Milady de Winter

[close] Milady Clarick de Winter, often referred to as simply Milady, is a fictional character in the novel The Three Musketeers (1844) by Alexandre Dumas, père. She acts as a spy for Cardinal Richelieu and is one of the chief antagonists of the story.

A capable and beautiful spy, Milady is an unusual example of a strong, independent woman with a tragic and checkered past, filled with the seduction and willful destruction of men who will provide her with monetary support. Milady is remorseless and unrepentant for her countless "misdeeds". Late in the novel, after the reader is already presented with numerous examples of her villainy to the crown, she is revealed to be the wife of Athos, one of the musketeers in the title of the novel. A teenager forced to enter the convent, she falls in love with a priest and escapes with stolen church property to fund their new life in another part of the country, for which both of them were branded by a legal official. She was with a man in Athos' village, and pretending to be his sister, when Athos, a nobleman (the Comte de La Fère), fell in love with her and, despite her obscure origins, married her. Out in the forest one day, he discovered the brand on her shoulder, identifying her as a convicted criminal. Thinking she had married him only for his money, and feeling dishonoured, Athos hangs her from a tree on the spot, but she survived.