This page is for tropes that have appeared in The Count of Monte Cristo (the novel, not the many adaptations).
For the rest:
- Jealous Pet: 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.
- Kangaroo Court: 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 Kangaroo Court element kicks in as Villefort applies powers actually given to him under the law to have Dantès imprisoned indefinitely without a trial.
- Karma Houdini:
- Downplayed with Danglars. As the instigator of Dantès' downfall, he was going to starve to death as Dantès' father had, but the Count had a My God, What Have I Done? 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.
- Benedetto's fate after his trial is unknown.
- Karmic Jackpot: 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.
- Kick the Morality Pet: 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.
- Kids Are Cruel: Edouard de Villefort is a little shit, but even he didn't deserve to be poisoned by his own mother.
- Kissing Cousins: Fernand and Mercédès are cousins who get married and have a son.
- Knight Templar Parent: Madame de Villefort will go to any lengths to ensure that her son inherits a large fortune; which includes poisoning nearly every member of her family, including her step-daughter.
- Lady Macbeth: Caderousse's wife, La Carconte, pressures him into murdering a jeweller who poses only the slightest threat to them. They succeed in the murder, but La Carconte gets a bullet in the throat.
- Laser-Guided Karma:
- 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 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 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, 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 Death Seeker. Mercédès herself is his big failure: all his cleverness is insufficient to provide her with the happiness she deserves.
- Last Request: 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.
- Leave Behind a Pistol: After de Villefort learns that 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.
- Leonine Contract: 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.
