"it's too embarrassing to post on my blog"

From the books:

D’Artagnan - Dorothy Castlemore. Dorothy means gift of God, but I’d wager that it’s just the modern name closest to D’Artagnan that they could think of. Charles de Batz de Castelmore is D’Artagnan’s full name and also where they draw the last name from.

Athos - Alex Silleg. Again, closest modern English name. Silleg comes from Armand de Sillègue d’Athos d’Auteville, the real person that Athos in the D’Artagnan Romances is based on.

Porthos - Portia Vallon. Book counterpart is Porthos du Vallon de Bracieux de Pierrefonds, so we have another anglicization there.

Aramis - Henry Abascale. René d’Herblay, alias Aramis. You can see where both the deadname and Henry come from, though I’m admittedly stumped about Abascale. Maybe because in the books he’s constantly caught between being a musketeer and wanting to join an abbey?

Milady de Winter - Miller Winters. Pretty unsurprising there.

Rochefort - Rochefort. 

Cardinal Richelieu - Rick Liu. Pun on the name just like Bing Lee in the Lizzie Bennet Diaries (which we know someone has seen because of Worst Dance Ever).

Constance Bonacieux - Connie Bonacieux. Pretty self-explanatory.

Monsieur Bonacieux - Monty. Selfish, cowardly, and sells out his wife/girlfriend’s nudes to gain favour with the Richelieu/Rick Liu faction. Portrayed much more sympathetically in A4O than in the books.

M. de Tréville - Jeanne Treville. The name Jeanne likely comes from Jean-Armand du Peyrer, Comte de Troisville, the real person the character was based on.

Anne of Austria/King Louis XIII - Anne Bonacieux. Made a Bonacieux because Constance is her lady in waiting/confidante in the book and I guess cousin is the closest they were getting to that. Sorority president rather than queen. There’s no Louis in A4O, but she shares some of his qualities: having things governed by minor ministers, closeness with Treville, etc.

Breton - Grimaud, Athos’ servant who’s from Bretagne (and thus, a Breton). Actually pretty much forbidden to speak in the books by Athos, who’s kind of a dick.

s1: everyone ignores alex’s desire not to be called mom. henry laughs at dorothy being too depressed to get off the couch/is just generally unsupportive of all his friends. henry and dorothy treat alex and then portia really badly and pressure portia to put herself in harm’s way. they all make up, for some reason (because they’re the musketeers and you can’t have 3 musketeers without them).

maybe this is just because i’m not and never have been in a sorority, but does it seem to anyone else like everyone kind of needs to chill? i’m sure mst is an awesome feminist sorority, but come on. i know the presidential election is sort of a proxy for a lot of other issues (unresolved aballon resentment, whatever the hell anne did) but even with these larger than life characters and with that in mind, everyone seems a little extreme about this election.

ok, so: new characters. let’s start with anne. maybe it’s just because of the way dorothy hyped her last season, but i kind of feel like she maybe should’ve stayed on off-screen presence or had a brief cameo (à la mrs bennet in the lbd). anyway, she sort of has two modes: kind of annoying and overly polished and subdued because she’s just been dumped. why is showing up somewhere after a party holding your shoes the universal sign that something went horribly awry? anyway, i kind of like subdued, sad anne better. she’s much more relatable and just, understandable as a character this way. anne must not have a lot of friends if she’s showing up at her little cousin and “little sister”’s room.

monty is... a lot. i don’t fully understand why connie was dating her. slim pickings in kingston, i guess. by the way, which kingston are they talking about? i assumed kingston, ontario in season 1 (known for its (now closed) penitentiary and being a stop on the way to montreal) but it’s not as small as they seem to be describing it. who knows. i know they’re keeping the location ambiguous on purpose (which is better than the carmilla bullshit where we had to pretend that they were in austria and everyone just happened to have canadian accents), but i wonder about this.

monty seems like she could just be totally oblivious to all social norms, timing, and other people’s feelings. she also seems like she could be manipulating connie’s already existing feelings of neglect to drive a wedge between her and dorothy and win her back. either way, not my favourite.

props to both actresses, though. it’s (i imagine...) hard to join an already established ensemble cast and carve out a space for yourself. especially if your character has been as hyped as monty and anne have. side note: thank god monty isn’t her real first name. i was really judging her parents.

also, how the hell do you manage to burn your bridges so completely that your parents won’t take you back in at home? are they super homophobic and she told them about connie? did she transfer? what the hell? why can’t she just leave (except for the drama...)?

portia and henry are as dysfunctional as ever. i’m sympathetic to portia here because what she went through last season was awful, but “forgiving” someone just to hold something over their head when they piss you off is not a great way to act. if you can’t forgive him, don’t be his friend and definitely don’t run with him. maybe there’s hope for these two, but i honestly kind of think they should just go their separate ways.

dorothy and connie could work out their issues pretty quickly if a) monty wasn’t there, exacerbating everything and b) they just, like, talked it out.

i get that treville feels betrayed by dorothy, but come on, tell her what happened. these two also just need to sit down and have a talk.