The Musketeers shows us the strengths and weaknesses of the state

The BBC's latest original drama The Musketeers is a fairly faithful remake of past versions. As in Alexandre Dumas' 1844 original, we're shown a France with a monarchy weak and dependent upon its government, its government conducted by an ambitious and scheming cardinal, and its law enforced by a state controlled paramilitary guard of whom the heroes are members.

'The Musketeers' is a fascinating story to present to Britain today, to a country that seems to despise its own elected officials as ambitious, selfish, greedy and corrupt, but remains largely unconcerned and even positive towards its unelected theocratic monarchy which offers the country, through a neutered passivity, a harmless link to the past and a comforting continuity for the present and the future.

In particular, the fascination with this incarnation of the story comes from the show's characterisation. So far the BBC's Musketeers has been careful to show its characters as weak, manipulable and vice-ridden - including the royal household. The King is vain and frightened; the Queen, while strong, is suggested to be possibly adulterous. The Chief Minister, the Cardinal Armand Richelieu is ambitious, paranoid and murderous. The three Musketeers are drunks (Athos), gamblers (Porthos) and lovers of others men's mistresses (Aramis). Even the protagonist, d'Artagnan, is impatient and reckless.

In the second episode Sleight of Hand, the Queen argues the virtues of mercy and reform for criminals, while the musketeers spy and deceive to uncover a plot, and the captain of the musketeer guards cautions the Queen over weakness of mercy:

The Queen Anne:    'Did you see the gratitude on their faces Captain? Mercy is more effective than any whip or gallows.'
Captain Treville:    'The worst offenders would only consider Your Majesty's gentle nature a weakness. Some men are just born bad.'

However, these characters find themselves nonetheless bound together. What binds them, what makes them able to work together whilst simultaneously scheming against one another, is the idea of the nation. The idea of the wellbeing of France. In the second episode we see the different parties pull together to track down a terrorist and thief, while the King shows resolve, with the support of the Queen, to play out the role of Monarch:

'My father never shirked public obligation, no matter what the threat to his person... I will not have it said that the son of Henry IV is a coward. It is my task to show courage and leadership, it is yours to protect me.'

But those ideas of monarchy and nation are also a façade, behind which these manipulations are hidden from the people. They are a lie constructed: the idea of a stable and lasting framework, a fixed structure around which the passage of life might drape itself securely and upon which people can depend for continuity.

The nation, the monarchy, are ideas upon which the state depends to impose order. While it can offer a means of rallying people to the common good, The Musketeers also warns us of the vice and corruption which it can also conceal.

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References:
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+ BBC's The Musketeers, episode 1 'Friends and Enemies'; 2014.

+ BBC's The Musketeers, episode 2 'Sleight of Hand'; 2014.

+ Alexandre Dumas' 'The Three Musketeers'; 1844.