Assane Diop

Babakar Diop came from Senegal to Paris and worked as the chauffeur for the Pellegrinis, a wealthy family. When a necklace that once belonged to Marie Antoinette vanished from their house, he took the blame. Babakar was jailed and died in prison, leaving his son Assane on his own as a teenager.

All Assane had left from his father was a book: Arsène Lupin, Gentleman Burglar. He read the gentleman thief's adventures over and over until he knew exactly how Lupin thought. At boarding school he met Benjamin, his friend for life, and Claire, who would become the mother of his son.

Twenty-five years later, the necklace resurfaces at a Louvre auction. Assane walks into the museum disguised as a janitor and walks out with the jewels, using people's assumptions against them: nobody looks twice at a Black man in a uniform.

The heist is only the start. Assane learns his father was framed, gets himself locked up to question an inmate, breaks out of prison and kidnaps the cop who handled Babakar's case. Every move comes with a new disguise and a trick lifted from the books.

Assane and Claire are separated and share a son, Raoul. Assane tries to show up for him, but the double life gets in the way: he's late, disappears without a word and lies to them both. His war on Hubert Pellegrini ends up reaching the boy at a Lupin festival in Étretat.

With Raoul in danger and his own face in every paper, Assane starts working in the open. He takes his showdown with Hubert to the stage of the Théâtre du Châtelet and turns revenge into a magic act: Hubert confesses in front of the audience and the police. Assane gets a moment with Claire and Raoul, then vanishes.

A year later, Assane fakes his death so he can return to Paris without being hunted. The plan falls apart when his mother, Mariama, calls to say she's been kidnapped, and his past as a young thief comes back in the shape of Keller. To save his family, Assane does what Lupin almost never does: he turns himself in. In prison, he finds out who's in the next cell.

Assane doesn't exist in Maurice Leblanc's books. He's an Arsène Lupin fan who copies the character's methods.