>>7303937There are a lot of things that could have been edited out in the original draft, but you can't just remove things from what we got without losing a lot of details that explain things.
Bertucio's backstory was pretty important, Luigi Vampa's wasn't. And IIRC it was the longest chapter in the book, I remember reading it, wanting to get back to the main story, and it wouldn't end. It certainly needs to be there, but it did not need to be that long. And the Maximillien and Valentine romance could have just been scrapped entirely. But Dumas got payed by the word, so it's entirely understandable.
