The problem is with Dumas that he seemed to think that anyone surely knew what he was addressing. Probably it was like that... He took numerous refernces from works like memoires and publications of letters... He must have presumed everyone read them or so, because he goes in quite a lot of detail, athough he sometimes permits himself a liberty of about 10 to 20 years...

I see what you mean about The Three Musketeers. Dumas idealised the world of Louis XIII and made it a world where boys plaid their games (read: fought with real swords with their lives at stake...) and where the king 'got bored' on the very battlefield . Still, I find mainly The Vicomte (the three last parts of the Musketeer-books) very entertaining because it sheds a light on what actually went on at court and how people tried to discover things about one another. How the queen tries to find out for her daughter-in-law who the mistress of the king really is... And the stories that are told with clearly implying certain people, but not really... I find that amazingly thrilling. Not because of what is happening, but to see how devious people are and how they try to cover things up . Mind you, people were not only so devious that you can laugh at it and no more. Madame, the wife of Monsieur (the brother of Louix XIV; they both features in The Vicomte and she is briefly Louis's mistress) actually got poisoned by her husband (who was probably homosexual) because he was so jealous. Scary...

But, yes, The Count is a more interesting topic than the romantic escapades of Louis XIV...

Still, I'll have to start on his books on the French revolution... Which is the first one? The Countess de Charny or The Queen's Necklace?