This page is for tropes that have appeared in The Count of Monte Cristo (the novel, not the many adaptations).
For the rest:
- Made a Slave: 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. It takes a while for him to accept she sees him as something other than a father-figure.
- Mama Bear: 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 Together in Death.
- Manly Tears: 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.
- Master of Disguise: The Count. (Although Mercédès recognizes him immediately.)
- Master Poisoner: Madame de Villefort, aided by advice from Monte Cristo.
- Meaningful Name: 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.
- Men Are Uncultured: 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).
- Mentor Occupational Hazard: 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.
- Mercy Kill: 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.
- Minored in Ass-Kicking: 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.
- Miscarriage of Justice: To the tune of fourteen years of false imprisonment. (And imprisonment in those days was arguably a Fate Worse than Death.)
- Mission from God: 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 his actions lead to the murder-suicide of Edouard and Héloïse de Villefort.
- Mock Millionaire: 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.
- Mood Whiplash: 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.
- Morality Pet: Haydee serves as an outlet for the otherwise cold and distant Count to show genuine affection.
- Morally Bankrupt Banker: 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).
- Moses in the Bulrushes: 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.
- Mushroom Samba: 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.
- My God, What Have I Done?:
- 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 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.
- Nested Ownership: 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.
- Nested Story: Signor Pastrini briefly interrupts his story about the bandit lord Luigi Vampa to tell another story about another bandit lord who preceded Vampa.
- New Job as the Plot Demands: 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.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: 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.
- No Doubt the Years Have Changed Me: 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 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.
- No Endor Holocaust: 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.
- No Honor Among Thieves: Caderousse has no problem with blackmailing Benedetto, just as Benedetto has no problem anonymously warning the Count about Caderousse's burglary attempt.
- No Party Like a Donner Party: 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.
- Nouveau Riche:
- 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).
- Oblivious Guilt Slinging: Albert mentions that when his mother Mercédès has feelings for someone, it's for life.
- Obviously Evil:
- 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 having no regrets at all losing both his daughter and his wife, then running away, simply to save his money.
- Officer and a Gentleman: 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.
- Offing the Offspring: After her crimes are discovered, Madame de Villefort kills herself and, to spite her husband, their son too.
- Oh, Crap!: The moment Morcerf realises the Count is really Edmond Dantès.
- The Old Convict: 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.
- Once for Yes, Twice for No: Noirtier is completely paralyzed except for his eyes. He communicates by a system of blinks, including two agreed-upon signals meaning yes and no.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: 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.
- Paid-for Family: 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. 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...
- Pet the Dog: 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.
- Pick on Someone Your Own Size: Dantès includes the innocent children of his enemies in his plan for revenge. 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.
- Pilfering Proprietor: 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 Loan Shark 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.
- Poisoned Chalice Switcheroo: 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.
- Poison Is Evil: The murder technique of choice of 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.
- Poor Communication Kills: 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.
- Prank Date: 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.
- Prematurely Grey-Haired: Danglars' hair turns white prematurely when the Count's vengeance catches up with him.
- Prisons Are Gymnasiums: Somehow, languishing in a small cell for years makes Edmond unusually strong. The narrative states that the rough conditions gave him strength.
- Proper Lady: Valentine and Haydee.
- Proto-Superhero: Arguably, although perhaps more of a supervillain 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.
- Public Execution: A public execution during a Roman festival allows the Count to test Franz's character.
