The Three Musketeers

The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas is a famed classic adventure novel. It tells the adventurous tales of four young soldiers, three musketeers and one young man (D'Artagnan) aspiring to be one.
The narrative flow of this book went like this - D'Artagnan picks a fight with someone, his three compatriots (Athos, Porthos & Aramis) join him in the fight, they win regardless of how many odds were stacked against them.
The motives for picking the aforementioned fights keep on changing and these motives are supposed to drive the plot forward.
Herein lies my main concern, the first half of the book portrays the entire party of cardinals as the antagonists and the royalists as the protagonists but the second half transforms into a revenge plot against one of the cardinal's minions (Milady) and the punishment she receives at the hands of the musketeers is the conclusion.
As the reader, there's no particular resolution regarding the tumultuous relationship between the cardinalists and the royalists.
Frankly, it felt like the book made big promises but failed to deliver them.

P.S. I didn't mention the sexist remarks made by the musketeers here because well I should have known what I signed up for when I chose to read a classic about the machismo of soldiers in early 17th century.