When you try to figure out the characters' ages and you realize how bad Dumas was with dates
The Three Musketeers take place between 1625 and 1628.
Twenty Years Later starts in 1648.
The Vicomte de Bragelonne takes place between 1660 and 1664.*
(* edit: I'm not counting the epilogue, which of course takes place 4 years later)
And these dates are 100% correct because they are backed by historical events mentioned in the novels.
Now, at the end of the last book, Dumas states that Athos is 62. But that would make him 23 at the beginning of the first book, which is impossible, considering that he got married at 25, and that must have been a couple of years before he and d'Artagnan met.
In Twenty Years After Raoul is supposed to be 15. And it makes sense chronologically, since Athos left service in 1633. So why in the next book Dumas says that Raoul is 25, when he's supposed to be at least 27 when it starts, and 31 when it ends?
And the best fuckup yet: according to Dumas, Henrietta is 14 in TYA, and 16 in VdB, even though TWELVE years passed between these two books. (Historically, Henrietta would be around 4 when her father died, and around 17 when she married Philippe, so I think Dumas aged her up because he needed a teenage princess in the second book and forgot about it by the third.)
To sum up, WHAT THE FUCK, ALEXANDRE? *shakes head* I'm bad at maths too, but I need data to rely on when I write my fanfiction!
