The origins of the word swashbuckler, in case you were curious about this particularly esoteric etymology, comes from a combination of swash, meaning “fall of a blow,” and buckler, an archaic word for “shield.” Together, they appear, since the 1550s, to have meant something like “blustering, swaggering fighting man,” which of course hardly brings to mind the dashing, chivalrous swordsmen of our favorite adventure tales. Clearly, it’s acquired some new meanings on its travels through time—as words do.
This look back in time is fitting in its own way, because the swashbuckler as a genre is difficult to disentangle from the development of historical fiction. Such stories tend to be full of intrigue, historical events, or at the very least historical settings where a man could reasonably be expected to carry around a sword and use it (if he was of noble birth, anyway; commoners weren’t allowed, though the outlaws and pirates the populate the genre certainly turned up their noses at that rule).
Growing up, I devoured such stories, raising myself on a steady diet of pirates, musketeers, honorable bandits, and princes in disguise—and then digging into historical primary sources about them. Then I managed to get a PhD in literature, and I learned even more about the history and context out of which my favorite tales of adventure and heroism sprung. And so, as I began compiling this list of the best tales of swashbuckling and intrigue, I couldn’t help stuffing it as full of detail and context as any historical novelist. I offer, you, then, some of the richest and best examples of tales of swordfighting, intrigue, and panache (did you know that’s the French word for the feather in your hat?) that also humbly presents some of its history and development.
Ivanhoe by Walter Scott
I don’t know if Walter Scott’s tales count as swashbucklers, properly—for one thing, most of them are set at an earlier period in history than the typical example of the genre, which tend to take place in the Renaissance and early modern period. However, Walter Scott pretty much pioneered the historical fiction genre, without which we wouldn’t have a good number of the books on the list. Beginning in the late eighteenth century, he brought to life lesser-known periods of history in books like Ivanhoe, Waverley, and The Bride of Lammermoor; prior to this, classical antiquity tended to be privileged in literature, scholarship, and philosophy. Set in 12th-century England, Ivanhoe is perhaps the best known of these novels in the anglophone world, following Sir Wilfred of Ivanhoe, a nobleman and knight out of favor due to his allegiance to Richard the Lionheart, and features jousting tournaments, witch trials, and damsels in distress. What more could you want?
The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
This list couldn’t possibly exist without featuring at least one book by Alexandre Dumas. Inspired by Walter Scott, Dumas became one of the most famous historical novelists in the world. It bears reiterating that classicism was pre-eminent at this time, but Romantic writers such as Dumas broke with that tradition, insisting on celebrating French history by writing plays and novels about previously overlooked periods of the nation’s history. And so The Three Musketeers begins with a marvelous conceit possibly stolen from the Gothic novel (which also rebelled against classicism): it pretends to be a lost document found by Dumas in a library, an account of a man who actually lived: Charles de Batz-Castlemore d’Artagnan, king’s musketeer. What makes this novel so memorable in addition to the political intrigue, romance, camaraderie, and friendship (“one for all and all for one!”) however, is its moral nebulousness. Are the musketeers the good guys, and if so, why are they helping the queen commit adultery with an enemy of the state? They care about honor, but do they care about France? What right do they have to take the law into their own hands? (Strangely, adaptations rarely plumb these depths, preferring to take a more straightforward black-and-white approach, and making me think that one day I’ll have to take matters into my own hands).
Since The Three Musketeers is so famous, however, I felt that a lesser-known work from Dumas’ oeuvre also deserved inclusion in this list. While that oeuvre is gargantuan, the work that is heaviest in swashbuckling rather than just political intrigue (and which has an English translation) is Georges, the story of a mixed-race man who leads a slave revolt in the French colony of Mauritius—a unique tale with resonances for Dumas, who was also mixed race, the descendant of a Haitian slave and a French aristocrat.
The Musketeers (BBC)
I have to admit that I’m not overly fond of most adaptations of The Three Musketeers; I hold the novel too close to my heart. But, though this series’ sensibilities are decidedly modern, it seems to me to understand and capture aspects of Dumas’ story in a way other adaptations do not: the sense that, for all their loyalty and courage, the musketeers live in a cruel world where their fates are decided by the whims of petty, capricious, and flawed human beings who have more power than any person should possess; Porthos, the character generally understood to be most like Dumas himself, is played by a mixed-race actor, the brilliant Howard Charles; and Aramis is an incorrigible Casanova. Of course there’s also plenty of adventure, suspense, and swordfighting, but most of all, it has heart.
The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope
This is another one of those books that you end up discovering if you ever fell in love with Dumas and wanted to read everything like him. In its period, it inspired an entire genre of what was called Ruritanian romance, and yet, somehow, it rarely gets mentioned in literary histories of the Victorian period. Its stalwart protagonist is English nobleman Rudolf Rassendyll, who visits the fictional kingdom of Ruritania on the eve of the coronation only to discover that he is, somehow, identical in appearance to his distant relative and heir to the throne, Rudolf V. When said heir is kidnapped by a pretender to the throne, Rassendyll must step in and take his place until the true king can be found, balance restored, and, in true Victorian fashion, until all the “good” characters choose duty over love.
Captain Blood by Rafael Sabatini
Italian-born novelist Rafael Sabatini is considered one of the masters of swashbuckling historical fiction after Dumas, so if you’re in any way a lover of the genre and go down the rabbit hole of searching out the best examples, you’ll inevitably encounter Sabatini. Known for titles such as Scaramouche, The Sea Hawk, and half a dozen others, he was also a significant contributor to the genre of nautical fiction, which Alan Brown covers in his recent piece on that genre’s contributions to space opera. Captain Blood is swashbuckler, maritime tale, and historical novel all in one, and in my opinion one of Sabatini’s best. Beginning with the Monmouth Rebellion (an attempt to depose King James II in 1685), it sees its protagonist, the surgeon Peter Blood, arrested for treason and sent to Barbados. Escaping imprisonment, he becomes a renowned pirate: Captain Blood, who combines the swordfighting skill of Inigo Montoya with the cunning of Vizzini. In fact, Blood was so popular that Sabatini was able to do what Arthur Conan Doyle did with his own most famous creation, giving the public more in the form of stories collected in Captain Blood Returns, each of which turns just as much on Blood’s cleverness as on his bravado, making each an utter an absolute delight. And I hear the film with Errol Flynn isn’t too shabby either…
The Curse of Capistrano by Johnston McCulley
If you’ve ever wondered about the origins of Zorro, wonder no more: the masked vigilante first appeared in 1919 in a serialized novel by McCulley, subsequently reissued in book form with the more familiar title of The Mark of Zorro. It has many of the features we’ve come to love about the character in the dozens of adaptations and variations he’s appeared in since: his double identity, his swordfighting prowess, the distinctive ‘Z’ he leaves as a calling card, and his penchant for taking up the causes of the poor and defenseless. Many of these qualities, of course, Zorro shares with the masked vigilantes that have come since, and whose metaphorical progenitor he is. In such cases, the first incarnation of a beloved superhero can be a lackluster affair, but this novel more than holds its own among our many caped crusaders, and is more than worth picking up if you loved the humor, charm, and swordplay of the ’90s classic The Mask of Zorro (which, with its revenge plot, owes more than a little to Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo).
Prince of Foxes by Samuel Shellabarger
If you ever fell in love with Dumas, like I did, Shellabarger is another one of those authors you inevitably ended up discovering. A scholar and Princeton professor, he published a small handful of incredibly well-researched historical novels bursting with period color, memorable characters, and pathos. Prince of Foxes is set during the Italian Renaissance, with an Italian peasant named Andrea Zoppo concealing his identity and pretending to be a long-lost member of the Orsini family in order to take up service with Cesare Borgia and aid him in his machinations against France and the Holy Roman Empire. Somewhat like Captain Blood, it’s full of cunning, trickery, and dastardly deeds as well as swordplay, all vividly painted against the backdrop of a bloody, complicated, and fascinating period of human history that Tor’s own Renaissance historian Ada Palmer has written about so brilliantly. Another contender for this list is Shellabarger’s Captain from Castile, though given that its protagonist serves under Cortes during his conquest of the Aztecs, and given that I last read the novel as an impressionable teenager, I can’t speak to how well his treatment of such a topic might have aged.
Swordspoint: A Melodrama of Manners by Ellen Kushner
Swordspoint is a defining text of the “fantasy of manners” subgenre, but worry not, manners don’t get in the way of sticking the other guy with the pointy end! In the world of Riverside, you live and die by the sword, and even nobles settle their disputes via duel—though, granted, they usually use a swordsman-for-hire to do so for them. In this world, Richard St. Vier is an undisputed master with the sword, until events conspire against him…
Also worth mentioning is the fact that this is an explicitly queer story, which is a welcome addition to a genre that is heavily preoccupied with deep, lasting relationships between men, but usually of the platonic variety.
The Phoenix Guards by Steven Brust
So, funny story: I mentioned that, as a youth, I read quite a bit of the historical swashbuckler fiction stuff. In fact, I mostly spent my time reading Alexandre Dumas, and then the historical sources he used, until my friends offered me money to read a book younger than myself, for goodness sakes. Fine, I said, and picked up The Phoenix Guards, a fantasy adaptation of The Three Musketeers…which turned out to be older than me by several months. Clearly, it simply wasn’t meant to be.
Described by Brust himself as “a blatant ripoff of The Three Musketeers,” The Phoenix Guards is set in Brust’s established fictional world of Dragaera. It borrows quite a bit from Dumas in addition to the obvious (Duels! Adventures! Honor! Friendship!), such as long-winded and misleading chapter titles and the pretense that it’s actually a historical document, written about real people, and these are all facts, actually. And that’s all I will say, though Jo Walton did write an excellent review of the book for Tor.
Pirates of the Caribbean (Disney, 2003)
I understand that the presence of Johnny Depp is a non-starter for many people, and we won’t be rehashing the conversation surrounding his behavior here. But, taken from the point of view of storytelling and craftsmanship, this is a film that has stood the test of time. It was iconic to the generation that grew up with it, and though this year marks 20 years since its release, its mix of character, story, humor, action, and macabre set pieces still resonates.
More generally, it should be noted that, given how old some of the texts on this list are, there are parts of them that are problematic by modern standards, but I’m not sure it would be realistic to try to address that in each entry in the list. Just be aware that certain elements may not have aged well if you’re diving into any of these books or movies for the first time.
I hope this gets you reading and excited, especially in light of the upcoming adaptation of the Three Musketeers (watch this space for more discussion of the film once it’s widely available!) And in the meantime, what are some of your favorite works that you would have loved to see included on this list?
Dr. Anastasia Klimchynskaya is a Sherlockian, a Trekkie, and a scholar specializing in nineteenth-century science fiction. In addition to her writing (which includes a top-secret Jules Verne project – stay tuned!), she has appeared widely to speak about science fiction and the cultural history of science, including on the Rosenbach Library’s Sundays with Frankenstein program. Find her on Twitter @anaklimchy.
The Scarlet Pimpernel is one of my favorite swashbucklers: a hero who leads a double life as a slow-witted bumbling fop, while rescuing aristocrats from the guillotine in disguise.
This seems to be a male centric list. But I would think someone like Ching Shih might fit in (she commanded a huge pirate fleet in 19th Century China). I noticed a slight uptick in books centered on her coming out last year and this….(and I’ve written a Conan mashup about her…..)
The Element of Fire by Martha Wells is a fantastic swashbuckler. The captain of the Queen’s Guard, court intrigue, strong female characters, magic, the Fae, and a terrific duel to cap it off. What more could you ask?
RPG-curious swashbuckling fans could consider Pettigrew’s venerable Flashing Blades (still in print in pdf form because FGU).
As it happens, I just finished reading Lawrence Ellsworth’s anthology The Big Book of Swashbuckling Adventure, which includes several of the authors mentioned here (Dumas, Hope, Sabatini, McCulley) and a number of the other Usual Suspects of the era (Conan Doyle, Baroness Orczy, Harold Lamb etc.), plus some other, now more obscure folks, and found it to be altogether a lot of fun.
Prince of Foxes is an amazing novel. I still have my grandmother’s copy forty years later, and I ended up trying to collect most of Shellabarger’s other works as a consequence.
I suspect Sir Arthur Conan Doyle would finally claw his way out of the grave if nobody mentioned his ADVENTURES OF BRIGADIER GERARD, a swashbuckling series lost in the vast shadow cast by the Man from Baker Street – and I suspect his Adventures of Sir Nigel could well qualify as swashbucklers to boot.
Also, I dearly want to see CAPTAIN BLOOD someday get something like the George MacDonald Fraser “Adventure is serious business, except when it’s absolutely hilarious” treatment in the same vein as the Musketeers received back in the 1970s (which for my money remains the Best adaptation of all the ones I’ve seen).
Arturo Perez-Reverte’s Captain Alatriste series is good, a Spanish golden age counterpoint to the musketeers. A commenter above mentioned Laurence Ellsworth: he is retranslating Dumas and by all accounts doing a splendid job
I am a big fan of the Richard Lester Three Musketeer films, with their unobstrusive backdrops of the grim reality of post-Reformation France that highlights why we watch the antics of our heroes. I also like the Richard Pevear translation, too, though I understand that newer ones of all Dumas works by Lawrence Ellsworth are worth checking. An embarrassment of riches. May our swash never buckle!
Other books to check out:
For the Good of the Realm, by Nancy Jane Moore. A feminist, sort of gender-swapped Musketeers.
The Henchmen of Zenda, KJ Charles. Charles is known for her m/m historical romances. Henchmen retells The Prisoner of Zenda from the pov of Jasper Detchard, who is one of the villains of the original. It’s not a strong romance but there’s something of a romance threading around the pulp action, between Detchard and the swashbuckling villain Rupert of Hentzau. I liked the original Zenda, and I like stories of honor, but it was still really amusing to watch Charles turn the original inside out without letting go of any of the original plot points.
One I picked up at an impressionable age was With Fire and Sword by Henryk Sienkiewicz, first of a trilogy set in the 17th century Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Our hero, a young officer in the service of a prince, has the misfortune to fall in love just before a rebellion breaks out, with his betrothed promptly kidnapped by her jealous and sinister foster-brother who has thrown his lot in with the rebels. Fortunately our hero has a few stalwart friends to help in his pursuit, but at the same time duty calls… Plenty of swordfighting, carousing, battles, sieges, royal elections, the fulfillment of impossible vows, and all that good stuff.
I was perhaps TOO obsessed with Dave Duncan’s King’s Blades series as a teen–they might count as sort of torrid, grimy swashbucklers. Another world I loved when I was young is Cynthia Voigt’s Tales of the Kingdom, particularly Jackaroo. One for All by Lillie Lainoff was a recent remix of The Three Musketeers.
@10 OtterB I feel the opposite about Henchmen. Detchard is too boring and uptight to make a fun, swashbuckling protagonist. Rupert is too villainous (though he works great in Zenda).
My vote for swachbuckling novel goes to ERB’s The Outlaw of Torn, (as well as ERB’s later, Ruritanian, The Mad King, even though that is set maybe too late in history to really qualify). I mean swordfighting, headlong pace, long lost nobility, it’s like the swashbuckling template!
@2: unfortunately it is. This list was inspired by the stories I grew up loving after I fell in love with Dumas and went looking for anything like him, and these were the books I found. There’s been many excellent variations on the swashbuckler since then by more diverse authors, but I didn’t want to recommend anything I hadn’t personally read.
@11: yes, I have heard of these! Hailing from the former USSR, where Dumas was incredibly popular, these novels were sort of treated like “this author is OUR, Slavic Dumas!” I would love to dive back into them sometime.
Also Emilio Salgari and his Sandokan and Black Corsair adventures, very popular not only in Italy but also in Spain.
A more recent series I would recommend is The Greatcoats series by Sebastian de Castell
Looking further back, see also The White Company by Arthur Conan Doyle and The Black Arrow by Robert Louis Stevenson.
Another companion volume to The Prisoner of Zenda is George MacDonald Fraser’s Royal Flash. There his antihero Flashman is forced to impersonate the duke of a fictional minor German state near Schleswig-Holstein, and hijinks ensue. On his return to England he tells the story to Anthony Hope, who rips it off for his novel.
Goldman’s The Princess Bride? Either the book or movie will do? The sword fight at the top of the Cliffs of Insanity is as swashbuckling as swashbuckling gets.
I’ve read all these more than once, and many others. W/o doubt, Frank Yerby’s The Golden Hawk is the greatest swashbuckler ever. Either that or it is because I read it before I was able to get my hands on any others, beyond Robin Hood. I even read The Golden Hawk before Ivanhoe, which I read first the summer between sophomore and junior h.s.
I’m so happy to see Shellabarger in this list!
Dorothy Dunnett’s novels will also appeal to those who like that combination of swashing, buckling, and intrigue.
@11 — I haven’t read the Sienkiewicz books (yet), but I did end up getting the Polish TV/film adaptations on DVD several years back. Good stuff!
(And this seems like as good a point as any to mention my favorite swashbuckling film, the 1997 French film On Guard (Le Bossu), based on a novel not by Dumas but by one of his contemporaries.)
So many good recommendations! Have to look many of these up! Never knew that about the origin of Zorro, either.
Just a week or so ago me and my friend talked about “The Three Musketeers” – about how wonderful this book is and how it is worth reading over and over and over again. We both also love the BBC version, even though it is quite far from the events in the book. Speaking of this book’s adaptations, my first that I still keep in quite high regard was the 1979 mini series “D’Artagnan and Three Musketeers” with Mikhail Boyarskiy.
Really glad to see “Ivanhoe” in this list. Perhaps “The Talisman” by Scott is also worth an addition? It’s been years since I read his “Rob Roy” so cannot exactly remember how things in the vein of swashbuckling were in that one.
Russell H @17 mentioned “The Black Arrow”, with very good reason. I would add to it also Stevenson’s immortal “Treasure Island”, and spinning from that, the series “Black Sails”. To some degree, perhaps also Stevenson’s “Kidnapped”? (Not so much its sequel “Catriona”.)
Burroughs’ “Barsoom” series can probably also be classified as swashbuckling, considering all the sword fighting John Carter does?
I love the “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies, especially the first three, but before these, there was also ”Cutthroat Island” from 1995, a lot better movie in my opinion than imdb gives it credit.
Have not read “Captain Blood”, but I did watch the movie with Errol Flynn a couple of months ago and was surprised at how good it was.
Also not sure if Scott Lynch’s “Gentleman Bastard” series classify exactly as swashbuckling, but they are excellent and I think well in line with the term’s spirit.
One thing that also includes a fair share of swashbuckling, I’d say, is the 1996 series “The Adventures of Sinbad” (with Zen Gesner). Half the special effects are truly terrible, a lot of the acting is mediocre (at best), and some plot holes are so big you could fall in. I still love it with all my heart.
I am sure I am missing something I definitely would want to mention. Oh well …
Oh, and on the more piratey side of things, I’d be remiss not to mention L.A. Myers’ Bloody Jack books — a YA series about a London orphan girl who, in the first book, dresses herself in sailor’s clothes and enlists in the British navy during the Napoleonic wars.
I had forgotten about The Prisoner of Zenda! Ivanhoe is awesome, we get a Robin Hood cameo, and the scene when the dude wakes up in the middle of his own wake is extremely funny. The Musketeers are better enjoyed in the original french and in Spanish, the humor loses zest in the English translations.
By far the biggest ones missing here are two series by Italian master Emilio Salgari: The Black Corsair saga (5 books) in which the eponymous Corsair fights Brits and Spaniards and real pirates like Henry Morgan and l’Olonnais are major players. He upped that by bringing Sandokan, The Tiger of Malaysia to life, a prince of Borneo looking for revenge on the Brits, with his faithful second in command the chain-smoking Portuguese suave Yañez de Gomera being a highlight, and moving from the island of Monpracen into India later, pure swashbuckling. Also great: Capitan Tormenta (Captain Storm), a cross-dressing lady fighting the Muslims in Cyprus trying to rescue her lover the Count of… can’t remember.
Can highly recommend George MacDonald’s “The Pyrates” which both sends up the genre and is a love letter to it at the same time. Movie-wise, I recommend the “Crimson Pirate” with Burt Lancaster. He did the rowboat-into-submarine trick long before “Pirates of the Caribbean”.
Note that Brust did several more Dumas pastiches. Five Hundred Years After (a play on the relative lifespans of the characters versus us “short-lived Easterners”) and the trilogy The Viscount of Adrilankha carry on Khaavren’s story. IMO The Baron of Magister Valley (cf The Count of Monte Cristo, but set in the same period as 500), just out in 2020, was the best of the lot.
I read most of the books mentioned when I was younger. Still very fond of The Viper of Milan by Marjorie Bowen, written 1906, set in the Renaissance, although of course it’s very dated.
Guy Gavriel Kay’s A Brightness Long Ago, Children of Earth and Sky, and All the Seas of the World are great swashbucklers.
@27 – I was happy to see Brust mentioned. The Khaavren Romances, of which The Phoenix Guards is the first volume, also tie in to his Vlad Taltos novels and Brokedown Palace; the former having its share of swash and buckle to go with the more modern procedural tone.
I have not read Georges, but the description seems to be even more evocative of Dumas’ own past than his other works, his father Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, a French Revolutionary general, being the son of a French noble and a slave mother who Napoleon perceived as a rival (to the detriment of Dumas’ family).
@18 – Fraser’s entire Flashman series could be considered the swashbuckling adventures of a very antiheroic, misogynistic, and sometimes downright cowardly scoundrel and rogue, who is inexplicably never found out. We’ve sort of gotten “out of period” by this point, otherwise I’d think some of Kipling could also qualify (thinking of The Man Who Would Be King).
I remember a role-playing/duelling game, EnGarde! from the mid 70s which I played; I’ve still got the booklet from the 1st or 2nd edition (1975 or 1977). One was basically a character wenching, fighting, clubbing, and intriguing one’s way through such a milieu as the title suggests. It became widely played by mail; I was in one of the earliest such campaigns (if not the first), started by a GM who was involved in both SF fandom and the PBM Diplomacy hobby.
I loved En Garde! A friend of mine that I played it with—forty years ago—eventually designed and got published a game called Legion of Honor, which is En Garde in the Napoleonic era.
@25. Roldy: Reading IVANHOE in full for the first time (I’d seen adaptations* and recall reading bits & pieces before this year, but only completed a read-through in full a few weeks ago) I was surprised and extremely pleased by the amount of dry wit good Sir Walter managed to smuggle in to a text often Very Serious in adaptations.
While there are better bits of comedy, seeing Sir Brian de Bois-Gilbert and the Abbot arguing over directions given by a certain jester plainly bent on misdirection was a sign of good things to come (I’m morally certain that Wamba either pointed left while saying “Right” – or vice versa – while giving directions): Cedric the Saxon trying to disguise himself as a priest with exactly two words of latin (“Pax vobiscum”) is another special highlight.
*Quite frankly a 1970s animated adaptation left me marked for life: Knights! Castles! Chivalric Romance! All continue to exert a strong pull over my imagination and, while there were other contributing factors (the Charlton Heston EL CID, FIRST KNIGHT and DRAGONHEART) that animated IVANHOE appears to have been Patient Zero: rediscovering it on YouTube left me on the brink not of cackling, but giggling with glee.
I grew up on swashbucklers thanks to my da, who handed me Scaramouche when I was 8 and said ‘I think you’ll love it.’ I did, and went on to read every swashbuckler in our family library as well as the public library.
Captain Blood is an excellent movie, as is The Sea Hawk.
I’m so glad that someone mentioned The Crimson Pirate! It’s one of my favourite films, and the stunts and swordfighting are top-notch (Lancaster and Cravat did all their own stunts too).
Thank for mentioning the Bloody Jack books. I highly recommend them.
I would recommend Tim Powers’ On Stranger Tides, a good book that became a disappointing (& hardly recognizable) chapter in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise.
What, no Pirate Latitudes?!
I liked The Prisoner of Zenda but I did love The Henchmen of Zenda by KJ Charles, a gay and feminist retelling, absolutely wonderful! A lot of fun.
(CW from the author’s website: Massive body count. Ghastly people throughout. Mention of off-page sexual abuse. Domestic abuse/control. Nonconsensual voyeurism. Does not have a standard heteronormative HEA.)
Perhaps there’s room for Danny Kaye’s masterpiece, The Court Jester? There’s something about a master swordfighter (Rathbone) having to pull his swings against someone who’s just learned the choreography for the part (Kaye). SNAP!
Oh, man… I grew up on Sabatini and Dumas. I hold the Musketeers books near and dear to my heart, too. Being born and raised in Bulgaria afforded me the opportunity to experience what I consider to be the best interpretation of the first book in the form of the Russian movie series of the late 70’s. It’s a musical and so, so fun!!!!
D’Artagnan and Three Musketeers. Part 1. 1978 (russian version with english subtitles)
And don’t get me started on my obsession with the Sea Hawk…
I see someone has already mentioned Captain Alatriste by Perez-Reverte (the film version with Viggo M as the lead is also worth watching).
But I have to nitpick and say that ‘buckler’ is not ‘an archaic word for shield’, but rather a very specific type of shield, usually smaller than a dinner plate, that was held in the off hand and designed for quick and easy movement to parry and deflect blows.
@7: ED — The George Macdonald Fraser take-down on Rafael Sabatini exists! It’s called The Pyrates and it’s worth every minute it takes to find it.
As far as the warning about “problematic” texts in the OP, it was while I was reading The Sea Hawk that I first learned what “objectification” means. About 200 pages in, it struck me that no female character had ever been mentioned before the verb. They had been, in the most literal, grammatical sense, objectified.
@35 Tara Li
It’s probably been at least 30 years since I’ve watched that, but I still remember that the pellet with the poison’s in the flagon with the dragon, and the vessel with the pestle holds the brew that is true (or is it the chalice from the palace? now I’m wondering about my memory hahaha)
There’s a sequel to The Prisoner of Zenda, written by the author, which I discovered poking around the stacks of my college library. My dad had never heard of it.
I would add that much of ERB’s oeuvre contains many of the same tropes as the swashbuckler genre. Two stand out. The Mad King is a take on PoZ with a happier ending. And there was a medieval story where the knight carved his initial in the foreheads of his foes.
My dad turned me on to many of these books when I was a kid (way back in the 60s) and they have a special place in ny heart.
“I had this story from one who had no business to tel it to me”
It was only in retrospect that I realized just how funny Ivanhoe is. I never had a lot of time for The Three Musketeers (sorry to those of you do enjoy it). I could never get past the part where D’Artagnan uses the girl who has a crush on him so he can sleep with her mistress and he is somehow still a hero. When he had to jump out the window sans clothing because he realized he was sleeping with a murderer, I considered it karma. And then Athos, my heroic, upright, revered Athos, ranted about how his wife deceived him after he did her the honor of marrying her instead of raping her. Perfectly legitimate to be mad that your lover didn’t tell you they were a wanted criminal. Expecting to be praised because you showed some common decency that cost you nothing? Nuh-uh. Really, I think it was the fall of Athos that sank any hope I might have had of enjoying Musketeers.
The Prisoner of Zenda was an interesting one. Part of me gloried in the whole honorable selflessness of the ending. Another part of me thought the king should have just abdicated in favor of Rassendyll.
I’m currently reading The Dark Frigate, which is not unlike Treasure Island, yet worthy of its Newbery on its own merits.
Another book in this genre is The Outlaws of Sherwood. Thirty years ago it was a fun read, and you might recognize the author, Robin McKinley.
No love for Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser? Really?
Another fave vote here for THE CRIMSON PIRATE, a movie I’ve watched at least a half-dozen times, and enjoyed every watch. (Trivia: Nick Cravat’s character of Odo was made a mute in the film because Cravat had a very strong Brooklyn accent that resisted all efforts at voice coaching.)
The Pardaillan saga by Michel Zévaco
The origins of the word swashbuckler, in case you were curious about this particularly esoteric etymology, comes from a combination of swash, meaning “fall of a blow,” and buckler, an archaic word for “shield.”
Slightly off-topic but I think interesting: this makes it etymologically unusual. A swashbuckler is someone who swashes bucklers. Normally, when English makes a new noun out of a verb and a noun, the verb goes second. What’s that machine for digging holes? It’s a hole-digger. Mind your fingers when you slice bacon with the bacon-slicer. And so on. But a swashbuckler isn’t someone who buckles swashes. He’s not a nounverber, he’s a verbnoun, like a pickpocket or a cutthroat or a cutpurse or a sellsword or a scofflaw… hmm, all these nouns have a similar sort of ring to them, don’t they?
Also, I dearly want to see CAPTAIN BLOOD someday get something like the George MacDonald Fraser “Adventure is serious business, except when it’s absolutely hilarious” treatment in the same vein as the Musketeers received back in the 1970s (which for my money remains the Best adaptation of all the ones I’ve seen).
A lot of people have already suggested The Pyrates, which is great (Avery laughed lightly. “But I’m the hero,” he said. “You don’t imagine you can stab me in the back on – ” he glanced down – “on page 138, do you?”) but a film version would be amazing. For those who haven’t read it, it is to swashbucklers what Blazing Saddles was to Westerns.
Unfortunately we got 57 Pirates of the Caribbean films instead of Avery and Tom Blood and Sheba and Vanity exchanging guaranteed authentic period dialogue and arguing about Helena Rubinstein moisturiser.
@11 Glad someone mentioned Henryk Sienkiewicz. I mean, how many other authors on this list have won a Nobel Prize, right? I will say, if you’re going going read them in English, (With Fire And Sword, The Deluge, Fire in The Steppe aka Pan Wolodjowski) try to find the W.S. Kuniczak translations. The Jeremiah Curtain versions aren’t terrible, but a little stilted and dated.
First, for those who buckle their swashes through films, get thee to IMDB and look up William Hobbs, fight choreographer extraordinaire, who gave us The Duellists, The Three and Four Musketeers, Sunshine, The Crimson Permanent Insurance, Excaliber, etc., etc. You can see the man himself duel for free (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Jdlas9JgZI) in the cheesy Hammer Film – Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter (rent the entire film at Amazon for $2.99).
Second, speaking of William Hobbs, is there no love for the Count of Monte Cristo in both book and film? The most recent film version with Guy Pearce was choreographed by Mr. Hobbs, so for any Witcher fans out there, Mr. Hobbs is the man who first taught Henry Cavill how to use a sword.
I actually squeed when I saw “Prince of Foxes” on the list. I found a first-edition copy in the freebies bin of my college library, and have read it dozens of times – not only for the story, but for the fantastic craftsmanship of Shellabarger’s writing. Plotting, pacing, portrayal, pathos, playfulness… perfection! Or close enough, anyway.
So many comments! I am delighted by the enthusiasm this has sparked.
@Cheryl from Maryland: The Count of Monte Cristo is my favorite book in the world, and the reason I fell in love with Dumas. But while it does have swashbuckling and bandits, I think it is dwarfed by other portions of the story, to the point where I’m not sure it’s fair to call it a swashbuckler. As for the movie…in my humble opinion as a passionate lover of Dumas since I was 13, it is an insult to everything that makes his book great. Though the duel at the end IS good. It just….rather misses the point of the story.
@Kyna: every time I think about The Three Musketeers a little longer, the closer I get to writing a retelling of the novel from Milady’s perspective. I had forgotten that Athos uttered those choice words, but dear lord. I read those books when young, and watched all the swashbuckling movies, and was so enamored of Athos, but these days, I wonder to what extent the novel is a deconstruction of heroism. It should at the very least be read as such!
@Ajay: I am delighted by your observation on the etymology!
@joe: I had the same realization via Sabatini. I was reading some historical novel of his when I realized that the female love interest could have been replaced with a sexy lamp and there would be no difference to the story.
And to everyone recommending the soviet adaptation of the Three Musketeers: a wholehearted yes! I grew up on this adaptation, though I think today’s audiences, used to CGI and “flashy” films, wouldn’t be as impressed.
It’s not well known, but Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote a few straight-up historical fiction swashbuckling stories. The ones I’m aware of I quite like: The Outlaw of Torn is about an old French fencing master who, finding his honour insulted by the English king he is working for, steals the baby heir to the throne and holes up in the countryside, raising the kid to be a brigand and the best, toughest swordsman in the world, intending to finish off his revenge by eventually getting the kid hanged or something and then revealing his identity. As the lad grows up he becomes leader of a huge band of outlaws and a thorn in the side of the crown, starts having interactions with nobles, and things get complicated.
There’s also The Mad King, which is a very “Prisoner of Zenda” kind of story except the real king turns out to be a total jerk and love conquers all in the end.
Oops! I see comment #13 beat me to mention of The Outlaw of Torn and The Mad King. Great minds and all that.
There was an absolutely hilarious 1976 film starring Robert Shaw, based on a story “The Scarlet Buccaneer” (which is also the title the film went by in the UK), Swashbuckler.
(Shaw had also starred in a British ITC TV series in 1956-1957, The Buccaneers, as Captain Dan Tempest, so he had experience in swashing his buckle. It was aimed at kids, so Tempest and his crew were former pirates.)
Besides Shaw, it also featured James Earl Jones, Geoffrey Holder, Geneviève Bujold, and a delightfully villainous Peter Boyle. I saw it in the theater when it first came out (I still have a program somewhere), having gotten the tickets via a contest or promotion.
I don’t think I’ve seen mention of Jean Lafitte in any part of the thread that’s ventured into pirate territory. There’s quite a bit of material there, including the Lyle Saxon novel Lafitte the Pirate, which was adapted for film twice, both titled The Buccaneer (1938 and 1958), the first starring Fredric March as Lafitte and the remake starring Yul Brunner as Lafitte and Charlton Heston as Andrew Jackson.
For more interesting adaptations, there’s the novel _Musketeer Space_ by Australian Tansy Rayner Roberts. Don’t forget the movie “Treasure Island” with Geena Davis & other talented folks.
May I suggest the Lymond Chronicles (set in the 16th century) by Dorothy Dunnett who had some influence on both Guy Gavriel Kay and Kushner? Featuring an outlawed noble Scot returning home and starting his career in Scotland of the early sixteenth century by trying to burn his mother’s castle down and one of the best written duels in the history of literature Traditional caveats: The first 100-150 pages of “The Game of Kings” are an endurance test, once past that, you are treated to one of the best written series of historical novels/swachbucklers available in the English language. Point two: the main character will make you want to shake him at least once in every novel (there are six) and has an unfortunate habit of insulting people by quoting verse (in about six different languages).
For my generation the best swashbuckler and Pirate on film was always Burt Lancaster. For those of a liberal disposition, there is also the advantage that he did not come with much of the baggage that afflicted Errol Flynn and others. The Crimson Pirate is the classic of the genre, and shamelessly ripped off in PotC.
Mary Gentle’s 1610: A Sundial in a Grave is a brilliant example of a swashbuckling adventure –with a queerish twist, no less– that takes us from France to Japan.
every time I think about The Three Musketeers a little longer, the closer I get to writing a retelling of the novel from Milady’s perspective.
“The Dumas Club” by Arturo Perez-Reverte features a present-day female villain who is a Milady fan, and who makes some very good points about how unfairly Milady is treated and how generally unsatisfactory the heroes are (Athos and d’Artagnan in particular).
@56 – Geena Davis was the star of Cutthroat Island. While flawed and overdone, it certainly buckled lots and lots of swashes.
I loved Swordspoint. Her Privilege of the Sword featured a female swashbuckler (or so she eventually became).
I am delighted by your observation on the etymology!
Thanks!
Another one came to mind – Shakespeare talked about the little bent bits of wire you use to open locks as “picklocks” but it’s commoner now to talk about “lockpicks”. “Picklock” fits well with the generally disreputable feel of the other verbnouns, which I have just learned are known as “cutthroat compounds”.
https://stancarey.wordpress.com/2015/04/28/cutthroat-compounds-in-english-morphology/
A cutthroat cuts throats, a telltale tells tales, a wagtail wags its tail, a killjoy kills joy, a scarecrow scares crows, a turncoat turns their coat, rotgut rots the gut, a pickpocket picks pockets, a sawbones saws bones (one of the few plural by default), and breakfast – lest you miss its etymology, hidden in plain sight – breaks a fast
@63 — Ever do I write a tale of swashbuckling adventure, the ne’er-do-well who opens locked doors for the sword-wielders shall be termed a “picklock”.
You mean the wieldswords?
@65 – Perhaps “sword wielder” is too generic to have given rise to a cutthroat compound, but we do have “sellsword” for a mercenary.
Amazingly it didn’t occur as an example in the article cited above (unless it’s in one of the clips) but it’s use is quite common in much written fantasy.
“Sellsword” is interesting because it’s one that I don’t think I’ve come across anywhere outside fantasy, specifically “A Song of Ice and Fire”. Google Ngrams shows it to be virtually unused before the mid 1990s… when “A Game of Thrones” came out. And there’s no citation I can find before 1950, and no citations that aren’t from fantasy stories, except very recent ones where it’s probably bled into general use from popular fantasy.
I’m not actually sure what term their English-speaking contemporaries would have used to describe people who hired themselves out as sword-wielding soldiers. “Mercenary” goes back only to Gibbon and Pope (18th century) and originally was used to mean just “works for and motivated by money” – not necessarily a soldier. They may have used more specific words like Landsknecht for German mercenaries, gallowglass for Scots and Irish mercenaries (Shakespeare used that), routiers for English mercenaries in the Hundred Years’ War, and so on.
But they may, interestingly, not have had a general term for mercenary, because they were so common. It wasn’t seen as odd at all for a national of one country to fight for another for pay. Othello was a mercenary – a Moor in the service of Venice. If you were a professional soldier, you fought for your employer for pay, and maybe before quite recently it wasn’t seen as particularly important whether you were an Englishman fighting for England for pay, like Falstaff, or an Scot fighting for Russia for pay like Gordon.
“Freelance” is Sir Walter Scott, “Ivanhoe” – so 1810 or so. A “lance”, as well as a pointy stick for pushing other men off horses with, was a small late-mediaeval military unit made up of a mounted armoured man plus 2-5 other men (servants, fighting auxiliaries etc), but the term “free lance” for a lance-for-hire wasn’t used until Scott.
Corwin and other princes in the Amber cycle by Zelazny; there are numerous detailed sword fights described.