49 Fun Facts About The Three Musketeers

The author of The Three Musketeers also wrote which revenge tale about the wronged sailor Edmond Dantès?

The Count of Monte Cristo followed The Three Musketeers within months in 1844; Dumas named a château after it, then sank so far into debt that he had to sell the place.

The young hero d'Artagnan leaves his family in which region of France to seek his fortune in Paris?

Gascony's hot temper is on show at once: his first morning among the musketeers ends with three duels booked for that same afternoon, against the men who become his closest friends.

D'Artagnan serves as a cadet in which company before finally earning a musketeer's tunic?

The King's Guards took him as a cadet because the musketeers required an apprenticeship first; his three friends stood his guard duty with him, so the company gained four men for one.

In The Three Musketeers, which powerful churchman is the heroes' chief antagonist, scheming against the queen?

Cardinal Richelieu gets a private motive from Dumas as well as a political one: he had loved the queen, and could not forgive her for turning him down.

What mark, branded on Milady de Winter's shoulder, reveals her criminal past?

A fleur-de-lis was burned into her by the executioner of Lille himself, who confesses it at her trial: she had led his brother into theft and ruin, and he swore she would share the punishment.

Who turns out to be Milady's first husband, the man who left her for dead in a forest?

Athos was once the Comte de la Fère: finding the brand on his young wife's shoulder, he hanged her from a tree, believed her dead, and buried himself in the musketeers under a false name.

D'Artagnan races to London to bring back which gift the Queen had given the Duke of Buckingham?

Diamond studs, twelve of them, a present from the king: Milady snips two off at a ball for the cardinal, so Buckingham has his jeweller copy them within two days to complete the set.

Who is Constance Bonacieux, the woman d'Artagnan falls in love with at first sight?

The Queen's seamstress and confidante is also the young wife of d'Artagnan's landlord, an elderly haberdasher whom the cardinal's men turn into a spy and who helps abduct her.

How does Milady kill Constance Bonacieux?

Poison from a hollow ring, tipped into a glass of wine in the convent where Constance was hiding: Milady had posed as a fellow victim of the cardinal, and d'Artagnan arrives minutes too late.

The Three Musketeers reaches its climax at the siege of which Protestant stronghold?

La Rochelle is where the four friends bet they can breakfast for an hour in a bastion under enemy fire, purely to talk out of the cardinal's hearing, and hold it for an hour and a half.

Which real assassin does Dumas borrow as Milady's puritan jailer, the man she talks into killing Buckingham?

John Felton really did stab Buckingham to death at Portsmouth in 1628; the real lieutenant had served in the duke's failed campaigns and needed no Milady to persuade him.

At the end of The Three Musketeers, the cardinal hands d'Artagnan a blank commission for which rank?

Lieutenant of musketeers, on a commission with the name left blank: d'Artagnan offers it to each of his three friends, all refuse, and one of them takes a quill and writes his name in.

D'Artagnan's servant Planchet is hired after being seen on a Paris bridge passing the time in which way?

Spitting into the river to watch the rings spread struck the musketeer who found him as proof of a reflective, contemplative nature, so he hired him on the spot.

How does Grimaud, a servant all but forbidden to speak, communicate in The Three Musketeers?

Sign language is all his taciturn master allows: Grimaud is trained to obey a gesture or a movement of the lips, and is thrashed, without anger, when he reads one wrongly.

Which queen do the heroes of The Three Musketeers defend?

Anne of Austria was in fact Spanish, a Habsburg princess born in Valladolid, and the real Duke of Buckingham did cause a scandal by declaring his passion for her in 1625, the year the novel opens.

In which form did The Three Musketeers first appear, between March and July 1844?

A newspaper serial in Le Siècle, which Dumas opened with a preface pretending he had only found the story, in an old manuscript of memoirs he asked leave to reprint.

What did Auguste Maquet do for Dumas on The Three Musketeers?

Drafted the plots: Maquet researched the history and wrote outlines, which Dumas expanded in his own style, cutting some characters and inventing others.

Dumas's collaborator on The Three Musketeers sued him for what, which the court refused?

Credit as co-author was what the court refused him, so the covers kept a single name; accounts differ on whether he came away with any more money.

Which film ends with a game-show contestant asked to name the third of the three musketeers?

Slumdog Millionaire's Jamal learned two of the names in a schoolroom but never the third, so he guesses, and the guess, Aramis, wins him twenty million rupees.

The real Charles de Batz de Castelmore d'Artagnan died in 1673 at the siege of which city?

Maastricht is where a musket ball killed the captain of the King's Musketeers as he led an assault in June 1673; Dumas kept the ending, and his hero dies at a Dutch siege in the saga's last pages.

The real d'Artagnan arrested which finance minister of Louis XIV, whose fall cleared the way for Colbert?

Nicolas Fouquet was seized at Nantes in 1661 as he left a council meeting; his judges voted for banishment, but Louis XIV overrode them and had him locked up for life.

The real Musketeers of the Guard were founded in 1622 when which king armed a company of light cavalry with muskets?

Louis XIII made them by handing muskets to light horsemen first raised by his father, Henry IV; a century and a half later Louis XVI disbanded the corps to save money.

After 1664 the two musketeer companies were called the Grey and the Black Musketeers after what?

The colour of their horses named both companies; one of them had begun as a cardinal's own musketeers, taken over by Louis XIV when Mazarin died in 1661.

In 2002, for the bicentenary of his birth, Dumas's remains were moved to which Paris landmark?

The Panthéon received his coffin from his home town's cemetery, draped in blue velvet bearing the musketeers' motto, to lie beside Victor Hugo and Émile Zola.

The sequel Twenty Years After sees the musketeers try in vain to save which doomed monarch?

Charles I of England goes to the block even though the four friends spirit away London's executioner to stall it: a masked volunteer takes the axe, and he proves to be Milady's vengeful son.

The Vicomte of Bragelonne, last of the d'Artagnan Romances, is usually split into volumes, the final one titled what?

The Man in the Iron Mask closes the saga: Aramis swaps Louis XIV for a secret twin held in the Bastille, the scheme fails, and d'Artagnan is killed moments after learning he is to be a marshal.

In the 1998 film of the saga's final volume, who played both Louis XIV and his imprisoned twin Philippe?

Leonardo DiCaprio was still in cinemas with Titanic: this film opened in second place at the US box office right behind it, so he starred in the two biggest films of the week.

Richard Lester's 1973 film of The Three Musketeers was first floated as a vehicle for which band?

The Beatles had made A Hard Day's Night and Help! with Lester, which is how he came to the project; the idea of using the band fell away, but the director stayed.

The 1973 Three Musketeers cast cried foul when the producers did what with their footage?

Released it as two films: The Four Musketeers followed in 1974, the cast demanded pay for both, and the Screen Actors Guild's 'Salkind clause' now makes contracts say how many films are being made.

The 1993 Disney film's end-credits song 'All for Love' was performed by Bryan Adams, Rod Stewart and whom?

Sting completed the trio on a ballad whose title plays on the musketeers' motto, 'All for one, and one for all'; it went to number one in the United States in January 1994.

Who played the scheming cardinal in the 1993 Disney adaptation starring Charlie Sheen and Kiefer Sutherland?

Tim Curry's cardinal goes further than the one in the novel: he plans to have the young king murdered on his birthday and rule France himself alongside the queen.

Paul W. S. Anderson's 2011 film added what anachronistic vehicles, one of which the musketeers hijack from Buckingham?

Airships, built in the film from designs by Leonardo da Vinci: the musketeers steal the plans in Venice in the opening scene, and Milady double-crosses them and sells them to England.

Who played Milady in the 2023 French two-part film of The Three Musketeers, which also starred Vincent Cassel?

Eva Green played her across both films; her co-star Vincent Cassel had visited the set of the 1973 version as a boy, when his father, Jean-Pierre Cassel, played the king.

In the BBC's 2014 series The Musketeers, which Doctor Who star played the cardinal in the first series?

Peter Capaldi learned during filming that he had been cast as the Twelfth Doctor, so his cardinal was killed off between series and the show had to find new villains.

In the cartoon Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds, the scheming Milady is drawn as which animal?

A cat among the dogs, with the cardinal drawn as a fox: the series was planned in Spain and animated in Tokyo, and its hero is D'Artacán in Spanish, from 'can', a word for dog.

The 3 Musketeers candy bar, introduced by Mars in 1932, originally came in three pieces of which flavours?

Chocolate, strawberry and vanilla came as three small bars in one pack, which is where the name comes from; the other two flavours were later dropped, leaving only the chocolate.

A 2004 New Year's TV musical of The Three Musketeers cast which future president as d'Artagnan?

Volodymyr Zelenskyy, then a television comedian, played him opposite three musketeers rewritten as women, in a New Year's special made jointly for Russian and Ukrainian television.

Which silent-film swashbuckler starred as d'Artagnan in the 1921 adaptation of The Three Musketeers?

Douglas Fairbanks, fresh from The Mark of Zorro, did his own stunts as d'Artagnan and came back to the part as an older man in 1929 for his last silent film.

Which Hollywood song-and-dance star played d'Artagnan in MGM's 1948 film of The Three Musketeers?

Gene Kelly broke his ankle before the shoot, so his fencing scenes were filmed last; the same injury cost him the lead in Easter Parade, which went to Fred Astaire.

A 1936 Disney Silly Symphony crossed The Three Musketeers with which nursery rhyme?

Three Blind Mice gave the short its title, Three Blind Mouseketeers: the sightless trio blunder past every trap Captain Katt sets for them, and he ends up caught in his own.

In Disney's 2004 film Mickey, Donald, Goofy: The Three Musketeers, the three heroes start out in which lowly job?

Janitors at musketeer headquarters: their captain, Pete, makes them royal bodyguards only because he thinks them too hopeless to stop his plot against Princess Minnie.

D'Artagnan earns a duel with Aramis by helpfully picking up which object the musketeer was trying to hide?

A handkerchief, embroidered with a coronet: Aramis had his foot on it because it came from a married lady, and the newcomer's good manners exposed the affair in front of his comrades.

D'Artagnan blunders into a burly musketeer and learns which secret of his dazzling baldric?

It is gold only in front: the back is plain leather, which is why its owner keeps a cloak on and pleads a cold, and being found out costs d'Artagnan his second challenge of the day.

Which of the four heroes of The Three Musketeers is the vain dandy of giant strength, the least cerebral of them?

Porthos ends the novel leaving the service to marry his mistress, a lawyer's rich widow, whose long-coveted strongbox turns out to hold 800,000 livres.

In The Three Musketeers, Aramis is torn between women, court intrigue and which other calling?

The priesthood was his path until a quarrel over a lady drove him from the seminary to a fencing master and a fatal duel; he calls himself a musketeer only 'for a time'.

Which agent of the cardinal mocks d'Artagnan's horse at Meung?

The Comte de Rochefort escapes him for the whole book; in the epilogue they finally fight, three times, d'Artagnan wins each duel, and the two end by embracing as friends.

D'Artagnan sets out for Paris with a letter of introduction, soon stolen, to which captain of the King's Musketeers?

Monsieur de Tréville had arrived in Paris just as poor and risen to be the king's friend; with the letter stolen on the road, d'Artagnan gets a cool welcome until he proves himself.

'All for one, one for all', the motto of the three musketeers, is also the traditional motto of which country?

Switzerland took it up after Alpine floods in 1868, when an appeal for aid used the slogan to rally the young federal state; since 1902 it has been set in Latin in the dome of the Federal Palace.

France's 'Four Musketeers' of the 1920s, among them René Lacoste, were champions of which sport?

Tennis: Lacoste, Borotra, Cochet and Brugnon won France the Davis Cup six years running from 1927, and the Roland Garros stadium was built to stage their first defence of it.