Fernand (de Morcerf) Character Analysis

One of the plotters who places Dantes in prison, Fernand begins life as a lowly fisherman in the Catalan neighborhood of Marseille. He is Mercedes’ cousin and he is desperately in love with her, all the more so because he recognizes that she is devoted to her intended, Dantes. Fernand is devastated by this, and he joins the imprisonment plot in order to foil their relationship so that he might have a chance with Mercedes, whom he goes on to marry. After their marriage, Fernand wins some renown in the French expeditionary armies of the post-Napoleonic era, and he steals money from the Ali Pasha in Turkey (for whom he was ostensibly fighting in the Greek wars) in order to boost his social status. Fernand uses this money to become a “Count,” rendering Mercedes a “Countess,” and his son Albert a Viscount. Fernand dies by his own hand after the Count exposes him as a perfidious fraud, and his wife and son leave Paris, with Albert joining the French army as an enlisted man, and Mercedes pledging herself to a life of pious solitude.