D'Artagnan

D'Artagnan is the young Gascon swordsman protagonist of Alexandre Dumas's The Three Musketeers, published in 1844. Arriving in Paris with little more than an old horse, a letter of introduction and a fierce sense of honor, D'Artagnan quickly becomes entangled in duels with three musketeers of the King's Guard, Athos, Porthos and Aramis, before the four become inseparable friends and allies, giving rise to the novel's enduring motto, all for one and one for all. D'Artagnan navigates the political intrigues of the French court under King Louis XIII, working to foil the schemes of the scheming Cardinal Richelieu and the seductive, dangerous spy Milady de Winter, while pursuing a romance with Constance Bonacieux, the queen's seamstress. The character is loosely based on the real seventeenth-century musketeer Charles de Batz de Castelmore, Comte d'Artagnan, whose life Dumas drew on and considerably embellished for the novel. D'Artagnan and his three companions became lasting archetypes of swashbuckling adventure fiction, inspiring countless later stage, film and television adaptations.