Fan Fiction · Set in The Countess de Charny

The Guard at the Temple

A story about a Temple prison guard · 2 chapters · Read the novel this is based on

This is fan fiction. An original, unofficial story written by a contributor to this site, not by Alexandre Dumas. It is not part of the actual novel and should not be mistaken for Dumas's own writing.

The novel depicts the royal family's imprisonment in the Temple through the eyes of major historical and fictional figures, but the actual daily guarding of the family fell to ordinary National Guardsmen rotated through the assignment, men whose personal convictions about the Revolution ranged across the entire political spectrum. This two-chapter story imagines one such guard — a sincere republican assigned to watch a family he has been taught to see as the nation's enemies, and what happens to that sincere conviction across months of actual daily proximity to the people it was built to condemn.

What He Was Taught to See

II.

What He Actually Saw