The duc de Beaufort
A royal prince locked in the keep at Vincennes, whose escape by rope ladder starts the Fronde chapters.
The book
Twenty Years After
Alexandre Dumas
At a glance
- A prince of the blood, prisoner at Vincennes, then a leader of the Fronde
- François de Vendôme, duc de Beaufort, 1616–1669
Who they are in the book
Spoiler-freeFrançois de Vendôme, duc de Beaufort, a grandson of Henri IV and a real leader of the Fronde, has been held in the keep at Vincennes for five years when the novel opens. Dumas plays him as a brave man of no learning, popular with the Paris crowd, whose escape is engineered by Athos and Aramis through Grimaud.
How The duc de Beaufort Is Portrayed
- Portraits in charcoalIn Chapter XVII, having failed at poetry, he draws portraits of Cardinal Mazarin on the walls of his cell with a piece of coal.
- Grimaud as gaolerIn Chapter XVIII he takes Grimaud, placed among his guards, for an enemy, and comes to trust him only when he understands that the man's stupidity is a blind.
- Forty methods of escapeChapter XXIII is titled for one of the forty methods he claims to have of getting out. The method is a rope ladder, a pie, and two horses waiting beyond the moat.
- Free!The same chapter ends with him outside the walls, shouting the word three times.
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