Diego Lovelace

Diego José San Fernando Lovelace
Name	Diego José San Fernando Lovelace
Nihongo	ディエゴ・ホセ・サン・フェルナンド・ラブレス
Information
Gender	Male
Age	54 (manga) 53 (anime)
Affiliates	Garcia Lovelace Rosarita Cisneros Fabiola Iglesias Unnamed wife (deceased)
Affiliation	Lovelace family
Race/Nationality	Venezuelan
Status	Deceased
First Appearance
Manga	Chapter 02: Rasta Blasta Part 1
Anime	Episode 08: Rasta Blasta
Anime Voice
Japanese Voice	Ryūsuke Ōbayashi
English Voice	Michael Kopsa
Image Gallery

Diego José San Fernando Lovelace (ディエゴ・ホセ・サン・フェルナンド・ラブレス Diego Hose San Ferunando Raburesu) was the eleventh head of the Lovelace family and the father of Garcia Lovelace.

Appearance

Diego was an older man with a skinny build, pale skin, short gray hair, blue eyes, and a mustache. He frequently wore long-sleeved polo shirts and khakis. According to his tombstone, he was born in November 1941, making him approximately 54 years old.

History

Diego was a descendant of a Spanish settler who settled in South America by traveling on Francisco Pizarro's first colonial expedition on the continent. While it is one of the thirteen noble families of South America, the Lovelace family fell upon hard times in the late 20th century, with only the meager income from their plantations in Venezuela maintaining their lifestyle. In particular, tobacco and mineral mining were key to sustaining Diego's declining wealth, though the tobacco crops had been hit by a flood in recent times. Diego's wife died in 1990-1991, and around that same year he took in Rosarita Cisneros when she was escaping from the Colombian Cartel and her former FARC comrades as a favor to his old friend, Roberta's father. He took her in and treated her as family, giving her a maid costume at her request since Roberta claimed that she did not want to be a burden or take advantage of his kindness. After his wife's passing, Roberta took care of Garcia and played with him while Diego attended to overseeing his business.

Rasta Blasta

When valuable minerals like lutetium were discovered during a land survey of the Lovelace estate, the Manisarera Cartel tried to intimidate Diego into giving up his land. When the patriarch refused to give in to their demands with Roberta's help, the cartel kidnapped Diego's son Garcia. Although he was reluctant to send Roberta to find Garcia, in the end he allowed her to track down the boy and rescue him. As the Lagoon Company shipped Garcia to Roanapur to deliver the boy to the cartel, Garcia mentioned his father's name and how a local Venezuelan cartel tried to intimidate the Lovelace head into giving up his plantation, but Diego would not budge. Diego was also seen with Roberta and Garcia in a photograph that Boris provided to Balalaika. Eventually, Roberta brought Garcia home safely back to Venezuela.

El Baile de la muerte / Roberta's Blood Trail

Sometime later, the estate's mine became financially stable, so Diego decided to increase the amount of employees to help out. Because Fabiola Iglesias was distantly related to one of Diego's farmhands, she was able to work for the Lovelace family using her familial connection as another maid alongside Roberta. On August 12, 1996, Diego visited Barinas State, Venezuela to provide support to a friend who was a high-ranking representative of the leftist party MVR in the country. It was speculated that Diego became friends with party leaders so that he could get government protection for Roberta to stave off groups who wanted the maid dead. At the same time, the NSA's Grey Fox team operated in the country in order to assassinate the leader at his party's inauguration ceremony. Shane Caxton ordered the explosion to go ahead, resulting in the bomb detonating, killing the leader as well as killing Diego Lovelace, who was not a target. Roberta was present nearby and witnessed the chaos, finding out that Diego was killed in the blast. At Diego's funeral, many attendees grieved as a Christian priest delivered a eulogy. Diego's son Garcia cried and asked Roberta if his father did anything to anger God, to which Roberta replied that Diego had nothing to be ashamed of in the face of God. Because of Diego's death as well as Garcia's grief, Roberta decided to avenge her master and took up her "Bloodhound" persona once more to hunt down Diego's killers.

As Roberta hid in Roanapur to track down and kill the members of Grey Fox in the city, she occasionally saw a hallucination of a man whom she killed due to the great amounts of pills that she ingested. In one instance, she had been praying for Diego's salvation and Garcia's protection, and Roberta's illusion told her that she could not be saved no matter how much she repented, which angered her. In another situation, the apparition told her that Diego would not have wanted her to continue her Bloodhound person and get revenge, but Roberta angrily replied that sins (i.e. Diego's murder) could only be atoned for by blood.

When Garcia met Caxton by chance and angrily relayed to him how his father was murdered by Grey Fox, Caxton even offered his gun to Garcia to take revenge if he so chose. At that moment, Garcia had a flashback to a memory he had of Diego while Roberta was serving them a drink in the courtyard. Diego listened to his son, who showed him a photograph of somebody hunting in a forest. Pouting, Garcia told his father that Emilio stated that there were four things hidden in the picture, remarking that Emilio bragged about it while the boy could not discern the things. Examining the photo, the relaxed Diego warned his son not to call people liars so quickly. Looking at the back of the photo, Diego saw the four things (a lion, a horned owl, an angel, and Jesus Christ) and pointed them out to his son. Amazed at the hidden things, Garcia asked why he could not see them at first. Saying that Garcia looked at the photo with a bias of one perspective, Diego taught him to look at things, problems, and situations from many different perspectives to get the full picture and solution.

Trivia

• In a popularity contest during the 10th manga collection release, Diego Lovelace ranked 57th (tying with Gustavo, Chief Watsap, and Tou Chi) with 2 votes.
• In a popularity contest during the 12th manga collection release, Diego Lovelace ranked 50th (tying with Kageyama and Tou Chi) with 5 votes.
• While the anime consistently puts Diego's time of death in October 1995, there are various inconsistencies concerning Diego's month/date of death in the manga, the earliest date being August 12. In Chapters 44 and 65, Diego's month of death is given as August on his tombstone. In Chapters 50 and 52, it is respectively stated by Roberta and Boris that Diego was killed in September, and in Chapter 66, Garcia claims that the bombing took place in October. There is also a typo in the original Japanese release of Chapter 44 for the death year, which shows the time of death as August 1991. In the North American (English) release, this is corrected to August 1996.