Coming back to Dumas as an adult is a very interesting experience. Just so that you know where I am coming from: as a preteen/teenager I was reading any Dumas novel I could get my hands on and I’ve lost count of how many times I’d reread The Three Musketeers.

This book has everything that Dumas excelled at: court intrigues, secret meetings, secret lovers, assassinations, mistaken identities, duels, adventures, etc, etc, etc. Today’s authors attempting to write fantasy with court intrigues would do well to go to Dumas and learn how it’s done (unless they have already ;) ).

Queen Margot of the title is awesome - clever, strong, and resourceful. (She spends quite a lot of time hiding various gentlemen in her chambers, for various reasons, ranging from tragic to hilarious.) I wish to have seen more of her and less of other characters, as well as of the very soppy love affair Dumas gifted her with. Women of the book know that they are not free, they talk about it, resent it, and do the best they can. I liked that – and it’s really not bad for a male author from the 19th century.

Do I have any complaints? Sure. The way Dumas writes about Saint Bartholomew’s Day massacre is very shallow and simplistic (but the foreshadowing of the horror to come was quite well done, I thought).
Coconas loses his humanity so easily during the night of the massacre, participating so eagerly – it’s horrifying to watch. And then… there is no aftermath, it’s “oh, we are all friends again”, and he gets to be a wonderful friend to La Mole and be quite a hero at the end. This is unbelievably clumsy and just plain wrong! It fees like Dumas wrote two different characters and then made them into one (or his ghost writers couldn’t agree). The last few chapters are just melodrama, melodrama, melodrama that I skimmed through – I no longer have patience with these things.

I had a very good time with refreshing my knowledge of French history while reading. Dumas does not pretend to write historical novels. I think that he wrote historical fantasies/alternative histories before anyone invented the concepts. Of course, Margaret of Valois, Catherine de Medici (who, in this book, should really go under the name of Catherine “I poison people” de Medici), Henry of Navarre and others were quite different and much more complex people than shown here.

But I accept the rules of the game, and in return, I am entertained in a very satisfying way, despite the flaws. I am beginning to think that Dumas rereads might be a good thing. After all, there are sequels, The Countess of Monsoreau and The Forty-Five Guardsmen What will I think when I revisit those? ( )

Review pending ( )

Dotado de una fabulosa imaginación y de una increíble capacidad de trabajo, Dumas subyuga al lector para atraparlo en la intriga de sus historias desde las primeras páginas. En "La reina Margot", utilizando unas deslumbrantes escenas teatrales, nos sitúa desde el principio en medio de un complicado nudo de tensiones políticas y de pasiones humanas elementales (amor, odio, poder, ambición).

Here's what I wrote in 2008 about this read: "From Kirkus Reviews on amazon.com: "The central figure is Marguerite de Valois, the daughter of Catherine de M‚dicis. Marguerite married the Huguenot Henry of Navarre, who became King Henry IV after he converted to Catholicism. What's to say? This is a novel about French royalty, so it has a lot of political and erotic intrigue and a lot of food."" ( )

Queen Margot, while not as engrossing or as sweeping as The Count of Monte Crisco was still a highly readable and enjoyable historical novel. Dumas doesn’t let actual history get in the way of his story-telling, for him the story always comes first so characters motives and actions are not always in line with the actual facts. His plot was full of schemes, quarrels, revenge and the politics of the day. Catholics versus Protestants was an ongoing issue, particularly in France for centuries. The Saint Bartholomew’s Day massacre that occurs in the opening chapters of the book actually happened and is believed to have been instigated by Catherine de Medici, the mother of both the King of France and of Margot, the bride of just a few days to the Protestant King of Navarre.

This massacre is the event that draws Margot and Henry of Navarre together in a strong political alliance even though they both look to others for romance. Political ambition is also a driving force in their marriage. However, I never felt that Margot was the main character of this story, I think the author felt more comfortable writing about men, although I suspect he got great enjoyment writing about Catherine and her many poison plots. Dumas excels in action scenes, swordplay comes alive under with his directions and his descriptions are lively and realistic. A weakness is his characters, to me they are fairly one-dimensional and he does seem to like his women to be rather flirtatious and somewhat fickle. A point in his flavor is that he does give his women intelligence, both Margot and her mother, Catherine had a good read on the politics of the day and knew how to manipulate situations in their favour.

Queen Margot is a long book and I felt it was starting to drag a bit by the time I finished it. While the story never became as stirring emotionally as The Count of Monte Cristo, and at times seemed a little repetitive, I nevertheless enjoyed this entertaining book. ( )