Comparative Analysis of the Three Musketeers and the Count of Monte Christo

Alexandre Dumas has always had a reputation for writing swashbuckling and fast-paced adventure tales that blend together fact and fiction. He wrote many historical fiction novels where would severely stretch the truth to achieve a great novel, but never claimed that the novels tell the same story as history. One common subject of Dumas' novels is the element of betrayal and what leads to the revenge of that betrayal. The Three Musketeers (1844) tells the story of a man named D'Artagnan, a young Gascon gentleman who dreams of becoming a Musketeer. On the way from his home in Gascoigne to Paris to meet Monsieur de Treville, the leader of the King's Musketeers and a fellow Gascon, D'Artagnan stops in the city of Meung. There, D'Artagnan gets into a quarrel with a man who steals his letter of recommendation to Monsieur de Treville and gives it to a beautiful woman referred to as Milady. D'Artagnan never stops wanting revenge. D'Artagnan soon finds out that the man from Meung is Comte de Rochefort and that Rochefort and Milady are both agents for the Cardinal Richelieu and that Milady has committed many crimes in her life. In fact, lots of other people want her dead too. Athos, especially, wants her dead because she lied to him when she married him because she has a Fleur-de-Lis branded on her shoulder. A Fleur-de-Lis a French National Symbol and you may know it as the New Orleans Saints' Logo. To have it branded on you means that you have committed one or more crimes in your life. The Three Musketeers refers to D'Artagnan's friends, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, so there are actually four of them. Another example of revenge used in the story is when Athos tracks down his thought-to-be-dead wife, Milady, who tried to kill him and kills her. D'Artagnan also gets vengeance on her when she is killed because she poisoned D'Artagnan's love, Constance Bonacieux. Lord de Winter, Milady's brother-in-law wants revenge on her because she killed his brother and