Aramis, the future priest with a sword, has the most opaque romantic life. He claims to despise women, preferring theology. But he is constantly receiving secret letters and disappearing into the country to see "a cousin."

The subtext here is about forbidden vocation. Aramis wants to be a bishop, but he cannot stop falling in love. His relationship with the Duchesse de Chevreuse (or his unnamed "Mme. d'Aramis") is one of intellectual seduction. She writes him poetry; he writes her sermons.

The Emotional Payoff: In the sequel (Twenty Years After), we learn that Aramis actually had a secret son with a noblewoman. The "spiritual" advisor was, in fact, a worldly father. This reveals that Aramis’ greatest adventure was hiding his heart in plain sight.

  • Outcome: Milady seduces and manipulates multiple men (Lord de Winter’s brother, Felton). She is finally executed by the musketeers and an executioner—a rare instance where romantic obsession ends in collective justice.

    • Each romantic thread directly catalyzes major action:

    Conversely, adventure destroys romance. The battlefield, the duel, the ambush—these leave no space for quiet love. Constance dies because she is entangled in politics. Milady dies because she is a weapon that backfires.

    No discussion of The Three Musketeers’ romantic storylines is complete without the central affair that triggers the plot: Queen Anne of Austria’s secret love for the English Prime Minister, the Duke of Buckingham.

    This is romance on a geopolitical scale. Their affair topples governments. The entire adventure of the diamond studs—the midnight rides, the sea crossings, the duels—exists because the Queen gave her lover twelve diamond tags, and Cardinal Richelieu wants to expose her infidelity. Dumas portrays the Queen’s love as tragic and noble, but also reckless. She risks a war between France and England for a memory of a smile.

    Buckingham is the novel’s most purely romantic figure, a man who would bankrupt his nation to gaze upon the Queen’s portrait. His assassination at the hands of Milady de Winter (ordered by Richelieu) is the novel’s most operatic death. He dies whispering the Queen’s name. It is a romance that cannot survive reality—only adventure.