4 ideas
In 1815 the sailor Edmond Dantès is denounced as a Bonapartist agent by Danglars, who envies his promotion to captain, and Fernand, who wants his fiancée Mercédès. The prosecutor Villefort buries him in the Château d'If to protect his own career, since the letter Dantès carries is addressed to Villefort's Bonapartist father.
Faria works out who framed Dantès without any outside evidence, only by asking who benefited from his removal and who could write, lie and reach the authorities. Dantès had missed it because he assumed his friends wished him well.
The Count's plans are precise, yet they still kill Villefort's young son Édouard, whose poisoner mother is driven to despair by the exposure the Count arranges. Seeing this, Dantès concludes that a man who appoints himself Providence cannot control the consequences that spread to people outside the original wrong. He abandons the final stage of his vengeance and spares Danglars.
The Count rarely strikes directly. He builds situations in which each enemy's defining weakness brings about his fall. He feeds Danglars false market news so that greed ruins him, exposes Fernand's past betrayal of Ali Pasha so that his reputation collapses in public, and uncovers Villefort's buried illegitimate child so that his own hypocrisy destroys him.