Yeah, surely the characters really existed - last summer I've been to a town called Oloron St.Marie, where Porthos was born. But the story has, of course, nothing to do with truth.
Carmen Beaudry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Speaking of....3 Musketeers is about real people too....the King of France > and the Duke of Buckingham were real people.... but no one believes Dumas' > story is true. Perhaps because the main characters are not real. (snip) Actually, d'Artagnan was a real person, and was a member, eventually captain, of the King's Musketeers. However, the historical Charles de Batz-Castlemore d'Artagnan was born somewhere around 1625 and so most of his exploits were during the reign of Louis XIV, not Louis XIII. Athos, Porthos and Aramis were also historic characters, but there is no record of them ever meeting d'Artagnan, and as a matter of fact I believe that Athos was killed in a duel around the time d'Artagnan was born. I have friends who last year visited the part of Gascony that contains the town of Artagnan. The town museum is full of the information about the historical figure. There was also a rather fanciful biography written in the early 18th cen. that is where Dumas got the idea for his stories, but he most certainly played fast and loose with the time period and other facts. For instance, Cardinal Richelieu, far from being the villian portrayed in Dumas' stories, was arguably one of the greatest statesmen in France's history. Melusine (the Three Musketeers may be why I fell in love with this time period, but my research sure didn't stop there) _______________________________________________ h-costume mailing list [email protected] http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume --------------------------------- Brings words and photos together (easily) with PhotoMail - it's free and works with Yahoo! Mail. _______________________________________________ h-costume mailing list [email protected] http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
