Twenty Years After Dumas comes out on the side of the monarchy in general, or at least the text often praises the "idea" of benevolent royalty. His musketeers are valiant and just in their efforts to protect young Louis XIV and the doomed Charles I from their attackers. The action begins during the regency of Queen Anne of Austria (term 1643–1651), with Cardinal Mazarin as First Minister. D'Artagnan, who seemed to have a promising career ahead of him at the end of "The Three Musketeers", has for twenty years remained a lieutenant, and seems unlikely to progress despite his ambition and the debt
The Twenty Years' Crisis assessing the military, economic, ideological, and juridical facets and applications of power, Carr brings harsh criticism to bear on utopian theorists who forget to consider the exigencies of survival and competition. Carr does not, however, consider the prospect of human improvement a lost cause. At the end of "The Twenty Years' Crisis", he actually advocates for the role of morality in international politics, and suggests that unmitigated Realism amounts to a dismal defeatism which we can ill afford. The sine qua non of his analysis is simply that in the conduct of international affairs, the relative balance of power must