Twenty Years After

What It's About

Twenty years after the events of their first adventures, d'Artagnan is now an aging lieutenant of musketeers, while Athos, Porthos, and Aramis have gone their separate ways into retirement, the church, and rural nobility. When the new chief minister, Cardinal Mazarin, needs loyal swords to help him navigate France's civil war (the Fronde), he sends d'Artagnan to bring the four friends back together. But the years have changed them, and they soon find themselves pulled onto opposing sides of the conflict. Their loyalties are tested further when they cross the Channel to England, where they become entangled in the final days of the English Civil War and the fate of King Charles I. Shadowing them throughout is Mordaunt, the vengeful son of Milady de Winter, determined to settle an old score with the four musketeers.

Key Concepts

The novel explores friendship and loyalty strained by time, ambition, and divided politics; the passage of time and the musketeers' reckoning with age and mortality; the turbulence of the Fronde and the English Civil War as backdrops for personal and political intrigue; and revenge, embodied in Mordaunt's pursuit of the men who wronged his mother.

About the Author

Alexandre Dumas (1802–1870) was a French novelist and playwright and one of the most widely read authors in French literary history. Born in Villers-Cotterêts, he was the grandson of an enslaved woman from Saint-Domingue and the son of a celebrated general in Napoleon's army. He became a dominant figure in French popular fiction, known for a prolific output and a gift for fast-paced, serialized storytelling.

About This Edition

This is an 1890s translation by Estes & Lauriat.