This gives the narrative an additional contemporary political aspect at a time when the debate in France between republicans and monarchists was still fierce. However, Dumas also frequently works into the plot various injustices, abuses and absurdities of the old regime that existed before the French Revolution (1789-99), which had taken place less than fifty years before the publication of the novel. In essence, the novel, set in France in 1625-8, is a lively romantic romp, recounting the rumbustious and exciting adventures of the heroes as they become entangled in the affairs of the state and the royal court. This scrap of information blossomed in Dumas’ creative mind into the famous saga that has enraptured generations of readers all around the world. de Tréville, captain of the Musketeers where, in the antechamber, he encounters and eventually befriends the three most formidable musketeers of the age: Athos, Porthos and Aramis. In the preface to the novel The Three Musketeers (1844), the author explains that his inspiration for the book was Mémoires de Monsieur D’Artagnan (1700), a historical fantasy by Gatien de Courtilz de Sandras, in which the character d’Artagnan relates his first visit to Paris and the office of M. The greatest set of literary heroes are those three daredevil Musketeers, Athos, Porthos and Aramis and their comrade in arms d’Artagnan, the creation of the French writer Alexandre Dumas (1802 –1870). Beyond The Three Musketeers: The life and times of Alexandre Dumas David Stuart Davies describes how his novels remain a continuing monument to his brilliance as a storyteller

Musketeers twenty years after