#vingt ans après

[potatosonnet]

Rats rats rats!! 🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀💛

Inspired by the designs of Juliette (@/cy-lindric)

[rrredgi]

Here's an article on ancient french swearing words and phrases that might be interesting to someone who (like me) is reading Dumas and is wondering wtf is "morbleu" and "vertudieu"

(there's no "ventre-de-biche" which "expresses surprise, disapproval, indignation" according to this article and is frequently used by Chicot)

[thorin-is-a-cuddler]

*rereads the reunion scene in Twenty Years After ten thousand times to finally calm my heartbeat but failing*

"Oh, no, dear count!" cried Aramis.

"Oh, my dear D'Herblay!"

"Oh, Aramis!" continued Athos [...] "I shall go unarmed." "No, for I will not allow you to do so."

"Did you see?" whispered Aramis to Athos, touching his shoulder with one hand.

"I hate hypocrites, and among that number I place musketeers who are abbés and abbés who are musketeers."

"Aramis, break your sword. It must be done." Then in a lower and more gentle voice, he added. "I wish it."

"I swear," he said [...] in a voice still trembling with emotion. [...] "now, Athos, come."

"Ah, traitor!" muttered d'Artagnan, leaning towards Aramis and muttering in his ear.

[cutel0lita]

angry mazarin, he needs to chill-out sometimes🤨

[iliketoshakepeare]

I am once again obsessing over The three musketeers, so here i am discussing whether they would be cats or dogs.

Athos: Cat. Laying on the sofa, drinking wine, being so stoic and chill about everything

Porthos: St Bernards dog. Big, loveable, huggable, and always there to help you even at the cost of his life

Aramis: Definitely a cat, like a very arrogant drama queen, who would shove your favourite plant off the shelf with the most angelic big eyes ever

D'Artagnan: Chiuaua. Smol and agressive, like he's literally ready to fight you any time

[northwest-by-a-train]

No one:

No one at all:

No one in the history of the universe:

d'Artagnan in Vingt Ans Après :

it's mousquetin time. i'm going to mousquet all over those guys. I got the mousqus. #Mousquetswee- you guys get the idea

[pierrotdameron]

"Je trouve que 'Vingt ans après', le deuxième roman" d'Alexandre Dumas "est absolument extraordinaire. Donc, ça a toujours été l'ambition", ajoute-t-il. Dimitri Rassam promet de ne "pas attendre 20 ans" et "espère revenir dans quelques années avec Les Trois Mousquetaires".

[alyona11]

I joined Dumas server and the people there have a galaxy brain so they headcanoned this tweet for Athos and Raoul and I couldn't stop myself from sketching it xD

[severias]

It is done

That does not look like Charles I but your get the vibe so it's fine

I was slightly inspired by Russian 20ya, yk the

I love Aramis did you know

[madeofplasma]

Cottage core Athis in Twelve Years Later for Les Dumariolles exhibit

[potatosonnet]

Made a post to announce that I have found the correlation in facial features between Denis Manuel and a Peanuts character.

Along with a bit of gay vampire frev and killer rats 🐀

-

PS translation for the Mandarin in alt text

[cy-lindric]

bonjour cy-lindric, j'ai une petite question. when I was a young person, I read The Three Musketeers and then eagerly started to read Twenty Years After and was so upset at what had happened to my beloved young heroes that I put the book down and never picked it up. what do you think, should I try again?

Bonjour !

After reading The Three Musketeers, I also wasn't sure I wanted to read Twenty Years After, and I took a break inbetween both to read something entirely different (The Locked Tomb, iirc). I think my reason for that was kind of the opposite of yours ; I enjoyed T3M a lot and loved the characters, flaws and all, but by the end they had somewhat crossed over the line into being Too Awful and the lack of retribution left me a bit frustrated. I didn't see it as a failing of the story - on the contrary, their strong character flaws and downfall in the conflict with Milady is one of the most emotionally intense and compelling parts imo - but I wasn't sure I felt like hanging out with these guys for a few hundred more pages at that point.

If your vision of the characters as a young reader was a very positive and perhaps idealized one, I can imagine why you might not have enjoyed entering into Twenty Years after. The illusion of glory has worn off ; the characters have separated, they live unremarkable lives, and their personalities have evolved drastically with the passing of time. It's almost a brutal return to reality.

For me though, it added layers of characterization to the point where now it's clear to me that this version of the Inseparables is by far the one I prefer.

I hope it's ok if I take the opportunity to talk at length about what I like about TYA below the cut. TL;DR : I love that Twenty Years After is a more realistic look at the big four's personalities and how they evolved while still keeping them thematically coherent, and that TYA makes them confront the reckless and cruel shit they did in their youth.

Spoilers ahead obviously.

We've often talked about how T3M is at its core a story about the end of knighthood. It's a tongue-in-cheek approach at chivalrous initiation, set at edge of the modern world, inbetween the time of ballads about knights in armor and that of adventures about journeying gunmen and soldiers. I think TYA embodies that particularly ; the story of people who have carried the last of these intense, dangerous chivalric ideals in their youths, and who have now grown into middle aged adults who need to find their place in the world.

For a good chunk of the book, the big four are separated into two teams ; that in of itself might discourage some, but imo it's genius. Instead of the natural two-by-pairings, Dumas goes for a d'Artagnan+ Porthos and Athos + Aramis split on opposite sides, which makes for good drama and develops lesser explored dynamics. D'Artagnan and Porthos form a scrappy team of opportunists with money on their minds, and Athos and Aramis a more idealistic duo fighting for a noble lost cause. I think it's a bold choice but also premium sequel writing.

I also love the way the young and wild characters we knew evolve into middle aged men ; at their core, they're still the same, but they've all changed and struggled against the sunset of the golden age in their own ways.

D'Artagnan, after knowing such adventures and subsequent rapid social ascension in his teenage years, has been met in his adult life with the harsh reality that he is, in fact, not a noble knight but a soldier on payroll. His modest origins give him little hope for any further career advancement, and he takes on a new mission in his early 40s for a man he has no devotion for and a cause he doesn't care about, simply because he is bored and broke. D'Artagnan still has his quick wits, his strategic talent, his fencing skills, but he has grown out of the excesses of pride of his teenage years. I loved meeting him again in TYA, and it made so much sense to me that his bouts of anger and aggressivity would be a youthful trait that he'd ended up taming. He also realizes now a lot of what seemed like funny adventures and necessary violence was actually kind of fucked up ; that was a shock to me, as their shenanigans are treated so lightly in T3M, and tbh it healed me a little. Grown up d'Artagnan is cunning, calculating, down to earth and realistic. My foxy little man. I love him.

Porthos, likewise, has been struck by the weight of reality. He has made the sensible choice and got married to the rich widow who sugar mommied him in the first book. Now she's passed, he is rich, but he still fails to earn the respect of the high society he evolves in because he's not high born enough. Like d'Artagnan, he's stagnating and bored and now that he goes back adventuring it has nothing to do with the queen or the kingdom or honour ; it's about getting his damn nobility title.

Athos, on the other hand, is the eternal knight : the only truly high born of the four, and still hopelessly holding on to a time gone by. It's no surprise imo that his storyline brings him into the english civil war, doomed to fail at saving a king who'll end up executed right in front of him. TYA acknowledges more clearly than ever that at 28 yo, Athos was a depressed alcoholic, and an embodiment of what an excess of aristocratic righteousness can do. In TYA, he is sober and moisturized and a DILF, and now he's running around frantically looking for absolution for his numerous crimes. It's delicious.

Aramis is maybe the hardest pill to swallow. TYA confirms the T3M hints that he isn't really the prim and proper romantic boy he acts like he is, and that he's possibly the most hypocritical and ruthless of the four. It might be a harsh one for Aramis fans who like him better as a cute bean, but I love the early onset of remorseless conniving bloodthirsty ambitious Aramis. Another harsh bit might be the evolution of Aramis and d'Artagnan not really liking each other ; they were always the least close combination, and imo it makes sense that their personalities would clash. I think it's clever and compelling conflict.

Now, obviously, if you've cared enough to read all this and if you know me a little, you know that a huge highlight of the book for me was its late-appearing antagonist, Mordaunt. Mordaunt is the son Milady had with her english husband. Because of the Musketeers' intervention, he's grown up in poverty and has been denied his father's inheritance. He's now a Roundhead working for Cromwell, and set on avenging his mother at all costs. Mordaunt, unlike his mother who was this beautiful and dangerous force of nature, is very uncool and pathetic. She was the primordial snake, he's the gutter rat. Obviously, I love that in and of itself, but it's also kind of striking image of the wretchedness of what they've done to her, a fucked up little goblin ghost come back to haunt them as they're trying to make their life worth living again. This time, their enemy is not a cunning political rival with a flamboyance of body and mind akin to their own ; it's a shitty little guy with bad skin who wants to kill the king and punish the murderers. Watch out babes, it's the modern world coming for you.

Of course, they're the Four Musketeers, and they did what they had to do, so they get together again and swear friendship and keep going their way. But they're also old guys with difficult personalities in a world that's never going to be the same. I think it's a cool book.

[aramielles]

et puis les trois mousquetaires c’est sympa mais quand est-ce qu’on a une adaptation de vingt ans après avec aramis en dilf (littéralement iykyk) et où ils sont tous slutty enough ?

[thorin-is-a-cuddler]

Can we talk about the fact that Marie de Chevreuse apparently crossdressed a lot for Aramis?

[omniavanitasblog]

[coolvieilledentelle]

Autrefois, j’étais belle, j’attirais les regards, Sur mon glorieux passage, les hommes se retournaient, Le monde et ses égards, oui, tout m’appartenait ! À présent, je suis vieille, j’ai perdu mon pouvoir. J’ai reçu bien des roses ; leurs épines m’ont blessée, Après les jours heureux suivaient les nuits glaciales, J’ai affronté déserts, tempêtes, et chacals, Et sans jamais plier, j’ai lutté, supporté. Mais tous ces coups du sort, reçus en pleine face, En laissant sur ma peau, d’indélébiles traces, Ont fortifié mon âme, comme un muscle qui travaille. Elle devenait plus belle, après chaque bataille ! Et vous tous qui pensez, sa beauté s’est fanée, Emportée par le temps, eh bien vous vous trompez, Car de cette sombre pierre qu’était mon cœur, avant, Les intempéries de la vie en ont fait un diamant. Derrière mes yeux, délavés par tant de larmes versées, Et mes paupières ridées, usées par les tourments, Se cache mon âme... Regardez-la, et vous verrez, Comme je suis belle, bien plus belle… qu’à vingt ans !

Martine Hadjedj