He nevertheless lusts after Dantes' fiancee Mercedes, and resents Dantes for being happier with nothing than he is with everything. A spoiled, narcissistic bully, Mondego considers Dantes, who is poor, to be his natural inferior. In the film adaptation, Mondego is an aristocrat and Dantes' childhood friend. Completely alone and facing imprisonment, Mondego commits suicide by shooting himself.
Mondego is brought before trial for his crimes, and Mercedes and Albert disown him upon learning of what he had done to Dantes. Dantes leaks the story to the press, and the resulting scandal ruins Mondego's reputation. Several years later, Mondego meets the mysterious Count of Monte Cristo - unaware that he is none other than Dantes, who had escaped from prison and reinvented himself as a wealthy nobleman in order to get revenge on the men who destroyed his life.ĭantes learns that, years before, Mondego had betrayed the Ottoman ruler Ali Pasha to the Turks and sold Pasha's wife and daughter into slavery. He is given the title of Count de Morcerf in recognition of his successes on the battlefield. Dantes is convicted and imprisoned in the Chateau d'If.ĭuring Dantes' imprisonment, Mondego marries Mercedes, has a son with her named Albert, and becomes a celebrated general in the French Army. Wanting to keep his father's Bonapartist sympathies secret, Villefort destroys the original letter and charges Dantes with treason. Mondego conspires with Dantes' shipmate Danglars, who covets Dantes' position as Leclaire's heir apparent, to send a note accusing Dantes of treason to Noirtier's son Villefort, a local magistrate. He learns that Dantes' captain, Leclaire, has given him a letter to deliver to a wealthy man named Noirtier - who, unbeknownst to Dantes, is an ally of the exiled Napoleon Bonaparte. Jealous of Dantes for winning her heart, he hatches a plan to have Dantes imprisoned. He died in 1870.In the novel, Mondego is Mercedes' cousin, and harbors unrequited feelings for her.
Movie Trailer for The Count of Monte Cristo (2002)Īlexandre Dumas was a French writer best known for his books The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers. The first requires memory and the second philosophy Learning does not make one learned: there are those who have knowledge and those who have understanding. I am not proud, but I am happy and happiness blinds, I think, more than pride. Often we pass beside happiness without seeing it, without looking at it, or even if we have seen and looked at it, without recognizing it. What makes you a man is what you do when that storm comes. You will bask in the sunlight one moment, be shattered on the rocks the next. Dumas’ epic tale of suffering and retribution, inspired by a real-life case of wrongful imprisonment, was a huge popular success when it was first serialized in the 1840s.Īll human wisdom is contained in these two words – Wait and Hope There he learns of a great hoard of treasure hidden on the Isle of Monte Cristo and he becomes determined not only to escape, but also to use the treasure to plot the destruction of the three men responsible for his incarceration. Thrown in prison for a crime he has not committed, Edmond Dantès is confined to the grim fortress of If. The epic tale of wrongful imprisonment, adventure and revenge.