D'Artagnan

[close] D'Artagnan is a fictional character created by Alexandre Dumas who first appears as the protagonist in the novel The Three Musketeers. Like several of Dumas' characters, he is loosely based on a real person - Charles de Batz-Castelmore, Comte d'Artagnan.

The real d'Artagnan's life was used as the basis for Gatien de Courtilz de Sandras' (1644-1712) novel Les mémoires de M. d'Artagnan. Alexandre Dumas in turn used de Sandras' novel as the main source for his d'Artagnan Romances (The Three Musketeers, Twenty Years After, and The Vicomte de Bragelonne), which cover d'Artagnan's career from his humble life's beginnings in Gascony to his death at Maastricht. Although Dumas knew that de Sandras' version was heavily fictionalised, in the preface to The Three Musketeers he affected to believe that the memoirs were real, in order to make his novel more believable.

The character is initially a hotheaded youth, and tries to engage the Comte de Rochefort and the three musketeers, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis in single combat. He quickly becomes friends with the musketeers, and has a series of adventures which put him at odds with Cardinal Richelieu, then First Minister of France. In the end, Richelieu is impressed by d'Artagnan, and makes him a Lieutenant of the Musketeers. This begins his long career of military service, as detailed in the sequels to Dumas' famous novel.