Same here. I thought it was completely fictional.

So, I immediately looked it up. There was a real d'Artagnan, he was kind of a big deal, so Dumas wrote some stories based on a fictionalized version of the real d'Artagnan.

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brightball an hour ago | parent | next [-]

I read the original Dumas story a few years back. Never had any idea.

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3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[deleted]

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bigstrat2003 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Wow, that's really cool. I knew that Cardinal Richelieu was a real person (and that he is credited with inventing the butter knife!), but I didn't realize there were others.

	▲	fusslo 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		D'Artagnan - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_de_Batz_de_Castelmore_... Cardinal Mazarin - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardinal_Mazarin Athos - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armand_d%27Athos Porthos - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_de_Porthau Aramis - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_d%27Aramitz Comte de Troisville (D'artagnan's mentor) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comte_de_Troisville All highly fictionalized and I have had trouble finding information on the real counterparts (aside from the Cardinal). I started learning about that period of history after listening to the D'Artagnan Romances in audiobook form. The other interesting thing is Gatien de Courtilz de Sanras wrote semi-fictional accounts of D'Artagnan, published 27 years after D'artagnan's death and 144 years before Dumas' The Three Musketeers ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gatien_de_Courtilz_de_Sandras ).
	▲	kergonath 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		> I knew that Cardinal Richelieu was a real person And he was more than a big deal. One of the most powerful people in Europe at the time.
	▲	expedition32 43 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Maastricht today is not a French city. The city was returned after a peace treaty. A hero and a heroic death in a pointless war.

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lo_zamoyski 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I had a similar experience with the characters in Sienkiewicz's Trilogy. A number of the fictional characters were amalgamations of actual historical figures, with added or modified histories. For example, the character of Sir Wołodyjowski is actually drawn from two figures with the same surname.

(For those interested, Jerzy Hoffman has produced excellent film adaptations of these books, two while navigating communist censorship, which is why they were filmed in reverse order. In reading order:

- "With Fire and Sword" (1999) [1]

- "The Deluge" (1974) [0] (trailer for the significantly shortened 2014 director's cut [3])

- "The Colonel Wołodyjowski" [2]

In my opinion, and this is widely regarded to be the case, the original 5+ hour "The Deluge" is the best of the three and frankly one of the best movies I've ever watched.)

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqdrKEEt_nc

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCESk2joFo8

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFO4O4JNjXw

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBfhvt1zrfU