The Count Of Monte Cristo / The Count Of Monte Cristo - Tropes A to C

This page is for tropes that have appeared in The Count of Monte Cristo (the novel, not the many adaptations).

For the rest:

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• Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder: 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.
• Abusive Offspring: 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).
• Acquired Poison Immunity: 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. 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.
• Aesop Collateral Damage: 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 Death Seeker. 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 Villefort's young son Edouard, prompting even the Count to reflect that he has gone too far. It almost leads to 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.
• Affably Evil:
  • 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.
• Age-Gap Romance: 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.
• The Alcatraz: The Chateau d'If, a prison located on an isolated rock in the Bay of Marseilles.
• Ambition Is Evil: 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.
• And I Must Scream: 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.
• …And That Little Girl Was Me: 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.
• Anonymous Benefactor: The Count serves as this to the Morrel Family.
• Appeal to Force: 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."
• Arbitrarily Large Bank Account: 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).
• Arc Words: "Wait and hope."
• Aristocrats Are Evil: 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.
• Arranged Marriage: 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.
• As You Know: 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.
• Ate His Gun: 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.
• At the Opera Tonight: Several key scenes take place in opera houses, including Albert's first encounter with the Count.
• Author Appeal: 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.
• Awesomeness by Analysis: Despite being imprisoned since longer than Dantès, Faria is able to correctly deduce the entire sequence of events that led to Dantès' imprisonment.
• Badass Adorable: Haydee has shades of this. Especially evident when she enters the courtroom to denounce Fernand.
• Badass Boast: 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."
• Badass Preacher: Dantès in his Busoni disguise, effortlessly disarms a would-be thief.
• Bandit Clan: 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.
• Bastard Bastard: 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.
• Batman Gambit:
  • 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 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.
• Beautiful Slave Girl: 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.
• Being Good Sucks: 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 Took a Level in Badass AND Took a Level in Jerkass.
• Benevolent Boss:
  • 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 Undying Loyalty to Morrel's family when his fortunes change.
  • Edmond himself, as the wealthy Count of Monte Cristo, treats his servants extremely well.
• Best Served Cold: 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.
• Better to Die than Be Killed: Fernand shoots himself in the head, having had his treacherous past exposed and abandoned by his wife and son.
• Beware the Nice Ones: 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.
• Bewildering Punishment: Edmond is not told why he was arrested.
• Bittersweet Ending: 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 hurt innocent parties too. The Count is particularly shocked by the death of 9-year-old Edouard de Villefort, and reflects that he has now "exceeded the limits of vengeance".
• Black-and-Gray Morality or Evil Versus Evil: The Count is ruthless to the point of being a Villain Protagonist, but the people he's up against are even worse.
• Blue Blood: 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.
• Bodybag Trick: 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.
• Book Ends: 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 Chekhov's Gun involving 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.
• Brain Fever: Captain LeClere, in the beginning of the novel, leaving Edmond in command of his vessel.
• Break the Believer: 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.
• Break the Haughty: 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.
• British Teeth: Exploited by the Count for his Lord Wilmore disguise, which includes false teeth.
• Bury Your Gays: 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.
• …But He Sounds Handsome: 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.
• Byronic Hero: 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 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.
• Came Back with a Vengeance: This novel did a lot to codify this archetypal revenge plot, with many authors following Dumas's lead in regards to their own revenge stories.
• Can Only Move the Eyes: 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.
• Celibate Hero: 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. 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.
• Character Filibuster: 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 Character Filibuster moments, the ones in this book are always key to the plot.
• Character Witness: 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.
• Chekhov's Gun: 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. Thus he only shoots himself at the end when Mercédès and their son have abandoned him, fully aware of his part in Dantès' fate.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Haydee appears to be a subverted Morality Pet for the Count at first, before she provides a crucial testimony against Fernand at the trial regarding his involvement in the Ali Pacha affair.
• The Chessmaster: 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.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: 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.
• Clean Food, Poisoned Fork: 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.
• The Cobbler's Children Have No Shoes: The home of the king's attorney is the site of half a dozen murders and attempted murders... by the king's attorney's own wife.
• Colliding Criminal Conspiracies: 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.
• Colonel Badass: Maximilien Morrel.
• Comically Small Bribe: 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.
• Contrived Coincidence: 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, 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 Caderousse received the diamond from the Abbé Busoni and killed the jeweler.
  • That the woman Villefort was having an affair and an illegitimate child with would go on to marry Danglars.
  • That 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.
• Convicted by Public Opinion: How 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.
• Cool Old Guy: Grandfather Noirtier, who manages to save the day a couple of times despite being almost completely paralyzed.
• The CSI Effect: Invoked In-Universe 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 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.
• Crapsack World: 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.
• Cultured Badass: The Count.
• Cunning Linguist: 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...

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