Copandon Dott

"Copandon Dott"

- He who looks down on 1 Gold is 1 Gold poorer. Even a little adds up to a lot. This 1 Gold is one step towards progress.

About
Copandon Dott is the president of the Dott Trading Company and also the empress of the Copa Empire, which was formerly a small country near M Land that she bought for a large sum of money, but under her skilled management, it has rapidly developed into a powerful metropolis and an important part of the Free Cities Alliance.

She was born in Portugal, a rich mercantile city where she learned the basic tenets of business and bargaining. She is a naturally gifted fortune diviner, and despite it being a highly forbidden act, when she was very young she used her omikuji skill on herself to discover her fate. On that day she learned with horror that she was cursed with Misfortune, and in her panic rewrote it as Great Fortune before forgetting the whole ordeal.

Ever since then however, she grew obsessed with the concept of luck and fortune, and she has spent much of her adult life scouring the world to find ways to increase them, such as finding lucky artefacts or the legendary land of fortune. Her greatest mission however was to find a man with "Great Fortune", an exceptional individual with amazing luck and destined for great things, in order to marry him and tie her fate to his. As he is the only one she has met so far that fits this criteria, ever since meeting Rance she has fervently been trying to seduce him with every tool at her disposal, even showering him with lavish gifts. Examples are his high quality cow carriage, a special visit to M Land where all the hostesses were skimpily clad virgins, and her aid in building Rance Castle.

Personality and Appearance
Copadon is a short petite woman with long silky blue hair. She is usually wearing a short red skirt, a white blouse and a red cap, though as her fortune grows her ensemble has grown a bit more intricate.

Copadon is a very single-minded woman and is seemingly relentless in obtaining what she wants. She scoured the world for years to find a man with Great Fortune, but when her efforts in seducing him failed, she simply decided that she would have to prove herself by becoming extraordinary herself, and set her mind on becoming the world's richest woman.

She is very shrewd and ambitious, and against all expectations quickly amassed a huge fortune, becoming one of the world's most recognized businessmen.

This capable and confident exterior however hides a large amount of complexes as she is extremely critical of herself. Probably as a result of her early trauma, she often worries about a myriad of things, such as her age, her breast size, her overall appearance, her sexual inexperience... However she shows this side of her personality very rarely, with Rance possibly being the only one ever privy to it.

Abilities
She was born in a family of shrine priests, and trained briefly as a miko. As such she learned some of their abilities, and grew particularly skilled with the use of the omikuji(*). This mysterious object when combined with her talent as a fortune diviner allows her to reveal an individual's overall fortune in life. It can also be used in battle, though its abilities there are quite unorthodox: if she draws a "Great Fortune", her enemies will be struck with a very powerful blow, but drawing "Great Misfortune" will instead cause her own allies to be attacked. However much of its negative effects can be negated with luck artefacts.

This skill is also tied to her own physical strength, which is itself quite impressive as she managed to kill Moheka the witch with ease, defeated assassins who came after her life, and easily won in an arm wrestling match during Zeth's gymnastics audition ( among Rance's female entourage at the time, only Sanakia could do the same ).

(*) Omikuji is a fortune written paper you pick randomly to see your fortune. With an initial level cap of 27, she has decent combat potential despite her esoteric skill set. However, using forbidden artefacts she manages to increase that cap permanently to 47, an extremely rare feat that turns her into a potentially terrible foe.
 * The paper could have anything from dai-kichi (great fortune) to dai-kyou (great curse).
 * Great blessing (dai-kichi, 大吉)
 * Middle blessing (chū-kichi, 中吉)
 * Small blessing (shō-kichi, 小吉)
 * Blessing (kichi, 吉)
 * Half-blessing (han-kichi, 半吉)
 * Near-blessing (sue-kichi, 末吉)
 * Near-small-blessing (sue-shō-kichi, 末小吉)
 * Curse (kyō, 凶)
 * Small curse (shō-kyō, 小凶)
 * Half-curse (han-kyō, 半凶)
 * Near-curse (sue-kyō, 末凶)
 * Great curse (dai-kyō, 大凶)

As it turns out however, neither combat nor divining are where she truly shines: her skill in business dealings and overall management is extraordinary, combining a great understanding of the stock market, shrewd business dealings and an overall great flair for money-making opportunities. Only a short amount of time after her escape of Genbu Castle, she had grown quite wealthy, and thanks to her direct involvement in the events surrounding Zeth, she managed to turn a consequent amount of money into a vast fortune.

Ever since then, her small business grew into one of the biggest business empires in the entire Continent, and she has managed to buy a country, build a large metropolis, helped build a castle, bartered with the infamous Pluepet, and become the de facto leader of the Free Cities.

Rance 5D
She was introduced as Bird Lithfie's girlfriend, as when she checked his fortune when they first met, it initially came up as "Great Fortune". Later on, she dumps Bard when she found out his fortune was in fact "Misfortune" ( as when she checked again, she realized that it really read Misfortune but that she had written over her own result as a child), and decides on Rance as her target partner, whose fortune truly was "Great Fortune".

Rance 6
She met up with Rance again in the Mansion of Moheka when Rance was requested to defeat the witch. As it turns out, Copadon had already killed the old witch because of some business deals, but when she sees Rance she joins his squad. As she learns of the upcoming revolution, she sells all her stocks directly related to Zeth at a high price and redistributes it in areas that took profit from the collapse. As the Monster Army was advancing on the country however, she reinvested a huge amount of money into the collapsed Zeth stock, confident that Rance would save the country. Her strategy pays off and Copadon grows massively wealthy. She also buys a small country near M Land that she renames the Copa Empire. At the end of the events of Rance 6, she left Zeth together with Sill Plain & Rance who had run away from the wedding with Magic.

Sengoku Rance
She sent a group of mercenaries to JAPAN to help Rance.

Rance Quest
The Copa empire that she rules over has steadily expanded by buying various free cities and has now become a very rich country. It would seem she's beginning to lose interest in Rance now, since all Rance does is goof around and waste money eating, sleeping and having sex. She still remains faithful to Rance as event after event leads her to think he does not like women over 30. However, on her 30th birthday, as she spends her entire birthday party in sorrow thinking that she will never be together with Rance again, Rance suddenly has sex with her at the end of the day, telling her she is an exception, because "Copandon has a body of a 20 year old" as far as he's concerned.

Trivia

 * Copandon gains a permanent level cap raise of +10 after each game  due to using a Forbidden Talent item, reaching as high as 47 by Rance Quest.
 * This makes her one of the few people to successfully raise her cap in a permanent way.
 * She is the personal favorite character of the Rance series' creator TADA.
 * In the Rance Quest popularity poll she was ranked 20th. In Rance VI she was unranked and Rance 5D featured a very small cast.
 * Though she did not start as such, as leader of the Copa Empire she has grown into one of the major political figures of the Continent infatuated with Rance, alongside Lia, Sheila, Magic, Gandhi, Kouhime and Crook.