Twenty Years After

Twenty years on, the friends have scattered: Athos lives as a country gentleman, Porthos is rich and bored, Aramis has become an abbé, and d'Artagnan is still a lieutenant. France is torn by the uprising of the Fronde, and Cardinal Mazarin needs men he can trust. The four find themselves on opposite sides, then reunite to attempt something desperate, saving King Charles I of England from the scaffold.

Published in 1845, the sequel is darker than The Three Musketeers: the heroes are older, history is crueller, and Mordaunt, the son of Milady, has come for revenge. Many readers think it is the best book of the trilogy.

Alexandre Dumas (1802–1870) was the grandson of a French nobleman and an enslaved woman of African descent in Saint-Domingue; his father became a general of the Revolution. Arriving in Paris as a clerk with little education, Dumas made his name in the theatre and then, with the collaborator Auguste Maquet, turned history into the most popular adventure novels of the century.

The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo were followed by dozens more, earning fortunes that Dumas spent as fast as they came, on travel, newspapers and a fantastic château. In 2002 his remains were moved to the Panthéon in Paris among the great figures of France.