The novel tells the adventures of an impecunious 18-year-old Gascon, d'Artagnan, who has come to Paris to make a career in the musketeer corps. He became friends with Athos, Porthos and Aramis, musketeers of King Louis XIII. These four men will oppose the prime minister, Cardinal Richelieu and his agents, including the Count of Rochefort and the beautiful and mysterious Milady de Winter, to save the honor of the Queen of France Anne of Austria. With its many fights and novelistic twists, The Three Musketeers is the typical example of the cloak-and-dagger novel and the success of the novel was such that Dumas adapted it himself for the stage, and took up the four heroes in the rest of the trilogy