How to Be a musketeer in 3 steps!

Josiah here. So part of my New Year’s Resolutions has been to take a look at some of the classics I missed during my education. The Three Musketeers was one of them - touted as the original sword and cloak novel. It’s kind of like a 150 year old Dan Brown novel or Jason Bourne story. My three takeaways are below - spoiler alert, although you probably should’ve gotten around to it before now. 

Prior to reading this my only real association with the Three M’s was the 1993 film version starring Chris O'Donnell (riding that Scent of a Woman high), Oliver Platt (a classic ‘I-swear-I’m-better-than-this role), Kiefer Sutherland (pre 24), Charlie Sheen (during drug haze), and Tim Curry (his first of two The Three Musketeer IMDB credits - the second being Barbie and The Three Musketeers). 

Tim: I'm voicing which one again...?

So you want to be a musketeer? 

Fight anyone you talk to. 

It’s shocking how many duels there are in this book. And conveniently a ban on duels has just been put into effect over all of France (per the king) so all of these fights have to be communicated with terse/double-entendre language: Let’s meet behind the village square. D’Artagnan himself schedules duels with each of the three musketeers on the same day (although he doesn’t fight them - he does fight with them in a brawl against five of the cardinal’s men), which is one of the only things the aforementioned 1993 movie keeps from the book. (That and the hats.) 

Oliver knows he looks good.

If someone gives you something, pawn it and drink the money away. 

This one's a no brainer. D’Artangan goes on a mission for the queen and returns with four amazing horses (a gift from the Duke of Buckingham) and, upon completion, is gifted a diamond ring. He gives three of the horses to his friends and keeps one for himself as well as the ring. 

Within two pages each of the musketeers, d’Artagnan excluded, has sold his horse and bought enough alcohol to drown it - and themselves - in. To his credit, it takes d’Artagnan a little longer to sell the ring, but he eventually does: France has declared war on England and to go to war each man must bring his own supplies. Since his friends sold their horses D pawns the ring and buys them animals and supplies (as well as alcohol) and the four friends happily go to war. 

Bye-Bye Horsies! I'll drink to your health.

If you think you’re right, go ahead, be the judge, jury, and executioner. 

After 575 pages of swords and drinking and women and drinking, the four friends finally catch up to the main villain, Milady - who has killed d’Artagnan’s love, and seduced and manipulated about forty men throughout the book. When the friends catch up to her, instead of turning her over for justice, they just say aloud everything bad she’s done to them and kill her. Now we see vigilante justice on movies pretty much every other film, but if you really think about this point in the plot, four men catch a woman in the wilderness and kill her. And they’re the good guys? Although they do spare the Comte de Rochefort, a bitter enemy of d'Artagnan throughout the entire book (though he doesn't share the same fate in the movie...) 

What makes you think I'm a bad guy?

So there you have it - three easy steps to becoming a musketeer. (HWW does not condone fighting, vigilante justice, Chris O’Donnell, or anything Charlie Sheen has done post-Hot Shots. Please Musketeer responsibly.)