This new musical adaptation of The Three Musketeers celebrates Dumas' romantic vision of honour, friendship, and lust for life. The energy and the passion of the four heroes - Athos, Porthos, Aramis and the young D'Artagnan - form the central focus, as they thread their way through the political intrigues that surround them.

The story follows the fortunes of the young D'Artagnan, who leaves home to seek adventure and glory in Paris with the King's Musketeers. It explores three intense love affairs. In the background, there is the clandestine passion of the English Duke of Buckingham for the French Queen, Anne, and all its political fall-out.

In the foreground, D'Artagnan falls in love with the Queen's seamstress, Constance Bonacieux, and finds himself entangled with the mysterious Milady de Winter, a beautiful adventuress with several pasts - one of them as the wife of Athos.

This musical version begins with D'Artagnan's farewell to his country home in Gascony.

With the gift of the family sword from his father - himself a former Musketeer - he sets out for Paris, on a somewhat decrepit yellow horse, heading for fame and fortune, or violent death.

He encounters the Comte de Rochefort, the Cardinal's chief agent, who becomes his sworn enemy, and is dazzled by the mysterious and beautiful Milady de Winter. In Paris, D'Artagnan learns that he cannot become a Musketeer until he has proved himself in battle.

D'Artagnan first quarrels and then becomes close friends with Athos, Porthos and Aramis, the Three Inseparables, three heroic and contrasting swordsmen. Although not a musketeer himself, D'Artagnan shares their life of enjoyment and chivalry, including their long-standing feud with the Cardinal's guards.

He acquires a distinctly unheroic servant, Planchet, falls head over heels in love with Constance Bonacieux, servant to the isolated Queen Anne, and as a consequence becomes involved in a palace intrigue.

To save the Queen's honour, he and his friends ride on a seemingly impossible quest to England, to retrieve the diamonds Anne has given to her lover, the Duke of Buckingham.

By his success, he ensures the Queen's temporary safety, but finds himself in direct opposition to Cardinal Richelieu's agents, the Comte de Rochefort and, more significantly, Milady de Winter.

Milady's fury at being outmaneuvered  drives the plot of Act 2. She needs to impress the Cardinal to achieve her freedom from her turbulent past. She schemes against the Queen and Constance, and seems strangely obsessed by D'Artagnan.

Buckingham raises the stakes by declaring war between England and France, and Constance is kidnapped.

Athos, warning D'Artagnan never to fall in love, reveals his own past in a story about a young wife branded with a fleur de lis, the mark of a condemned murderer.

Milady invites D'Artagnan to her house, with the promise of news about Constance. She pretends to be a woman in distress, as a means of  disarming D'Artagnan. When they kiss, D'Artagnan sees the fleur de lis on her shoulder.

To protect her secret, Milady now pursues D'Artagnan to the battlefield of La Rochelle. She fails to murder him, but does succeed in poisoning Constance, who dies in D'Artagnan's arms.

Milady is captured, tried and condemned to death by the Musketeers. Defiant to the end, Milady takes her own life.

At the close, D'Artagnan is rewarded for his bravery at La Rochelle by a post in the Musketeers, though he is reluctant to accept.

His naïve innocence is now tinged with bitter regret for having failed to protect Constance, as well as the complexity of his feelings about Milady.

The former Three Inseparables all decide to retire, but first persuade D'Artagnan to take up his sword and pursue the elusive ideal of being a hero.