandit leader, only to learn she was a transgender woman.
  • Whenever he mentions Sill following her Harmless Freezing in Sengoku Rance, he begins to grieve and has a serious look on his face despite him saying otherwise.
• Out with a Bang: Has one in the Poisoned Ending of Kichikuou Rance, after having sex with Katyusha Bosch and Saulnia Benz.
• Overprotective Dad: When he starts having daughters, this tends to be how he acts toward them. This is particularly notable towards his first daughter, Reset Kalar.
• Papa Wolf: He's very protective towards his daughter Reset Kalar.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: One optional event in Rance VI shows him disguising as a doctor to infiltrate the military hospital to have his way with the Ice General Uspira Shintou.
• Parental Abandonment: His parentage remains a mystery to this day.
• Pervert Dad: Before he knew Reset was his daughter, he tried to raise her into a bride for him to have sex with.
• Protagonist-Centered Morality: One of the main reasons he is like that. Thinking of himself as a great hero, he doesn't consider everything he does wrong. Downplayed by the time of Rance Quest, having grown out of it.
• Pure Is Not Good: On several occasions, abilities that destroy a person via their inner evil have no effect whatsoever on Rance, which confuses the hell out of everyone, since it's well known that only the pure of heart could survive such things. The official explanation is that Rance genuinely doesn't believe he's doing anything evil, therefore there is no evil in his thoughts, regardless of what other people think of his actions.
• Quest for Sex: Exaggerated, his final objective is to get laid with every beautiful woman of the Continent. He also has sex with his harem on a daily basis.
• Questionable Consent: For roughly half of the series, most of the girls he slept with all fall under this trope instead of outright rape, many by offering Sex for Services in exchange for helping them in a quest or by Rance persuading them to do so. Throughout the later half of series, it's slowly downplayed and he progressively gets patient and more accepting of consent. That said, it only applies to his allies, as he stills have his way with women in enemy factions during armed conflicts.
• Refuge in Audacity: Given his personality, many of his accomplishments came from these, daring to do any tactic possible, no matter how outrageous or underhanded they are. Such as kissing Camilla to distract her despite being weaponless in Rance VI.
• She Is Not My Girlfriend: Happens to him more than once with Sill, as many people mistake them for lovers, and he often tries to deny it by abusing Sill at random.
• Signature Laugh: Gahahaha!
• Signature Move: Rance Attack, an overhead sword strike that creates a wave of energy in front of him.
• A Sinister Clue: Downplayed. He's left handed, but not a villain.
• Sir Swearsalot: Let's just say that his vocabulary is quite simple.
• Slasher Smile: His default face.
• Small Name, Big Ego: Zig-Zagged. He likes to boast about his many (non-existent) qualities, but over the course of the games actually saves numerous cities and countries from destruction. The twist being that many circumstances hide his role in the games, such as Lia using her influence in order to prevent him from getting popular with girls, Zeth not wanting other nations to realize that the Maginot Line actually went down and that they nearly got invaded by Fiends and monsters, or that he was only a secret leader to the actual representative of the Oda Clan, Kou Oda.
• Thou Shall Not Kill:
  • His policy regarding women. He refuses to kill them until they happen to be extremely ugly and/or cross the Moral Event Horizon. As such, his body count for women is almost null.
  • Downplayed in Kichikuou Rance due to bordering close to Villain Protagonist, which features him killing some women in battles.
• Spanner in the Works: His unpredictable behavior allowed him to derail almost every conflict happening in the LP Era.
  • On other franchises, Alicesoft released DLCs for the Evenicle 1 and 2 games, wherein Rance replaces the normal protagonist. The result in both cases is the world getting turned upside down by Rance's actions. Most notably, in "Evenicle Rance 2", Rance's morally repugnant behavior causes the villains of the series to have a Heel Realisation, perform a Heel–Face Turn, along with a Heroic Sacrifice, and unite with the heroes in order to stop Rance from taking everything over. In both cases the game ends with a Non-Standard Game Over message about how Rance wasn't suitable for this world after all.
• Standard Hero Reward: Thanks to his actions, he was given the opportunities to marry Queen Lia from Leazas and Princess Magic from Zeth, both of them being kingdoms saved by Rance, but refused both, preferring remaining free as a roaming adventurer.
• Tough Love: This is the best way how you can describe his relation with his first child, Dark Rance. Rance does seem to show some form of care and respect for him since in all of their battles in Rance VI, he actually lets him escape alive and feels pride in the growth his son shows in combat. When they meet again in Rance Quest, one of things he does after meeting him is kick him of a forty store tower without a care in the world since he knows/believes that it won't kill him, but toughen him up into a man. He also offers to do the same to Reset, but she declined.
• Token Evil Teammate: A rare case applied to the protagonist himself, while almost all of his other companions are mostly good persons.
• Took a Level in Kindness: As the series goes on, he gradually becomes less of a dick, and shows more signs of genuinely caring for his friends and harem.
• Tsundere: Towards many people (which can include some of his male friends such as Rick and Patton), but Sill especially.
• Unscrupulous Hero: Up until Rance VI, he was mostly doing heroic things solely for himself, and cared little about other people and their problems unless he could get some Gold or women out of it. Afterwards he still often has ulterior motives, but becomes gradually more willing to do things for others.
• Villain Protagonist: In Kichikuou Rance, he has several Kick the Dog or Shoot the Dog moments who can cement him into an actual villain.
• Wacky Parent, Serious Child: Naturally he is the wacky parent to his serious children, to the point they passed out after seeing the ridiculous events that transpire around him^{note(Warning:SPOILERS)} .
• We Do the Impossible: He only subscribes in doing the impossible. Anything else is just below him. It's why by Rance X, the entire world leaders trust him to be their leader. And in the True Final Boss fight of Part 2, he defeats the cause of all the grief in the world.
• What the Hell, Hero?: A lot of characters call him on it, but it fell on deaf ears in the first games. Later on, it's whether Rance deciding to go with it or not, and it depends on the characters present with him.
• Would Hurt a Child: He was willing to cut down the kid Maha Margaret without mercy. This is justified since Maha is a spy who was working for his older sister, Minerva, and was trying to kill Rick, one of Rance's closest friends, with a Puchi Hanny.
• Younger Than They Look: He's only 18 in the first two games. Given how he acts, it's easy to assume he's older.

Sill Plain

A magic user bought by Rance. A spell of obedience has been casted on her so she can't act against Rance's will. (By this time the spell has possibly lost its effect but..)

Sill Plain is the slave of Rance. She was originally a noble from Zeth until she got kidnapped by slave traders and bought by Rance for 15,000 Gold. She's a very nice girl who likes to help other people and tries to convince her master Rance to help other people, which he will do depending on his mood.

She has a staggering level cap of 80. This was not her original level cap, but after many sessions of sex with her master Rance it gradually rose to that point. She possesses Level 1 skills in Magic and Divine Magic, giving her options for offense and healing. While she's overshadowed by Level 2 users of those skills, she's still a very versatile mage and a great help to Rance in combat.

Tropes exhibited by Sill include:

• Anime Hair: If one ever needs a reminder as to when the series was created, Sill's giant puffball of hair is a good sign that it was the tail-end of The '80s. An attempt was made to give her a more normal style in Kichikuou Rance, but after the series changed artists it went right back to being fluffy.
• Artificial Human: It is revealed at the very end of Rance X:Part 2 that she was never unfrozen in the first place, due to the Archfiend's curse being too strong to be lifted. Instead, the Pope Crook Mofus opted for an alternative solution: using one of the treasures of Helman, she transferred her soul to a artificial body named "IP Body" and was effectively revived this way.
• Betty and Veronica: The Betty to both Lia and Satella's Veronica.
• Butt-Monkey: One of the series constant victims of abuse, much of it courtesy of Rance.
• Distressed Damsel: She gets kidnapped a lot.
• Fantasy Contraception: Rance has her casting a contraception spell on him on a regular basis, but it stopped working once she was put in ice, causing him to impregnate the Kalar Queen Pastel and having Reset, his third child, with her, in Rance Quest.
• Foil: To Rance. While he's mostly brutish and rude towards everyone he meets, Sill always tries to cool down the situation and is very caring and nicer to people.
• Happiness in Slavery: Despite having several opportunities to escape Rance's grasp or claiming her freedom, she chose to stay with him, mostly happy as his slave.
• Harmless Freezing: This happened to her in both timelines.
  • A victim of one in Kichikuou Rance, in the ending Slave: to force him to create chaos in the world, Rudrathaum takes him the most important thing ever to him: Sill, by putting her in ice.
  • In Sengoku Rance, she ends up taking a curse from the Archfiend Little Princess to protect Rance, and is encased in unbreakable ice. She's finally freed in Rance X, though her body stayed in ice: Her soul was transferred to an IP Body instead. She's freed for real at the very end of Rance X:Part 2, by Archfiend Rance himself.
• Living Emotional Crutch: The one instance where she actually dies in Kichikuou Rance causes Rance to torture Ruberan, the one responsible for her jailing, to death, and can potentially kill Miki in cold blood to be the 8th Archfiend. Happens once again at the end of Rance X, where Sill is murdered by Bird Lithfie, causing Rance to throw away his humanity and succeed Miki as the next Archfiend.
• Morality Chain: Towards Rance. Several non-canon scenarios show that if she were to die, all of Rance's bad traits would be turned up to eleven. For example, in one ending of Kichikuou Rance, because of her death Rance becomes the most cruel Archfiend known to mankind.
• Mysterious Past: All we know is that she's originally from Zeth, and was the daughter of a nobleman. Why and how she got sold into slavery has remained unexplained, and no members of her family (if they still exist) ever make even a small appearance.
• Nice Girl: Her main defining trait, and most of the people met by Rance remember her as such.
• One True Love: While Rance denies it constantly, the series makes clear multiple times she is this to him.
• Put On The Bus: She spends the entirety of Rance Quest and Rance IX stuck in ice, leaving her unable to influence the plot in any way.
• The Red Mage: Knows both healing and offensive spells, making her one of the best assets for Rance in his adventures.
• Rose-Haired Girl: She fits the trope to a T, with her being one of the nicest characters in the series and very forgiving.
• Satellite Character: She's almost never seen apart from Rance, and most of her role and character revolves around him.
• Stripperiffic: Given that Rance of all people picks out her clothes, she tends to wear very little, with the amount increasing as games go on. In Rance 02 she wore little more than a bikini, but by the end of the series was wearing a more sensible cloak and dress.
• Taking the Bullet: During Little Princess' rampage in Sengoku Rance, she took a hit from her while protecting Rance, and it causes her to be trapped in eternal ice.
• What Does She See in Him?: Discussed through the series. It's acknowledged by multiple characters that she's in love with Rance, but most of them cannot explain why. One of the very first hints is her rejection of Bird Lithfie in Rance II/02, despite seemingly being much nicer than Rance.
• Yamato Nadeshiko: Has shades of this due to her gentle demeanor and manners, emphasized by her Nipponese costume in Sengoku Rance.
• You Gotta Have Blue Hair: Her signature pink hair.