“The Three Musketeers”: the fabulous and incredible (invented) story of the sulphurous character of Milady

Adélaïde de Clermont-Tonnerre boldly reinvents a diabolical heroine to make her a strong and fearless woman

Come on! Saddle up! It's a cavalcade to the heart of this intense 17th ^century . Milady is a young orphan taken into a convent after her mother's assassination. A young lady who will go from the complacent education of a brave priest moved by the girl's intrepidity to the devious influence of a young priest quick to defrock himself. Adélaïde de Clermont-Tonnerre delivers a true swashbuckling novel, a wild fantasy that seeks to rehabilitate Alexandre Dumas' cursed character. Well, rehabilitate isn't the word. The author of the sumptuous "Fur" - another story about women - makes Anne de Breuil, Countess of La Fère, Milady de Winter, an ambivalent woman, burdened with painful memories, who constantly oscillates between tenderness and revenge, love and hurt.

This is a portrait of great complexity. It draws on imagination and historical rigor, that of the era of the action, the reign of Louis XIII, that of the time of Dumas's writing, in a century when women were corseted by the Napoleonic Code. Dumas's Milady has vice anchored to her body: seductive, cunning, spy, traitor, but, implicitly, courageous and fascinating. Audacious for a female character of the ^19th century. Adélaïde de Clermont-Tonnerre deciphers the psychological construction by reversing Dumas's score: innocent and bold, Milady turns cautious over the course of her trials. This powerfully thick "I Wanted to Live" joyfully dialogues with "The Three Musketeers" and skillfully does justice to this abused heroine, judged and condemned by her lovers - she marries the seductive Athos and d'Artagnan falls in love with her.

We will definitely never hate the cunning Milady again. After Paul Féval – Interallié Prize winner for his "Aramis" –, Roger Nimier, Jean-Pierre Dufreigne and a few others, Adélaïde de Clermont-Tonnerre, without deviating from her passion for dense intrigues, joins the circle of Dumas's little hands and reappropriates his masterpiece with brilliance, for a dizzying and elegant romantic "fanfiction".

“I wanted to live” by Adélaïde de Clermont-Tonnerre , published by Grasset, 480 p., €24.