Fan Fiction · Set in The Forty-Five Guardsmen

What Bussy Left Behind

A story about Diane de Méridor · 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.

By the time of The Forty-Five Guardsmen, Bussy d'Amboise has been dead for several years, and Diane de Méridor's grief has had time to settle into something considerably more complicated than the raw loss covered in the trilogy's earlier volume, La Dame de Monsoreau. This two-chapter story imagines what that grief actually looks like years later — not resolved, exactly, but transformed into something Diane can finally examine honestly, including truths about the relationship itself she couldn't afford to see clearly while Bussy was still alive.

The Anniversary

II.

What She Finally Let Herself See