I’ve loved the Musketeers ever since I first saw the 1973 movie but haven’t gotten around to reading the actual novel until now. I even managed to read The Man in the Iron Mask first, which should have tipped me off more about what to expect. But seeing how that book is described as a darker turn, I was still surprised about how the main characters act in the book.
Namely, they’re a bunch of douchebags.
They get into duels (which is illegal) and then have to fight the guards (who are trying to arrest them for doing something illegal) and maim and kill people without any sort of consequences. At one point Athos gets goaded into telling a dude his true name before a duel, only to tell him that now he has to die and goes about killing him. Porthos is leeching off a married woman, Athos became a Musketeer after doing the French equivalent of an honor-killing and they all mistreat their servants. Athos beats his if he speaks to him and they all recommend that Dartagan does the same. They financially take advantage of anyone they can, cause havoc everywhere they go and kill a lot of people super casually.
That being said, I do love them for it.
My friend and I used to describe them in the movie as “Varsity Stars who can get away with everything” but I had chalked a lot of that up to being characters in a Richard Lester movie, not the original novel. It was fun to read about them holding wine cellars hostage, putting in no effort to avoid violence and not realizing that rent was something they had to pay until their landlord informed them. They’re not great people, but they’re great to read.
by Both_Tone
29 Comments
yeah that’s part of the appeal right? like wouldn’t it be great if we could all act like assholes and do whatever we want? If only we weren’t so filled with empathy and consideration for our fellow beings… some of us anyway
Yeh, read the book. D’artagnan is much cooler and more competent than the country fool he plays in the film (i did love the films as well).
Best hot take book review I’ve seen. I think Dumas would even chuckle.
The Richard Lester movies are remarkably true to the book. I love them both.
Alexandre Dumas was well aware of his heroes’ flaws, just as Ian Fleming was well aware of James Bond’s flaws, or Sergio Leone was well aware of The Man with No Name’s flaws. The swashbuckling genre generated by *The Three Musketeers* was often far less cynical than the original. Lester restored the hilarious cynicism of the original book.
D’Artagnan has several love affairs and tricks Milady into sleeping with him while she thinks she’s sleeping with her lover — and despite the fact that Constance is supposed to be his girl. Richelieu is actually much smarter than the King and has France’s welfare in mind. Ultimately, D’Artagnan ends up working for Richelieu and becomes good friends with Rochefort, who appeared to be the big baddie at the beginning of the tale.
It’s all a big game, life is cheap, and what redeems our “heroes” is that they are brave, daring, clever, and just plain awesome and the people they kill are either non-entities or truly villainous — even more villainous than our heroes.
What surprised me most when reading the books, is how much d’Artagnan is after money. But yes, the musketeers were an unit of privileged and flamboyant men. In a way they remind me of how the hussars were said to be (same thing, womanizing assholes getting into fights, but glamorous).
Yes.
They are awesome.
I read this after *The Count of Monte Cristo*. I was, shall we say, underwhelmed.
The candy is also awful
D’artagnon being the biggest douche of all! Raping countess DeWinter through lying, whining that his daddy only got him a dork ass yellow horse instead of a Bentley. He has immature frat kid written all over him.
Yeah. That’s the point. Having said that I always wanted to be Porthos when I grew up. It doesn’t seem to have worked.
A product of their time. Modern sensibilities impose a distortion
They sure were. I remember being horrified when they talked about the baker’s wife.
The musketeers were only heroic and virtuous in their own estimation.
There was a Brit TV series, 5-10 years ago, very swashbuckling, you might like that too. Good casting and lots of action
I like a quote from “the Barber of Seville” where early on Figaro says
-Of course I know the doctor! He is giving me a room, for free! And I promise to pay him 10 gold a year, also for free.
This happens to everyone.
I am finding flaws in most of the books that I used to love back then. I watched movies when I was in school and now after reading them, I hate the patrogonist.
I realized you’re basically describing any Dungeons and Dragons party.
There’s definitely an appeal to being an adventurer that doesn’t care about the law and morality and such, it’s just fun in fiction. That plus everyone is hot for some reasons.
I mean, they’re French, so of course they’re assholes.
It’s been years since I read them, but that’s not the vibe I recall
Its a very masculine style of friendship they have.
Same experience here.
Knowing only the movies and adaptations, it came as a surprise to see how the characters are actually portrayed.
Then again, considering that this was written well after the revolution… I get the impression Dumas very much wanted to make fun of the societal standards around that time. He may even have dropped in a poke or two at his contemporaries 🙂
I just finished Van Gogh: The Life by Naifeh and Smith and had the same response. Yes, he had major mental problems, but wow, he was REALLY hard on everyone around him.
Perhaps the book was written for the expected reader at the time, using contemporary stereotypical attitudes and morals.
That’s something that struck me as well when I read it. “Wow, D’artagnan’s…pretty sure he’d be prosecuted for rape nowadays. Don’t see that in the Mickey Mouse version.”
Like, Dumas’ prose is still wonderful, but I definitely have to put a lot of *product of its time* filter on when reading.
No spoilers, but…the second and third books in the series (what gets published as “The Man in the Iron Mask” is something like the last quarter of the third book) play on this a lot.
The second book is called “Twenty Years After” and we see our middle-aged heroes figure out what each of them have grown into in the intervening years, what’s changed and what hasn’t. It’s an enormously underrated book.
Some other pieces of context:
1. Socially, France was in the process of being transformed from an Honor-based culture to one based upon Rules. This was very much played out in the clash between what nobility can get away with vs. what the rules declare.
2. Richelieu was very much the point man on the centralization of government and the creation of the modern nation-state. This would play out in full under Louis XIV, but the process of destroying the economic and military power of the nobility in France began under his father (or more accurately under his red right hand, Richelieu). A big part of this was bringing the nobility to heel under the Rule of Law rather than their traditional privileges. Another, unspoken policy was to impoverish the nobility and financially tie them to the Throne by making them spend lots of money and become dependent upon lucrative work either in government or the royal court.
3. The King’s Musketeers was composed mostly of “gentlemen,” but by and large, they were either “spare” sons, or from the less financially wealthy families and those from the provinces. Along with providing these young men a chance to sow their wild oats, it was also supposed to be an opportunity for them to show their worth and gain a chance at better and more lucrative government and court postings…and politically indoctrinate them into loyalty to the Crown.
I disliked their immoral attitudes I quit halfway through the book.
Some books are meant to be read at certain age, thus the magic.
The Club Dumas by Arturo Pérez-Reverte https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7194.The_Club_Dumas
He does it well, despite the rating
I mean yeah the revolution didn’t just happen for no reason. Even a romanticised version of the aristocracy *whom we’re supposed to like* are absolutely intolerably arrogant, abusive and exploitative towards everyone they can get away with.
On a similar vein, allow me to recommend the *Flashman* books. Even by his own standards, Flashman is a callous, racist, thieving raping villain, but he sure is engaging to read about. Plus you pick up a sense of what a very busy world it was in the Victorian age.
They’re supposed to be! 🤣 The first thing we see D’Art do is swear not to sell his father’s old and faithful warhorse. The third thing we see D’Art do is sell his father’s old and faithful warhorse. They’re musketeers, not knights.