# Futility — Character guide

> Key figures in Futility by William Gerhardie.

- [Nikolai Vasilievich](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/futility_se/characters/nikolai_vasilievich.md): Nikolai Vasilievich is the magnetic, exasperating center of a sprawling household of wives, fiancées, daughters, and hangers-on, all sustained by mines that never pay. He endures endless waiting with a patience that fina
- [Fanny Ivanovna](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/futility_se/characters/fanny_ivanovna.md): Fanny Ivanovna runs Nikolai's household and his finances with weary competence, yet she has no legal claim on either. She pours out her grief to Andrei Andreiech in a torrent of hurt and clear-eyed arithmetic, exposing t
- [Nina Bursànova](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/futility_se/characters/nina_bursanova.md): Nina moves through the Bursanov flat in twilight, watching her father and Fanny Ivanovna quarrel and translating the family's tangles for Andrei Andreiech with unnerving composure. She visits her mother in secret, carrie
- [Zina](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/futility_se/characters/zina.md): Zina is the girl at the center of Nikolai's late-life passion, a schoolmate of his own daughter and the object of a courtship that scandalizes the household. Her people urge her to 'stick to him' for the mines and the mo
- [The General](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/futility_se/characters/the_general.md): The General presides over the Kolchak State's bureaucratic machinery, dispensing patience and procedure to petitioners like Nikolai Vasilievich. When Nikolai erupts into abuse, the General resorts to the recognized proce
- [Kniaz](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/futility_se/characters/kniaz.md): Kniaz lives on Nikolai Vasilievich's belief in the mines, treating each loan as an advance on dividends that never come. He helps sustain Nikolai's faith in return for Nikolai's faith in the shares, a mutual delusion tha
- [Andrei Andreiech](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/futility_se/characters/andrei_andreiech.md): Andrei Andreiech moves through the Bursanov circle as the friend everyone confides in, the steady ear for a mother's outrage over spying daughters and a father's perplexed grief at the theatre. His role is to absorb the 
- [Sonia](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/futility_se/characters/sonia.md): Sonia is one of Nikolai Vasilievich's daughters, stranded in the Mohovaya flat where her father and Fanny Ivanovna fight like cat and dog, worse when guests are present. She is sardonic and impatient, mocking Fanny's mal
- [Eisenstein](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/futility_se/characters/eisenstein.md): A character, possibly a foreigner, involved in the social milieu.
- [Vera](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/futility_se/characters/vera.md): A named female character with limited but notable appearances.
- [Sir Hugo](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/futility_se/characters/sir_hugo.md): Sir Hugo's presence in the story provokes the narrator into a comic bout of Napoleonic scheming, drawing columns, arrows, and circles to pair off Nina, Sonia, Nicholas, Fanny, and the rest. He is the catalyst for the nov
- [Baron Wunderhausen](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/futility_se/characters/baron_wunderhausen.md): A baron with a minor but distinct part in the story.
- [Magda Nikolaevna Bursànova](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/futility_se/characters/magda_bursanova.md): A member of the Bursanov family with a limited role.
- [Stanitski](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/futility_se/characters/stanitski.md): A minor character mentioned in the narrative.
- [Admiral Kolchak](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/futility_se/characters/admiral_kolchak.md): Kolchak hovers over the novel's Siberian chapters as the emblem of a doomed intervention, discussed by Uncle Kostia and the bookkeeper Stanitski while the Allies blunder about firing at villagers they mistake for Bolshev
- [General Bologoevski](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/futility_se/characters/general_bologoevski.md): A military general with a minor role.
- [The Russian General](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/futility_se/characters/the_russian_general.md): An unnamed Russian general appearing in the narrative.

HTML index: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/futility_se/characters