The Vicomte de Bragelonne is a different sort of novel from the precedingvolumes in the D’Artagnan Romances. In The Three Musketeers and TwentyYears After, we find our four heroes battling against evil forces with acombination of stunning swordplay, unmatched bravado, unbelievable ingenuity,and several strokes of great fortune. Their famous cry, “All for one andone for all!” has echoed throughout the imagination for 150 years. Moviesare still being made from the stories, they still appear in televisioncommercials, they have their own candy bar, and some current authors have evenlent their talents to filling in the gaps between the novels. The swashbucklingexploits of the “four invincibles,” as they are referred to in thenovels, have made them sell consistently for a century and a half, a feat notachieved by many authors. The popularity of the stories, first as magazineserials and then as novels, made Dumas the most famous Frenchman of the age.The heroes and villains are clearly defined, and it is never difficult for thereaders to know who to cheer for as the drama unfolds in the theater of themind.
Dumas himself resembled, as much as one could in the 19th Century, hisswashbuckling heroes. Before he embarked on the series, he was alreadyconsidered one of, if not the, greatest dramatists in France. He had fought inone of the many revolutions in France at that time, and would later run guns inan Italian revolution. His unerring sense of drama had brought him theatricalacclaim the world over, and when he switched to novels, that same sense neversteered him wrong. For the entirety of the D’Artagnan Romances, he had acollaborator, named Maquet, who did much of the historical research. But themany charges leveled against Dumas that he ran a literature“factory” are blatantly false. Once he got his historicalframework, Dumas injected the story with his own energy and breathed life intoit, many times ignoring the strict dictates of historical fact for thenecessity of crafting the drama as he saw fit. Indeed, The Three Musketeers andTwenty Years After bear many structural similarities. There are clear villains(Milady, De Wardes, Richelieu, Mordaunt, Mazarin) and clear heroes andheroines, great men destined for demise, despite our heroes’ efforts(Buckingham, Charles I), and yet our four heroes must triumph against all odds,united until the end.
But the clearest difference in this third volume is that our heroes are nolonger united. Though inseparable in their youth, now Aramis, with theunwitting Porthos in tow, is plotting against the king, who D’Artagnanhas sworn with his life to defend. Athos, once the most upright defender ofnobility, is now forced to break his sword before his monarch, and renounce thesacred vow he pledged with his son in Twenty Years After to respect royalty inall its forms. Never, even, do the four come face to face in the course of theentire novel. Time has sent them in different directions, and managed toseparate them when constant villains in the course of forty years have failed.
Dumas uses this division of his heroes to skillfully insert his own opinions onthat phase of French history, which in many ways paralleled the time he livedin himself. Although Dumas’s distinct storytelling talents are as evidentas in the former novels, Dumas sets the twilight of his characters in the dawnof a new age, exploiting the contrast as a form of social commentary. The fourformer musketeers are now drawn to each represent a virtue. D’Artagnan isLoyalty, Athos is Nobility, Porthos is Strength, and Aramis is Cunning. WhenLouis XIV dishonors Raoul and casts off Athos, he sheds the ideal of Nobility