Milady de Winter

Milady de Winter
D'Artagnan Romances character
First appearance	The Three Musketeers
Created by	Alexandre Dumas, père
Information
Gender	Female
Occupation	Spy
Nationality	French

Milady de Winter, often referred to as simply Milady, is a fictional character in the novel The Three Musketeers (1844) by Alexandre Dumas, père, set in 1625 France. She is a spy for Cardinal Richelieu and is one of the dominant antagonists of the story. Her role in the first part of the book is to seduce the English Prime Minister, the Duke of Buckingham, who is also the secret lover of Queen Anne of France. Hoping to blackmail the Queen, Richelieu orders Milady to steal two diamonds from a set of matched studs given to Buckingham by the Queen, which were a gift to her from her husband, King Louis XIII. Thwarted by d'Artagnan and the other musketeers, Milady's opposition of d'Artagnan carries much of the second half of the novel.

Described as being twenty-two, tall, fair-haired and uncommonly beautiful, with brilliant blue eyes and black lashes and brows, Milady also possesses a voice that can seduce and bewitch. A capable and intelligent French spy who can effortlessly pass as a native Englishwoman, Milady's beautiful exterior hides a diabolically cunning, ruthless and cruel interior; she is remorseless and unrepentant for her countless "misdeeds" and often described as appearing demonic and frighteningly ugly in the instant when she is thwarted in her aims.

Milady is later revealed to be the wife of Athos, originally the Comte de la Fère, one of the three musketeers of the novel's title.

Like Athos, who sheds his true identity as the Comte de la Fère when he joins the musketeers, Milady goes by numerous aliases, so that her identity is concealed for a good part of the novel. Athos first knows her as an adolescent as Anne de Breuil, but since she was already concealing a scandalous and criminal past at that time, it was probably not her real name.

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