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**spoilers**
"Disappointed" would be too strong a word: I enjoyed this last installment of the D'Artagnan romances. But I found it less compelling than expected, less compelling than, for example, much-maligned book 3.2 (LdLV), which brilliantly ramps up the tension of court intrigue and then explodes. Why is 3.3 not so compelling?
1. Bragelonne's love-sickness to death stops being pitiable and merely becomes pathetic. He should have done like his father and taken to drink.
2. Fouquet is set up as the noblest and most king-like character in the book, someone worthy of the fawning artistic groupies and the devotion of men like Aramis (and someone who therefore must be taken out of the picture if Louis is to grow into the role of true king). But the portrait is not convincing. We see generosity--but it is not really generosity, it is impulsive prodigality, and one seriously questions his fitness to be superintendent of finances. We see lack of decisiveness throughout most of the story. We see bizarre machinations and secret tunnels that allow him to communicate privately with a mistress--reminiscent of the king indeed, but not in a particularly flattering way. In the end we see loyalty, when he storms the Bastille-- but this actual virtue is the virtue of a subject, not a sovereign.
3. Philippe's role in the story is so marginal. I realize that Dumas was weaving together many threads of real history, and the existence of a masked and possibly royal prisoner was just one, and that Dumas himself did not give book 3.3 its title, but Philippe's thread of the story is dropped so coldly, it cries out for a reprise. It is severely disappointing not to get one.
4. Colbert becomes a different person at the end of the book, and so does Louis. Maybe that's the point--in order for Louis to become a great and good king (and ditto for Colbert as minister), he first had to be a ruthless consolidator of power. But it is humanly unconvincing. (When Louis changes after Nantes-- changes his daily habits, shuns and arrests and declares new intentions toward D'Artagnan, relents toward Aramis-- I more than half expected D'Artagnan to discover that Athos had committed the perfect crime, substituting Philippe again for Louis. That would have been satisfying on so many levels.) It is also politically naive, in a dangerous way. Is it credible that one who craves power and seizes it by ruthless and underhanded means will then shift gears and become mild and just?
"Disappointed" would be too strong a word: I enjoyed this last installment of the D'Artagnan romances. But I found it less compelling than expected, less compelling than, for example, much-maligned book 3.2 (LdLV), which brilliantly ramps up the tension of court intrigue and then explodes. Why is 3.3 not so compelling?
1. Bragelonne's love-sickness to death stops being pitiable and merely becomes pathetic. He should have done like his father and taken to drink.
2. Fouquet is set up as the noblest and most king-like character in the book, someone worthy of the fawning artistic groupies and the devotion of men like Aramis (and someone who therefore must be taken out of the picture if Louis is to grow into the role of true king). But the portrait is not convincing. We see generosity--but it is not really generosity, it is impulsive prodigality, and one seriously questions his fitness to be superintendent of finances. We see lack of decisiveness throughout most of the story. We see bizarre machinations and secret tunnels that allow him to communicate privately with a mistress--reminiscent of the king indeed, but not in a particularly flattering way. In the end we see loyalty, when he storms the Bastille-- but this actual virtue is the virtue of a subject, not a sovereign.
3. Philippe's role in the story is so marginal. I realize that Dumas was weaving together many threads of real history, and the existence of a masked and possibly royal prisoner was just one, and that Dumas himself did not give book 3.3 its title, but Philippe's thread of the story is dropped so coldly, it cries out for a reprise. It is severely disappointing not to get one.
4. Colbert becomes a different person at the end of the book, and so does Louis. Maybe that's the point--in order for Louis to become a great and good king (and ditto for Colbert as minister), he first had to be a ruthless consolidator of power. But it is humanly unconvincing. (When Louis changes after Nantes-- changes his daily habits, shuns and arrests and declares new intentions toward D'Artagnan, relents toward Aramis-- I more than half expected D'Artagnan to discover that Athos had committed the perfect crime, substituting Philippe again for Louis. That would have been satisfying on so many levels.) It is also politically naive, in a dangerous way. Is it credible that one who craves power and seizes it by ruthless and underhanded means will then shift gears and become mild and just?
