History Literature / TheCountOfMonteCristo

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!!The Book

* TheCountOfMonteCristo/TheCountOfMonteCristoTropesAToC
* TheCountOfMonteCristo/TheCountOfMonteCristoTropesDToF
* TheCountOfMonteCristo/TheCountOfMonteCristoTropesGToI
* TheCountOfMonteCristo/TheCountOfMonteCristoTropesJToL
* TheCountOfMonteCristo/TheCountOfMonteCristoTropesMToP
* TheCountOfMonteCristo/TheCountOfMonteCristoTropesQToS
* TheCountOfMonteCristo/TheCountOfMonteCristoTropesTToZ

[[folder:Other adaptations]]
* TheAce: In the 1973 animated series, the Count was able to do things like: flying a balloon, paint art forgeries in a week to unmask a real forger, fool a villain into thinking he was a giant, stop [[spoiler:the Tower of Pisa]] from being blown up, etc.
* ActionizedAdaptation: The original book has very few action scenes, with two duels interrupted before they can begin via apology or a BreakingSpeech. Most film adaptations add some sword fights anyway.
* AdaptationRelationshipOverhaul: In the original book, Caderousse, Danglars and Mondego are the ones who actively frame Dantès for treason. Villefort only "joins" the plot afterwards when he interrogates and jails Dantès for his own political gain. He doesn't interact with the rest of the conspirators until much later in the story. In some adaptations that remove Caderousse, Villefort replaces him as an active conspirator in the plot to frame Dantès.
* AdaptedOut: Caderousse is omitted from many adaptations. His secondary role in the plot (drunkenly encouraging Mondego and Danglars to carry out the plot, then doing nothing to save Dantès from arrest even though he knows the truth) and his implied motive (his jealous of Dantès's prosperity, which he shares with Danglars) arguably make him redundant in a CompressedAdaptation.
* AdaptationalSexuality: With Eugenie and Louise being one of the first, if not the ''very'' first, sympathetic gay couples in mainstream entertainment, it's really a shame how their romance hardly ever makes it into adaptations.
** In the Soviet adaptation, Eugenie is straight and elopes with [[AllGirlsWantBadBoys Luigi Vampa]] rather than with Louise. It serves as an additional [[SarcasmMode lovely]] surprise for her father when he is in Vampa's captivity.
* AscendedExtra: Jacopo, who [[YesMan obeys the Count's instructions without question]] in the book, becomes TheWatson in some adaptations like the 1973 animated series.
* CompressedAdaptation: One of the four conspirators is typically removed from adaptations, though the 1975 Richard Chamberlain version manages to squeeze in all of them.
* CulturallySensitiveAdaptation: The book ends with the Count in a relationship with his slave/adoptive daughter Haydée (to be fair, she's a slave InNameOnly, and she was the one doing all the work to get him to notice her). As this still smacks of WifeHusbandry to modern audiences, most adaptations will have him end up back with Mercédès instead of Mercédès joining a convent, and Haydée sometimes ends up with Franz d'Epinay, who otherwise disappears from the book long before the end.
* DeathByAdaptation: Danglars, frequently. In the 1975 TV version, for instance, he gets Fernand's death so that Fernand can go out in a fight scene with Edmond.
* GenderFlip:
** The Korean soap opera ''Cruel Temptation'' features a female protagonist, who survives her own murder by her husband and his dominative mistress.
** The Brazilian [[SoapOpera telenovela]] ''Avenida Brasil'', whose protagonist Rita/Nina returns to have revenge on her WickedStepmother Carmen/Carminha.
** In the Musical, Vampa is female . . . and a pirate queen.
* GenreShift: The book is a historical epic and psychological revenge thriller, but adaptations tend to go the route of an action-heavy RoaringRampageOfRevenge.
* LighterAndSofter: The 1973 series, which makes the Count into TheAce and his group into a Myth/RobinHood-like group. Sorta justified, as it's geared towards a younger audience than usual.
%%* LostInImitation
* MajorityShareDictator: In the French miniseries ''Le comte de Monte Cristo'', the count buys fifty-one percent of Danglars's bank's shares so he can issue himself infinite letters of credit.
* RaceLift: In the Soviet adaptation, Ali becomes a Chinese man called Li (probably due to RealLifeWritesThePlot, as an Asian actor was much easier to find for a Soviet director).
* SettingUpdate:
** The Korean soap opera ''Cruel Temptation'' is set in the present day.
** The Brazilian [[SoapOpera telenovela]] ''Avenida Brasil'', whose protagonist Rita/Nina returns to have revenge on her WickedStepmother Carmen/Carminha after she dumped her off in [[WrongsideofTheTracks a landfill]] so she wouldn't get in her way.
** The Argentinian SoapOpera ''Montecristo'' also gives the book a SettingUpdate, with the lawyer Santiago going through similar ordeals to Dantès, becoming [[ShoutOut Alejandro Dumas]] as a result.
%%* {{Swashbuckler}}
[[/folder]]

!!The Book]]

* JealousPet: Danglars' wife has a small yippy dog that doesn't like Danglars, growling at him whenever he enters his wife's chambers. It gets punted across the room when Danglars needs to have a serious discussion with his wife.
* KangarooCourt: Dantès has just been framed for treasonous activities and goes before Villefort the Crown Prosecutor (a judge) in his chambers. Villefort is touched by Dantès's integrity and about to let him go, when he sees that a letter which was part of the evidence against Dantès, implicates his own father in treason and would ruin his career. At this point of course, the KangarooCourt element kicks in as Villefort applies powers actually given to him under the law to have Dantès imprisoned indefinitely without a trial.
* KarmaHoudini:
** Downplayed with [[spoiler:Danglars. As the instigator of Dantès' downfall, he was going to starve to death as Dantès' father had, but the Count had a MyGodWhatHaveIDone moment after the Villefort mess and let him off after a few days, reputation and fortune both ruined but alive, and with just enough francs to start a new, if humble, life elsewhere]].
** [[spoiler:Benedetto's]] fate after his trial is unknown.
* KarmicJackpot: Most of the novel is about revenge, but the Count also repays the effort of those who tried to help him. Monsieur Morrel, Edmond Dantès's employer at the time of his arrest, tried to get Dantès released despite the dangerous political risks he was taking. By the time Dantès escapes, Morrel's shipping company is on the verge of bankruptcy and his family honor is ruined. The Count rewards Morrel's efforts to save him by paying off his debts, buying him a new merchant ship, and providing a dowry for his daughter.
* KickTheMoralityPet: Edmond attacks innocent people -- the family members of his enemies -- not because they've hurt him in any way, but just to make his true enemies' despair that much more absolute. It's only once one of his closest friends attempts suicide (because he, unbeknownst to Edmond, was in love with one of those innocents) that Edmond realizes how cruel he's become. Fortunately, there's still time to save ''most'' of his victims.
* KidsAreCruel: Edouard de Villefort is a little shit, but even he didn't deserve [[spoiler:to be poisoned by his own mother]].
* KissingCousins: Fernand and Mercédès are cousins who get married and have a son.
* KnightTemplarParent: Madame de Villefort will go to any lengths to ensure that her son inherits a large fortune; which includes [[spoiler:poisoning nearly every member of her family, including her step-daughter]].
* LadyMacbeth: Caderousse's wife, La Carconte, pressures him into murdering a jeweller who poses only the slightest threat to them. [[spoiler:They succeed in the murder, but La Carconte gets a bullet in the throat.]]
* LaserGuidedKarma:
** After being robbed of his beautiful fiancée and a promising job and spending 14 years in prison, Dantès gets filthy rich and becomes acquainted with an even more beautiful woman.
** Dantès himself tries to [[InvokedTrope enforce]] this trope during his time as the Count of Monte Cristo, with mixed success. He rewards Monsieur Morrel, the one person who always believed in Dantès and actually put himself at risk to lobby for Dantès' release from his unjust imprisonment, but then [[spoiler:nearly ruins the life of Morrel's son Maximilien by inadvertently using the woman Maximilien loves as a pawn in one of his schemes]]. He destroys the lives of the men who destroyed his, but with considerable collateral damage, [[spoiler:particularly among their innocent children: Edouard de Villefort is murdered, Valentine de Villefort would have suffered the same fate if Maximilien had not interceded for her, and Albert Morcerf would have been killed too if Mercédès had not interceded for him, and at the end he joins the army as a DeathSeeker. Mercédès herself is his big failure: all his cleverness is insufficient to provide her with the happiness she deserves]].
* LastRequest: Captain Leclere, as he lies dying, charges his first mate, Dantès, with delivering a message that Leclere had been on his way to deliver. Dantès, of course, feels duty-bound to carry out his captain's last request, and that's where all the trouble starts.
* LeaveBehindAPistol: After de Villefort learns that [[spoiler:his wife Heloise]] has poisoned several people, and wanting to see justice done but not wanting the family's reputation to suffer from a public trial and execution, he strongly suggests to the culprit that one more poisoning would be in everyone's best interests.
* LeonineContract: Luigi Vampa and his men take Danglars prisoner and deprive him of any food except for what he buys from them at astronomical prices. This was, of course, masterminded by the Count as a means of separating Danglars from his ill-gotten wealth.
* MadeASlave: Haydée, though she was treated considerably better than most. If anything she's the one insisting the Count owns her, when he mostly sees her as a daughter and an instrumental pawn in his revenge against Morcerf. [[spoiler:It takes a while for him to accept she sees him as something other than a father-figure.]]
* MamaBear: Deconstructed. It's Madame de Villefort's complete devotion to her child what drives her to kill or attempt to kill all of her relations by marriage (while ignoring his sociopathic behavior) and, when caught, kill her own son before committing suicide so they'll be TogetherInDeath.
* ManlyTears: Plenty of male characters cry in the novel. Edmond himself cries often but as the Count, he very rarely sheds tears. This is implied to be a result of his bitterness and obsession with revenge. Pretty much the only times that Monte Cristo cries is when he experiences gratitude for how things have turned out for him, or when he witnesses gratitude towards him in others.
* MasterOfDisguise: The Count. (Although [[spoiler:Mercédès]] recognizes him immediately.)
* MasterPoisoner: [[spoiler:Madame de Villefort]], aided by advice from Monte Cristo.
* MeaningfulName: Valentine de Villefort, the proper lady-like daughter of one of the Count's enemies, and one half of the book's main romantic subplot.
* MenAreUncultured: Danglars. He even uses it as a selling point, as it proves he's a man of the People (while making sure everyone knows he's a baron).
* MentorOccupationalHazard: Abbe Faria spends years tutoring his fellow prisoner Edmond Dantès, and planning an escape from prison. Then, just as their escape plan is coming to fruition, he dies. But not before telling Dantès how to find some long lost treasure.
* MercyKill: In the sidestory about the Italian bandits, one bandit does this to his lover to prevent her being gang-raped by the rest of his band.
* MinoredInAsskicking: Edmond Dantès. The greater part of the story involves him infiltrating the French aristocracy multiple times under different guises, and trapping his enemies in various plans. But he's also a hardened ex-con, seasoned buccaneer, and hellbent on revenge.
* MiscarriageOfJustice: To the tune of fourteen years of false imprisonment. (And imprisonment in those days was [[ColdBloodedTorture arguably]] a FateWorseThanDeath.)
* MissionFromGod: The Count believes himself an agent of divine punishment, his new life proving that God has sent him after the people who destroyed his old one. His confidence is shaken when [[spoiler:[[MyGodWhatHaveIDone his actions lead to]] the [[WouldHurtAChild murder-suicide of Edouard and Héloïse de Villefort]].]]
* MockMillionaire: As part of his scheme, the Count gets a disreputable old soldier and Benedetto, a career criminal, to pose as father and son and pretend to be wealthy Italian aristocrats.
* MoodWhiplash: The young women Eugenie and Louise are planning their escape from the French aristocracy. It's a tense, risk-filled scene... until Eugenie swears, and the two erupt in laughter.
* MoralityPet: Haydee serves as an outlet for the otherwise cold and distant Count to show genuine affection.
* MorallyBankruptBanker: Danglars. Not only does he make stupid investments with his client's money, but when it catches up to him he runs for it with what's left of it (money intended for hospitals and the poor, to boot).
* MosesInTheBulrushes: The villainous Benedetto ("blessing") is a subversion of this trope. He is the product of an adulterous affair and left for dead by his parents. He is raised by criminals (well, smugglers), and is much worse than his adoptive family. If they manage to impart any values to him, it is an utter hatred of his birth father.
* MushroomSamba: There is a scene ({{bowdlerized}} in many translations, although the original isn't much more detailed) in which Franz has an erotic dream while high on hashish.
* MyGodWhatHaveIDone:
** Subverted by Villefort, who has his moment at the very ''beginning'' of the book. He initially feels a terrible remorse at sending the innocent Dantès to prison, but later represses it and goes through with the deed. It's implied, however, that the guilt he feels does not go away so easily. In fact, it is implied that Villefort became the hanging judge that he is ''because'' of the repressed guilt.
** Caderousse is horrified at the realization that Danglers has actually carried out the scheme he claimed to only be joking about, and almost blows the whole thing right at the start until Danglers convinces him any apparent connection to the plot would be very bad for him. Later, he becomes just as bad as the others.
** Played straight by [[spoiler:the Count himself, when confronted by Maximilien about Valentine's peril; it is only then that he starts realizing what he has become in the pursuit of vengeance. His most pointed realization, and the one that made him realized he'd gone too far, was when he failed to save a young boy who'd inadvertently become involved in his schemes.]]
* NestedOwnership: Edmond mentions this trope while explaining to Baptistin why he won't allow Baptistin's embezzlement to continue.
-->''Though a servant, you yourself have servants who take care of your laundry and your belongings. [...]Nowhere will you find a position comparable to the one that good fortune has gotten you here.''
* NestedStory: Signor Pastrini briefly interrupts his story about the bandit lord Luigi Vampa to tell another story about another bandit lord who preceded Vampa.
* NewJobAsThePlotDemands: Monsieur De Boville, who over the course of the novel goes from being the inspector of prisons for the south of France, to a high office in the police and finally to Receiver-General of the charities.
* NiceJobBreakingItHero: Morrel intercedes for Dantès many times in an effort to gain his release. After Napoleon returned to power, he greatly exaggerated Edmond's role in restoring the Emperor; once Napoleon fell again, those very statements, now on record, meant that there was ''no chance at all'' that Dantès would ''ever'' be released.
* NoDoubtTheYearsHaveChangedMe: Dantès does this type of reveal to each of his enemies. It backfires in Villefort's case since Villefort has other thing to worry about, namely [[spoiler:his wife's suicide, her murder of their son, his utter social annihilation once it's revealed he's Benedetto's father, and he goes mad shortly after]].
* NoEndorHolocaust: The false message that caused Danglars to lose a large chunk of his fortune very likely ruined other investors, but we only hear about Danglars'. Likely not touched upon because all the people losing money on that deal would've been acting following the 19th century equivalent of insider information.
* NoHonorAmongThieves: Caderousse has no problem with blackmailing Benedetto, just as Benedetto has no problem anonymously warning the Count about Caderousse's burglary attempt.
* NoPartyLikeADonnerParty: Discussed. One of the survivors of the sinking of the ''Pharaon'' mentions that the lifeboat was adrift in the open ocean for several days before being picked up by another ship, fortunately before it had reached the point of them eating each other but after things had got bad enough that they'd started discussing it as a possibility.
* NouveauRiche:
** The villainous Danglars is described as a stereotypical Nouveau Riche, with an appearance as repellent as his personality, and descriptions of his house emphasizing that everything is expensive but in poor taste. In contrast, the Count is himself Wicked Cultured despite having spent most of his life as a humble sailor and prisoner. It seems that the lowborn will only develop shallow tastes in response to riches if they're bad people to begin with.
** Morcerf is noted as being despised by true bluebloods for his haughty attitude (made worse once his career is exposed).
* ObliviousGuiltSlinging: Albert mentions that when his mother Mercédès has feelings for someone, it's for life.
* ObviouslyEvil:
** [[spoiler:Mme Villefort]] is repeatedly shown to be stalling for time or generally being unhelpful when someone is dying of poison.
** Baron Danglars is also very much this trope, having absolutely no remorse about sending Dantès to fourteen years of prison for his own ambition, and [[spoiler:having no regrets at all losing both his daughter and his wife, then running away, simply to save his money.]]
* OfficerAndAGentleman: Despite being a rabble-rousing populist, General Noirtier provides a good example of a gentleman soldier behaving honorably to those of the same class, even if on opposing sides. In the backstory, Franz d'Epinay's father, a Royalist, was caught infiltrating the group of pro-Napoleon soldiers Nortier belonged to and seeing that d'Epinay was a fellow gentleman, Nortier allowed him to duel to the death instead of simply killing him outright.
* OffingTheOffspring: [[spoiler:After her crimes are discovered, Madame de Villefort kills herself and, to spite her husband, their son too.]]
* OhCrap: The moment [[spoiler:Morcerf]] realises the Count is really Edmond Dantès.
* TheOldConvict: Abbe Faria. He teaches Dantès everything he will need to know for his new life on the outside, tells him where a fortune is hidden, and his death provides Dantès with his means of escape.
* OnceForYesTwiceForNo: Noirtier is completely paralyzed except for his eyes. He communicates by a system of blinks, including two agreed-upon signals meaning yes and no.
* OnlyKnownByTheirNickname: Chapter 29 mentions an old clerk known to all his colleagues by the nickname "Coclès", and says that he's been called that for so long that he probably wouldn't answer to his own real name in the unlikely event of somebody using it.
* PaidForFamily: Dantès creates the Cavalcanti line from whole cloth, providing the ruined major Cavalcanti with a fortune to act as the father of Benedetto, so as to let him move into society and from there, ruin Villefort. [[spoiler:Benedetto is Villefort's illegitimate child, who was thought dead by both parents.]] He also uses him to humiliate Morcerf and Danglars: Danglars, being informed of Cavalcanti's considerable wealth, breaks off Eugenie's engagement to Albert (using the pretext of the Janina scandal). Then Andrea is revealed to be Benedetto at their contract signing, and Eugenie runs away with her girlfriend...
%% ZCE * PayEvilUntoEvil: ''And how.''
* PetTheDog: Just before he becomes the Count, Edmond uses his vast riches to save Mr. Morrel from bankruptcy anonymously, helping the one person who always believed in him.
* PickOnSomeoneYourOwnSize: Dantès includes the innocent children of his enemies in his plan for revenge. [[spoiler:Most of them survive, and some of them end up better off, but that's more through bad luck than from any sentiment on the Count's part.]]
* PilferingProprietor: Caderousse is not specifically noted as corrupt once he becomes an innkeeper, although prior to that, he had a minor role in Dantes' unjust imprisonment and afterward acts as a LoanShark towards Dantes' impoverished father. However, he nonetheless fulfills the part about preying on guests. After being gifted a diamond by a disguised Dantes, Caderousse invites an appraiser. After the appraiser offers an inadequate (although still generous) sum, Caderousse and his wife murder and rob him so they can keep both the money and the diamond.
* PoisonedChaliceSwitcheroo: There is some in-story discussion of this trope as used by the Borgias. According to one of the men, the chalice contained a secret compartment that released the poison when the cupfiller needed, thus allowing him to serve an entire row of cardinals with only one in the middle one dying.
* PoisonIsEvil: The murder technique of choice of [[spoiler:Madame de Villefort, who poisons her husband's relatives one by one so her son will inherit everything]]. Its use by the Borgias is also mentioned.
* PoorCommunicationKills: A lot of drama could have been avoided had Maximilien told the Count ''who'' he was head over heels in love with, since the Count was actively pushing for her murder by proxy at the time to get at her father. To be fair to Maximilien, she made him promise not to mention her to the Count, because her interactions with the Count had given her a more pessimistic view of how he would react.
* PrankDate: Albert is propositioned by a peasant girl at the Carnival in Rome, but it turns out to be a ploy to lure him into the clutches of bandits who hold him for ransom.
* PrematurelyGreyHaired: Danglars' hair turns white prematurely when the Count's vengeance catches up with him.
* PrisonsAreGymnasiums: Somehow, languishing in a small cell for years makes Edmond unusually strong. The narrative states that the rough conditions gave him strength.
* ProperLady: Valentine and Haydee.
* ProtoSuperhero: Arguably, although perhaps more of a super''villain'' than hero at times. Like Batman, he's a brooding loner bent on revenge who is massively wealthy, a Master of Disguise, and has picked up immense physical prowess along the way.
* PublicExecution: A public execution during a Roman festival allows the Count to test Franz's character.
* RaceLift: There was a real Abbé Faria who was imprisoned in the Chateau d'If, but he was Goan Indian (and culturally Portuguese), where Dumas's version is Italian. The major commonality between the real guy and the fictional character is that both were well-read priests and both were imprisoned in the Chateau d'If, but other than that, the fictional Faria is quite different than the real one.
* RageAgainstTheLegalSystem: Edmond's revenge includes the corrupt judge who had him incarcerated indefinitely despite knowing he was innocent.
* RagsToRiches: Dantès goes from humble sailor and convict to one of the richest men in the world, thanks to him finding the treasure of Spada. Fernand and Danglars respectively start out as a fisherman and a clerk and become two of the richest and most prominent men in France via underhanded means.
* RedHerring: d'Avrigny believes that [[spoiler:Valentine]] is the poisoner. It's actually [[spoiler:Madame de Villefort...Valentine's stepmother]].
* RelativeError: Mercédès is mistaken for her son's mistress. The fact that [[MommasBoy Albert]] just can't shut up about how perfect his mother is really doesn't help matters. The Count probably [[InvokedTrope made that mistake on purpose]] -- he didn't want to reveal to Albert that he knew Mercédès. Debray doesn't have the same excuse, though he does have the excuse that it's dark and he can't see who the veiled woman is.
* RemoveTheRival: What Mondego did to Dantès and kick start the plot.
* RestrainedRevenge: What the Count settles on for Danglars after the death of Madame de Villefort and her son. He leaves the greedy Danglars humiliated and in abject penury, but alive.
* {{Revenge}}: Forms the motivation and the plot for this novel once Dantès gets out of prison.
* RevengeBeforeReason: Dantès finds himself free, talented, and ridiculously wealthy. It reaches the point where he's able to offer bribes to the pope, bankrupt a major French bank, construct multiple elaborate secret identities, buy up half of the French property market, and care for a beautiful foreign princess. He could sail off into the sunset, attempt to live out a long and happy life... But by this point he is a broken man obsessed with vengeance. [[spoiler:He eventually snaps out of it, but only when he sees the consequences of his actions.]]
* RevengeByProxy: Monte-Cristo is perfectly willing to encompass the deaths of Albert and Valentine to get his revenge on their fathers, in each case only relenting when he realizes their deaths will also harm people he cares about (Albert's mother Mercédès and [[spoiler:Valentine's secret fiance Maximilien]]). He does at least draw the line at harming Villefort's infant son, [[spoiler:and Edouard's death is a key moment leading to the Count realizing that he's not the omniscient BigGood he thought he was]].
* RevengeIsSweet: Edmond Dantès feels this way when he commits revenge on one of the antagonists. [[spoiler:At least until a machination of his indirectly kills a 9-year-old child, to the point he chooses a lesser revenge on his final target.]]
* RewardedAsATraitorDeserves: A romantic example. Madame Danglars is known to have an extramarital relationship (in a string of many) with Debray. In the end, when her own husband skips town leaving her disgraced but free, she seems to expect Debray to take her, but he simply gives her the corresponding part of the profits made with her money and advises her to leave Paris, where her reputation is tarnished. This throws her into despair.
* SacredHospitality:
** The Count, during the period when he's traveling and preparing his revenge, spends time in lands where this principle is upheld and absorbs it himself. One consequence is that he is noticeably unwilling to dine at Albert's home. While he gives other excuses, the explanation is that he feels it wouldn't be right to revenge himself on them if he shared their food. It's how Mercédès gets her first hint that the Count doesn't have her husband's best interests at heart, since he refuses food she herself gives him.
** Caderousse's step into a life of crime is murdering and robbing a wealthy stranger staying the night (at Caderousse's own insistence) in his house. Compounding the crime's seriousness is the fact that said stranger had actually travelled there to trade with him -- Caderousse is simply driven by Greed.
* ScrewTheRulesIHaveMoney: Edmond Dantès, Determinator or not, wouldn't have gotten far into his elaborate schemes for revenge without his eleventy billion francs.
* SecretIdentity: Dantès uses the titular Count persona to mask his true identity. He has other identities as well, such as a British nobleman, Lord Wilmore, and an Italian abbot, Abbe Busoni. He even builds a network of relationships between his alter egos, which he uses to throw off suspicions: Wilmore and Monte Cristo are supposed to be bitter enemies, while Busoni is a friend of both and is greatly perplexed by their rivalry. Then there is Sindbad The Sailor, and presumably many others.
* SecretIdentityIdentity: Edmond Dantès was so changed by prison that as the Count, he doesn't look at all like the idealistic NiceGuy he used to be and has some ThatManIsDead toward his earlier self. Also odd is that Dantès creates other personas: Busoni, an intellectual and pious Italian priest who seems to be modeled after Faria who tutored him in prison, and Lord Wilmore, an eccentric British philanthropist who is an enemy of the Count. Thus, Dantès essentially divided the different parts of his personality into different identities, and his main identity as the Count represents his darker side. He ultimately ends up showing some kindness and mercy (after one of his revenges went too far), and at the end of the novel signs a friendly letter as "Edmond Dantès, Count of Monte Cristo", thus reconciling the identities.
* SecretTestOfCharacter:
** After getting caught up on what's been going on with his enemies while he was in prison (see MrExposition above), the Count rewards Caderousse by giving him a valuable diamond. Caderousse can either use the diamond to rebuild his life and become an honest man, or fall victim to greed and let the diamond ultimately destroy him. [[spoiler:He fails. Hard. The Count even gives him a second chance, but he blows ''that'' too. When he's caught in the Count's mansion, Caderousse asks for yet another chance, but this time the Count leaves him to his fate, getting himself literally stabbed in the back by Bennedetto.]]
** The Count gives one to Maximilien at the end to confirm that [[spoiler:he is truly deserving of happiness by his standards]]. Max passes with flying colors by [[spoiler:agreeing to kill himself with a drug given to him by the Count, even when offered large sums of money if he chooses to live]], thus proving that [[spoiler:he has tasted true despair]].
* SentimentalDrunk: When he gets sloshed, Caderousse switches from being enviously resentful of Edmond's success to declaring that Edmond is a good man and a good friend and repeatedly toasting his health. He even tries to come to Edmond's defense when he realizes Danglars and Fernand have malicious intentions, though unfortunately for Edmond, Danglars is clever enough not to show his hand until Caderousse is too drunk to put up an effective protest.
* SeparatedByTheWall: Maximilien and Valentine, in a ShoutOut to ''[[Literature/TheMetamorphoses Pyramus and Thisbe]]''.
* SeriesContinuityError: In the chapters set in 1815 and during Dantès' imprisonment, Monsieur Noirtier is always referred as a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girondins Girondin]]. Later on, in the chapters set in 1838, all characters refer to him instead as a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobin_(politics) Jacobin]].
* SeriouslyScruffy: Combined with MessOfWoe when Villefort works several days nonstop to keep his mind off the death of his in-laws and his daughter, looking dishevelled and unshaven (though he shapes up in time for the trial).
* SexSlave: This is the Count's cover story for Haydee's presence (although he only sees her a a tool for his revenge against Morcerf). It also helps him to justify why a man of his standing isn't courting women.
* ShedTheFamilyName:
** Villefort, a Royalist, changed his name to disassociate himself from his Bonapartist father, Noirtier.
** [[spoiler:Albert de Morcerf]] does this after he finds out what a bastard his father was and his mother even suggests to him that he take her maiden name instead.
* ShipperOnDeck: When the Count is [[spoiler:writing up his will before the duel]], he hopes that Morrel will marry Haydée, before learning Morrel already has his sights on someone ([[spoiler:had he known that someone was Valentine, the rest of the book would have been very different indeed]]).
* ShipSinking: The novel confirms that Edmond and Mercédès don't get back together. She goes to a convent and he continues with his revenge plot.
* ShoutOut:
** The sequence set in Italy where Albert first makes the acquaintance of the Count includes a bunch of references to earlier {{Byronic Hero}}es, including Byron's own Theatre/{{Manfred}}. (Cheekily, one of the other Byronic Heroes who gets namechecked is the protagonist of one of Dumas's earlier successes, the play ''Antony''.)
** "That's a mountain, not a name" has a similar counterpart in ''Literature/TheThreeMusketeers'' (Monte-Cristo is an island in the Mediterranean, Athos is a mountain in Greece).
* SinsOfOurFathers: The Count plans to kill [[spoiler:Albert]] as part of his revenge on [[spoiler:Fernand]], and has no plans to stop [[spoiler:Mme de Villefort]] from poisoning Valentine until he learns Morrel loves her.
* SlidingScaleOfBeauty: Several female characters are said to be beautiful. Haydee is the most beautiful in the story, her and her mother Vasiliki are somewhere between World Class and Divine Level. Closely following are Mercédès and Valentine as Common Beauties. Eugenie is considered an UncannyValleyGirl because of her masculine behavior.
* SmallRoleBigImpact: Napoleon Bonaparte. He never actually appears in the novel as Edmond meets him in Elba off-screen (some adaptations actually show this meeting) but he nevertheless has a big impact on the story. Many characters are defined by their attitude to him. The novel begins shortly before Bonaparte's brief return to power in 1815, when the restored royalist regime is still shaky, and being denounced as a pro-Bonaparte conspirator is enough to get Edmond arrested. When Villefort realises that his own father (a Bonaparte loyalist) was the intended recipient of the letter given to Edmond, he condemns Edmond to the Chateau d'If, fearing that any connection between him and a pro-Bonaparte conspiracy would ruin his chances of social and political advancement.
* SmitingEvilFeelsGood: The Count feels satisfied by doing "God's will", as he puts it, and genuinely remorseful when he wrongfully judges (i.e, punishes) an innocent person. In one case, the absence of this satisfaction leads him to realize what he already knew subconsciously: [[spoiler:that Edouard did not deserve to be murdered]].
* SoftWater: {{Discussed}}. During his prison escape, [[BodybagTrick Dantès hides in a bodybag]] that is thrown into the sea from a high cliff. He is briefly "stunned", but more by the surprise of the cold water than the impact, and suffers no injury. This is because a cannon ball is sewn into the bottom of the bodybag, ensuring he hits the water feet-first. This is a lot more survivable than if he landed flat.
* SoundingItOut: When Noirtier forces Franz Depinay to read aloud the true account of [[spoiler:his father's death, previously believed to be a suicide]].
* SpannerInTheWorks:
** The Count almost runs into one when he wants to bribe a semaphore operator to send false information. The semaphore operator is honest and unambitious, and it seems at first that there's no bribe he'll be interested in.
** Later, his plan to deal with the Villeforts is seriously compromised by the fact that Morrel is in love with Valentine, Villefort's daughter.
* TheSpeechless: The Count's Nubian servant, Ali, does not speak and communicates with hand signals. The Count explains that he had his tongue torn out as a punishment in his former life as a slave before the Count bought and freed him.
* SpellMyNameWithABlank: Countess G_____. A subversion, as she's based off of Lord Byron's mistress: Teresa, Countess Guiccioli.
* SpoiledBrat:
** Due to his mother's constant over indulgence, Édouard de Villefort is such an ill-behaved little shit the even the narrator refers to him as a household plague.
** When he was a child Benedetto was a complete terror who abused his adoptive mother's love for him.
* StarCrossedLovers: Maximilien Morrel and Valentine de Villefort, [[spoiler:at first]].
* StealingFromTheTill: The Count notes that his head servant has a salary of 1500 francs per year, and is making as much again by taking a cut out of the household expenditures that he is in control of.
* AStormIsComing: The prime minister remarks to King Louis that he fears a storm in the south, meaning that he believes the Bonapartists are up to something. By the end of the same chapter, news arrives confirming his fear.
* StrawmanPolitical: All of the good characters are or were supporters of Napoleon, and nearly all of the bad ones are royalists. Dumas' father was a famous soldier in Napoleon's army.
* SurpriseIncest: Narrowly avoided: [[spoiler:Eugenie and Andrea/Benedetto are half siblings, sharing the same mother, and they very nearly get married.]] This is never mentioned, though and since he is unaware of that side of his heritage and she skips town before knowing his true identity, it's unlikely they'll ever find out.
* SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome:
** The Count of Monte Cristo has enough money to start a new life and move on from his traumas. However, because ThereAreNoTherapists, he can't forgive being unjustly imprisoned and having his life stolen from him. Thus, he begins to PayEvilUntoEvil towards the three men that ruined him. He doesn't stop when Mercédès calls him out for it, only refining the means to attempt sparing a handful of innocents. [[spoiler:Edmond gets what he wants, and only refuses to let Danglars die when he indirectly murders a child]].
** Edmond and Mercédès truly loved each other. He also admits he's not mad at her for marrying Fernand because the other choice was staying single forever. Mercédès also understands why Edmond is doing what he's doing; anyone falsely imprisoned would want revenge. When she confronts the Count and begs him to leave her son out of his grudge, they have a frank talk about how things in their life went. Mercédès can't forgive the fact that the Count would have killed Albert in a duel without considering how she would feel. The Count also admits that his love for Mercédès faded a while back, not because of her marrying his rival but because that's what happens when you spend more than twenty years away from someone, to the point that they become a memory.
* SymbolicHeroRebirth: Edmond Dantès is initially a benign, trusting, and naive young man with a happy future ahead of him. Then he's falsely imprisoned. He initially hopes that he'll receive justice and return to his friends. But after four years, he realizes that he'll never be released. This is the point where there is no going back to his old life, only ahead. It initially drives him to despair and a suicide attempt. But the unexpected arrival of a fellow prisoner, the remarkable Abbe Faria, turns his thoughts in a new direction, toward escape and revenge. This also marks a change in Dantès's character.
* SwordCane: Noirtier carried one before he was paralyzed and was skilled enough with it to defeat a seasoned military officer armed with a full-sized rapier.
* TakingTheVeil: Mercédès opts for this in the end.
* TallyMarksOnThePrisonWall: Edmond tracks how long he's been imprisoned with a series of tallies.
* ThatManIsDead: When Mercédès addresses the Count as "Edmond", he tells her that he no longer knows anyone with that name.
* ThoseTwoGuys: Morrel, Albert, Franz, Debray, Beauchamp and Chateau-Renaud all end up in this role at one time or another with one of the others, with the last one having the least characterization or bearing on the plot.
* TimeSkip: The period of several years between Dantès' escape from prison and his introduction into French society. We know from later narration that many things happened in it; Dantès TookALevelInBadass both physically and intellectually, he travelled to the East (and bought Haydee), [[ItMakesSenseInContext gave an emerald to the Pope]], saved Ali from execution, and generally became the RenaissanceMan we see after the TimeSkip. Yet these events, while important, would only slow down the plot if they were shown- so we get this trope.
** Interestingly, the narrative treats the character in the different time periods as different people; before the TimeSkip the narration calls him Dantès or Edmond, after it it calls him The Count.
** To a lesser degree, sometimes important events take place that happen weeks apart in two chapters.
* TookALevelInBadass: Edmond Dantès becomes The Count of Monte Cristo and spends several years preparing to get revenge on his enemies. At one point, the narration asserts that Dantès' time spent languishing in a tiny cell has given him unusual strength.
* TookALevelInJerkass: Compare the kind-hearted, good-natured Edmond Dantès who is thrown into prison with the ruthless, manipulative Count who escapes to take his revenge. Justified, since being wrongfully imprisoned in a hellish island fortress for crimes you didn't commit due to the spite, jealousy, and manipulations of others who went on to prosper as a result of your misfortune is not the kind of thing that is usually good for the soul.
* TranslationConvention: At different times, characters may be speaking French, Italian, Greek, and so on. Occasionally the narrator [[LampshadeHanging informs the reader]] that one of the characters can't understand what another character is saying.
* {{Tsundere}}: Eugénie Danglars is cold, aloof, and unfriendly to her family, her friends, her acquaintances, and her fiancé(s) and even telling her father that she loves no one and nothing except her studies of music and art. Yet the second she's alone with her vocal coach/friend/lover Louise d'Armilly, she's warm, playful, and affectionate, even calling Louise things like "my sweet" and gently teasing her for being unable to close an over-packed suitcase.
* {{Tuckerization}}: Dumas did this in a fairly transparent way, including his concierge in Italy as a character and including a scene where a character is praised for his collection of paintings by current artists. All of the artists mentioned were friends or acquaintances of Dumas and none are known today except for Delacroix.
* UndisclosedFunds: The amount of money Dantès finds at Monte Cristo is never stated. Although the Cardinal Spada wrote in his will that the treasure amounted to nearly 2 million Roman crowns when it was buried in the late 1400s, and it is later mentioned each of those Roman crowns would be worth around 80 francs at the time of the novel, a significant part of the treasure is made up of jewelry and precious stones, whose value might have wildly fluctuated. After many years of purchases and investments, the Count says he has about one hundred million francs at the end of the book.[[note]]Adjusted for inflation, this is equivalent to ''over $400 million USD'' in 2010 money. Not quite enough to make the 20 Richest Men in the World list, but still nothing to scoff at.[[/note]]
* UndyingLoyalty: Jacopo, Haydee and Ali to the Count.
* UnfriendlyFire: One of the characters tells a story about a bandit lord named Cucumetto who shot a treacherous underling in the back during a skirmish with some soldiers.
* UngratefulBastard: Cucumetto, the bandit leader before Luigi Vampa. First he abducts and rapes the betrothed of a fellow bandit who had saved his life mere days beforehand (and shooting said bandit in the back at the first opportunity afterward). Then responds to Luigi and Teresa concealing him from soldiers by stalking and abducting the her too, which earns him a much-deserved (and suitibly karmic) shot to the back courtesy of Luigi.
* UnholyMatrimony: Villefort realizes that he and his wife are even better suited for each other than he thought, [[spoiler:considering their horrible crimes.]] "The union of the tiger and the serpent", as he calls it.
* UnsettlingGenderReveal: In Rome, Albert is lured into Vampa's trap by a pretty young woman, who is revealed, after Albert has spent some time flirting with her and is attempting to kiss her, to be a 15-year-old male bandit named Beppo.
* UriahGambit: The bandit lord Cucumetto pulls one in Signor Pastrini's NestedStory, shooting a treacherous underling in the back during a skirmish with some soldiers.
** Benedetto hooks Caderousse into thinking the Count keeps large amounts of money in his house, then sends a letter to warn the Count of the break-in.
* VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory: ''The Count of Monte Cristo'' is loosely based on the story of [[https://archive.ph/OOpI Pierre Picaud]].
* VicariouslyAmbitious: The motivation of the poisoner in the InheritanceMurder subplot. [[spoiler:It's Héloïse de Villefort, Valentine's step-mother, who is not in the line of inheritance herself; she's attempting to ensure that the family's wealth will be inherited by her own son instead of her step-daughter]].
* VillainousBreakdown: [[spoiler:Villefort, who has a complete breakdown and goes insane at the end.]]
* VillainousLineage: Benedetto is a bad guy because of the evil inclinations of his father, [[spoiler:Villefort]]. He is naturally educated and well-spoken, despite receiving little schooling, simply because his father is an aristocrat. Interestingly, his half brother is also an inconsiderate, cruel and rude brat, but his half sister a decent and good-natured young woman (like her mother, the parent she doesn't share with either half-brother).
* VillainWithGoodPublicity: All of the Count's enemies have risen to high status in Parisian society and are well-respected with good reputations among their peers.
* WealthyPhilanthropist: The count mostly uses his vast fortune to further his plans and reward those he holds dear to him, but occasionally uses it to help those in need.
* WeddingDeathJuxtaposition: Valentine's grandmother dies shortly after she comes to Paris, but ensures that Valentine's wedding to Franz d'Epinay will go through. Unfortunately for Valentine, she isn't in love with Franz at all, but she can't go against her grandmother's last wishes. Fortunately, [[spoiler:Noirtier is able to get the marriage cancelled by revealing he's the one who killed Franz' father in a duel.]]
* WellIntentionedExtremist: The Count himself is an anti-heroic example, and realizes it by the end of the book. Having escaped prison after many years of undeserved confinement, he devotes himself obsessively to taking revenge on those enemies who framed him and ruined his life. For most of the book, Edmond is able to ignore the fact that the grand machinations of his vengeance are heaping danger and grief on numerous innocent bystanders as well as the guilty.
* WhamLine:
** "The sea is the cemetery of the Chateau d'If".
** [[spoiler:"Edmond, you will not kill my son!"]] hits Edmond particularly hard, seeing as [[spoiler:it's the first time anyone's seen through his disguise.]]
* WhatHappenedToTheMouse:
** Benedetto, whose court sentence is never revealed after he exposes Villefort as his father.
** Franz also mostly disappears from the story after his [[spoiler:ruined engagement]], only briefly appearing at the [[spoiler:cut-off duel between the Count and Albert.]]
* WhatYearIsThis: It's easy to lose track of time over fourteen years of imprisonment.
* WhatYouAreInTheDark: Villefort has the opportunity to release Dantès (whom he knows is innocent) or incarcerate him to save his own reputation. He chooses the latter.
* WickedCultured:
** The bandit leader, Luigi Vampa, is a polite, nice guy who reads Caesar's ''[[Literature/CommentariesOnTheGallicWar Commentaries]]'' for fun. He's also a strong believer in punctuality, and if a ransom is not paid on time, he will calmly stab the kidnappee to death or shoot them in the head.
** Benedetto, a young career criminal who has no trouble posing as a cultured aristocrat.
** The Count himself has impeccable taste and if not an outright villain, is a ruthless WellIntentionedExtremist.
* WickedStepmother: Madame Heloise de Villefort is the young wife of middle-aged prosecutor Villefort, with a spoiled eight-year-old son. She despises Valentine, Villefort's daughter by his previous marriage, because all of the property of her grandparents will revert to her rather than her step-brother. She eventually [[spoiler:goes on a killing spree, poisoning Valentine's maternal grandparents and attempting to poison her husband's paralytic father (his servant is killed instead). To escape justice, she poisons herself, and [[KicktheDog just to spite her husband]], kills [[OffingtheOffspring her son]] as well.]]
* WifeHusbandry: Haydee falls in love with the Count, who she's been living with since she was twelve, and it's implied that they become a couple at the end. Conveniently ignored by adaptations. Not a straight example, anyway, since the Count isn't even interested in Haydee for most of the story; he just assumed that he was never going to fall in love again, so ''she'' has to make all the moves.
* WigDressAccent: Most likely, Dantès's different personas are this kind of disguise (the Lord Wilmore disguise involves false BritishTeeth).
%%* WorldOfBadass
* WouldHurtAChild: Madame Heloise de Villefort [[spoiler: goes on a killing spree, employing poison that very nearly kills her stepdaughter Valentine and ''does'' kill her beloved son.]] The former forces The Count to take unexpected action to protect a dear friend, and the latter causes him to consider that he may have pushed things a bit too far, as [[BatmanGambit he had intentionally planted that idea with her in the first place]].
* WrongGenreSavvy: The unnamed countess who, seeing the Count's strange demeanor and unnatural pallor, believes him to be a vampire. This is justified, however, because of the whole scene being a {{Tuckerisation}}: the countess in question is based on Lord Byron's mistress at the time, and Byron himself was one of the main originators of the vampire genre.
* XanatosSpeedChess: Dantès has to rewrite a rather major part of his plans when he learns that Maximilien is truly and deeply in love with Valentine. Before that, [[spoiler:her death]] was just another step towards Villefort's planned DespairEventHorizon, forcing him to [[spoiler:give her a substance that fakes death long enough that he can get her sent to safety]]. This, combined with the unintentional death of [[spoiler:Edouard]], makes him realize he's not as omnisciently good as he thinks he is, and he [[spoiler:resolves to let Danglars live instead.]]
* TheXOfY
* YouAreNumberSix: While Edmond Dantès is imprisoned in the Château d'If, a new governor is put in charge. He doesn't want to bother learning the names of the prisoners, so he refers to them by the numbers of their cells. Abbe Faria is prisoner number 27; Dantès is number 34.
* YouKilledMyFather: Haydee's father was betrayed by [[spoiler:Fernand]], which as good as left him with a death sentence.
* YouWillBeSpared: Deconstructed. The count leaves Mercédès out of his plan to discredit her husband and son respectively. Mercédès goes to confront him, saying that killing Albert would be akin to killing her.
* YoungConqueror: Luigi Vampa, a celebrated bandit, is analogized to one of these, because he's achieved power and celebrity and is not yet 30. Vampa may be aware of the comparison, since he likes to read Julius Caesar for fun.
* YoungLoveVersusOldHate: The once young and benevolent protagonist has turned to a bitter and vengeful old man, threatening to destroy not only the old men who once wronged him, but also the next generation of people who are just as untainted as he himself once was.
* YourOtherLeft: In the scene where Villefort visits King Louis, the king tells the prime minister to pick up a report "over there, on the left", then has to clarify that he means "my left".
[[/folder]]

[[folder:The Book]]
* AbsenceMakesTheHeartGoYonder: Edmond Dantès is gone for years, and Mercédès is told he is dead and marries his enemy and raises a son during that time. Dantès isn't happy about it but eventually forgives her, specifically saying that the eighteen months she waited before moving on was all a lover could ask for.
* AbusiveOffspring: Benedetto tortured his adoptive mother to death (the death part was unintentional, he got too carried away with the torture bit). During the big reveal of who his father is, he also says he doesn't care who his real mother is (said real mother faints in the crowd).
* AcquiredPoisonImmunity: Monsieur Noirtier has an immunity to brucine (a variant of strychnine) because he has been taking a medicine that contains the same compound, and has built up a resistance to it. [[spoiler:Realizing that his granddaughter and heir Valentine is also a target, he starts giving her small doses of his medicine; this saves her life when the poisoner has a go at her.]]
* AesopCollateralDamage: The Count causes a lot of this while getting his revenge on those who betrayed him:
** In the process of bringing about Danglars' financial ruin, the Count is implied to be responsible for the bankruptcy of several major banking houses across Europe, with all the attending dire financial consequences for all their proprietors and clients.
*** Danglars names Jacopo as one of those who "suspended payments;" one imagines that this one was a setup aimed specifically at Danglars.
** Destroying Morcerf leaves Mercédès and Albert disgraced and destitute (although the Count does note that they went too far in cutting all ties with him, including his fortune, and contact them to give them some money). She is set to spend the rest of her life in a convent, while he joins the army as a DeathSeeker. Earlier the Count was willing to kill Albert in a duel as part of his revenge against Morcerf, until Mercédès intervened.
** His machinations against Villefort led to the death of [[spoiler:Villefort's young son Edouard]], prompting even the Count to reflect that he has [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone gone too far.]] It almost leads to [[spoiler:Valentine's death]] too, until the Count learns in time that she is the woman with whom Maximilien Morrel is madly in love.
** The fallout from the above is what prompts the Count to spare Danglars, stripping him of all his wealth but sparing his life rather than letting him starve to death as he originally intended.
* AffablyEvil:
** Luigi Vampa, who is perfectly polite to his prisoners in the one evening they have for their ransoms to arrive.
** The Count cultivates this image toward Albert and Franz.
** Benedetto is remarkably likable and charming for someone who has committed nearly every crime on the books before the age of 21.
* AgeGapRomance: The Count (in his early 40s) and Haydee (around 20) at the end of the book, which serves as a route to peace and redemption for him.
* TheAlcatraz: The Chateau d'If, a prison located on an isolated rock in the Bay of Marseilles.
* AmbitionIsEvil: Ambition is a common motivation for the villains. Two of the three main contributors to the downfall of Dantès, Danglars and Villefort, are motivated by concerns for the advancement of their careers; the third, Fernand, has a different motivation for his hatred of Dantès but goes on to cheat and betray his way up the social ladder. In the scene where Villefort is first mentioned, Morrel says that he's never heard that Villefort is a wicked man, and Danglars replies (with no apparent self-consciousness) that he is however ambitious and that often comes to the same thing.
* AndIMustScream: Between Dantès's arrest and his return as the Count, Noirtier suffers a stroke that renders him incapable of moving anything other than his eyes. He and his granddaughter-caretaker do manage to develop a suitable means of communication.
* AndThatLittleGirlWasMe: When Maximilien is on the point of despairing, the Count tells him a story about another man he once knew who was driven to despair but lived to find renewed happiness. The story is, as the reader knows, the Count's own history. It's left ambiguous whether Maximilien realizes it.
* AnonymousBenefactor: The Count serves as this to the Morrel Family.
* AppealToForce: During the sinking of the ''Pharaon'', one of the sailors suggests abandoning ship, and the captain responds by pulling out his pistols and threatening to shoot anyone who abandons their post before he's satisfied that the ship's beyond saving. Recalling the incident later, the sailor remarks, "Nothing inspires a man like a solid argument."
* ArbitrarilyLargeBankAccount: Dantès has unlimited credit with Danglars's bank (although he fixes it at six million francs), and keeps withdrawing enormous amounts of money at the worst possible times (for Danglars).
* ArcWords: "Wait and hope."
* AristocratsAreEvil: Three of the four individuals responsible for Edmond's imprisonment become members of the nobility, and the most noble characters in the book, the Morrel family, are the only ones without some title. And of course, while Edmond Dantès was a nice happy-go-lucky guy, the Count of Monte Cristo is a sinister and vengeful man.
* ArrangedMarriage: Eugenie Danglars with Albert de Morcerf (later, with Andrea Cavalcanti), and Valentine de Villefort with Franz d'Epinay. None of the marriages go ahead: two are derailed by the Count's revenges and Valentine's grandfather prevents her marriage because he knows her heart is with someone else.
* AsYouKnow: In the chapter where Villefort recounts what he's learned about the aftermath of that one terrible night in Auteuil, the audience has already been informed of how the night began, but not yet how it ended, so Villefort begins by providing that information, even though he's talking to the person who was there with him and is unlikely to need reminding of any of it.
* AteHisGun: M. Morrel is nearly driven to suicide by the collapse of his business, and has got as far as placing the muzzle of his pistol in his mouth when news arrives of a last-moment reprieve.
* AtTheOperaTonight: Several key scenes take place in opera houses, including Albert's first encounter with the Count.
* AuthorAppeal: Alexandre Dumas ''really'' liked hashish; he was a founding member of Le Club des Haschischins, a group where Parisian intellectuals came to take psychedelics. The drug use was carried over to the Count, who takes hashish with his coffee after dinner and needs opium and hashish pills to sleep at night.
* AwesomenessByAnalysis: Despite being imprisoned since longer than Dantès, Faria is able to correctly deduce the entire sequence of events that led to Dantès' imprisonment.
* BadassAdorable: Haydee has shades of this. Especially evident when [[spoiler:she enters the courtroom to denounce Fernand.]]
* BadassBoast: The Count, after being challenged to a duel: "In France people fight with the sword or pistol, in the colonies with the carbine, in Arabia with the dagger. Tell your client that, although I am the insulted party, in order to carry out my eccentricity, I leave him the choice of arms, and will accept without discussion, without dispute, anything, even combat by drawing lots, which is always stupid, but with me different from other people, as I am sure to gain."
* BadassPreacher: Dantès in his Busoni disguise, effortlessly disarms a would-be thief.
* BanditClan: Italy is more or less presented as entirely comprised of these, but in particular, the Count's valet, Bertuccio, is a former bandit, and comes from a family of bandits.
* BastardBastard: Benedetto is the product of an extramarital affair and seems to be evil since birth. However, the behavior of his half brother, who was born in legitimacy, suggests that being a bastard had little to do with it.
* BatmanGambit:
** Many of the Count's plots rely on him using his intimate knowledge about the character and motivations of certain people to give them enough rope to hang themselves.
** Benedetto's plan to get rid of [[spoiler:Caderousse]] also qualifies. He fills his head with tales of all the wealth there is lying around in the Count's house and gives him details of the place, knowing that his greed will compel him to try and rob the mansion. He then tips off the Count about the burglary.
* BeautifulSlaveGirl: Haydee, who was enslaved as a child and later bought by the Count. He treats her honorably, but sometimes makes use of others' assumptions about why he keeps her to embroider his legend.
* BeingGoodSucks: The innocent and good-hearted Edmond is betrayed and condemned to 14 years in jail by Danglars, Villefort and Fernand, who all prosper as a result. Though they do eventually get their comeuppance, it only happens after Edmond himself TookALevelInBadass AND TookALevelInJerkass.
* BenevolentBoss:
** Monsieur Morrel to the young Edmond Dantès. When Edmond was framed for Bonapartist collaboration and imprisoned in the hellish Chateau D'If, Morrel was the only person who tried to save him, though it was extremely politically dangerous to do so. Edmond rewards this compassion with UndyingLoyalty to Morrel's family when his fortunes change.
** Edmond himself, as the wealthy Count of Monte Cristo, treats his servants extremely well.
* BestServedCold: Dantès has to wait fourteen years in prison before he escapes, and spends another nine years preparing before he sets his plans for revenge in motion. The Count is even generous enough to bring other people screwed over by his enemies almost as many years before (namely Haydee by Fernand and Bertuccio by Villefort) so they can be the direct executors of the vengeance.
* BetterToDieThanBeKilled: Fernand shoots himself in the head, having had his treacherous past exposed and abandoned by his wife and son.
* BewareTheNiceOnes: Edmond was a guy who had everything going for him, then lost everything thanks to being screwed over by whom he thought were his friends. What ensues is a gigantic Batman Gambit to take revenge on every last one of them and their families.
* BewilderingPunishment: Edmond is not told why he was arrested.
* BittersweetEnding: The Count gets his revenge on those who wronged him, but everything of his old life that he valued is still lost to him. Even the victorious revenge loses its sweetness in the end, because it has [[AesopCollateralDamage hurt innocent parties too]]. The Count is particularly shocked by [[spoiler:the death of 9-year-old Edouard de Villefort]], and reflects that he has now "exceeded the limits of vengeance".
* BlackAndGrayMorality or EvilVersusEvil: The Count is ruthless to the point of being a VillainProtagonist, but the people he's up against are even worse.
* BlueBlood: Several characters are aristocrats, but quite a few only recently so. Valentine's grandmother, the marquise de Saint-Meran, would likely have opposed her marriage to a commoner like Maximilien.
* BodybagTrick: Used in the prison escape. And (partly) averted: Dantès expects to merely be buried, at which point he can dig himself free and escape. However, he learns the hard way that the Chateau d'If buries its dead at sea -- and still manages to escape, even though it's much harder going.
* BookEnds: The main section of the novel begins with an episode in which Franz d'Epinay visits the island whose name the Count bears, and is introduced to the Count's underground home on the island, and ends with an episode in which Maximilien Morrel does the same. The two episodes also respectively set up and fire a ChekhovsGun involving [[spoiler:the Count's excellent hashish]].
* {{Bowdlerize}}: The lesbian elements of Eugénie Danglars' plot-line and the positive portrayal of hashish consumption were favorite targets of early English translators, who would edit them out of the story.
* BrainFever: Captain [=LeClere=], in the beginning of the novel, leaving Edmond in command of his vessel.
* BreakTheBeliever: The Count believes that, in his campaign of revenge, he is acting as an agent of Providence to destroy the wicked and reward the virtuous, and that as such he is infallible. In the latter part of the novel, he begins to confront the accumulation of evidence that he is only human, capable of overlooking important details and making mistakes that harm the innocent, and has a crisis that forces him to reevaluate what he is doing with his life.
* BreakTheHaughty: The goal of the Count's revenge plans. Villefort, for instance, is extremely proud of his keen intellect and reputation for detecting and punishing evildoers, without fear or favor; the Count shows that he has knowingly countenanced injustice when it suited him, and that he has allowed a dangerous criminal to operate under his nose, first without detection and then placing the blame on an innocent victim.
* BritishTeeth: {{Exploited}} by the Count for his Lord Wilmore disguise, which includes false teeth.
* BuryYourGays: Inverted. Eugenie Danglars is the only one among the children of Dantès' enemies to reach a happy ending as a result of her own agency and without Dantès having a change of heart.
* ButHeSoundsHandsome: While attempting to uncover the Count's history and identity, Villefort meets with two men who he's told have known the Count for years: an Italian priest, who says that the Count is an old friend and a great philanthropist, and an English lord, who says that the Count is an unmitigated scoundrel and his sworn enemy. Both men are actually the Count himself in disguise.
* ByronicHero: The Count, a man so obsessed by revenge that no means of ensuring his enemies' destruction is too heinous for him to consider. It's superficially [[LampshadeHanging lampshaded]] early on when someone remarks that he looks an awful lot like the incarnation of Lord Ruthven, a fictional character based on Lord Byron himself.
* CameBackWithAVengeance: This novel did a lot to [[TropeCodifier codify]] this archetypal revenge plot, with many authors following Dumas's lead in regards to their own revenge stories.
* CanOnlyMoveTheEyes: Valentine's grandfather suffered a stroke that rendered him incapable of moving anything other than his eyes. He and his granddaughter-caretaker do manage to develop a suitable means of communication. And he still manages to save Valentine and write out a will.
* CelibateHero: The Count is too preoccupied with revenge to have any interest in romance or sex. People assume that Haydee is his lover, and he encourages this assumption. [[spoiler: It is only at the end of the novel, once he has given up vengeance, that Monte Cristo allows himself to return Haydee's love for him.]]
* CharacterFilibuster: Abbe Faria has one when he tells the lengthy story of how he came upon the treasure. There's another one for Luigi Vampa's {{Backstory}}. Basically, pretty much any time a character goes into {{Backstory}}, it's time to get comfortable and forget about the main story for a while. Fortunately, unlike a lot of CharacterFilibuster moments, the ones in this book are always key to the plot.
* CharacterWitness: After Edmond Dantès is arrested, Monsieur Morrel makes a valiant effort to try and get him released, as he was convinced of Dantès' innocence. Morrel is taking a dreadful political risk in doing so, due to the struggles between royalist and Bonapartist groups that are convulsing France at the time and are in part what led to Dantès' imprisonment. By the time Dantès escapes and becomes the Count, Morrel's shipping company is on the verge of bankruptcy and his family's honor is ruined because of his inability to pay his debts. Using the alias of "Sinbad the Sailor", the Count repays his old employer by buying out and paying off the company's debts, giving them a brand-spanking new merchant ship to replace the one that had recently been destroyed in a storm, and also providing a generous dowry for Morrel's daughter. Monsieur Morrel dies soon after, but his good name and family honor are both fully restored.
* ChekhovsGun: After Dantès is imprisoned, it's mentioned Fernand had a plan in case he returned: shoot him then kill himself. The narration tells us he wouldn't have gone through with it because he still hoped Mercédès would fall for him. [[spoiler:Thus he only shoots himself at the end when Mercédès and their son have abandoned him, fully aware of his part in Dantès' fate.]]
* ChekhovsGunman: Haydee appears to be a subverted MoralityPet for the Count at first, before [[spoiler:she provides a crucial testimony against Fernand at the trial regarding his involvement in the Ali Pacha affair.]]
* TheChessmaster: The Count is this in spades. He plans and prepares for almost everything. It takes a lot to throw him off, and, when it happens, he just uses it to further his end goal.
* ChronicBackstabbingDisorder: Morcerf betrayed the Spanish for the French during the Spanish expedition, the French for the English at Waterloo, and sold out Ali Pacha (who he was working for as an instructor). Plus, y'know, betraying Dantès as a supposed Napoleonian agent.
* CleanFoodPoisonedFork: The Count says that the Borgias used something like this for their inexplicable "only the intended victim dies" poisonings: the cup used has a special compartment containing the poison, but it only opens if a button is pressed on the cup. So the Borgia could drink from the cup first to prove neither the wine nor the cup was poisoned, then pass it to the target after pressing the button.
* TheCobblersChildrenHaveNoShoes: The home of the king's attorney is the site of half a dozen murders and attempted murders... [[spoiler:by the king's attorney's ''own wife''.]]
* CollidingCriminalConspiracies: Dantès' life is ruined by two separate conspiracies against him and one that didn't concern him: Danglars writes a letter accusing him of treason and Fernand posts it (Caderousse could have stopped it but did nothing), and when the letter reaches Villefort he was about to release Dantès when he realizes the letter implicates Villefort's father in a plot against the crown, and so he sends Dantès to prison to remove anyone who knows. The letter in question ''was'' part of a conspiracy to return Napoléon to power, although that didn't work for long.
* ColonelBadass: Maximilien Morrel.
* ComicallySmallBribe: Averted, the Count ends up offering what turns out to be a large amount of money to a telegraph operator, but only after pointing out the beautiful garden he could have with that money.
* ContrivedCoincidence: The plot of the book features so many of them that the Count becomes convinced that they are the work of Providence intervening in mortal affairs. A few of the most egregious examples include:
** That Dantès escapes prison and acquires his treasure just in time to save Mr. Morrel from financial ruin.
** That Bertuccio, [[spoiler: a man with a completely independent history with Villefort and access to concrete evidence of his misdeeds]], just so happened to seek refuge at Caderousse's inn on the same day [[spoiler:Caderousse received the diamond from the Abbé Busoni and killed the jeweler.]]
** That the woman [[spoiler:Villefort was having an affair and an illegitimate child with]] would go on to marry Danglars.
** That [[spoiler:Benedetto and Caderousse]] should not only end up in the same prison, but also become friends... or as close to such as two people like them could ever become.
** Maximilien Morrel falling in love with Valentine de Villefort, of all people.
* ConvictedByPublicOpinion: How [[spoiler:Morcerf and Villefort]] are taken down (in both cases, the judge asks for definitive proof and is told to look at the accused, who looks guilty as hell and confesses before running away). The former shoots himself, the latter goes mad.
* CoolOldGuy: Grandfather Noirtier, who manages to save the day a couple of times despite being almost completely paralyzed.
* TheCSIEffect: Invoked InUniverse by the Count as the reason why French poisoners of the time period are so often caught:
-->Now, shall I tell you the cause of all these stupidities? It is because, at your theaters, by what at least I could judge by reading the pieces they play, they see persons swallow the contents of a phial, or suck the button of a ring, and [[PerfectPoison fall dead instantly]]. Five minutes afterwards the curtain falls, and the spectators depart. They are ignorant of the consequences of the murder; they see neither the police commissary with his badge of office, nor the corporal with his four men; and so the poor fools believe that the whole thing is as easy as lying.
* CrapsackWorld: In early nineteenth century France an anonymous denunciation can get a man arrested and a single prosecutor can condemn a man to spend the rest of his life in a dungeon without trial. Meanwhile Italy is practically overrun with bandits.
* CulturedBadass: The Count.
* CunningLinguist: The Count rather matter-of-factly establishes that he is master of many languages.
-->I adopt all customs, speak all languages. You believe me to be a Frenchman, for I speak French with the same facility and purity as yourself. Well, Ali, my Nubian, believes me to be an Arab; Bertuccio, my steward, takes me for a Roman; Haidee, my slave, thinks me a Greek...
* DaddysGirl: Good men have good relationships with their daughters. Haydee loved her father and remains devoted to his memory, and M. Morrel is loved by his daughter Julie. On the other hand, Eugenie Danglars and her father couldn't care less about each other, and Villefort ignores Valentine (though Valentine is very close to her grandfather, a better man than his son).
* DeniedFoodAsPunishment: What Edmond finally does to [[spoiler:Danglars]] once he captures him, as a deliberate reflection of the way Edmond's father died poor and starving.
* DiesWideOpen: Abbe Faria dies like this after a seizure and Edmond has a lot of trouble closing his eyes.
* DispenseWithThePleasantries: This is a typical trait of Baron Danglars's conversations; he's a very strict man with little tolerance for small talk.
* DisproportionateRetribution: No character simply wants to get even in their revenge.
** The conspiracy to get Edmond imprisoned is motivated by him getting a promotion and getting to marry a pretty woman; the punishment is to slander him as a spy and sentence him to die in prison.
** Edmond's revenge toward the conspirators includes not only ruining their family and pushing them to suicide or madness but also killing their eldest children. His justification is that like God his punishment applies to the next generation.
** Franz' father died because he did not enjoy coercion: he still went with it but his bitterness over it irritated the bonapartist leader who challenged him to a duel.
** Bertuccio stabbed Villefort in what he thought was the heart (he hit a rib) because Villefort refused to start an investigation of the murder of Bertuccio's brother. The amusing part is that everyone refers to this event as typical Corsican revenge with the Count even saying Bertuccio shames his nationality by botching it.
* {{Doorstopper}}: Most copies exceed 1000 pages, varies with translation.
* DramaticIrony: The plot runs on it. The characters never know what the other characters are up to.
** When Edmond is imprisoned, he and Morrel are oblivious to the treachery of Villefort, and trust his advice as though he were a good friend.
** None of Edmond's friends realize that Danglars and Fernand were responsible for his arrest.
** When Edmond is in disguise, none of his old friends or enemies knows his true identity. [[spoiler:Except for Mercédès, who pegged it was him when she first heard his voice, at least when he was Monte Cristo.]].
** Benedetto manages to make a name for himself in French society under a false identity, but nobody except the Count and one of his servants knows that he's actually the illegitimate son of [[spoiler:Gérard de Villefort and Hermine Danglars]]. This takes a new dimension when he ends up engaged to [[spoiler:his own half sister]]. After he is exposed as an impostor and a criminal, two characters discuss how grieved his parents would be if he had any, unaware that they themselves are his parents.
** Towards the end of the book two characters are running away from Paris at the same time, and they cross paths a couple of times without noticing, before finding themselves face to face.
** Even the Count, the ManipulativeBastard himself, doesn't realize that Maximilien and Valentine are romantically involved until [[spoiler:the last minute]]; as far as he's concerned, Valentine is the daughter of his hated enemy.
* DrivenByEnvy: Danglars gets in on the plot to frame Edmond because he's envious of Edmond's success, and particularly because Edmond has recently been promoted into a position Danglars had been angling for himself.
* DrivenToSuicide:
** [[spoiler:M. Morrel contemplates suicide when his business fails, but is prevented when Edmond comes to the rescue.]]
** [[spoiler:Maximilien threatens to kill himself in three separate occasions. Prevented by the Count in all cases but one, where it's prevented by Valentine.]]
** [[spoiler:Fernand, after being confronted by the Count.]]
** [[spoiler:Madame de Villefort]], after strong pressure from [[spoiler:her husband]].
** Danglars implies that the Marquis of Nargonne killed himself [[spoiler:after returning from an absence of ''nine'' months to find his wife Hermine ''six'' months pregnant.]]
* DrugsAreGood: The Count talks about the delights of hashish, and claims he uses it to sleep at will.
* DuelToTheDeath:
** Between Albert and the Count. Averted at the last minute--[[spoiler:Mercédès intervenes with both and stops the duel by getting Dantès to promise to spare her son, and by explaining to Albert why the Count wants to take down Morcerf]].
** [[spoiler:Averted by]] Morcerf, who brings a pair of swords to demand an explanation from the Count, [[spoiler:only for him to deliver a ReasonYouSuckSpeech that sends the general reeling back home.]]
** Noirtier reveals that he killed [[spoiler:Franz's father in a duel to the death, the official reason he's opposed to the marriage]].
* DumberThanTheyLook: MockMillionaire Major Cavalcanti is mentioned as seeming to be the very image of a well-educated Italian nobleman, as long as he isn't spoken to or asked to do math.
* EarnYourHappyEnding: A major theme is that you cannot know true happiness unless you have suffered deeply first. Anyone who manages to get a happy ending in this book, ''earned'' it.
* EatTheDog: Maximillien Morrel rescued Chateau-Renault during combat in North Africa, and as the two ended up in the desert without rations, they were forced to kill and eat one of their horses. Played for laughs when they recount the incident to their friends, there's a comment about it being tough (i.e. a difficult thing to do), which one of the friends jokingly interprets as a reference to the horse meat being tough.
* EeriePaleSkinnedBrunette: The Count. Years in prison will do that to you. Part of why everyone thinks he's a vampire.
* EnemiesList: Much like Saint Nick, the Count has a list. He's checking it twice. And he's very interested in whether you've been naughty or nice.
* EntertaininglyWrong: Doctor d'Avrigny's reasoning to conclude that [[spoiler: Valentine]] is a poisoner is entirely sound: He correctly deduces that three sudden deaths in the same household with the same symptoms are the result of poison, he correctly identifies the exact poison that was used, and he correctly identifies the financial motivation for the crimes as all benefiting a single person who also had ample access and opportunity to deliver the poison to the victims. He just happens to be wrong because he fails to consider that [[spoiler:Valentine herself also had heirs and her death would benefit the real poisoner]]. The readers on the other hand, know beforehand that his deduction is wrong because they’ve seen the real culprit spend an entire chapter discussing poisons with Monte Cristo earlier in the book.
* EveryManHasHisPrice: Bribery is standard procedure for our fabulously wealthy protagonist. At one point he's worried about a lowly functionary with no ambitions beyond tending his garden, before getting him to see that lots of money can buy lots of gardens.
* EvilCounterpart: Benedetto to the Count. Both are portrayed in-story as vessels for divine retribution, both are mysterious aristos with fake names and shady pasts only a select few know, both were at one point convicts - hell, Benedetto's even convinced that the Count is his father! The crucial difference is that the Count has at least some empathy, self-awareness, and remorse, and while he was imprisoned for a crime he did not commit, Benedetto escaped justice for crimes he was certainly guilty of.
* EvilRedhead: Benedetto had red hair as a child and a red beard as an adult. Bertuccio even comments that redheads are destined to either complete good or complete evil.
* FaceOfAnAngelMindOfADemon: Benedetto has strawberry blond hair, and there's a comment in the text to the effect that he looked like an angel; unfortunately, that angel was Lucifer. He's an unrepentant criminal who has committed nearly every crime on the books before the age of 21.
* FailedAttemptAtDrama: The first time the Count reveals himself to his enemy has all the gravity and tension he expected [[spoiler:with Morcerf committing suicide shortly after the reveal]].The second time he does it though the conspirator just grab him by the arm [[spoiler:shows him the body of his 9 years old son]] with the Count both confused and alarmed.
* FaintInShock: Madame Danglars faints at the Count's dinner party when [[spoiler:the Count starts unearthing the history of her secret child who died in childbirth]] and again much later when it's revealed that [[spoiler:said child is not only alive, but a notorious criminal who almost married her daughter]].
* FakeAssistedSuicide: [[spoiler:After Maximilien's fiancee Valentine is poisoned, Maximilien is heartbroken and only the Count's intervention prevents him from shooting himself by revealing it was he who saved his father from bankruptcy and suicide, extorting from Maximilien a solemn oath that he won't make any more suicide attempts for a month. Having taken him to his private island in the meantime, the Count finds that Maximilien is still willing to die, and gives him a spoonful of haschich, which he claims will kill him painlessly. After Maximilien takes it and wakes up, he bitterly readies to kill himself with a knife... before Valentine makes her presence known to him (the Count had helped her fake her death in order to continue his revenge against her father, he was perfectly willing to let her die before he learned how important she was to Maximilien).]]
* FakeUltimateHero: Count de Morcerf is a respected public figure with a beautiful wife, military commission, vast fortune, and noble title -- each of which he earned by screwing someone else over.
* FalseReassurance: Monte Cristo persuades Caderousse to write a letter denouncing Benedetto as an impostor; Caderousse expresses concern about what the consequences will be for himself when the truth comes out, and Monte Cristo assures him that he won't have anything to worry about. By this, he means that Benedetto is already planning to kill Caderousse anyway, and Monte Cristo has accurately predicted that Caderousse is not going to live long enough to face the consequences.
* FatalFlaw:
** Greed for Caderousse, explicitly spelled out by the Count. [[spoiler:When poor, he was given a diamond by the Count, but murdered the jeweler who'd brought the money to buy it. Then he could have blackmailed Andrea for enough money to live quietly every month, but demanded more. And when Andrea told him about the rich aristocrat that seemed to have taken an interest in him, he goes and tries to burgle the place.]]
** Ditto for Danglars. If willing to swap bridegrooms for his daughter isn't enough, he's also built a reputation as one of France's greatest corporate pirates. And then he tries to sake his lust by playing into the Count's hands by blindly dumping and investing his money where the Count can easily ruin him.
* FauxDeath: [[spoiler:Valentine's death by poisoning turns out to be a faux death arranged by the Count so she can escape the poisoner.]]
* {{Fauxreigner}}: The Count of Monte Cristo, who variously presents himself as English and Italian and hints at even more exotic origins, when actually he was born and raised in France like the other characters.
* Fiction500: The Count's ludicrous wealth earns him a spot on this privileged list -- he owns so much money that the same amount ''not adjusted for inflation''[[note]]The book is set in the first half of the 19th century[[/note]] would still make you very rich today. A scene in the novel shows the Count listing his assets, totaling an estimated value of 120 million francs, an impossibly huge figure by 1838 standards (as a comparison, Napoleon Bonaparte's personal wealth in 1814 was estimated at somewhere in the region of 80 million francs), and this is the near the end of the story, when he has already spent a large portion of his fortune. He is able to effectively "resurrect" a ship confirmed as lost at sea in a matter of weeks, is implied to control one of the most powerful banks in Europe, owns a fleet of ships, and singlehandedly toys with the French financial market specifically to screw a single person.
* {{Foreshadowing}}:
** Pay attention to what the Count says to people as he's usually talking about something that will happen much later in the novel.
** The story of how Bertuccio entered the Count's service -- specifically [[spoiler:the fact that he came to the Count's attention after the Count's gift to Caderousse inspired a crime spree that Bertuccio was falsely accused of and nearly executed for -- is an early indication that the Count doesn't know or foresee everything and that his interventions can have devastating results for innocent bystanders, something he is increasingly forced to face up to in the later stages of the novel]].
** At the Morcerfs' ball, Albert remarks that Baron Danglars can afford to to be dismissive of his title because he would still be a millionaire even if he renounced the title of baron, while Albert would be nobody if he were not Viscount Morcerf. [[spoiler:By the end of the novel, Danglars has lost his fortune, while Albert has renounced the Morcerf name and title and set out to make something of himself on his own account.]]
* FourStarBadass:
** Exploited by Fernand, when he comes to challenge the Count to a duel in full general's garb. Subverted, since he himself is far from badass, and [[spoiler:Edmond Dantès knows exactly who he is.]]
** Played straight with Ali Pasha.
* FromNobodyToNightmare: At the very beginning, Danglars is the ship's accountant, and Fernand a fisherman. Both opportunistically rise in society, until they're both aristocrats, one a banker and the other a general.
* GambitRoulette: One must imagine how long Dantès had to plan out his revenge, but the final plot is unspeakably convoluted. That he is able to make any of it work speaks volumes about his control.
* GentlemanAndAScholar: The novel opens with Edmond Dantès as a young, naive sailor; his transformation into the suave, educated, and urbane Count began with his meeting the Abbe Faria, who educates him and reveals to him the location of a great treasure. Edmond made the most of both.
* GoingDownWithTheShip: When the ''Pharaon'' springs a leak in a storm and starts sinking, Captain Gaumard orders the crew to the lifeboat, remaining on board himself until all the men are safely off. The last sailor to leave realizes that the captain intends to stay on the sinking ship, and throws the captain over the side before abandoning ship himself. As a result, the entire crew survives, including the captain and the last sailor.
* GorgeousGreek: Haydee is one of the most famous examples of this trope in literature; a lovely, exotic and nubile slave girl of Greek origin that is completely devoted to the main protagonist, even though he bought her freedom and ends up [[spoiler:becoming his lover at the end]].
* GratuitousItalian: While in Italy Danglars uses what little he knows of musical and operatic terms to communicate.
* GraveClouds: During the funeral of Valentine's grandparents, the weather is noted to be "overcast, and so quite appropriate for the dismal ceremony". At the novel's second funeral, the weather is dull and stormy.
* GreatEscape: Dantès escapes by hiding in the bodybag of his late mentor, which is thrown into the sea.
* GreenEyedMonster: Danglars and Fernand plot Edmond's downfall all because they are jealous of his pretty fiancée and his recent promotion.
* HandicappedBadass: Nortier, who is ''completely paralyzed from the eyes down'', yet still manages to protect his granddaughter from unwanted fiancés and assassination attempts. As Villefort puts it, an "indestructible old man".
* HappinessInSlavery: Ali and Haydee, since the Count saved both their lives and treats them exceptionally well. So much that when he offers Haydee her freedom, more than once, she adamantly ''refuses''.
* HaveYouToldAnyoneElse: Dantès is arrested on suspicion of being involved in a Bonapartist conspiracy; Villefort questions him and learns that Dantès is innocent of anything beyond agreeing to carry a letter for a friend, and knows nothing about the contents of the letter nor anything about its intended recipient beyond his name and address. Villefort asks Dantès if he's told anybody else the name and address, and Dantès assures him that he hasn't, at which point Villefort immediately takes steps to have him silenced because the letter's intended recepient in Villefort's father.
* HellholePrison: The Chateau d'If.
* HistoricalCharactersFictionalRelative:
** The (real) general Quesnel is given a fictional son (Franz) so as to provide a YouKilledMyFather moment (in real life, his death was unsolved). In the book, he's killed in a duel with [[spoiler:Villefort's father Noirtier]], with [[spoiler:Noirtier]] keeping this interesting little tidbit as a trump card to prevent Franz' marriage with his granddaughter Valentine.
** Haydee is the daughter of the historical [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Pasha_of_Ioannina Ali Tebelin]] and [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyra_Vassiliki Kyra Vassiliki]], and she serves a major role in revealing Fernand's crimes (in the novel, he betrayed Ali to the Turks and sold both Kyra and Haydee into slavery), leading to his downfall.
* HistoricalDomainCharacter: UsefulNotes/NapoleonBonaparte and Louis XVIII.
* HoistByHisOwnPetard: If Caderousse had improved ''at all'' as a person, the inception of Edmond's revenge against him (a bequeathement of a tidy but not vast sum of money) could have been a blessing on his house and it would've ended there. But he hadn't, and it didn't.
* HometownNickname: Caderousse's wife is known as "La Carconte", from the name of the village where she was born.
* HomoeroticSubtext. The lesbian relationship between Eugenie Danglars and Louise d'Armilly is never stated overtly, but it's ''very strongly'' implied:
** It begins subtly, by comparing Eugenie's beauty to that of Diana--who was virginal, preferring female company to male company. Diana also had at least one follower, Callisto, who was apparently in love with her, since Jupiter seduced her in Diana's form.
** Eugenie is incredibly quick to admire the beauty of other women, while attesting no opinion of the good-looks of any male characters.
** Then the narrator describes the glances of Eugenie's admirer as being deflected off "Minerva's shield," which "once protected Sappho." Creator/{{Sappho}} of Lesbos.
** They are found sitting on the same chair in front of the piano, making duets out of solos by each playing one hand of the song.
** When they're planning to run away together after Eugenie's engagement ends in disaster, they are extremely affectionate and flirty, calling each other "my sweet", comparing themselves to classical lovers such as Hercules and Queen Omphale (who liked to switch clothes with Hercules for fun), and comparing their flight to a sexual abduction.
** Finally, in case you still had your head in the sand: In one scene, an unexpected visitor drops into a hotel room they're staying in (two paragraphs after the text makes a point of telling the reader that the room has two beds) and finds them sleeping together in the same bed. Yeah...
* HopelessSuitor: Fernand to Mercédès, until he decides to RemoveTheRival.
* HopeSpot:
** There is a moment where, according to the narrator, Villefort is on the cusp of setting Edmond free, if only someone should burst through the door and confront him. The moment passes.
** When [[spoiler:Edouard]] is found poisoned, Monte Cristo (who's an expert physician and chemist) takes the body to a room and locks the door. It seems for a moment that he'll be able to save the life, but fifteen minutes later he comes out declaring he failed.
* HorribleJudgeOfCharacter: The young Edmond, trusting as friends the same men who will completely ruin his life and get him started on the quest for revenge that will occupy the rest of the story. In fact, he will never realize, by himself, the reason of his downfall: only with the help of old Faria will he be able to finally get a clue.
* HumiliationConga:
** Albert's ability to accept all sorts of humiliations with relative dignity--from being seduced by a servant-boy (whom he thinks is a woman until he gets a knife pointed at his face), to being forced to call off a duel with the Count, to [[spoiler:giving up his wealth and name after he finds out what kind of man his father is]]--is ultimately his most redeeming quality, and what truly distinguishes him from his father.
** Danglars gets one too. Having been the instigator of the plot that sent the Count to prison, he is [[spoiler:subsequently bankrupted, divorced, abandoned by his daughter, and kidnapped and imprisoned by Luigi Vampa and his bandits when he flees to Italy with the money he embezzled.]] Danglars is initially left without food, and when he demands to be fed the bandits charge him outrageous prices for his meals. Forced to choose between his money and his life, Danglars is starved out of the millions of francs he still has with him, until only 50,000 remain. It then turns out that the Count [[spoiler:had ordered Vampa and his bandits to kidnap Danglars and imprison him, putting Danglars in the very same situation that he placed the Count in. The money the bandits charge Danglars for his meal is returned to the hospitals he embezzled it from, as Danglars learns a horrible lesson in greed. He pleads for mercy and forgiveness, and the Count ultimately grants it to him, letting him go with the last 50,000 francs -- the only money he was carrying that he had earned more or less honestly. Oh, and the situation turns his hair white.]]
* {{Hypocrite}}:
** Villefort seems to be something of a hanging judge and obsessed with the family honor, but commits several heinous crimes.
** Danglars calls himself a man of the people, but uses his title when talking to his social inferiors and not when he's sucking up to his superiors.
* ImpoverishedPatrician: The Baroness Danglars comes from a highly aristocratic family, but neither they nor her first husband were very rich, as Danglars points out during an argument:
-->'''Hermine Danglars:''' Once for all, sir, I tell you I will not hear cash named; it is a style of language I never heard in the house of my parents or in that of my first husband.\\
'''Danglars:''' Oh, I can well believe that, for neither of them was worth a penny.
* ImprobableAimingSkills: Both Albert and the Count have such great aim that they can shoot at playing cards with pinpoint precision (Beauchamp's skill is about as the same as Albert). The Count makes an entire ''deck'' out of blank cards.
* ImprobableInfantSurvival:
** [[spoiler:Benedetto]], who was thought dead by his parents.
** Averted with [[spoiler:Edouard, who is poisoned by his mother just before her suicide]].
* InadvertentEntranceCue: Near the end of the novel, Julie and her husband are discussing recent events and whether they are evidence that some agent of Providence is at work; at a suitably dramatic moment, the conversation is interrupted by the arrival of Monte Cristo, who (unbeknownst to them) is responsible for all the events they've been discussing.
* IncompatibleOrientation: While it's not said outright, Eugénie is a lesbian, and thus has no inclination towards marriage with any of the suitors her father finds.
* INeedAFreakingDrink: At the Count's dinner party, when he starts hinting at one of Villefort's dark secrets:
-->Villefort, who had hitherto not tasted the three or four glasses of rare wine which were placed before him, here took one, and drank it off.
* InheritanceMurder:
** Valentine's maternal grandfather dies on the way to Paris, soon followed by her grandmother, making Valentine the heir (her mother died young and her father remarried). Then it turns out someone's been trying to poison her paternal grandfather, though fortunately his AcquiredPoisonImmunity saves him. Due to the motives, the family doctor starts suspecting Valentine herself until she too is poisoned. It turns out it was [[spoiler:her stepmother who wanted her own son]] to inherit both family's fortunes.
** Benedetto manipulated Caderousse into burgling the Count's house and possibly murdering the Count by claiming the Count's will acknowledged Benedetto as his heir.
* InnateNightVision: After spending more than ten years in a dimly-lit cell, the Count of Monte Cristo sees as well in the dark as in the light.
* InnOfNoReturn: Caderousse owns an inn of ill reputation. When he receives a diamond from the Count he immediately runs after a jeweler. The jeweler gives him money for the diamond, but has to spend a night in the inn due to bad weather. Caderousse, influenced by his greedy wife, decides to murder the jeweler, so he would have both the money and diamond. He succeeds, but in the ensuing fight his wife gets murdered and later Caderousse gets caught.
* InstantlyProvenWrong: While Valentine's father, Villefort, and her proposed fiancé, Franz, are discussing her grandfather's opposition to the match, Villefort claims that the old man is senile and doesn't understand what is happening. He goes so far as to assert that Valentine's grandfather probably doesn't even remember the name of the man she's going to marry -- and a moment later a message arrives from the grandfather addressed to Franz by his full name and title.
* InvisibleWriting: The key to the colossal fortune was found in an old piece of paper used as a bookmark. When Faria tried to use it to light a candle, he noticed words forming on it and quickly extinguished it, but was arrested before he could follow the instructions thus revealed.
* IronicHell: This is what the Count enacted on the men who wronged Dantès; The coworker who betrayed him so he could have his coveted promotion, and who used said position to amass a fortune was to be left bankrupt, the man who betrayed him because he coveted his fiancée had his wife and son taught to despise him, and the prosecutor who sent him to Château d'If because he knew something that would ruin his reputation had all his past misdeeds dragged out for all of Paris to see.
%% ZCE * ItsPersonal: The ur-example of this trope in fiction.

For a list of adaptations or works the novel inspired, see [[DerivativeWorks/TheCountOfMonteCristo here]].

* NiceJobBreakingItHero: Morrel intercedes for Dantès many times in an effort to gain his release. After Napolean returned to power, he greatly exaggerated Edmond's role in restoring the Emperor; once Napolean fell again, those very statements, now on record, meant that there was ''no chance at all'' that Dantès would ''ever'' be released.

[[index]]
[[/index]]

[[folder:Adaptations include:]]

[[AC:Anime & Manga]]
* ''Anime/{{Gankutsuou}}'' (2004 anime series)

[[AC:Films -- Live-Action]]
* ''The Count of Monte Cristo'' (1922) -- Starring Creator/JohnGilbert.
* ''The Count of Monte Cristo'' (1934) -- Starring Creator/RobertDonat.
* ''The Count of Monte Cristo'' (1954) -- Starring Creator/JeanMarais.
* ''The Count of Monte Cristo'' (1961) -- Starring Creator/LouisJourdan.
[[index]]
* ''Film/{{The Count of Monte Cristo|2002}}'' (2002) -- Starring Creator/JimCaviezel.
[[/index]]
* ''The Count of Monte Cristo'' (2024) -- Starring Creator/PierreNiney.

[[AC:Literature]]
* ''Literature/TheVampireCountOfMonteCristo'' (2013) -- Book from the "classic literature + monsters" mash-up trend

[[AC:Live-Action TV]]
* ''Series/{{The Count of Monte Cristo|1964}}'' (1964) -- BBC series starring Alan Badel.
* ''Series/{{The Count of Monte Cristo|1998}}'' (1998) -- French miniseries starring Creator/GerardDepardieu.
* ''Series/{{Ezel}}'' (2009 Turkish series)
* ''Series/{{Revenge|2011}}'' (2011 American primetime soap opera)

[[AC:Western Animation]]
* ''WesternAnimation/{{The Count of Monte Cristo|1997}}'' (1997)
[[/index]]
[[/folder]]

* SurpriseIncest: Narrowly avoided: [[spoiler:Eugenie and Andrea/Benedetto are half siblings, sharing the same mother, and they very nearly get married.]] This is never metioned, though and since he is unaware of that side of his heritage and she skips town before knowing his true identity, it's unlikely they'll ever find out.

* PilferingProprietor: Caderrouse is not specifically noted as corrupt once he becomes an innkeeper, although prior to that, he had a minor role in Dantes' unjust imprisonment and afterward acts as a LoanShark towards Dantes' impoverished father. However, he nonetheless fulfills the part about preying on guests. After being gifted a diamond by a disguised Dantes, Caderrouse invites an appraiser. After the appraiser offers an inadequate (although still generous) sum, Caderrouse [[AxCrazy hacks the appraiser to death with an ax so he can keep both the money and the diamond. And then does the same to his wife when she objects.]]