'Forth now, and fear no darkness!'

we lose the glimpse of Edmond's interiority after he finds the treasure and sets off on his further trajectory of research and paying his dues.

the thing is, I can 100% believe that being obsessed with revenge and doing nothing but planning it would make Edmond into the Count, an almost vampiric presense closer to, say, Dracula than Jonathan Harker.

but it's hard for me to feel it, much harder than when I was 14-18 and obsessed with the book.

it's because I'm not a vengeful person, I guess.

it feels to me like the Count is avenging another person as well. and that he's overreacting because he didn't go through what Edmond did.

but he did go through it.

and I have to make effort to remind myself of it.

Also, as a bit of a side note, you mentioned that you understood this aspect of the story more when you were a teenager, and I think that's very important to note. And that's because Edmond Dantes will always be a teenager. I think that this is an aspect of the story that many people don't truly think about in too much depth.

In 1815 , when he is imprisoned Edmond Dantes is 19 years old, when he meets Abbe Faria, he is twenty six, when he escapes from prison, in 1829, he is 33 years old, and when Franz meets him in Italy in 1838 he is 42 years old. He ages, obviously, but something people may not fully consider is that Edmond Dantes never has a chance to grow up. He is imprisoned when he is 19, and is almost immediately placed in solitary, where the most he interacts with anyone is twice a day when his jailer brings him a meal. It is not until 7 years later that he meets Abbe Faria and has a chance to interact with others in a meaningful way, and is given a chance to grow. However, by that time it's a bit too late, Edmond is already eternally a teenager. We see this in his conversations with Abbe Faria, and his eagerness to respond to just about any situation with a suggestion for murder. Abbe Faria manages to tame him while he's alive, but after his death, there's no one to hold him back. And Edmond is left to his own for nine years. And during that time, he doesn't grow up, he's still stuck in his teenager ways. We can see this in every part of him, he talks of saving Ali only after his tongue has been cut, because he wanted a mute slave, he talks of himself as an agent of god, an avenging angel, he has three different personas to craft this revenge he's enacting, etc. The moment that Edmond begins to start growing up, is after his talk with Mercedes before his duel with Albert, and this slowly continues in moments like when Maximilian tells him he loves Valentine, that he learns Edward is dead, when he forgives Danglars, when he realizes that Haydee loves him, etc.

Time is frozen for Edmond Dantes, he is the same 19 year old boy that was thrown into prison, with no clue why. It is not until the end of the book that time thaws, and time finally moves forward for Edmond Dantes.

Me, an intellectual:

Case in point: Tsun Zu's rival defended a city with 10 men against Tsun's army of hundreds by disarming his own soldiers, dressing them in plain clothes, INVITING Tsun's army to come in, and it only worked because Tsun knew the guy was an ambush master and thought "if we attack the city he's inviting us into, we will die." and left without even trying ON THE BASIS OF HIS RIVAL'S REPUTATION AND NOTHING MORE

Another example: Tsun Zu, on being told his soliders were out of arrows during a battle against a city across a river from them, had his men craft scarecrows, put them on a boat, send it out on a line, leave it there for half an hour, then pull it back in and used the arrows the enemy had fired at the boat to restock their own ammunition. It only worked because it was foggy and the enemy couldn't tell the difference between the scarecrows and actual soldiers.