MBTI Type: ISFP

If there’s one thing that can be said for Edmond, he has morals and strict scruples. He takes his captain ashore in an attempt to save his life when he takes ill at sea, despite the advice of others on board, and even knowing that’s the island where Napoleon is exiled. He feels sorry for his friend not being promoted when he is, and assures him that he means no ill will. Given the choice to kill a man and take his place on a vessel, he knocks the man down, then persuades the captain to keep them both on, earning this man’s respect (he goes on to serve as Edmond’s servant, because he saved his life). Though his servant says he could just kill the men who wronged him and move on, Edmond insists on doing it the legal way. His intentions are to ruin them and expose their sins, not to kill any of them (he does fight Fernand and intend to kill him later, and also threatens to kill Fernand’s son if he gets in his way). He can also be stubbornly resistant to other people’s advice; the priest tells him that revenge only hollows you out, but Edmond doesn’t believe it until he has come out the other side of it, and found that the revenge has not healed his soul. He refuses to listen to anyone else about what he ‘should’ do, until he hears that Mercedes thought he was dead, and wants to be with him, and hasn’t been able to forget him since the day of their parting; she kept her promise to him, and still wears his ring. Then his heart of stone begins to crumble, and he agrees to go away with her. It’s only after he carries out his revenge that he devotes himself to God to atone for his actions. Edmond spends a great deal of the film bitter and lost in his own feelings; he gives no thought to what Mercedes went through in his absence, but is instead angry that she would so ‘soon forget me.’ When he realizes her son belongs to him, his heart changes in an instant—a moment earlier, thinking it was the child of ‘revenge,’ he was willing to kill him to get to his father. As a young man, he takes everything at face value—he knows Napoleon has been exiled, but still naively agrees to deliver a message for him on the mainland in secret, never once thinking that it might put him in danger, or be seen as treason. He endures each day in prison, counting it off and keeping track of it, but never thinks about whether he could escape or how, until he meets a priest—and then he joins him in this enterprise. He also, when the priest dies, takes his place in the body bag, steals the keys off the warden when they throw him over the cliff, and escapes, finding and working his way abroad on a ship after fighting for his life before a sea captain. He impulsively falls into bed with Mercedes after they reconcile, and slept with her before his imprisonment (a risk, since if she fell pregnant, she could be ruined). He knows the way into his enemy’s house is through his son, so he has him kidnapped so he, the Count, can ‘rescue him,’ thereby introducing them and casting himself in a positive, fatherly light. He isn’t afraid to fight and often challenges people to duels. He spends part of the story in a Fi/Ni loop, driven to revenge and ignoring the present moment (he refuses to let go of his ambitions and his dream to see all those who wronged him pay for their crimes and just move on with Mercedes). He has no idea why he’s been thrown into prison or who has betrayed him, and it doesn’t occur to him until much, much later. He obtains an education through the administrations of a priest in the prison where he serves his unlawful sentence, and devotes his life to the cause of “revenge.” He is so insistent upon his scheme that he works steadily toward it in all of his decisions, from how he builds his reputation to the eventual dismantling of all his enemies, one by one—often using the legal authorities to do so (in the case of the man who framed him, he has him confess to his father’s murder, which Edmond has discerned through intuition and spying, in front of the authorities, then arrested and thrown into prison; he leaves him a pistol as a ‘taunt’ to see if he will attempt to commit suicide). Though his servant begs him to cease in this stupid quest for revenge, to live in the moment, take his wife and son and flee, Edmond must see it through—he has to know that everyone who wronged him has been revealed for their true intentions and exposed as murderers, thieves, and traitors. He goes about this in a methodical, logical way—building up cases against people, or getting them to expose their true behaviors through confronting them and intimidating them.

Enneagram: 1w9 sx/sp

Edmond has very fierce opinions, and once he decides that revenge is owed for what he experienced, he refuses to let anyone talk him out of it. No amount of pleading, encouragement, begging, or telling him that he could ruin his life following this path drives him off his desire to right the wrongs of his life. He is angry and refuses to move on, holding a bitter grudge for the hardships enforced upon him in prison (thirteen years of starvation and beatings). He initially rebuffs Mercedes and her desire to reconcile with him and love him, by denying that he is Edmond and insisting on taking her back to her husband. He tells off his servant for allowing her into the coach. He tells her son that he will kill him, if he stands in the way of Edmond having his revenge upon his father. Anger and righteous indignation runs under everything he does—but also a sense of super-ego obligation, as he attempts to ‘make amends’ to God after he has carried out his vengeance. (It is not all purely revenge; he only kills the man who attacks him; the rest, he has arrested and taken through the ‘proper’ authorities to make up for their crimes.) His 9 wing numbs himself to the attempts of others to persuade him, and can be rather withdrawn and ‘unfeeling’ at first, but he soon finds himself attaching to Mercedes’ desire for a happy ending.

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