Before he can marry his fiancée Mercédès, Edmond Dantès, a French nineteen-year-old first mate of the merchant ship Pharaon, is falsely accused of treason, arrested, and imprisoned without trial in the Château d'If, a grim island fortress off Marseille. A fellow prisoner, Abbé Faria, correctly deduces that romantic rival Fernand Mondego, envious crewmate Danglars, and double-dealing magistrate De Villefort are responsible for his imprisonment. Over the course of their long imprisonment, Faria educates Dantès and, knowing himself close to death, inspires him to retrieve for himself a cache of treasure Faria had discovered. After Faria dies, Dantès escapes and finds the treasure. As the fabulously wealthy, powerful and mysterious Count of Monte Cristo, he enters the fashionable Parisian world of the 1830s to avenge himself.
