Every person prefers himself first
That is why love, friendship, and relativs are underestimated
That is why when they chanted: One  for all, all for one .. We stared at the Three Musketeers for a long time; Because they lived and implemented it

Dumas is said to have borrowed their story from the diary of a knight named Charles Patza, better known as Count Dartanian, who had a practice of espionage for Louis XIII,
and his memoirs were in the hands of Alexandre Dumas; The strongest story in the nineteenth century


The funny thing is that the hero of the novel The Three Knights is the fourth knight of Dartanian, so we see a relationship of love after an enmity arises between him and Athos, Aramis and Porthos
His desperate attempt to join the King's Knights is also successful
Intrigue abounds in the court, and some try to tarnish the queen's reputation; Knights loyal to their weak king are successive heroics without limits
The Three Musketeers is achieving unprecedented success and it is issued in two parts
A simple classic historical novel without symbols or vague connotations ... Rather, it is the old narrative that confirms to us that your friend is the one who preserves you and stays on the covenant when in dispute

Sometimes funny, sometimes tragic, this historical fiction weaves high adventure, politics, scheming, revenge, and romance for full dramatic effect. A few parts are a little slow, but most of it is gripping.

I first read this in my early 20s and then listened to the audio. They are different translations and quite different from each other, but I couldn’t find any translator names in either edition. It kind of bugs me that I can’t judge the original French writing.

Read this for the first time when I was thirteen or fourteen, and felt great to read it again now, many years later. So many great parts: d'Artagnan's triple dual, the machinations and intrigues of Cardinal Richeliu and Milday, the picnic in the enemy bastion during the siege of La Rochelle.

Also real Adam West Batman vibes re-reading this and realizing it's not the matter of high seriousness I once took it as, but actually it's quite intentionally funny. And also none of the history matters. In fact, I quite liked how all the intrigue constantly boiled down to a love affair or the like, and never had anything to do with the conflict between Catholics and Huguenots (itself an antiquated conflict at the time of publication). A very lib sentiment, I know, but must've been felt refreshing to have something that felt political but had no absolutely no political content in it, especially considering all the proletarian turmoil in France in the 1840s.

One demerit in that Dumas is a bit longwinded at times, never failing to say two or three times something he could say once. Reminds me a little of Dickens, actually, in that with both of them you get the sense they're dragging things out because the work is being serialized.

Earlier review: I liked this when I read it in junior high, but I am ashamed to say I probably didn't 'get' it. For one thing, I didn't know French history at all but felt like I should because sometimes I couldn't keep track of the royal characters. I think maybe I'd heard of Cardinal Richelieu, because he had something to do with Samuel de Champlain, maybe? And then the plot really threw off my expectations because on the cover it says 'The THREE Musketeers' but then right off the bat there's D'Artagnan, basically a fourth guy. What's that all about?

Thrilled by the excellent recent adaptation by the BBC, I decided it was time to finally read The Three Musketeers. I have vague memories of borrowing a book with a yellow hardback cover from the library when I was much, much younger. But at that precocious age I found the nineteenth century language and over-the-top tropes of romance and revenge difficult to enjoy, and I don’t recall if I ever finished it. This time, I did a little research and discovered that Richard Pevear has a relatively new translation out, and that my UK library had a copy! Strangely, the title page promises that this edition is “Translated with an Introduction by Richard Pevear,” but there is no introduction to be found. Huh.

It seems almost silly to give much of a plot summary of The Three Musketeers. Everyone knows the story, right? Athos, Porthos, and Aramis are the eponymous black sheep within the musketeers: the ones who don’t play by the rules but nevertheless still hold to the ancient rites of honour. D’Artagnan is a young Gascon man eager to make his name by joining the musketeers, and he quickly befriends the Three and joins them on many adventures. Together they fight the machinations of Cardinal Richelieu and his minion, the irredeemable Milady de Winter.

Except, it’s a lot more complicated than that.

Alexandre Dumas’ story is one that has become so popular, been adapted so many times, that its original narrative has become snarled and twisted and confused in public consciousness. Having now read the book, I can see why: this is a massive novel that plods on and on in a series of interrelated episodic adventures that can be repetitive at times. It’s not difficult to understand why the various writers of adaptations have streamlined and simplified the story for television and movies. In so doing, they have associated the three (or four) musketeers with the ideas of heroism, courage, and bravery. Also, they have a chocolate bar named after them. How many literary characters can say that?

Most of the adaptations manage to portray the heroes with flaws as well as virtues: they capture the carousing, the drinking, the gambling—oh, and the irrepressible urge to duel. But they elide over some of the most memorable moments. For instance, the musketeers’ four respective manservants play crucial roles in the books, almost as important as the musketeers themselves—and, for the most part, the musketeers treat them like shit. Athos doesn’t let his speak, and Dumas goes out of his way to describe how d’Artagnan forbidding his servant to quit his service actually endears his servant to him more…. Meanwhile, a lot of the problems in the book are the result of the musketeers drinking and/or gambling too much. They tend to pick fights where none are necessary. Then they go running to hide behind Captain de Tréville’s skirts, using their special friendship with him to get out of trouble. When they need more money, they chat up bored wives for loans.

So the musketeers aren’t the shining heroes we have made them out to be in popular culture. They are, to Dumas’ credit, much greyer and more morally complex than that. The same can be said for Cardinal Richelieu and Milady. Although it’s easy to mistake this book for a florid romance set two centuries before it was written, it is a far richer story of how personal whims and ambitions and relationships affect the political tapestry of a continent like Europe. For his love of Queen Anne, Buckingham betrays his nation. D’Artagnan finds himself set against Richelieu not necessarily because they are so different but because Richelieu’s methods conflict with d’Artagnan’s sensibilities.

One thing that surprises me in the novel is the very fair treatment that Dumas gives Richelieu. He is not a one-dimensional, transparent villain. It’s clear that Richelieu is acting for what he believes is the good of France. This is a perilous time for the kingdom, which has remained staunchly Catholic in the face of rising Protestantism, and has managed to alienate even the other Catholic countries in Europe—namely, Spain. Richelieu is legitimately worried about alliances between these countries and invasion or rebellion, and his scheming is, ultimately, an attempt to make sure that France is prepared. Peter Capaldi captures a sliver of this side of the character in the BBC adaptation, but his Richelieu is also a more personally self-absorbed character.

I wonder if Dumas was secretly fascinated by seventeenth-century France, so much so that he ached to write a political thriller about the events therein, only he knew that it would sell better if he couched it in the contemporary ideas of the romance. By our standards he is incredibly sexist—women are, to Dumas, the fairer and weaker sex, and indeed, part of Milady’s villainy is her presumption to “rise above” the proper stations of motherhood and companionship as a woman and seek a man’s destiny in life. (He also has this weird obsession with women’s hands.) But for his time, Dumas might have been perceived as fairly liberal, for a male writer, in his depictions of women characters.

That’s not saying much, of course. It’s sufficient that Dumas’ women have more agency than fenceposts. There are basically three important female characters (I’m not counting Kitty): Anne, Constance Bonacieux, and Milady. Although Dumas’ portrayals of them are far from faultless, he nevertheless manages to capture the dangerous and difficult nature of being a woman in seventeenth century France. He shows the empty court life that Queen Anne must lead, the emotional gulf that separates her from her husband and leads her to seek love in an English ambassador. And, oh, did this book make me love Constance even more than I did in the BBC version. In the latter, she is merely d’Artagnan’s landlady rather than the queen’s seamstress. But this additional dimension in the original text makes her character much more interesting. She and Anne are both victims of the oppressive, patriarchal nature of the time. They lack the power to do much about their situations, and they ceaselessly exercise the little power they do have to make their lives better, only for men to swat them down again if it’s inconvenient.

But it’s in the portrayal of Milady de Winter that Dumas truly excels at a nuanced portrait of women’s struggles. As I note above, there are very problematic aspects to Milady’s use of her sexuality to get what she wants, and the ending of the book seems to say that Dumas is punishing her for having the gall to act, essentially, the same as the musketeers do. She is the Cardinal’s agent in the same way that the musketeers are the king’s/queen’s/whatever. In fact, it’s arguable that Milady has a more legitimate claim to being a loyal French agent than the musketeers. Richelieu sends her to assassinate Buckingham—who, let us not forget, is English—because it would prevent the launch of an invasion fleet. That kind of seems like a good thing to do if one is concerned for French sovereignty, no? But the musketeers rush to stop her, and then condemn her for engineering Buckingham’s death, despite the fact that he is clearly an enemy of state and she totally had the Cardinal’s permission. Who is the wrong now, hmm?

Indeed, there is a delightfully subversive edge to this, the major plot of The Three Musketeers. For a long time prior to achieving her goals, Milady is imprisoned in a castle in the English countryside. She laments the fact that, as a woman, she is unable to merely fight her way free and escape through physical feats. Instead she must resort, as always, to her beauty and wiles. And my interpretation of this is not that Dumas is painting Milady as a sociopathic viper but as an unfortunate, psychologically scarred woman who has to do a lot of unsavoury things in order to survive. She is aware of how her gender has affected her life, has made things harder, and she has been forced to hone whatever few weapons she could forge from her disadvantages. So even though there is something fairly unfortunate in how Dumas portrays Milady’s vituperative scheming against d’Artagnan and her consequent fate, I also think that she is a far more complex character than she might seem at first glance.

These layers, then, are what result in the wonderful and transcendent quality of The Three Musketeers. On one level it is a straightforward romance, a tale of swashbuckling heroes against scheming villains. It has swordfights and chase scenes and all the melodrama that anyone could want—and I love it for that reason, far more than I suspected I would. On another level, it depicts the difficult life of musketeers in seventeenth-century France. The four musketeers are complicated and flawed characters who make mistakes and essentially function as vigilantes. Dumas captures the tense political situation in Europe at the time. And onto that additional level, he overlays the ambitions and relationships of individuals—both men and women—depicting how these alter and affect the fates of nations. The Three Musketers is an adventure novel, yes, but it should never be dismissed merely as that. It is nothing short of an amazing and impressive work of literature that deserves its status as a classic.

n  n

En cuanto a concepto me gustó más “El conde de Montecristo”, pero en cuanto a estructura y fluidez de la trama central este me fascinó. Es un libro lleno de aventuras, humor, drama (como no, es Dumas), y el personaje antagónico en uno de los más interesantes y refrescantes de los clásicos de la literatura.

Un eterno pendiente al que por fin pude darle oportunidad y solo puedo decir que nada se compara con el libro. Las aventuras de Porthos, Athos, Aramis y D’Artagnan son una delicia, las intrigas en la corte, cada detalle de esta historia lo hacen ser lo que es, un clásico extraordinario.

« Tous pour un, un pour tous. » p. 167

“Les Trois Mousquetaires” was written in 1844, the same year that he published “Comte de Monte-Cristo.” A year later he published “La Reine Margot.” In the summer of 2023, I read “Margot” which kicked off my long inquiry into this dramatic period in French history. This book makes #15.

The Three Musketeers is set around 1625 and culminates in the siege of La Rochelle by the English led by Lord Buckingham in 1628. I was expecting some kind of “Disney” version that I saw as a child. You know, swashbuckling lads with sword fighting galore and intriguing if not mysterious ladies tempting those lads. All of that is there but thankfully, Dumas is a political writer who bases his work on historical periods.

During this period Louis XIII is king of France. He is the son of Henri IV, also known as Henri de Navarre, who was married to Margot. Louis is married to Anne d'Autriche, daughter of Philip III of Spain and Margaret of Austria. Her beauty is legendary and was pursued by many would be lovers. The greatest of them all is the Englishman Lord Buckingham.

Although the 16th century religious wars are more or less over, they keep surfacing in the form of outbreaks and skirmishes. The most fierce proponent of the Catholic faith is Cardinal Richelieu. He is willing to go to any means to keep the church in power and stop the Huguenots from getting any power. Under Henri IV, M. de Treville formed an elite group of fighting soldiers, les mousquetaires. They are sworn to protect the king and those who support him in the court.

Our troop of Athos, Porthos and Aramis take on a hopeful upstart, d’Artagnan from Gascogne. His father served under Henri and he wants his son to follow in his footsteps. Getting into the troop is no easy task and the three musketeers prove a challenging gang. Swashbuckling and of course many laughs follow at the brunt of poor d’Artagnan.

Of course, one cannot write a romance without women and d’Artagnan falls for not one but two married ladies. As he admits, “J’aimais Mme Bonacieux avec la cœur, tandis que j’aime Milady avec la tête.” Bonacieux’s husband knows of his wife’s potential lover, although he is truly a man who gets himself in trouble more than he needs. If Mme Bonacieux is the heart, then Milady is really playing with his head. She is danger beyond anything d’Artagnan knows.

Her background is all about treachery. Born English, married to Lord Winter she sides with the French, works for Richelieu and was married to a Frenchman (one the Musketeers no less). When Buckingham fails to move Anne of Austria, he aligns with the Protestant Huguenots, decides to invade France, and that is where Milady puts her double treachery to work.

Nothing like Dumas to keep one entertained with so many twists in this tale. Milady is quite the character and falling in love with her leads our noble d’Artagnan down a bleak path. How he rallies the Musketeers together to get to the bottom of things reveals his inner self, and of course, all for one, one for all.

The book was much better than expected thanks to all the political intrigue. Thanks to the excellent notes in this Folio edition to makes heads out of all this historical fiction, not to mention that several of these characters were based on real people. Of course, it’s the fiction that elevates the story, and that makes for a good story.

Alexandre Davy de la Pailleterie Dumas (Villers-Cotterêts, 24 de julho de 1802 — Puys, 5 de dezembro de 1870) foi um romancista francês, autor dos romances clássicos de capa e espada Os Três Mosqueteiros e O Conde de Monte Cristo.

Os três Mosqueteiros, que inicialmente era para se chamar Athos, Porthos e Aramis, foi publicado, entre Maio e Julho de 1844, como folhetim no jornal Le Siècle, e, devido ao sucesso alcançado, foi editado em livro no mesmo ano.
É o primeiro volume de uma trilogia, sendo o segundo Vinte anos depois: edição comentada e ilustrada e o terceiro e último O Visconde de Bragelonne (é aqui que está inserida a aventura O Homem da Máscara de Ferro).

A história é mais que conhecida, mas este livro é tão incrível que não dá vontade de largar.
Estamos em França, em pleno século XVII, D’Artagnan, jovem gascão, chega a Paris em busca do sonho de ser mosqueteiro. Aí, trava conhecimento com Aramis, Porthos e Athos, mosqueteiros do Rei Luís XIII, que o admitem no grupo depois de testadas as suas qualidades de espadachim. Os quatro envolvem-se em grandes aventuras e na luta contra o cardeal Richelieu.

Não se sabe se estes quatro aventureiros existiram de facto, o que sabemos é que o autor se inspirou na vida de Charles de Batz-Castelmore, conde de Artagnan, militar francês e capitão dos mosqueteiros da guarda.
Há quem defenda que os outros três também existiram, Athos, ou Armand de Sillègue d’Athos d’Autevielle nasceu na região do Béarn; Porthos, ou Isaac de Portau nasceu na cidade de Pau; Henri d’Aramitz, ou Aramis, era um religioso laico.

A narrativa é frenética e o ritmo dos acontecimentos é altamente envolvente. Há muita intriga, traições, desavenças por dinheiro, dívidas de jogo e batalhas por mulheres. As personagens estão muito bem construídas, todas elas têm as suas características, as suas facetas e os seus segredos. Contrariamente ao que nos foi “vendido”, através das adaptações tanto para o cinema* como em desenhos animados, Os três Mosqueteiros “não são flor que se cheire”. Athos é um alcoólico; Porthos “rouba” o marido, já idoso, da amante; Aramis, apesar ser um homem religioso e cujo objectivo é tornar-se padre, mantém um caso amoroso; e D’Artagnan é um mulherengo. Apesar de todas estas falhas eles conseguem ter uma das mais leais amizades na literatura cujo lema é conhecido até por aqueles que nunca leram a obra:

**********n  Um por todos, e todos por um.n **********


A par com D’Artagnan há uma outra personagem que me fascinou, Lady Clark Milady de Winter.
Milady, uma das grandes vilãs da história – se não a maior -, é maravilhosa. O seu passado está envolto em mistério. Milady é a antiga mulher de Athos, que o fez abdicar de tudo, do seu nome, dos seus títulos, das suas terras e levou-o a alistar-se nos mosqueteiros.  
Ela é a femme fatale, aquela que seduz e engana. É manipuladora, perversa e sem escrúpulos, e como braço direito do Cardeal Richelieu não olha a meios para atingir fins.

Os três Mosqueteiros é um clássico da literatura universal. Uma grande aventura recheada de intrigas e romances, com a dose certa de acção e humor, vivida por personagens que não podem deixar de ser conhecidos.




* - As principais versões cinematográficas da adaptação do romance de Alexandre Dumas.

1948- Gene Kelley(D'Artagnan), Van Heflin (Athos), Gig Young(Phortos), Robert Coote (Aramis)

1973 - Oliver Reed (Athos), Richard Chamberlain (Aramis), Michael York (D'Artagnan), Frank Finlay (Phortos)

1993- Kiefer Sutherland (Athos), Charlie Sheen (Aramis), Oliver Platt (Phortos), Chris O'Donnel (D'Artagnan)

2011 - Logan Lerman (D’Artagnan), Matthew Macfadyen (Athos), Ray Stevenson (Porthos), Luke Evans (Aramis)

I've had more fun reading "The Three Musketeers" than I've had with any book in a long time, and my only regret is that I didn't find my way to Dumas sooner. It's bursting with swordplay, political intrigue, romance, fortunes won and lost, mistresses kept and stolen, poisoned wine, devious nobility, and vengeance sought and attained. What more could a reader ask for? While "The Three Musketeers" isn't the most intellectually challenging book ever written -- though it does offer, in passing, the occasional insight into the human race -- it might be the best guilty-pleasure book of all time. And while it's long for such a book at 650-plus pages, not a word is wasted.

Is there a more intriguing villainess in literature than Milady? A more fascinating hate-him-one-moment, forgive-him-the-next character than Cardinal Richelieu? And that's not to ignore d'Artagnan, who, with a youthful foolhardiness and energy that eventually gives way to gravitas, only the hardest hearted of readers could not love. And while Porthos, Aramis and Athos may spend most of the book as flat characters -- and I'm using that term the same way E.M. Forster does, not as an insult but to distinguish them from multifaceted, "round" characters -- they each have their more complex moments, Athos especially.

I do have one minor complaint about "The Three Musketeers." While the long section detailing Milady's imprisonment by her brother-in-law is a fine story on its own, it does tend to drag on too long in the context of the "The Three Musketeers," mostly because it causes readers to spend too much time away from the Musketeers themselves. And while Milady's corruption of Felton does have its interests, we as readers don't spend enough time with him ahead of it to really feel as bad as we should.

But this is a minor quibble. As should be obvious by my five stars, which I give unreservedly, I really did love the book on the whole. And, on a side note, I like that "The Three Musketeers" concludes with a brief what-happened-to-each-character section, something Dumas did long before the film "Animal House" or Van Halen's "Hot for Teacher" video. (And this, by the way, may mark a rare time Van Halen and Dumas are mentioned in the same sentence. Someone please Google that to make sure.)

I Tre Moschettieri è Avventura!
Ma è avventura che spesso si ferma per interrogarsi sui concetti di giustizia, di onore, di fato…
E poi l’Avventura ricomincia portandoci via tra un duello e l’altro, tra un mistero e un inseguimento, tra un intrigo e un amore celato.
I nostri pensieri se ne vanno così, tra oltre settecento pagine, attraverso una storia di Amicizia nota ai più ma che lo stesso val la pena leggere perché i più, forse, non conoscono davvero le storie dei Tre Moschettieri (+ uno).

Il mondo dei TRE MOSCHETTIERI è un mondo nel quale mi sento a casa, perché tra fumetti, cartoni animati e trasposizioni cinematografiche li abbiamo conosciuti sin dalla più tenera età, ancora prima dell’opera originale di Dumas, che comunque resta più straordinaria di tutte le versioni derivate. Straordinario romanzo.

E’ davvero impossibile non lasciarsi irretire dalle pagine di questo classico dell’avventura ambientato tra Francia e Inghilterra nel XVII secolo, al tempo del re Luigi XIII di Francia e del temibile cardinale Richelieu: una cavalcata interminabile tra duelli, agguati, inseguimenti, palpitanti lotte all’ultimo respiro, amori contrastati, raggiri e atroci vendette e su tutto l’amicizia virile tra quattro giovani moschettieri del re, gli indimenticabili protagonisti di questo romanzo. Opera di quantità e priva di qualità letterarie? di morale? di fulgidi insegnamenti di vita? sia pure…ma leggendolo mi sono sentito di nuovo ragazzino, mi sono lasciato avvolgere dall’atmosfera giocosa, tanto da non vedere l’ora di leggerne il seguito!