Quote:
Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward
If her husband gave them to her, I would assume they are hers. (after all, the queen gave D'Artangnan an jewelled ring as payment for his trip to England, and MiLady kept the necklace from Athos (in his former life). I think you are reading too much into a minor sidebar in the book. [...]
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Except that I think ownership is at the core of my point, at least as far as this discussion touches on
The Three Musketeers. Were the Queen's jewels actuallys hers, or did they belong to the state? More relevantly, it was made quite clear in
The Three Musketeers that the woman keeping Porthos was doing so from the coffers of her husband. My assumption (I do not know for certain) is that in marriages of those times everything, probably including the wife, was legally the possession of the husband (it wasn't until 1882 that the
Married Women's Property Act was passed in the UK, I don't imagine France was too different). So there was a great disparity in how a kept woman was kept versus how a kept man was kept.