Twenty years after

About the book

Two decades after their early adventures, d'Artagnan seeks out Athos, Porthos, and Aramis as France enters new struggles around royal authority and Cardinal Mazarin. Their lives have diverged, and friendship cannot simply erase the allegiances each has acquired. Dumas carries the action between French factional conflict and the English civil war, giving private loyalties consequences within public upheaval. Old memories return with new force, while younger figures and inherited grievances complicate the sense that the past has safely ended. The pleasure of reunion is therefore accompanied by uncertainty about what the friends can still ask of one another. Adventure, disguise, and political manoeuvre keep testing whether a bond formed in youth can survive mature commitments that pull its members towards incompatible purposes.

• Friendship over time
• Political loyalty
• The return of the past

Why read it

For a musketeer sequel that makes the reunion of familiar friends more interesting by allowing their loyalties and circumstances to have changed.

English translation