Edward Dant's The Count Of Monte Cristo

Set against the turbulent years of the Napoleonic era, The Count of Monte Cristo is the story of a betrayed young man named Edward Dantès. The book weaves a tale out of his long years in captivity deep inside the Château d’lf, his miraculous escape, and his carefully thought out revenge. Readers find out that there is a reason for everything the Count does, even if they cannot see it right away. All of the Count’s decisions lead to the eventual downfall and ruin of the people that are, in his mind, the guiltiest in the betrayal that lead to his imprisonment. While he is imprisoned Dantès figures out (with the help of Abbè Faria) that the three most responsible parties are Monsieur Danglars, Fernand, and Monsieur de Villefort, so he sets out
to become the angel of vengeance by inflicting upon them punishment according to the deepest desires of their hearts. Danglars with his greed and envy, Fernand with his lust, and Villefort with his political ambition find out the wrath of an innocent man unjustly punished. When we first meet Danglars who is an envious and deceitful man, we are immediately aware that he has an avaricious and envious detestation for Edmond Dantès simply because Dantès is younger, more talented, more assured, and self-confident and because he is moving up in life while he himself is stuck. Danglars is the one who conceives of the scheme against Dantès, and he is the one responsible for writing the treacherous, anonymous letter which sends Dantès to prison for fourteen years. By various illegal means, Danglars first ingratiates himself into the family of a prominent banker, later weds the banker's widow, and by using unlawful banking methods, he rapidly becomes an extremely prosperous man. The Count of Monte Cristo, however, is even craftier, and he gradually involves himself in Danglars' finances to the point that Danglars eventually goes bankrupt. But he does manage to confiscate five million francs in bank notes, and he flees to Italy, hoping to have them cashed. He is captured by the bandit chief Luigi Vampa, an old friend of the Count of Monte Cristo, and then he is gradually stripped of all his five million francs. He is finally freed by the bandits, but he is now an old and broken man, and, worst of all, he is penniless. The Count's vengeance has at last been carried out concerning Danglars. In his youth, Fernand was a simple fisherman who was in love with the woman whom Edmond Dantès was engaged to, Mercedes Herrera. Because Mercedes loved Fernand as a brother, Edmond Dantès trusted him. However, it is Fernand who actually mailed the letter condemning Dantès, hoping all the while that if Dantès was arrested, he would then be able to marry Mercedes. By immoral means, he was able to use his smuggling skills and his treachery in warfare to eventually be made a Count and awarded an immense sum of money. Sometime during his rise to power, he married Mercedes, who had waited a long time for Dantès, but finally abandoned hope. Fernand gained most of his wealth by betraying a high authority named Ali Pasha, whose daughter he sold into slavery, and who is now the paramour of the Count of Monte Cristo. When all of his treachery is exposed and he discovers that his wife and son have deserted him. Fernand having lost everything that meant so much to him shoots himself in order to escape living in the pure misery that the Count’s revenge has left him in. Villefort is described early in the novel as the type of person who "would sacrifice anything to his ambition, even his own father." And throughout the novel, whenever political expediency demands it, he denies his own father, who was a Bonapartist and therefore opposed to the ruling royalty.
When it is discovered that Edmond Dantès has a letter from the island of Elba, where Napoleon is confined, to be delivered to Villefort's father. Villefort, in order to protect his own interest, has Dantès imprisoned in the impregnable fortress of the Chateau d'If, from which there is no escape. Because of his political ambitions, Villefort is willing to have an innocent man imprisoned for life. Thus, he becomes the central enemy against whom the Count of Monte Cristo affects revenge. During Dantès' fourteen years of imprisonment, Villefort uses all sorts of conniving means to achieve the powerful post of Deputy Minister of France; he becomes the most powerful law enforcement man in the nation. He also has had an affair with a woman who becomes the Baroness Danglars, and Villefort uses his wife's family mansion (Monte Cristo later purchases this mansion) to conceal his mistress while she is pregnant. When the child is born, Villefort announces that the child is stillborn and takes the child in a box to the garden, where he plans to bury him alive. However, an assassin who has a vendetta for Villefort stabs him and, thinking that the box contains treasure, he takes it, only to find that it contains an infant who is ultimately raised by him and his sister-in-law. The boy is named Benedetto, and he will later be brought back to Paris by Monte Cristo as Prince Cavalcanti and will accuse his own father, Villefort, of all of his dastardly deeds. This is part of Monte Cristo's revenge: A son whom the father tried to kill as an infant becomes the instrument of Divine Justice and accuses and destroys the evil father. The other part of his revenge is that after all the hard work
Villefort put into getting where he is he lost everything in one fell swoop. Not only does he lose his political position, he also loses his family including his wife and son.