igenlode | Entries tagged with musketeers

On reading the French version of the earlier chapters (this being the rather tediously lengthy chunk of Fronde activity which the film omits entirely :-p) I noticed somewhat to my embarrassment that d'Artagnan explicitly *does* take Raoul 'home' with him to his lodgings on the rue Tiquetonne after the boy gets mixed up in the rioting, and leaves him shut up there in Madeleine's house for some time in order to keep him out of trouble. Since he does this without a moment's qualm almost immediately after Athos leaves for England, it clearly doesn't make much sense to have him embarrassed subsequently by the mere idea of lodging Raoul beneath his mistress' roof ('what would the Comte de La Fère have thought?')

So I probably need to go more explicitly for my original image, which was the idea that what d'Artagnan considers and rejects is the expedient of having Madeleine 'mother' the bereaved boy on his behalf ("I don't know how to give him what he needs now" -- but a woman's touch possibly might).

Having been through the stage of finding myself surprisingly pleased with this story, I am now back in the more expected reaction of realising that it doesn't sound much like Porthos after all ( Read more... )

Think Only This of Me

Athos gave his life to save Charles Stuart. A grieving d’Artagnan must deal with the consequences. And there are some things, at least, that Porthos sees more clearly than any of them.

The Seigneur de Pierrefonds blew in from the little park at Bragelonne like a great gust of wind and demanded Mouston, who had made himself scarce somewhere in the depths of the house. But since his attendant was for the moment nowhere to be seen and the establishment was shrouded in the dismal air that had driven him out-of-doors in the first place, he caught up a candlestick and went himself in search of d’Artagnan. He had a certain uncomfortable sense that in abandoning the house of mourning he had likewise abandoned his friend, and now that the winter dusk had enforced his return, it was time to relieve d’Artagnan of his duties and stand guard in his place, so to speak, over the young Vicomte Raoul. For even if the Comte de La Fère had bequeathed his ward into d’Artagnan’s care, Porthos had a firm intention that the boy should become his son also.

They had gone together to break the dreadful news. D’Artagnan had not asked for support in that task, but Porthos had been quite certain that he needed it.

And it had been every bit as bad as he had thought. ( Read more... )

I spent a happy evening attempting to grab some screen captures of Porthos and d'Artagnan to go with my new fic (since the "Twenty Years After" film conveniently provides footage of the two of them together at Bragelonne, as per my story, although in canon Porthos doesn't ever come there (and hence is implicitly seeing the house for the first time in my AU)... :-p)
http://ivory.ueuo.com/Tower/Albums/Porthos_pics/

This was a rather hit and miss operation, given the hefty shutter delay on screencaps: I did coincidentally grab a halfway decent image of Porthos, Raoul and d'Artagnan at Bragelonne without Athos in shot, although I was actually trying to get a usable picture of Porthos at the time! ( Low resolution footage )

So after that I went back to the scenes of d'Artagnan and Porthos together at Pierrefonds, and got quite a few decent shots of the two of them together which could potentially be used as an AO3 illustration, and some better vertical format close-ups of Porthos on his own for FFnet. ( Read more... )

( I had forgotten how endearing the morning-after scene is! )

I now need to decide on (probably) one horizontal and one vertical image out of the sixteen. I'm tempted to add the fortuitous Raoul-in-frame pic as a 'happy ending' illustration, although it has to be said that it isn't objectively very good.

I watched the finale of "Twenty Years After" (no crib, no subtitles) and I loved it! I have to say I'm pretty sure this is extremely non-canonical -- surely, surely in Dumas Mordaunt doesn't survive Athos' dagger? -- but then this is why we watch the film adaptation before rereading the book :-)

If only I'd been able to speak Russian, how my heart would have soared to see this come out back in 1992, because it was *exactly* the type of content that had filled my dreams since childhood, just as "Pirates of the Caribbean" would send me into joyous fandom in 2003. ( I get a little carried away describing the episode )

( Things that I loved )

N.B. At this point YouTube has clearly decided that I am Russian, because not only is it no longer offering to translate the comments into English, thus making my life far harder, but it has now started offering to translate comments on English-language videos into Russian for me...ooops!

Objectively speaking... is this film as good (and as delightful) as the first film? ( It was worth it anyway )

( Part 3? )

I *think* I've finished my Porthos-fic (which is of course going to need a title, although its filename is clearly going to be 'Porthos'!) I'm not sure that I've entirely captured Porthos' 'voice', either in speech or in thought-patterns, although there were intermittent bits that I was pleased with in that respect -- I may need to go through and try to simplify my convoluted syntax a *lot*...

I'm thinking of running this together with "If I Should Die" as an AO3 'series' under the name of "To Save the King", since they are basically both in the same continuity, although this one is much more obviously AU -- ironically enough, given the genesis of the fic, I'm afraid that in this situation Aramis probably *doesn't* ever carry out his commission to pass on Athos' farewells, because the story turned out to be very much about a rift between d'Artagnan and Aramis that hadn't even existed at the point when I set out to write it, and which would have made any such interaction feel impossible :-( I did know that Aramis was busy 'having a life-crisis moment', part of the idea for this fic being that maybe you could 'save' Aramis, in the same way that I did for Javert, by inflicting a canon trauma -- in Aramis' case, losing a friend -- on him at a much earlier point in his character arc, when he still has the moral and mental flexibility to change. But I didn't 'know' (until d'Artagnan unexpectedly threw it into conversation...) that this was because the Gascon was blaming him for not having prevented Athos' death :-(
( Aramis' faith )

( Fic length )

As predicted, I found myself somewhat adrift after Porthos finishes his anecdote about how he and Athos first got to know one another, because I simply hadn't thought up any more to the sequel past that point; normally I only start to write down a fic when it comes to a good end, and with this one I had instead stopped short in the middle of the 'telling myself a story' stage. And I only had four pages left at that point, with no idea where the story was going to go :-(
But d'Artagnan then came out with something completely unexpected (for the second time), and I had a fresh development that tied satisfactorily into what had gone before, and could --on the very last page of the notebook! -- both be linked back into Porthos' previous memories of Athos in his very first days in the musketeers, and sort out some of the extra complications I'd set in the way of a happy ending. The main trouble is that it *is* a pretty random reaction, even if it was genuinely something that came up without planning as an in-character response, rather than the author desperately trying to perform a segue to an arbitrary plot point...

From the writer's own website (and, by the look of it, from his 1999 autobiography): https://www.smekhov.narod.ru/Athos/finalm.html

I haven't attempted to do more than skim the chapter, but it appears to contain a complete transcript of the Athos poem, something I've been diligently chasing ever since I discovered there was a *longer* version, heard recited on stage but minus helpful subtitles...

(Pointless, I know, but I was really curious to find out what it said!)

Flower update: we have the first mesembryanthemum, the first feverfew (after two years) and the first marigold. The sweet peas are proving a great success, being a beautiful dark purple and sufficiently scented -- and sufficiently high off the ground -- to actually produce a noticeable perfume on the air without having to be sniffed at extreme close quarters :-)

Les Trois Mousquetaires ou
Le collier de la Reine

A French aide-memoire running from "one times three is three" up to "ten times three is thirty"... with a little help from Athos, Porthos and Aramis :-D

(at any rate, it amused me...)

Les Trois Mousquetaires
Vont en Angleterre ;
Leur habit porte une croix,
Trois fois un, trois.

Penchés au bord du bateau,
Ils voient leur reflet dans l'eau,
Athos, Porthos, Aramis !
Trois fois deux, six.

( Read more... )

I finally dedicated myself to doing a thorough re-watch of the 55-minute chunk of "Twenty Years After" that I had viewed 'blind' and unsubtitled as it was originally intended -- which took about six or eight hours of study spread over two days. Next time I'm going to have to try to force myself to stop watching sooner... although in fact there are only about 30 minutes left of the story, including end-credits :-(

( subtitles )

One of the non-subtitled lines, when I listened to it more carefully, turned out to be Porthos randomly observing that d'Artagnan looked good in a beard, which amused me mightily given my original comments on the scene ("for someone whose moustache has more or less been a permanent trademark since the start of his career, Mikhail Boyarsky actually looks pretty good in a 'full set' :-D)

Boyarsky in a beard

In fact as usual I did get pretty much all of it plot-wise on the first viewing, while the 'crib' filled in most of the longer/more rapid dialogues where I could only catch a few words (but generally sufficient to identify those sections in the novel, e.g. Milo of Croton, who unsurprisingly defeated me entirely when encountered as an unexpected subject of prison conversation :-p) The big changes from the novel are, I think, actually active *improvements*: ( Read more... )

( Madame de Chevreuse )

( Shipping? )

The towel-tomatoes have now reached the mystic state of Setting the Second Truss, which means I switch from feeding them with ordinary liquid fertiliser (although I haven't been doing so of late, because they had brand new compost a couple of weeks ago) to specialised tomato feed. I also gave the same dose to the single Roma tomato, although that has only set a single truss level as yet.

(In fact, on a renewed reading of the instructions on the tomato food bottle, I observe that I have actually been doing it wrong for the last few years: the instructions about 'after the setting of the second truss' only state that you should feed at a more frequent interval after that point, not that you should delay feeding until then! You are actually supposed to start to apply the feed after the *first* fruit has set...)

An unexpected connection: while I was listening in a desultory way to a recent TV interview with Venjiamin Smekhov ('Soviet Athos') a name familiar in another context suddenly caught my attention. Smekhov was being asked about his involvement with a rock musical recorded by the group Korol' i Shut, whose (unrelated) "Three Musketeers" song I translated :-)
( Read more... )

Dates and ages (probably mutually inconsistent)

Athos tells Raoul on their arrival in Paris that he spent seven of the sweetest and yet most bitter years of his life in his old lodgings on the rue Férou (including the further years after d'Artagnan's promotion?)

He appeals to Porthos during the confrontation at the Place Royale on the grounds that "we slept ten years side by side", presumably referring to the length of time over which the two of them served together as musketeers.

( The age of Aramis )

( Oliver Reed's careless fencing )

On my second expedition I successfully managed to purchase a new slide buckle of the right size to fit my secondary clothes line, thanks to a very helpful Indian lady whose haberdashery stall turned out to be well-stocked with all sorts of components as well as the glittering sari fabrics and accessories. I tested it out this afternoon on a batch of washing, and it seems to function exactly as effectively as its predecessor (which is to say that it is no longer bar-taut after a few hours when you take the washing down again, but doesn't sag enough to cause a discernable problem while the weight is on it).

( New cycle computer )

( Documentaries in Russian )

What I *haven't* done, having been submerged in documentaries, or at least having had them playing in the background while engaged in other things, is actually finish watching "Twenty Years After", which I have already encountered 'spoilers' for in places ranging from TV Tropes (yes, the Soviet Musketeers have their own TV Tropes page...) to random Aramis fanvids and AU fan-fiction. Although I did, on my first (pedestrian) expedition to try to buy buckles, manage to start that third "Twenty Years After" Porthos-fic of my own...

Apart from anything else I got caught up in rereading the earlier parts of the book in the French version to see what else was missing in terms of detail, which turns out to include little scenes like the one in which d'Artagnan gives Raoul a fencing-lesson during his visit and praises Athos on the boy's swordsmanship (C’est déjà votre main, mon cher Athos, et si c’est votre sang-froid, je n’aurai que des compliments à lui faire) -- this entire conversation being omitted from the English edition, which cuts straight to Mazarin's recall message!

YouTube just bestowed upon me a recording of the poem by Venjiamin Smekhov (who played Athos)...

( Source of the clip revealed )

However, what the longer context *does* provide is an explanation for the more obscure references in the poem: Smekhov mentions that he wrote it because they were filming in Lvov (now renamed 'Lviv' to reflect the tight Ukrainian accent, which still strikes me as akin to relabelling Glasgow as "Glasgae" ;-p) in August at the time of his birthday. It's a 'kino-horoscope': Lvov, the City of Lions (as in Lev Tolstoy, sometimes Anglicised to Leo) under the European astrological sign of Leo in the Chinese astrological Year of the Horse 1978.

A filk/translation of the ballad that has nothing whatsoever to do with the 'Soviet Musketeers' film, but which has a very catchy chorus that went round and round in my head while I was cycling until it had practically translated itself ;-)
And after that, of course, I had to put sweat and tears into actually translating the verses to go with it...

( Read more... )

YouTube just bestowed upon me a recording of the poem by Venjiamin Smekhov (who played Athos) that showed up in the background soundtrack to one of the many, many Russian-language documentaries I have been watching recently about the making of "D'Artagnan and the Three Musketeers", the actors involved, and various other subjects ;-) I remember being impressed at the time because it only very gradually started to dawn on me that the voiceover at that point was in poetry: there are precious few people who can 'speak verse' and make it sound so entirely natural that you only realise they are doing it when things keep starting to rhyme! Smekhov in particular really does have a beautiful stage-trained voice, as all the fans (and in Russia there are still a lot of them) kept saying. It's what you would describe as 'Shakespearian' training when talking about English actors, but I don't know what the Russian equivalent would be; whether they actually have classical verse plays, as the French do (Pushkin maybe?)

Anyway, I heard this poem drifting past in the middle of a half-hour documentary and couldn't make out much of it apart from the fact that it probably wasn't entirely serious (and was likely to have been written by Smekhov himself, whom I had heard writes verses), and involved a lot of things 'flying' in all directions, musketeers included :-D And then a couple of weeks later YouTube suddenly decided to bestow on me unprompted a video of Smekhov actually reading it out to his fellow cast-members... *with* on-screen subtitles, so that I could actually interpret what it said.

https://youtube.com/shorts/XYlxuqXFaMY

I have been potting up two of the towel-tomatoes and the Roma tomato into what will be their final pots, and have pretty much used up all the compost I bought in the process; I shall have to get some more. Not a lot of progress from the catch-up tomatoes, but presumably they have been developing roots under their sturdy seed-leaves.

The sweetbriar, rose campion and flax are in flower, ( red and yellow poppies )

( Clothes line buckle snapped )

My bedroom clock stopped again this week after I wound it (which is annoying, because it was working up until then!), and turning it upside down didn't seem to help this time :-(

I have been seriously considering writing the third "Twenty Years After" fic that I was running in my head (basically as a sequel to "If I Should Die") and that I was more or less confident that I was *not* going to write, on the grounds that it had no plot ( and can't really be fitted into canon )

( The obvious sequel to 'If I Should Die' being an AU in which he does )

What worries me more is that I'm not sure Porthos' anecdote, originally conceived in the context of a puzzled conversation about Raoul's parentage (a secret which Athos at this juncture has of necessity taken to his grave so far as his friends are concerned) actually fits very well any more into the story as I am now revolving it in my mind; it's certainly not a good ending. It was simply the point at which I broke off my 'what would they say to one another if...' speculations on reaching my own front door :-p

And unfortunately that particular idea was pretty much the whole point of attempting to write this, being the sole original piece of inspiration there :-(

The one-shot that was inspired by a slight mis-remembering of the farewells beneath the scaffold, and by a line that is for some reason omitted from the translation I had from Project Gutenberg... I have worked grit-covered ropes in bitterly cold weather; my pen-calluses weren't of much help. Athos probably has sword-calluses, but it's canon that those didn't help much either ;-)

(Aramis does in fact embrace both Porthos and d'Artagnan immediately afterwards on his own account before going off on what he has every reason to believe may be a suicide mission, another line which was left out of the English translation, which simply reads "Aramis again presented himself at the bishop’s" in lieu of "Aramis les quitta comme il avait quitté Athos, c’est-à-dire en les embrassant; puis il se rendit chez l’évêque Juxon".)

If I Should Die

At dawn on the day of the English king’s execution, Athos takes precautions for the future and contemplates those to whom his life is bound — both by love and hate.

“Donc Athos déchirait ses belles mains si blanches et si fines à lever les pierres arrachées de leur base par Porthos...” Vingt ans après, Chapitre LXX, “Les ouvriers”

The January wind stole across the stones of Whitehall, and fluttered the sombre drapes beneath the gaunt new structure that stood there. It had been a bitterly cold night, and Athos had worked without respite, under cover of the labour going on all around them to complete the King’s scaffold— a thing horrible and unheard of, not that a King should be murdered but that the deed should be carried out with this travesty of the forms of justice. But they had given their word, he and Aramis, to Madame Henriette of England. Given their word to guard her husband the King and to bring him safely back to her, even if it should cost both their lives.

( Read more... )

After getting distracted by "Aramis no Bouken" I plunged into the final part of the Soviet "Twenty Years After" with a certain trepidation (oh no, it's going to come to an end) and no idea what to expect, having no memory of this part of the novel at all.
(It does strike me as being slightly worrying that I have now managed to write two fanfics for it without actually having finished the story myself, but unless further big chunks of backstory appear in the remaining section it shouldn't invalidate anything in what I have already written, all of which takes place at an earlier point in the plot than this!)

It looks as if the last part of the serial is going to be all about how the protagonists back in France get themselves out of the political consequences of their actions in England. We saw d'Artagnan and Porthos get arrested at the end of the last episode, and now Aramis and Athos are wondering what became of them. ( Read more... )

Edit: well, that turns out to be almost *all* the remaining chapters of the book (the duel of Aramis and Athos being mixed up with a vast chunk of armies and political manoeuvring in canon). But the book does at least explain why Mazarin is apparently walking around in a greenhouse; d'Artagnan and Porthos are shut up not in a mediaeval tower as shown on screen, but in a pavilion wing in an orangery, and not for months but for a grand total, according to d'Artagnan, of eighty-three hours of frustration ;-)
(And I am also touched to find out that in the book it is Aramis who is outside the walls with horses, whereas I was beginning to fear in the film that he had simply gone to ground to save his own neck as the final survivor...)

Courtesy of Porthos, who reminded me of the Bastion Saint-Gervais, I have found, I think, a better ending for my new Athos-fic -- which, by the by, will have to find a filename, the first one having already been saved under the name of its protagonist as tends to be my habit (my first LND fic is still saved simply as "Raoul" ;-)

Due to having been started on a long coach journey it is written in what is probably my tiniest notebook yet: a little ring-bound pocket pad that is smaller even, I think, than the pocket diary that I took away with me on a Norfolk Broads holiday in July 2016 and in which I wrote "There is no Phantom of the Opera" and "If I were Vicomte" while variously propped up in the polished mahogany of my pre-war berth and writing by the light of the cabin oil-lamps, and wandering up and down the staithe! (With hindsight, that was probably one of my last ever summer holidays...)

I definitely did find that the very small page size made it harder to avoid inadvertent repetition of words and phrases that I'd only just used -- being only able to see one or two sentences back is more of a pain that I had realised, even with constant leafing backwards and forwards through the text, and I can't imagine how people manage on mobile phones. The limited page size may turn out to have had unexpected effects on my paragraph construction, as well, but we shall see once I get a better view of the whole thing. My very rough estimate is that this notepad runs about 100 words/page, which means that the whole story is around 2000-2500 words; neither too short nor too long for a one-shot, which means, I hope, that it's not quite so waffly as I was starting to fear at one point.

( Extremely self-indulgent and not quite canonical )

( Differing characterisation between the two fics set at different dates )

It very belatedly dawned upon me also what Athos means when in the Soviet musical he says to Milady ( d'Artagnan is an honourable gentleman and will yield precedence to a lady )

Oh horror, Mordaunt is still alive... (not -- surely not -- canonical?)

And there is a Part Four to this series, which I had not anticipated, assuming it was only three episodes like the others. Makes sense, as we are very far from being anywhere near the end of the book, although I have absolutely no idea what happens next. The Fronde, presumably.

The book appears to follow Athos and Aramis, while the screen version instead follows the fate of Porthos and d'Artagnan (captured by Jussac, which again is probably not strictly as in the original!), so I can't read up to clarify those events without spoiling myself for future scenes. The comedy stuff with Mazarin and the pigeon post is probably not in there anyway :-p

( Discovered details of the duel with Mordaunt )

( Confusion over Athos' role beneath the scaffold )

Otherwise I got a few more scraps of dialogue, including bits that weren't in the subtitles, or even the novel -- Porthos' reference to being attacked by 400 men at the bastion at La Rochelle -- but I had basically picked up all the plot-important bits on the first time through, and couldn't make out the obscure sections even on repeat.

( The small boat sequence )

I'm afraid I really am going to have to go back and read "Vingt Ans Après" in French, because it turns out there are so many little character moments left out of the translation; in the scene where they all cut their hair in an attempt to pass as Puritans, for example, where the English version says simply that "After some discussion this was agreed to", but the French version reveals that Aramis objected strongly to the suggestion, being very vain about his carefully-tended shoulder-length locks, and it was not until Athos -- to whom such concerns were a matter of complete indifference -- set him the example by going first that he would consent to be duly shorn :-p Meanwhile d'Artagnan opted to cut his own hair, and contrived to end up with a style reminiscent of coins from a hundred years earlier...
( Read more... )
Basically the bottom line is that you need to read it in French to write fic (and yes, I have started another one... complete self-indulgence, as it's based on a mis-recollection), but can probably get by on the abridged version for film crib purposes, given that none of these details are likely to make it into the far more abridged film in the first place.

( Long floating hair in the water )

Profile

Igenlode Wordsmith

Ivory Tower

July 2025

M	T	W	T	F	S	S
	1	2	3	4	5	6
7	8	9	10	11	12	13
14	15	16	17	18	19	20
21	22	23	24	25	26	27
28	29	30	31

Syndicate

Page Summary

Style Credit

Style: Neutral Good for Practicality by timeasmymeasure

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags

Page generated 4 July 2025 07:49 am

Igenlode Wordsmith

Entries tagged with musketeers

Raoul at the rue Tiquetonne

Think Only This of Me

Think Only This of Me

Porthos pics

The end of "Twenty Years After" -- I loved it

Fic conclusion

Kino-horoscope in full

The Musketeers' three-times-table

Les Trois Mousquetaires ou
Le collier de la Reine

One hour becomes six or eight

The second truss / Sweeney Todd

Dumas dates

New acquisitions

Kino-horoscope

Song of the Musketeers (Korol' i Shut)

Soviet Athos verses

Plant progress -- and a new fic idea

If I Should Die

If I Should Die

Twenty Years After: it really is the beginning of the final episode this time

Very small pages

Twenty Years After, Episode Three, conclusion

More missing bits

Profile

July 2025

Links

Syndicate

Most Popular Tags

Page Summary

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

Entries tagged with musketeers

Think Only This of Me

Les Trois Mousquetaires ou Le collier de la Reine

If I Should Die

Links

Syndicate

Page Summary

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

Les Trois Mousquetaires ou
Le collier de la Reine