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28th Mar '13 8:46:03 PM Xtifr

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{{Raffles}} is the GentlemanThief protagonist of a series of stories by E.W. Hornung, [[SherlockHolmes Arthur Conan Doyle's]] brother-in-law. Intended as a sort of dark reflection of Sherlock Holmes, rather than an asocial BunnyEarsLawyer who works toward law, Raffles is a seemingly respectable gentleman who commits crimes, and rather than the bluff Watson, he is assisted by ''his'' chronicler, "Bunny" Manders, something of a CowardlySidekick.

!!!Contains examples of:

* AdaptationalHeroism: Tends to happen to Raffles a lot.
* Main/{{Adorkable}}: Bunny
* AffablyEvil: Raffles ''is'' this trope---he's charming, funny, a good friend to have and a very valuable man to have on your side in a tight pinch...and an unrepentant thief.
* AmbiguouslyGay: Raffles and Bunny, who have lots of HoYay. Raffles is described as associating with Oscar Wilde's aesthetic movement and dressing according to that fashion, [[RealMenWearPink but being surprisingly macho]].
* AntiHero / VillainProtagonist: Raffles varies between the two
* BlackandGrayMorality: While Raffles is presented as AffablyEvil, some of his victims are no saints, and could be said to deserve some comeuppance...[[spoiler: a crooked South African diamond magnate, an unscrupulous Australian land baron, and a brutal, brutish American prizefighter all fall into this category.]]
* {{Cricket}}: Raffles is a professional cricketer and spin bowler, if an amateur cracksman. 
* DependingOnTheWriter: While Hornung intented Raffles to be a throuroughly unsympathetic character, the association of him with the GentlemanThief trope meant he came to be seen as similar to ArseneLupin or Literature/TheSaint. Barry Perowne, who wrote Raffles stories after Hornung's death, took this perception and ran with it, to the extent that a parody by John L. Breen has Hornung's Raffles and Perowne's Raffles as seperate characters.
* DisguisedInDrag: Bunny does this in The Rest Cure.
* DownerEnding: [[spoiler:The series ends with both Raffles and Bunny getting shot in the Second Boer War. Raffles dies and Bunny becomes an invalid.]]
* DrivenToSuicide / InterruptedSuicide: How it all begins. After losing all his money and facing disgrace, Bunny comes to Raffles to ask for help. When Raffles explains that he doesn't have any money either Bunny tries to kill himself but Raffles stops him.
* EvenEvilHasStandards: Raffles will not steal from a home while he is a guest there (stealing from other guests is OK by him, though); he will not cheat at games; he will not betray a fellow thief, even one who's blackmailing him (he ''despises'' blackmailers); and in many ways, thieves or no, he and Bunny retain most of their late-Victorian upper-class code. 
* EvilCounterpart: As noted above, Raffles and Bunny are this to Holmes and Watson.
* FakingTheDead: [[spoiler:Raffles does this. Twice.]]
* GaolTime: [[spoiler:Following The Gift of the Emperor Bunny spends some time in prison.]]
* GentlemanThief: One of the first, although Raffles steals because he needs the money- he couldn't keep up his front as a gentleman-of-leisure without the profits from his crimes.
* HairContrastDuo: Blond, naive Bunny and dark, cynical Raffles.
* HaveAGayOldTime: Although there would be plenty of HoYay without it, it's definitely furthered by Bunny's references to himself as being Raffles' "fag" while they were at school together. There is also some straight-faced talk of man-diddling. 
* HeroAntagonist: Inspector Mackenzie of Scotland Yard.
* HeterosexualLifePartners: Sort of. While there's definitely subtext and most fans see their relationship as a homosexual one, it never actually states that their relationship is anything but platonic (being written in Victorian times and all) and both characters do have female love interests.
* HomoeroticSubtext: And how!
* ImportantHaircut: Raffles used to have a mustache, but he shaved it off after his first heist.
* IShouldWriteABookAboutThis: The stories are presented as Bunny's memoirs.
* KilledMidSentence: [[spoiler:It's not only been the best time I ever had, old Bunny, but I'm not half sure-]]
* MasterOfDisguise: Raffles, in a dept to Sherlock Holmes.
* OfCourseISmoke: Mirabel Renny in "The Raffles Bombshell".
* OlderThanTheyLook: Bunny is implied to look quite young. In Mr Justice Raffles, when explaining he and Raffles knew each other from school, Camilla Belsize comments that she'd thought Raffles would have been a little before his time. After the TimeSkip he is described as only being able to grow a peach fuzz moustache despite being in his 30s by now. 
* OnlyKnownByTheirNickname: Bunny's real name is only ever mentioned in one story; The Last Word. (It's Harry)
* PayEvilUntoEvil: Raffles often steals from nasty, new-money people. And although he does not normally kill, he does cause the deaths of some very nasty Camorra men through an inadvertent {{plan}}. He also connives in allowing a murderer to escape, but the person in question killed a would-be blackmailer, which, by the standards of the time, "didn't count," according to Orwell's essay on Raffles.
* PromotedToLoveInterest: In Graham Greene's play ''The Return of A.J. Raffles'' as well as Kim Newman's Literature/{{The Hound Of The Durbervilles}} Raffles and Bunny are depicted as a couple.
* RedemptionEqualsDeath: [[spoiler:Raffles goes off to fight in the Boer War, thinking it's about time he gives something back to his country. He gets shot and killed.]]
* SecondBoerWar: Raffles and Bunny both fight in this war in the story The Knees of the Gods.
* {{Seme}} / {{Uke}}: Again, the pair aren't explicitly gay, but Raffles and Bunny fit rather well into these respective tropes.
* SensitiveGuyAndManlyMan: Bunny and Raffles.
* {{Sidekick}}: Bunny. More precisely a CowardlySidekick.
* SmokingIsCool: Raffles famously favors Sullivan cigarettes [[spoiler: to the point that, when returning to London after being lost and presumed dead, he doesn't dare smoke them, since he was so well-known to love that particular brand.]]
* TallDarkAndSnarky: Raffles
* TheWatson: Bunny, of course.
* TimeSkip: Set between The Gift of the Emperor and No Sinecure.
* UnbuiltTrope: While Raffles isn't the first GentlemanThief, he comes from an era where people weren't as accepting of criminal heroes (who got away with it), and so he reads like a nastier version of the GentlemanThief we are familiar with (ArseneLupin is the straighter version of that trope).
* WithFriendsLikeThese: Raffles often treats Bunny cruelly in various ways, [[spoiler: such as letting Bunny think Raffles is really dead, not telling him what the real plan is, ]]and making it clear that he doesn't think much of Bunny's brainpower. But Raffles eventually does come around to admitting that in a crunch, there's nobody he'd rather have at his back...and Bunny would cheerfully die for Raffles. 
* YoungerThanTheyLook: During the TimeSkip Raffles' hair turns prematurely white and he is described as having aged 20 years.
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12th Jan '13 2:09:41 PM thisisanaccount