Twenty Years After (Alexandre Dumas, 1845), the sequel to The Three Musketeers, is set during the Fronde in France and the English Civil War. Among the characters is a young Englishman with a pale face and a cold voice who calls himself Mordaunt. His real name is John Francis de Winter, and he is the son of Milady de Winter. He was a child when his mother was executed by the musketeers, d’Artagnan and her brother-in-law Lord de Winter, and he says that his uncle then declared him illegitimate and took away his name and his fortune. He has grown up with one purpose: to find and kill the men who killed his mother. He becomes an agent of Oliver Cromwell, which places him on the opposite side from the musketeers, who are trying to save King Charles I. He tracks down the former executioner of Lille, now living as a penitent, and stabs him as he confesses. He kills his uncle, Lord de Winter. At the execution of Charles I in London, the masked executioner who strikes the blow is Mordaunt. Finally he tries to blow up the boat in which the four friends are fleeing to France. They escape; in the sea, Athos reaches out to save him, and Mordaunt drags him under the water. Athos stabs him to free himself.
// The theoryCrime in the blood
For most of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many criminologists, doctors and reformers believed that crime ran in families as a hereditary trait. In 1877 Richard Dugdale published The Jukes, a study of a New York family with many criminals, paupers and prostitutes across several generations; although Dugdale himself gave weight to the environment, the study was read as proof of hereditary degeneracy. In 1912 Henry Goddard’s The Kallikak Family claimed to show that a single “feeble-minded” ancestor had produced generations of degenerates. These family studies fed the eugenics movement and policies of segregation and forced sterilisation in the United States and elsewhere. Later research showed that the studies were methodologically weak and confused heredity with poverty, stigma and shared environment. Modern behavioral genetics finds genetic influences on antisocial behavior, but they are partial, probabilistic and strongly dependent on the environment.
The later critique of hereditarian family studies
Family studies such as The Jukes and The Kallikak Family were read as proof that crime is inherited, when they could not separate blood from poverty and stigma.
What Mordaunt actually inherited
The musketeers and the narrator see Mordaunt through the lens of heredity: he has his mother’s eyes, her coldness and her talent for vengeance, and Athos calls him the son of a demon. The novel invites us to read his crimes as Milady’s blood reasserting itself. But the story gives us everything we need for another reading. What Mordaunt inherited was not a criminal nature, but a history: a mother executed at night, without trial, by a group of men who considered themselves her judges; a dispossession, the loss of his name and fortune to the uncle who took part in that execution; and a grievance that nobody has ever acknowledged. That inheritance is social and emotional, not biological, and it is exactly the kind of confound that undermined the family studies: children of offenders grow up in the circumstances their parents’ lives and punishments create.
// The subjectThe avenger on the wrong side
Mordaunt is in many ways a dark mirror of Edmond Dantès, Dumas’s other great avenger. Both have been wronged, both plan meticulously, both pursue every person responsible. The difference is that Dantès’s enemies are villains and Mordaunt’s are the heroes. His methods are brutal: he murders a man in the act of confession, kills his uncle in cold blood and takes the role of executioner of a king. He is also intelligent, patient and utterly single-minded, and he comes closer than anyone to destroying the four friends. His death is symbolic. Athos, the man who hanged his mother years before and who still feels guilty about it, is the only one who tries to save him from the water; Mordaunt uses that gesture to try to take him down with him.
Mordaunt
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// The crackA discredited theory, a convenient story
The theory of criminal heredity has been largely discredited in its original form: family studies like those of Dugdale and Goddard could not distinguish genes from environment, and their conclusions served cruel policies. Modern behavioral genetics, based on twin and adoption studies, finds a moderate genetic influence on antisocial behavior, but it emphasizes interaction with the environment, and nothing in it supports the idea of a “bad seed” passed on intact. Mordaunt is better explained by the theories the novel half-suggests: revenge, the grievances of a dispossessed child and the social learning of a boy raised in the shadow of his mother’s fate.
The hereditary reading also serves a purpose in the story: it protects the heroes. If Mordaunt is simply Milady’s blood, then the musketeers’ execution of his mother was justice and his revenge is pure evil. If he is the product of what was done to him, the heroes share some responsibility. Mordaunt chose to kill a confessing man, his uncle and a king, and to try to drown the man who reached out to him. What the critique of hereditary theories adds is that “it runs in the family” is often a way of not asking what the family went through.
The children of the condemned
Research on children of prisoners shows that they face higher risks of poverty, school failure and later involvement with the justice system. Hereditarian theories once read that pattern as proof that crime is in the blood. Today it is understood mainly as the effect of what happens to families when a parent is imprisoned or executed: economic loss, stigma, trauma and unstable care. Mordaunt’s story is a nineteenth-century melodrama, but it touches a real question. Societies that punish parents also shape the lives of their children, and calling those children bad seeds is a way of avoiding responsibility for that.
Three key ideas
- The theory of criminal heredity (Dugdale, 1877; Goddard, 1912) held that crime is transmitted from parents to children and fed eugenic policies. Its family studies could not separate blood from poverty and stigma; modern genetics finds only partial, environment-dependent influences.
- Mordaunt, Milady’s son, hunts the men who executed his mother: he stabs the former executioner of Lille during his confession, kills Lord de Winter, acts as the masked executioner of Charles I and drags Athos under the sea when he tries to save him. Athos stabs him.
- The crack: what Mordaunt inherited was a history of execution and dispossession, not a criminal nature, and the hereditary reading protects the heroes. Even so, his murders were his choice.
Sources · further reading
- Dugdale, R. L. (1877). The Jukes: A Study in Crime, Pauperism, Disease and Heredity. Putnam.
- Goddard, H. H. (1912). The Kallikak Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeble-Mindedness. Macmillan.
- Rhee, S. H. and Waldman, I. D. (2002). “Genetic and Environmental Influences on Antisocial Behavior: A Meta-Analysis of Twin and Adoption Studies”. Psychological Bulletin, 128(3), 490-529.
- Dumas, A. (1845). Vingt ans après.
Case-file questionsFrequently asked questions
Who is Mordaunt?
Mordaunt (“John Francis de Winter”) is a villain from The Three Musketeers, analysed on KRIMINIS through the lens of criminology. The musketeers recognized Milady’s eyes in him.
Why does Mordaunt (John Francis de Winter) become a villain?
Mordaunt and criminal heredity: in Twenty Years After, Milady de Winter’s son hunts the men who executed his mother, kills his uncle, puts on the mask of Charles I’s executioner and almost drowns Athos. Dumas presents him as the blood of a she-devil. The theory of criminal heredity believed for a century that crime traveled that way, from parents to children.
Which criminological theory explains Mordaunt?
Mordaunt's case is analysed through Criminal heredity. The theory of criminal heredity (Dugdale, Goddard and the tradition they inspired) held that the tendency to crime is transmitted from parents to children like a biological trait, and it was used to justify everything from segregation to sterilisation. Mordaunt, Milady de Winter’s son in Twenty Years After (1845), is its perfect literary character: the novel calls him the son of a demon and attributes to him the same cruelty as his mother. But the story itself offers another explanation, more uncomfortable for the heroes: a child stripped of his inheritance, whose mother was executed without trial by the very men he now pursues.
