The inherent subversive nature of adventure in "Three Musketeers"

What struck me while reading "Three Musketeers" is how little it seemed to matter which side d'artagnan fought for; I feel he could have just as easily fought for the cardinal as he could have for the King. The antagonism between the two sides was merely the antagonism between two sports teams, nothing more serious than that. d'artagnan and the three musketeers were in it solely for the adventure, for the sheer fun of it. The Cardinal was constantly trying to win their favor, and the King to keep it, yet all around these four musketeers stayed outside of whichever ideology tried to assimilate them. For they couldn't be assimilated, you see, adventure by its very definition must continually exist outside the dominant paradigm.

I read a theorist last semester who argued that the genre of adventure was an expression of 19th-century capitalism, trying to glorify and normalize the investment of risk to produce profit. My mind immediately remembered the Authorian romances of the 12th century, wherein adventure is supposedly performing the same task for feudalism. The Soviets and the communists likewise have their own adventure heroes (e.g. Che Guevera, etc). In short, every dominant ideology tries to assimilate the genre of adventure for its own purposes, to contain it, to validate the ideology, something ideology must constantly attempt because, again, adventure by its very nature resists containment; you cannot have adventures if you are safely contained.

Adventure resists ideology; ideology may try to pull the reigns on adventure, put the bit in its mouth and safely guide it to its own ends, but a domesticated adventure is no adventure at all. To go on an adventure is to invalidate the dominant paradigm, to implicitly declare that the prevailing ideology does not contain all life has to offer. Ideology may try to reclaim adventure later, explain that that's what he wanted it to do all along, but to no avail; adventure is inherently politically subversive. Adventure-seeking d'artagnan, by his mere presence, disrupts the entire political structure of 17th-century France.

Be a political subversive; go on an adventure!