“BBC AMERICA’s new co-production drama series, The Musketeers, is set on the streets of seventeenth century Paris, where law and order is an idea more than a reality. In addition to being King Louis XIII’s personal bodyguards, Athos, Aramis and Porthos stand resolutely for social justice, honor, valor, love – and for the thrill of it.” [The Musketeers Official Website]
Related Works by Alexandre Dumas:
The Three Musketeers- The Man in the Iron Mask
“In the Musketeers’ final adventure, D’Artagnan remains in the service of the corrupt King Louis XIV after the Three Musketeers have retired and gone their separate ways. Meanwhile, a mysterious prisoner in an iron mask wastes away deep inside the Bastille. When the destinies of king and prisoner converge, the Three Musketeers and D’Artagnan find themselves caught between conflicting loyalties.” - Twenty Years After
“Two decades have passed since the musketeers triumphed over Cardinal Richelieu and Milady. Time has weakened their resolve, and dispersed their loyalties. But treasons and strategems still cry out for justice: civil war endangers the throne of France, while in England Cromwell threatens to send Charles I to the scaffold. Dumas brings his immortal quartet out of retirement to cross swords with time, the malevolence of men, and the forces of history. But their greatest test is a titanic struggle with the son of Milady, who wears the face of Evil.” - The Vicomte de Bragelonne
“It is May 1660 and the fate of nations is at stake. Mazarin plots, Louis XIV is in love, and Raoul de Bragelonne, son of Athos, is intent on serving France and winning the heart of Louise de la Valliere. D’Artagnan, meanwhile, is perplexed by a mysterious stranger, and soon he learns that his old comrades already have great projects in hand. Athos seeks the restoration of Charles II, while Aramis, with Porthos in tow, has a secret plan involving a masked prisoner and the fortification of the island of Belle-Ile. D’Artagnan finds a thread leading him to the French court, the banks of the Tyne, the beaches of Holland, and the dunes of Brittany.”
I. Where & When: General History
Perhaps you don’t know much about the Musketeer’s complex world: the religious conflict and wars, the unstable monarchies, political intrigue to spare.
One Family, Two Empires: The Spanish Hapsburgs, The Hapsburgs in Central Europe by Joyce Milton and Caroline Davidson- The Thirty Years War: Europe’s Tragedy by Peter H. Wilson
“A deadly continental struggle, the Thirty Years War devastated seventeenth-century Europe, killing nearly a quarter of all Germans and laying waste to towns and countryside alike. In a major reassessment, Wilson argues that religion was not the catalyst, but one element in a lethal stew of political, social, and dynastic forces that fed the conflict–a conflict that ultimately transformed the map of the modern world.” - The Huguenots by Geoffrey Treasure
- French Musketeer 1622-1775 by
- Blood Royal: A True Tale of Crime and Detection in Medieval Paris by Eric Jager
- Furies: War in Europe, 1450-1700 by Lauro Martines
- Erotic Exchanges: The World of Elite Prostitution in Eighteenth-Century Paris by Nina Kushner (In which Richelieu, among others, is mentioned.)
II. Biography
Curious about the real-life individuals who make up Dumas’ novel? Dumas himself? We have biographies!
The Titans: A Three-Generation Biography of the Dumas by Andre Maurois- The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo by Tom Reiss
“Explores the life and career of Thomas Alexandre Dumas, a man almost unknown today, but whose swashbuckling exploits appear in The three musketeers and whose trials and triumphs inspired The count of Monte Cristo.” - D’Artagnan, The Ultimate Musketeer: A Biography by Geoffrey Fowler Hall
- Cardinal Richelieu and the Making of France by Anthony Levi
- Eminence: Cardinal Richelieu and the Rise of France by Jean-Vincent Blanchard
“Chief Minister to King Louis XIII, Cardinal Richelieu was the architect of a new France in the seventeenth century and the force behind the nation’s rise as a European power. One of the first statesmen to clearly understand the necessity of a balance of powers, he has captured the imagination of generations, both through the story of his life and through Alexandre Dumas’s portrayal of him as a ruthless political mastermind in the classic The Three Musketeers.” - After Elizabeth: The Rise of James of Scotland and the Struggle for the Throne of England by Leanda de Lisle
- Royal Survivor: A Life of Charles II by Stephen Coote
III. Weaponry & Clothing
Is it possible to put together a Musketeers reading list and not include their weapons–swords and muskets and the like–or their clothing? No, I think not.
Weapon: A Visual History of Arms and Armor by Paula Regen- By the Sword: A History of Gladiators, Musketeers, Samurai, Swashbucklers, and Olympic Champions by Richard Cohen
“Napoleon fenced. So did Shakespeare, Karl Marx, Grace Kelly, and President Truman, who would cross swords with his daughter, Margaret, when she came home from school. Lincoln was a canny dueler. Igantius Loyala challenged a man to a duel for denying Christ’s divinity (and won). Less successful, but no less enthusiastic, was Mussolini, who would tell his wife he was “off to get spaghetti,” their code to avoid alarming the children. By the Sword is an epic history of sword fighting—a science, an art, and, for many, a religion that began at the dawn of civilization in ancient Egypt and has been an obsession for mankind ever since. With wit and insight, Richard Cohen gives us an engrossing history of the world via the sword.” - Dueling With The Sword And Pistol: 400 Years of One-on-One Combat by Paul Kirchner
- Gentlemen’s Blood: A History of Dueling From Swords at Dawn to Pistols at Dusk by Barbara Holland
“The medieval justice of trial by combat evolved into the private duel by sword and pistol, with thousands of honorable men-and not-so-honorable women-giving lives and limbs to wipe out an insult or prove a point. The duel was essential to private, public, and political life, and those who followed the elaborate codes of procedure were seldom prosecuted and rarely convicted-for, in fact, they were obeying a grand old tradition.” - Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century Fashion in Detail: The 17th and 18th Centuries by Avril Hart
IV. Swashbuckling Fiction & Other Readalikes
- Q by Luther Blissett
“With Europe convulsed in wars over religion, a young theology student finds himself siding with heretics and the disenfranchised while confronting an agent of the Vatican who intends to hunt down and destroy enemies of the faith.” - The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy
- Pale Assassin by Patricia Elliott
- Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner
- Charterhouse of Parma by Marie Henri Beyle
- Traitor’s Blade by Sebastien de Castell (Forthcoming)
- Captain Blood by Rafael Sabatini
Captain Alatriste series by Arturo Perez-Reverte:
“Wounded seventeenth-century Spanish soldier Alatriste works as a swordsman-for-hire in Madrid, but when his latest job takes an unexpectedly deadly turn, he realizes he is in the employ of one of the Spanish Inquisition’s most dangerous figures.”
Captain Alatriste
Purity of Blood
The Sun Over Breda
The King’s Gold
The Cavalier in the Yellow Doublet
Pirates of the Levant- The Club Dumas by Arturo Perez-Reverte
- Sharps by K.J. Parker
- The Gilded Chain: A Tale of the King’s Blades by Dave Duncan
- Zorro by Isabel Allende
- The Silver Skull by Mark Chadbourn
- The Cardinal’s Blades trilogy by Pierre Pevel
“Welcome to seventeenth-century Paris, where intrigue, duels, and spies are rife and Cardinal Richelieu’s men may be prevailed upon to risk life and limb in the name of France at a moment’s notice. And with war on the horizon, the defense of the nation has never been more pressing. “
The Cardinal’s Blades
The Alchemist in the Shadows
The Dragon Arcana - Maledicte by Lane Robins
As you may recall from this post, Dumas mentions Don Quixote in his introduction of D’Artagnan, so…If you gravitate towards doorstoppers, you may enjoy reading Cervantes’ novel. Or, if you’ve read the classic, you could try Spinning Out by David Stahler Jr., a YA novel featuring a main character obsessed with his town’s high tech wind turbines, who also lands the lead role in his school’s play: Man of La Mancha.
V. Movies
- The Three Musketeers (2012, starring Matthew MacFayden, Luke Evans, Ray Stevenson and Logan Lerman)
- The Three Musketeers (1999, starring Charlie Sheen, Kiefer Sutherland, Chris O’Donnell, Oliver Platt)
- The Three Musketeers (2006, Brain Blessed, Gary Watson, Jeremy Young, Jeremy Brett)
- La Princesse de Montpensier
- The BBC’s The Musketeers will be released on DVD towards the end of August