Karakterler

Alexandre Dumas

Alexandre Dumas was born on 24 July 1802 in the small town of Villers-Cotterêts. His father, Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, was the son of a French nobleman and an enslaved woman in Saint-Domingue; he rose to the rank of general in the armies of the Revolution, fell out with Napoleon, and died in 1806, before his son turned four. The widow was granted no pension and the family sank into poverty. Schooling was scarce, and the boy's only asset was his fine handwriting; at fourteen he became a clerk to the local notary. In 1823 he left for Paris, where that same handwriting won him a place in the offices of the Duke of Orléans, the future king Louis-Philippe. His evenings belonged to the theatre, his nights to Shakespeare and Schiller. In February 1829 Henry III and His Court, staged at the Comédie-Française, caused an uproar by brushing the classical rules aside; coming a year before Hugo's Hernani, it was taken as the first victory of Romantic drama. Two years later Antony settled his name. He found his true vein in the 1840s, when the newspapers opened their columns to the serial novel. Working with Auguste Maquet, in 1844 he ran The Three Musketeers in Le Siècle and The Count of Monte Cristo in the Journal des débats. He spent as fast as he earned: he founded a theatre of his own and had the Château de Monte-Cristo built at Port-Marly. When the theatre went bankrupt in 1850 he fled his creditors to Brussels. Later he travelled across Russia, joined Garibaldi in Italy and lived four years in Naples. He handles history not as an archive but as a stage: dialogue drives the action, and the instalment breaks off exactly where curiosity bites hardest. He took the historical novel out of a narrow circle of readers and handed it to a mass public, setting down patterns of adventure storytelling that still work today. On 5 December 1870, in the middle of the war with Prussia, he died almost penniless at his son's house in Puys, near Dieppe. In 2002 his remains were moved to the Panthéon.

Caderousse

Dantes's former next-door neighbor and a tailor they borrowed from. Although he seems harmless at first, he is an opportunistic and cowardly man. He is at the table in the tavern when the treasonous compass planned by Danglars is written; even though he does not want to be a deliberate part of the plan, he just watches what happens while drunk. Later, he remains silent because he feels danger and does not dare to stand in the face of justice. His silence makes him one of the passive but most critical pillars of the three-person betrayal mechanism that led to Dantes's tragic journey to prison.

Danglars

The accountant of the Pharaon. Although he gets along well with the ship's owner, Morrel, he has a cunning and envious personality. He cannot stomach the respect Dantes earned at a young age and his impending promotion to captain. He is the mastermind who wrote the anonymous conspiracy letter that paved the way to the dungeons of the Chateau d'If. In the returns of Napoleon, he always seizes the opportunity to secure his own wealth. He is a heartless figure who acts entirely based on mathematical calculations.

Edmond Dantes

The young and talented first mate of the ship Pharaon. Just as he is about to be promoted to captain by his employer in honor of his open-sea experience and leadership, and about to marry his great love Mercedes, his life is stolen by a conspiracy hatched by his rivals. On a serious charge of being a Napoleonic agent, he is thrown into the ruthless Chateau d'If without any trial. He spends 14 years there; when he reaches the point of despair and madness, his cell unites with that of Abbe Faria. Faria teaches him everything from history to science, foreign languages to analytical philosophy, and leaves him the location of the Spada family's secret treasure. After managing to escape from prison in a body bag and acquiring the vast wealth, all the joy of his youth has faded; he transforms into a cold, wise superhuman determined to establish justice and take ruthless revenge on those who destroyed him.

Fernand Mondego (Fernand the Catalan)

The Catalan cousin of Dantes' fiancée, Mercedes. He harbors a mad and hopeless love for Mercedes. The fact that she is to marry Dantes drives Fernand to the point of madness. Using the betrayal mechanism offered to him by Danglars without hesitation, he ensures Dantes is denounced. While Dantes is in prison, he convinces Mercedes to marry him through false comforts and the successes he achieves in the military.

Gérard de Villefort

The deputy royal prosecutor of Marseille. A highly talented, young, and insidious man. While celebrating his marriage with the family of a noblewoman he just became engaged to, he takes on Dantes' case. He sees Dantes' honesty and innocence and is about to grant him his freedom when he notices the conspiracy letter is addressed to Monsieur Noirtier (his own Bonapartist father). His father being accused would mean the end of his own career; to cover this up, he destroys the evidence, throws Dantes, an innocent young man, into the dungeon for life, and lies to curry favor with the King for his own career.

Mercedes

Dantes' deep and eternal love, his fiancée whom he loved more than life itself. However, when Dantes goes to prison due to the cowardly conspiracy, she is left alone, helpless, poor, and hopeless. As a result of the false news about Dantes' death and the 14 years of loneliness she endured, she was forced to marry her Catalan cousin Fernand just to hold onto life and out of gratitude; this separation destroys her.

Monsieur Morrel

A virtuous shipowner from Marseille, Dantes's employer and the owner of the ship 'Pharaon'. Trusting Dantes's intelligence and good intentions, he promises him the position of captain at a young age. When Dantes is accused of being a Bonaparte agent and imprisoned, Morrel repeatedly approaches the authorities to secure his release, despite all political risks and the pressures of the Royalist regime. He also cares for Dantes's elderly and sick father with his own money while Dantes is in prison and pays for his funeral.

Abbe Faria

An intellectual and scholar of Italian descent who was the former secretary to Cardinal Spada. Because he wrote political treatises long before Napoleon with the mission of uniting Italy under a single roof, he was targeted by Bonapartist authorities and thrown into the Chateau d'If. During his years of imprisonment, he resisted loneliness with his intelligence, invented his own tools and pens, and created a giant literary and philosophical legacy in his stash. When he breaks through to Dantes's cell via a miscalculated tunnel, he becomes a guardian angel for him. He leaves the young man all his knowledge and, finally, the decoded Monte Cristo treasure left by the Spada family.