I think the fact that the book has always been presented as that fun adventure novel has tainted our perception of it. Dumas makes fun of the heroes and of their uselessness in many situations, and he does, in theory, present morally shady characters. But their moral shadiness is never addressed; the authorial voice appears to approve of them in everything that they do. I wondered recently if what happened here was similar to what apparently happened to Huckleberry Finn, which some people think is incredibly racist, when in fact it is anything but. If Dumas perhaps wrote a scathing satire of an adventure novel and deconstructed the Hero character by presenting the designated heroes as violent and hypocritical.

I like Milady's seduction of John Felton, actually ;-) I commented on the unfair treatment of Milady here. I would love to tackle the challenge some time to reconcile Athos PoV and Milady's PoV without turning one of them into a villain, but I don't even know how to do that with book Athos ;-)

Still. I love Athos, I really do. He was one of my literary crushes for many years. I would love him more, however, if his dark abusive side and his feudal mindset were widely acknowledged.