This page is for tropes that have appeared in The Count of Monte Cristo (the novel, not the many adaptations).
For the rest:
- Gambit Roulette: One must imagine how long Dantès had to plan out his revenge, but the final plot is unspeakably convoluted. That he is able to make any of it work speaks volumes about his control.
- Gentleman and a Scholar: The novel opens with Edmond Dantès as a young, naive sailor; his transformation into the suave, educated, and urbane Count began with his meeting the Abbe Faria, who educates him and reveals to him the location of a great treasure. Edmond made the most of both.
- Going Down with the Ship: When the Pharaon springs a leak in a storm and starts sinking, Captain Gaumard orders the crew to the lifeboat, remaining on board himself until all the men are safely off. The last sailor to leave realizes that the captain intends to stay on the sinking ship, and throws the captain over the side before abandoning ship himself. As a result, the entire crew survives, including the captain and the last sailor.
- Gorgeous Greek: Haydee is one of the most famous examples of this trope in literature; a lovely, exotic and nubile slave girl of Greek origin that is completely devoted to the main protagonist, even though he bought her freedom and ends up becoming his lover at the end.
- Gratuitous Italian: While in Italy Danglars uses what little he knows of musical and operatic terms to communicate.
- Grave Clouds: During the funeral of Valentine's grandparents, the weather is noted to be "overcast, and so quite appropriate for the dismal ceremony". At the novel's second funeral, the weather is dull and stormy.
- Great Escape: Dantès escapes by hiding in the bodybag of his late mentor, which is thrown into the sea.
- Green-Eyed Monster: Danglars and Fernand plot Edmond's downfall all because they are jealous of his pretty fiancée and his recent promotion.
- Handicapped Badass: Nortier, who is completely paralyzed from the eyes down, yet still manages to protect his granddaughter from unwanted fiancés and assassination attempts. As Villefort puts it, an "indestructible old man".
- Happiness in Slavery: Ali and Haydee, since the Count saved both their lives and treats them exceptionally well. So much that when he offers Haydee her freedom, more than once, she adamantly refuses.
- Have You Told Anyone Else?: Dantès is arrested on suspicion of being involved in a Bonapartist conspiracy; Villefort questions him and learns that Dantès is innocent of anything beyond agreeing to carry a letter for a friend, and knows nothing about the contents of the letter nor anything about its intended recipient beyond his name and address. Villefort asks Dantès if he's told anybody else the name and address, and Dantès assures him that he hasn't, at which point Villefort immediately takes steps to have him silenced because the letter's intended recepient in Villefort's father.
- Hellhole Prison: The Chateau d'If.
- Historical Character's Fictional Relative:
- The (real) general Quesnel is given a fictional son (Franz) so as to provide a You Killed My Father moment (in real life, his death was unsolved). In the book, he's killed in a duel with Villefort's father Noirtier, with Noirtier keeping this interesting little tidbit as a trump card to prevent Franz' marriage with his granddaughter Valentine.
- Haydee is the daughter of the historical Ali Tebelin
and Kyra Vassiliki, and she serves a major role in revealing Fernand's crimes (in the novel, he betrayed Ali to the Turks and sold both Kyra and Haydee into slavery), leading to his downfall.
- Historical Domain Character: Napoléon Bonaparte and Louis XVIII.
- Hit Them in the Pocketbook: Dantes' revenge against Danglars consists of ruining him, first by encouraging his wife to play the stock market in way he knows will fail (such as by bribing a telegraph operator to deliberately send false political news), then by arranging for Danglars' daughter to marry a Mock Millionaire (and revealing that status, as well as being an escaped convict, matricide and murderer). When Danglars escapes, he's caught by bandits working for Dantes, who proceed to starve Danglars out of his money by making him pay half a million francs (of the five million he embezzled) for each meal.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: If Caderousse had improved at all as a person, the inception of Edmond's revenge against him (a bequeathement of a tidy but not vast sum of money) could have been a blessing on his house and it would've ended there. But he hadn't, and it didn't.
- Hometown Nickname: Caderousse's wife is known as "La Carconte", from the name of the village where she was born.
- Homoerotic Subtext. The lesbian relationship between Eugenie Danglars and Louise d'Armilly is never stated overtly, but it's very strongly implied:
- It begins subtly, by comparing Eugenie's beauty to that of Diana—who was virginal, preferring female company to male company. Diana also had at least one follower, Callisto, who was apparently in love with her, since Jupiter seduced her in Diana's form.
- Eugenie is incredibly quick to admire the beauty of other women, while attesting no opinion of the good-looks of any male characters.
- Then the narrator describes the glances of Eugenie's admirer as being deflected off "Minerva's shield," which "once protected Sappho." Sappho of Lesbos.
- They are found sitting on the same chair in front of the piano, making duets out of solos by each playing one hand of the song.
- When they're planning to run away together after Eugenie's engagement ends in disaster, they are extremely affectionate and flirty, calling each other "my sweet", comparing themselves to classical lovers such as Hercules and Queen Omphale (who liked to switch clothes with Hercules for fun), and comparing their flight to a sexual abduction.
- Finally, in case you still had your head in the sand: In one scene, an unexpected visitor drops into a hotel room they're staying in (two paragraphs after the text makes a point of telling the reader that the room has two beds) and finds them sleeping together in the same bed. Yeah...
- Hopeless Suitor: Fernand to Mercédès, until he decides to Remove The Rival.
- Hope Spot:
- There is a moment where, according to the narrator, Villefort is on the cusp of setting Edmond free, if only someone should burst through the door and confront him. The moment passes.
- When Edouard is found poisoned, Monte Cristo (who's an expert physician and chemist) takes the body to a room and locks the door. It seems for a moment that he'll be able to save the life, but fifteen minutes later he comes out declaring he failed.
- Horrible Judge of Character: The young Edmond, trusting as friends the same men who will completely ruin his life and get him started on the quest for revenge that will occupy the rest of the story. In fact, he will never realize, by himself, the reason of his downfall: only with the help of old Faria will he be able to finally get a clue.
- Humiliation Conga:
- Albert's ability to accept all sorts of humiliations with relative dignity—from being seduced by a servant-boy (whom he thinks is a woman until he gets a knife pointed at his face), to being forced to call off a duel with the Count, to giving up his wealth and name after he finds out what kind of man his father is—is ultimately his most redeeming quality, and what truly distinguishes him from his father.
- Danglars gets one too. Having been the instigator of the plot that sent the Count to prison, he is subsequently bankrupted, divorced, abandoned by his daughter, and kidnapped and imprisoned by Luigi Vampa and his bandits when he flees to Italy with the money he embezzled. Danglars is initially left without food, and when he demands to be fed the bandits charge him outrageous prices for his meals. Forced to choose between his money and his life, Danglars is starved out of the millions of francs he still has with him, until only 50,000 remain. It then turns out that the Count had ordered Vampa and his bandits to kidnap Danglars and imprison him, putting Danglars in the very same situation that he placed the Count in. The money the bandits charge Danglars for his meal is returned to the hospitals he embezzled it from, as Danglars learns a horrible lesson in greed. He pleads for mercy and forgiveness, and the Count ultimately grants it to him, letting him go with the last 50,000 francs — the only money he was carrying that he had earned more or less honestly. Oh, and the situation turns his hair white.
- Hypocrite:
- Villefort seems to be something of a hanging judge and obsessed with the family honor, but commits several heinous crimes.
- Danglars calls himself a man of the people, but uses his title when talking to his social inferiors and not when he's sucking up to his superiors.
- Impoverished Patrician: The Baroness Danglars comes from a highly aristocratic family, but neither they nor her first husband were very rich, as Danglars points out during an argument:Hermine Danglars: Once for all, sir, I tell you I will not hear cash named; it is a style of language I never heard in the house of my parents or in that of my first husband.
Danglars: Oh, I can well believe that, for neither of them was worth a penny. - Improbable Aiming Skills: Both Albert and the Count have such great aim that they can shoot at playing cards with pinpoint precision (Beauchamp's skill is about as the same as Albert). The Count makes an entire deck out of blank cards.
- Improbable Infant Survival:
- Benedetto, who was thought dead by his parents.
- Averted with Edouard, who is poisoned by his mother just before her suicide.
- Inadvertent Entrance Cue: Near the end of the novel, Julie and her husband are discussing recent events and whether they are evidence that some agent of Providence is at work; at a suitably dramatic moment, the conversation is interrupted by the arrival of Monte Cristo, who (unbeknownst to them) is responsible for all the events they've been discussing.
- Incompatible Orientation: While it's not said outright, Eugénie is a lesbian, and thus has no inclination towards marriage with any of the suitors her father finds.
- I Need a Freaking Drink: At the Count's dinner party, when he starts hinting at one of Villefort's dark secrets:Villefort, who had hitherto not tasted the three or four glasses of rare wine which were placed before him, here took one, and drank it off.
- Inheritance Murder:
- Valentine's maternal grandfather dies on the way to Paris, soon followed by her grandmother, making Valentine the heir (her mother died young and her father remarried). Then it turns out someone's been trying to poison her paternal grandfather, though fortunately his Acquired Poison Immunity saves him. Due to the motives, the family doctor starts suspecting Valentine herself until she too is poisoned. It turns out it was her stepmother who wanted her own son to inherit both family's fortunes.
- Benedetto manipulated Caderousse into burgling the Count's house and possibly murdering the Count by claiming the Count's will acknowledged Benedetto as his heir.
- Innate Night Vision: After spending more than ten years in a dimly-lit cell, the Count of Monte Cristo sees as well in the dark as in the light.
- Inn of No Return: Caderousse owns an inn of ill reputation. When he receives a diamond from the Count he immediately runs after a jeweler. The jeweler gives him money for the diamond, but has to spend a night in the inn due to bad weather. Caderousse, influenced by his greedy wife, decides to murder the jeweler, so he would have both the money and diamond. He succeeds, but in the ensuing fight his wife gets murdered and later Caderousse gets caught.
- Instantly Proven Wrong: While Valentine's father, Villefort, and her proposed fiancé, Franz, are discussing her grandfather's opposition to the match, Villefort claims that the old man is senile and doesn't understand what is happening. He goes so far as to assert that Valentine's grandfather probably doesn't even remember the name of the man she's going to marry — and a moment later a message arrives from the grandfather addressed to Franz by his full name and title.
- Invisible Writing: The key to the colossal fortune was found in an old piece of paper used as a bookmark. When Faria tried to use it to light a candle, he noticed words forming on it and quickly extinguished it, but was arrested before he could follow the instructions thus revealed.
- Ironic Hell: This is what the Count enacted on the men who wronged Dantès; The coworker who betrayed him so he could have his coveted promotion, and who used said position to amass a fortune was to be left bankrupt, the man who betrayed him because he coveted his fiancée had his wife and son taught to despise him, and the prosecutor who sent him to Château d'If because he knew something that would ruin his reputation had all his past misdeeds dragged out for all of Paris to see.
