This page is for tropes that have appeared in The Count of Monte Cristo (the novel, not the many adaptations).
For the rest:
- Daddy's Girl: 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).
- Denied Food as Punishment: What Edmond finally does to Danglars once he captures him, as a deliberate reflection of the way Edmond's father died poor and starving.
- Dies Wide Open: Abbe Faria dies like this after a seizure and Edmond has a lot of trouble closing his eyes.
- Dispense with the Pleasantries: This is a typical trait of Baron Danglars's conversations; he's a very strict man with little tolerance for small talk.
- Disproportionate Retribution: 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.
- Dramatic Irony: 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. 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 Gérard de Villefort and Hermine Danglars. This takes a new dimension when he ends up engaged to 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 Manipulative Bastard himself, doesn't realize that Maximilien and Valentine are romantically involved until the last minute; as far as he's concerned, Valentine is the daughter of his hated enemy.
- Driven by Envy: 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.
- Driven to Suicide:
- M. Morrel contemplates suicide when his business fails, but is prevented when Edmond comes to the rescue.
- Maximilien threatens to kill himself in three separate occasions. Prevented by the Count in all cases but one, where it's prevented by Valentine.
- Fernand, after being confronted by the Count.
- Madame de Villefort, after strong pressure from her husband.
- Danglars implies that the Marquis of Nargonne killed himself after returning from an absence of nine months to find his wife Hermine six months pregnant.
- Drugs Are Good: The Count talks about the delights of hashish, and claims he uses it to sleep at will.
- Duel to the Death:
- Between Albert and the Count. Averted at the last minute—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.
- Averted by Morcerf, who brings a pair of swords to demand an explanation from the Count, only for him to deliver a "Reason You Suck" Speech that sends the general reeling back home.
- Noirtier reveals that he killed Franz's father in a duel to the death, the official reason he's opposed to the marriage.
- Dumber Than They Look: Mock Millionaire 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.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: 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.
- Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: The Count. Years in prison will do that to you. Part of why everyone thinks he's a vampire.
- Enemies List: 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.
- Entertainingly Wrong: Doctor d'Avrigny's reasoning to conclude that Valentine is a poisoner is entirely sound: He correctly deduces that three sudden deaths in the same household, within a relatively short period of time, 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 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.
- Every Man Has His Price: 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.
- Evil Counterpart: 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.
- Evil Redhead: 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.
- Face of an Angel, Mind of a Demon: 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.
- Failed Attempt at Drama: The first time the Count reveals himself to his enemy has all the gravity and tension he expected with Morcerf committing suicide shortly after the reveal.The second time he does it though the conspirator just grab him by the arm shows him the body of his 9 years old son with the Count both confused and alarmed.
- Faint in Shock: Madame Danglars faints at the Count's dinner party when the Count starts unearthing the history of her secret child who died in childbirth and again much later when it's revealed that said child is not only alive, but a notorious criminal who almost married her daughter.
- Fake Assisted Suicide: 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).
- Fake Ultimate Hero: 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.
- False Reassurance: 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.
- Fatal Flaw:
- Greed for Caderousse, explicitly spelled out by the Count. 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.
- Faux Death: 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.
- Fiction 500: 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 inflationnote 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 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. 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.
- Four-Star Badass:
- 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 Edmond Dantès knows exactly who he is.
- Played straight with Ali Pasha.
- From Nobody to Nightmare: 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.
