This page is for tropes that have appeared in The Count of Monte Cristo (the novel, not the many adaptations).
For the rest:
- Race Lift: 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.
- Rage Against the Legal System: Edmond's revenge includes the corrupt judge who had him incarcerated indefinitely despite knowing he was innocent.
- Rags to Riches: 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.
- Red Herring: d'Avrigny believes that Valentine is the poisoner. It's actually Madame de Villefort...Valentine's stepmother.
- Relative Error: Mercédès is mistaken for her son's mistress. The fact that Albert just can't shut up about how perfect his mother is really doesn't help matters. The Count probably 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.
- Remove The Rival: What Mondego did to Dantès and kick start the plot.
- Restrained Revenge: 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.
- Revenge Before Reason: 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. He eventually snaps out of it, but only when he sees the consequences of his actions.
- Revenge by Proxy: 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 Valentine's secret fiance Maximilien). He does at least draw the line at harming Villefort's infant son, and Edouard's death is a key moment leading to the Count realizing that he's not the omniscient Big Good he thought he was.
- Revenge is Sweet: Edmond Dantès feels this way when he commits revenge on one of the antagonists. 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.
- Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves: 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.
- Sacred Hospitality:
- 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.
- Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: Edmond Dantès, Determinator or not, wouldn't have gotten far into his elaborate schemes for revenge without his eleventy billion francs.
- Secret Identity: 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.
- Secret-Identity Identity: Edmond Dantès was so changed by prison that as the Count, he doesn't look at all like the idealistic Nice Guy he used to be and has some That Man Is Dead 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.
- Secret Test of Character:
- After getting caught up on what's been going on with his enemies while he was in prison (see Mr. Exposition 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. 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 he is truly deserving of happiness by his standards. Max passes with flying colors by 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 he has tasted true despair.
- Sentimental Drunk: 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.
- Separated by the Wall: Maximilien and Valentine, in a Shout-Out to Pyramus and Thisbe.
- Series Continuity Error: In the chapters set in 1815 and during Dantès' imprisonment, Monsieur Noirtier is always referred as a Girondin
. Later on, in the chapters set in 1838, all characters refer to him instead as a Jacobin. - Seriously Scruffy: Combined with Mess of Woe 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).
- Sex Slave: 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.
- Shed the Family Name:
- Villefort, a Royalist, changed his name to disassociate himself from his Bonapartist father, Noirtier.
- 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.
- Shipper on Deck: When the Count is writing up his will before the duel, he hopes that Morrel will marry Haydée, before learning Morrel already has his sights on someone (had he known that someone was Valentine, the rest of the book would have been very different indeed).
- Ship Sinking: The novel confirms that Edmond and Mercédès don't get back together. She goes to a convent and he continues with his revenge plot.
- Shout-Out:
- The sequence set in Italy where Albert first makes the acquaintance of the Count includes a bunch of references to earlier Byronic Heroes, including Byron's own 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 The Three Musketeers (Monte-Cristo is an island in the Mediterranean, Athos is a mountain in Greece).
- Sins of Our Fathers: The Count plans to kill Albert as part of his revenge on Fernand, and has no plans to stop Mme de Villefort from poisoning Valentine until he learns Morrel loves her.
- Sliding Scale of Beauty: 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 Uncanny Valley Girl because of her masculine behavior.
- Small Role, Big Impact: 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.
- Smiting Evil Feels Good: 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: that Edouard did not deserve to be murdered.
- Soft Water: Discussed. During his prison escape, 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.
- Sounding It Out: When Noirtier forces Franz Depinay to read aloud the true account of his father's death, previously believed to be a suicide.
- Spanner in the Works:
- 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.
- The Speechless: 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.
- Spell My Name with a Blank: Countess G_____. A subversion, as she's based off of Lord Byron's mistress: Teresa, Countess Guiccioli.
- Spoiled Brat:
- 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.
- Star-Crossed Lovers: Maximilien Morrel and Valentine de Villefort, at first.
- Stealing from the Till: 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.
- A Storm Is Coming: 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.
- Strawman Political: 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.
- Surprise Incest: Narrowly avoided: 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.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
- The Count of Monte Cristo has enough money to start a new life and move on from his traumas. However, because There Are No Therapists, he can't forgive being unjustly imprisoned and having his life stolen from him. Thus, he begins to Pay Evil unto Evil 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. Edmond gets what he wants, and only refuses to let Danglars die when he indirectly murders a child.
- In their youth, 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 lives went, but there's no possibility of them rekindling their romance, nor do they wish to. Mercédès can't forgive the fact that the Count would have killed Albert in a duel without considering how she would feel, and the Count admits that while he respects and cares for Mercédès, his romantic love for her faded a while back; not because of her marrying his rival but because that's inevitably what happens when you spend more than twenty years away from someone, to the point that they become a memory.
- Symbolic Hero Rebirth: 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.
- Sword Cane: 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.
