Yes, it is true! In fact, he wrote more than one. Prince of Thieves is the first, and it's an origin story for Robin Hood. It's rather different from the usual Robin Hood origin stories you get from authors like Howard Pyle. Robin Hood here is the son of a nobleman, yes, but he's taken as an infant and given to a forester to raise because his father is dead and there's someone out to get his inheritance, and so on. Robin grows up happily in the forest (I mean, who wouldn't?) and is in his mid-teens when he starts to have adventures, meets Maid Marian and Little John and Friar Tuck, and so on.
Most of the plot revolves around some friends of his who are trying to get married, but the girl's dad forbids the match and tries to have her intended killed, and there's all manner of skulduggery and mayhem, along with some hijinks. It's a totally different story from any Robin Hood I've read before, and I had a lot of fun imagining Dumas just chuckling with glee as he came up with it. It definitely stars the cheerful kind of Robin Hood that I like best. But it's almost more of an ensemble piece, really. I assume the sequel, Robin Hood the Outlaw, probably deals more with getting Robin's rightful inheritance back? We shall see! It's sitting on my TBR shelves.
Prince of Thieves was first published after Dumas's death. It has nothing whatever to do with the Kevin Costner movie with the same title, sorry. The version I read was translated into English by Alfred Allinson, and it has deliberately archaic language, which I'm assuming Dumas also affected, full of prithee and mayest thou and so on.
If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG. It has some violence and even killing, but it's totally not gory or scary or even intense. Still, people do die, sometimes in somewhat distressing ways if you have a vivid imagination, so I wouldn't give it to a kid younger than at least 10.
This is my second book read and reviewed for my fourth Classics Club list and my 49th for #TheUnreadShelfProject2022!
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