Any Dumas fans out there?

Quote:

Originally Posted by HenryIV

The saga of the Three Musketeer, Twenty years later, the Viscount of Brag

is amazing . Cardinal Richelieu is portrait as the bad guy when in reality Cardinal Richelieu has France interest closer to his heart than
Queen Anne in the saga. Queen Anne flirting with the enemy , the Duke of Buck. I found reprenhensible . If the Huguenots with the help of the English have won the war , maybe France would have gone through partition and French territories could have become English again .

Lady Winter, is a very evil character , whom I dislike a lot but she was working for Richelieu who was promoting French interests.[/I]

That is what I meant, though. For d'Artagnan, he is the bad guy, but he is not really, as he shows in the end. His motives are not hate or anything, his motives are running France in place of the useless king (someone needs to do it of course). Although, I seem to remember that Dumas wrote a piece in The Three Musketeers about Richelieu once being the lover of the queen and thus his jealousy being sparked when she hooked up with Buckingham, the then embassador of England to France. As he would like Buckingham out of the Queen's life, he sparks a war, manipulating the king obviously in doing things against the protestants and then sending the beautiful Lady de Winter to seduce Buckingham. Things work and Buckingham gets killed and France is safe from civil war (for the time being).

Richelieu wasn't a bad guy per se, but only in the situation.

Quote:

Originally Posted by HenryIV

The Friendship of Athos, Porthos, Aramis and D'Artagnan seems
so closed and so fraternal but in the saga

politics force the friends to choose,

Aramis became the boss of the Jesuits and his interest clashed with the ones of D'Artagnan, Porthos died siding with Aramis
and Athos sacrificed his family happines putting first his loyalty to the Crown

And D'Artagnan when pull comes to shovel, choose over his dearest and closest friends

the service to the Crown .

Aramis is the only one who survive at the end

What kind of picture ? Dumas like many of his fellow writers of such period
were very complex and force characters into very challenging choices

If you ever read the Miserables ?

By the way? How many people today will choose political alliance over
close knit friendships? like the Musketeers did ?

Aramis had always been one who dared to put his ambitions first. As soon as anything gets in the way, he will clear it up. That's it. His friends were only lucky that they were not the obstacles.

Porthos had always been gullible and thus is a bit of a sad creature who meets Aramis at the wrong time.

Aramis does not even care about politics, he just wants to be king. As he becomes head of the jesuits (second to the pope) and embassador to France from the Spanish king, he really has accomplished everything he ever wished for. France is nothing compared to Spain at that point. It has the Netherlands/Belgium, the richest area in Europe and the world back then, and a great empire in the Americas.

D'Artagnan, contrary to what you claim did not choose to let Aramis and Porthos perish, he was mastered by his king who had ordered that action was to be taken and if Mr d'Artagnan was not prepared to (which he did foresee), Mr d'Artagnan was to be temporarily stripped of his rank and the lead to be taken over by his junior officer. D'Artagnan, at that point, is trying to buy Porthos and Aramis some time, but he is not allowed to. He will never forgive Aramis for getting Porthos involved whom he knew was gullible and naïve.

Athos really doesn't do anything a minor nobleman did not do in those days. Noblemen were supposed to do service to the crown and as such his son should also do so. That is quite clear. If he dies, he will have died for a good cause. The point of that story line is not that he sacrifices his son (that was natural to him), the point is that Raoul himself decides that he does not want to live if he cannot have Louise.
Louise is really in a pickle, because she is damned if she does and damned if she does not. Maybe she was in love with Louis at first, but everyone knows that a relationship is not going to last. However, as soon as Louis sets eyes on her (firstly just as a diversion from Madame, his sister-in-law, later for real), there is no way she will marry Raoul for the simple reason that Louis is a covetous bastard (sorry) and so does not want to marry her to another. It could be done, though, as Henry VIII did it in England with one of the Boleyn girls and (allegedly) still had a relationship with her. It also happened to Louis XIV himself as he married Athénais, one of the three friends (Louise, Athénais, and ?) to Mr de Montespan but keeps her as his mistress and had a range of children with her. Still, Louise may not marry and so she goes to her downfall as after a while she is discarded in favour of her friend. Evident in the epilogue of The vicomte de Bragelonne.
Athos really has no say in this and is as distraught as Raoul when the king refuses his consent (which was obligatory), even imprisoned at some point, briefly.

Actually no-one, not even Aramis or d'Artagnan, sacrifice themselves to politics. It is evident that d'Artagnan really respects his master by the end, because he sees that he is much more willed and moved by real political motive than Richelieu ever was (Mazarin just wanted money). As a soldier he respects his orders as he often stresses, but needs a master who does not take advantage of his power. That is why he gets upset at the king wanting to lock Athos up because the latter said something about his covetous behaviour. D'Artagnan despises this kind of thing because it has no clear purpose. That, for him equals honourable conduct. He who abuses his power to achieve personal satisfaction is no man. In that, he despises Aramis too.