The Three Musketeers - Fun Facts

By MoonQuill2006

I’m still waiting for December 1st so I can finally start The Three Musketeers in a serious way, but I figured I’d drop a few “wait, really?” things I found that you might not know. First off, Dumas wasn’t totally alone on it—he had this ongoing writing partnership with Auguste Jules Maquet, who didn’t exactly have a huge success record. I’ve heard Maquet might’ve come up with a lot of the plot and maybe helped a lot with the actual writing. Also, the book didn’t just come out all at once. It was printed in 1844 in Le Siècle, one chapter at a time from March to July, and people apparently lined up to get copies so they could keep going. And a bunch of the characters are based on real guys. Like d’Artagnan is supposedly Charles de Batz-Castelmore from Gascony (took the Artagnan name from a property his mom’s family owned), and his career was actually under Mazarin and Louis XIV, not Louis XIII and Richelieu. Same deal with Porthos, Aramis, and Athos—each linked to a real musketeer. Then there’s a weird little bonus: d’Artagnan shows up in Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac (Act I, Scene IV) and basically congratulates Cyrano after he beats de Valvert in a duel. Oh, and the motto—“One for all, all for one”—is also Switzerland’s motto, which I didn’t know. Anyone else have fun facts about this book? Or was any of this news to you?