The Duke de Richleau is a fictional character created by Dennis Wheatley who appeared in 11 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.Phil Baker, 2009, The Devil Is a Gentleman: The Life and Times of Dennis Wheatley, Sawtry, Cambridgeshire, Dedalus, pp. 280–283 . 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'.Phil Baker, 2009, The Devil Is a Gentleman: The Life and Times of Dennis Wheatley, Sawtry, Cambridgeshire, Dedalus, pp. 42–43 and 280 . The friends were reunited in Wheatley's best-selling novel of the occult The Devil Rides Out (1934).
His favoured form of transport is the powerful luxury vehicle the Hispano-Suiza.
Overview 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."Dennis Wheatley, 1972, Strange Conflict, London, Heron Books, p. 1; Dennis Wheatley, 1963, Vendetta in Spain, London, Arrow Books, p. 10.
He was born in Russia as 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.Phil Baker, 2009, The Devil Is a Gentleman: The Life and Times of Dennis Wheatley, Sawtry, Cambridgeshire, Dedalus, p. 509 . 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.
The novel The Second Seal (1950) recounts how, in 1914, the duke was recruited by the British government to obtain intelligence on the build-up to war in Vienna and Belgrade. During this time, the duke fell in love with the Austrian Archduchess Ilona Theresa. Their relationship is resolved at the novel's end.Phil Baker, 2009, The Devil Is a Gentleman: The Life and Times of Dennis Wheatley, Sawtry, Cambridgeshire, Dedalus, pp. 462–463 . By the early 1930s, when he met 'those modern musketeers' in Three Inquisitive People (written 1931, published 1939), he was living in London at Errol House, Curzon Street, Mayfair. He also owned a villa in Italy and a castle in Austria, and for his retirement he built a villa in Corfu.Dennis Wheatley, 1972, The Forbidden Territory, London, Heron Books, p. 3; Dennis Wheatley, 1965, Three Inquisitive People, London, Arrow Books, pp. 14 and 135; Dennis Wheatley, 1958, The Second Seal, London, Arrow Books, p. 179; Dennis Wheatley, 1961, Codeword – Golden Fleece, London, Arrow Books, p. 9; Dennis Wheatley, 1967, Dangerous Inheritance, London, Arrow Books, p. 9. These 'modern musketeers' came together in an attempt to prove Richard Eaton innocent of the murder of his mother. In The Forbidden Territory (1933), the Duke, Richard Eaton and Simon Aron entered the Soviet Union to rescue Rex Van Ryn, who had been arrested. In the course of this adventure, they also rescued Princess Marie-Louise, who later married Richard.
Wheatley stated that he deliberately based the characters invented for Three Inquisitive People on the four friends of Alexander Dumas' novel The Three Musketeers. Athos = Duc de Richleau, Porthos = Rex van Ryn, Aramis = Simon Aron and D'Artagnan = Richard Eaton.Phil Baker, 2009, The Devil Is a Gentleman: The Life and Times of Dennis Wheatley, Sawtry, Cambridgeshire, Dedalus, pp. 283–286 .
In the story The Devil Rides Out (1934), the Duke, Rex and Richard rescue Simon Aron who had joined a Satanic cult headed by the sinister Damien Mocata.Phil Baker, 2009, The Devil Is a Gentleman: The Life and Times of Dennis Wheatley, Sawtry, Cambridgeshire, Dedalus, pp. 326–335 . The Duke returned to Spain in The Golden Spaniard (1938), with Richard Eaton, during Spain's civil war, to remove a vast bullion cache from seizure by the Republican government.Phil Baker, 2009, The Devil Is a Gentleman: The Life and Times of Dennis Wheatley, Sawtry, Cambridgeshire, Dedalus, p. 372 . In Codeword – Golden Fleece (1946) the Duke and his friends attempted to cripple the German war effort by business intrigues involving oil barges in neutral states among the Danube. In Strange Conflict (1941), the Duke was instrumental in foiling the activities of a Nazi occultist, based in a location to be discovered, which were threatening the Atlantic convoys.Phil Baker, 2009, The Devil Is a Gentleman: The Life and Times of Dennis Wheatley, Sawtry, Cambridgeshire, Dedalus, pp. 405–407 and 434 . After World War II, the Duke and his friends travelled to South America to foil another satanic cult, this time targeting Rex Van Ryn in the tale Gateway to Hell (1970).Phil Baker, 2009, The Devil Is a Gentleman: The Life and Times of Dennis Wheatley, Sawtry, Cambridgeshire, Dedalus, pp. 571–574 . In his final years, in Dangerous Inheritance (1965), the Duke left England to live on the island of Corfu, then leaving for a final adventure in Sri Lanka.Phil Baker, 2009, The Devil Is a Gentleman: The Life and Times of Dennis Wheatley, Sawtry, Cambridgeshire, Dedalus, p. 545 .
Fictional character biography Jean Armand Duplessis, Comte de Quesnoy, born in 1875, was the son of the ninth Duc de Richleau (1847–1909) and a Russian princess of the Plackoff family line. His father loathed the French Republican regime and lived as a voluntary exile on an estate belonging to his wife in the Carpathian foothills near Jvanets on the Dniester River in what was then the Russian Empire. The nearest town was Kamenets Podolskiy, now located in the Khmelnytskyi Oblast of western Ukraine, but at that time the region was known as Podolia. His mother died in 1888, when Armand was 14 years old.Dennis Wheatley, 1957, The Prisoner in the Mask, London, Heron Books, pp. 2, 271, 274; Dennis Wheatley, 1961, Codeword – Golden Fleece, London, Arrow Books, p. 10; Dennis Wheatley, 1963, Vendetta in Spain, London, Arrow Books, pp. 9, 11, 25, 264 and 358. Wheatley erroneously locates Jvanets, or Zhvanets, on the river Prut, about 25 km to the south. The mistake is significant. Jvanets is situated to the north of the river Dniester, which between 1920 and 1940 formed the border between the USSR and Romania. If the Plackoff family estate was on the banks of the river Prut, and therefore in Romania, then the duke would have enjoyed an income from it until World War II. Conversely, had the estate been in Jvanets on the north bank of the Dniester, then it would have been expropriated when the communists took control of the area in 1920. Armand was fluent in Russian, German, Polish, English, Italian and Spanish, and his mother tongue was French. Although Catholic by upbringing, he ceased to be observant in his 20s.Dennis Wheatley, 1957, The Prisoner in the Mask, London, Heron Books, pp. 271, 339; Dennis Wheatley, 1961, Codeword – Golden Fleece, London, Arrow Books, pp. 20 and 219; Dennis Wheatley, 1965, Three Inquisitive People, London, Arrow Books, p. 14; Dennis Wheatley, 1962, The Golden Spaniard, London. Arrow Books, pp. 45, 74, 101 and 281; Dennis Wheatley, 1963, Vendetta in Spain, London, Arrow Books, pp. 24, 26.
Armand inherited the title of Duke de Richleau on the death of his father in 1909, who was killed in a bomb attack by a Russian nihilist. At the same time, he also gained the Austrian title of Count Königstein, and inherited an estate on the Danube some 25 miles west of Vienna.Dennis Wheatley, 1963, Vendetta in Spain, London, Arrow Books, pp. 251, 264; Dennis Wheatley, 1958, The Second Seal, London, Arrow Books, pp. 166 and 179. Until he reached middle age, Armand undertook soldiering as a living but diversified into commodity trading and high finance on his own account and in partnership with his friend the Jewish banker Simon Aron.Dennis Wheatley, 1962, The Golden Spaniard, London, Arrow Books, p. 69; Dennis Wheatley, 1958, The Second Seal, London, Arrow Books, pp. 18; Dennis Wheatley, 1972, Strange Conflict, London, Heron Books, p. 1. His hobbies were big game hunting, fishing and cookery, and he enjoyed fine French wines and premium Hoyo de Monterrey Cuban cigars.Dennis Wheatley, 1965, Three Inquisitive People, London, Arrow Books, pp. 105, 107 and 120; Dennis Wheatley, 1972, The Forbidden Territory, London, Heron Books, p. 1; Dennis Wheatley, 1954, The Devil Rides Out, London, Arrow Books, pp. 7; Dennis Wheatley, 1958, The Second Seal, London, Arrow Books, pp. 18 and 80.
Armand enlisted at the French military academy of St. Cyr in 1894. After graduation in 1897, he was posted for garrison duty to Madagascar where he studied the magic arts under "the most celebrated White Magician in the island". As a result of his studies into the occult, Armand became a believer in reincarnation and astrology and formed the view that the world was a battleground between the adepts of the Order of the Left-Hand Path and the Guardians of the Way of Light.Dennis Wheatley, 1957, The Prisoner in the Mask, London, Heron Books, pp. 105–106; Dennis Wheatley, 1962, The Golden Spaniard, London, Arrow Books, p. 304; Dennis Wheatley, 1972, Strange Conflict, London, Heron Books, pp. 12, 20–23 and 281. After two and half years, he was sent to a cavalry regiment in Algeria. He was promoted to lieutenant colonel and decorated with the Légion d'honneur, France's highest military award, in 1903 on returning to France.Dennis Wheatley, 1957, The Prisoner in the Mask, London, Heron Books, pp. 110, 123; Dennis Wheatley, 1963, Vendetta in Spain, London, Arrow Books, p. 25.
An ardent monarchist and imperialist with strong conservative convictions, de Richleau was nonetheless no bigot and abhorred racism. Although a soldier, he respected the tradition of chivalry and regarded war as an evil inflicted by ambitious and unscrupulous politicians. He was particularly critical of liberals, who, in his opinion, provided cover for anarchism, communism and radicalism to flourish. He opposed Freemasonry for similar reasons, as a "secret society of freethinkers and fanatics", believing the brotherhood to have been established by the mystic Illuminati and behind the violent revolutions of the 19th century.Dennis Wheatley, 1958, The Second Seal, London, Arrow Books, p. 316; Dennis Wheatley, 1957, The Prisoner in the Mask, London, Heron Books, pp. 269, 271–272; Dennis Wheatley, 1963, Vendetta in Spain, London, Arrow Books, pp. 58 and 68; Dennis Wheatley, 1962, The Golden Spaniard, London, Arrow Books, pp. 229–232; Dennis Wheatley, 1972, Strange Conflict, London, Heron Books, p. 1; Dennis Wheatley, 1967, Dangerous Inheritance, London, Arrow Books, p. 28.