Duke de Richleau

The Duke De Richleau is a fictional character created by Dennis Wheatley who appeared in eleven novels published between 1933 and 1970.

Dennis Wheatley originally created the character for a murder mystery Three Inquisitive People, written and set in 1931 but which was not published until 1939. The character first appeared in the novel The Forbidden Territory (1933), along with his friends, Simon Aron, Richard Eaton and Rex Van Ryn, whom Wheatley dubbed ‘the modern musketeers’. The friends were reunited in Wheatley’s best-selling novel of the occult, The Devil Rides Out (1934).

He was played by actor Christopher Lee in The Devil Rides Out, a 1968 film adaptation of the second published novel in the series. A film adaptation of the Forbidden Territory had previously been made in 1934, but replaced de Richleau with a character named Sir Charles Farringdon, played by Ronald Squire.

The novels revolving around de Richleau's exploits ranged from occult stories such as The Devil Rides Out, Strange Conflict and Gateway to Hell, to more straightforward thrillers based around non-supernatural intrigue. The Duke de Richleau (1875-1960) was an aristocrat, adventurer and occultist. Wheatley described him as follows:

“The Duke was a slim, delicate-looking man, somewhat above middle height, with slender fragile hands. … His hair was dark and slightly wavy, his forehead broad, his face oval with a rather thin but well moulded mouth, and a pointed chin that showed great determination. His nose was aquiline, his eyes grey, flecked with tiny spots of yellow; at times they could flash with piercing brilliance, and above them a pair of ‘devil’s eyebrows’ tapered up towards his temples.”

He was born in Russia the only child of the exiled French nobleman and a Russian princess. In 1894, against the wishes of his father, he joined the French army, but, as recounted in The Prisoner in the Mask (1957), his military career was brought to an end as a result of his involvement in a plot to overthrow the French Republic and place Francois de Vendôme on the throne of France. This resulted in his becoming a wanted man in France and he sought asylum in Britain, where he married Angela Syveton. The novel Vendetta in Spain (1961) tells of his undercover work to investigate the Spanish anarchists responsible for Angela’s murder in 1906 during an assassination attempt upon the Spanish king.

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