# War and Peace — Character guide

> Key figures in War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy.

- [Pierre Bezúkhov](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/war_and_peace/characters/pierre_bezukhov.md): An illegitimate son suddenly thrust into wealth and society, Pierre stumbles through drawing rooms and debauchery, hungry for a purpose he cannot name.
- [Prince Andrei Bolkónski](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/war_and_peace/characters/andrei_bolkonsky.md): A brilliant, restless prince who finds drawing-room chatter unbearable, Andrei chases glory on the battlefield while his young wife waits at home.
- [Natásha Rostóva](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/war_and_peace/characters/natasha_rostova.md): The Rostovs' youngest daughter, all impatience and song, Natasha feels everything at full volume and hides among flower tubs to catch a first kiss.
- [Nikoláy Rostóv](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/war_and_peace/characters/nikolai_rostov.md): A goodhearted young hussar who tips generously and rides home from foraging grinning, Nikolai chases honor and horses with equal boyish delight.
- [Princess Márya Bolkónskaya](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/war_and_peace/characters/maria_bolkonskaya.md): Devout, plain-faced, and quietly luminous, Princess Marya endures her father's cruelty at Bald Hills while her radiant eyes betray an inner life of striving.
- [Napoleon Bonaparte](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/war_and_peace/characters/napoleon_bonaparte.md): The Emperor of France, whose shadow falls across every Russian drawing room and battlefield, Napoleon looms as the age's unstoppable, feared, and admired force.
- [Mikhail Kutúzov](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/war_and_peace/characters/mikhail_kutuzov.md): Kutúzov commands the Russian forces against Napoleon in 1812, a veteran of Catherine's wars now mocked in foreign dispatches as dissolute and weak. Where younger officers crave decisive glory, he trusts time, attrition, 
- [Count Ilyá Rostóv](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/war_and_peace/characters/ilya_rostov.md): Count Ilyá presides over the Rostóv household with generous dinners, Turkish pipes, and an inability to say no to anyone. His affection for his children is genuine and his finances are a slow disaster, a tension his wife
- [Sónya](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/war_and_peace/characters/sonya.md): Sónya grows up in the Rostóv house as a dependent whose only dowry is devotion, and she gives it entirely to Nikoláy. Her constancy is both her beauty and her trap: she knows the family's fortunes need a rich match, and 
- [Vasíli Denísov](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/war_and_peace/characters/vasily_denisov.md): Denísov arrives at the Rostóv house in a cloud of sabers, pipes, and tobacco, instantly kissed by Natásha and embraced by the old count. He is a soldier's soldier — gallant, profane, hopeless with money and paperwork — w
- [Fyódor Dólokhov](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/war_and_peace/characters/fyodor_dolokhov.md): Dólokhov moves through Petersburg drawing rooms and army camps with the same cold, deliberate nerve, whether ruining a man at cards or riding past a sentinel on a night raid. He is capable of real tenderness — he kisses 
- [Borís Drubetskóy](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/war_and_peace/characters/boris_drubetskoy.md): Borís rises through society and the army by knowing exactly whom to flatter and when to smile, listening to Nikoláy's plea for Denísov as a general listens to a subordinate. He is not villainous so much as frictionless, 
- [Anatole Kurágin](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/war_and_peace/characters/anatole_kuragin.md): Anatole drifts through Petersburg drawing rooms on his looks and his sister's connections, cheerfully spending money he has not earned and pursuing married women with the same blank enthusiasm he brings to everything. Dó
- [Prince Vasíli Kurágin](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/war_and_peace/characters/vasily_kuragin.md): Prince Vasíli moves through Petersburg society with the ease of a man who has spent decades learning exactly which doors open for charm and which for persistence. His chief project is securing advantageous marriages for 
- [Anna Pávlovna Schérer](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/war_and_peace/characters/anna_pavlovna.md): A well-connected St. Petersburg hostess whose soirées open the novel.
- [Pétya Rostóv](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/war_and_peace/characters/pyotr_rostov.md): Pétya is the baby of the Rostóv family, doted on and restless, forever trying to insert himself into the adult world of officers and campaigns he has only heard about. His eagerness is both touching and dangerous: he wan
- [Hélène Bezúkhova](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/war_and_peace/characters/helene_bezukhova.md): Hélène enters every room as an event, her beauty so complete that it seems to require no effort and no thought. She marries Pierre for his fortune, manages her affairs with a calm that scandalizes society without ever qu
- [Platón Karatáev](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/war_and_peace/characters/platon_karataev.md): Platón appears in the novel's later movement, a Russian peasant taken up into the army and then into French captivity alongside Pierre. He speaks in proverbs, moves with a round, unhurried cheerfulness, and accepts each 
- [Prince Nikoláy Bolkónski](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/war_and_peace/characters/old_prince_bolkonsky.md): Prince Nikoláy Bolkónski is a man of the eighteenth century stranded in the nineteenth, brilliant, exacting, and incapable of softening. He drills his daughter Márya in mathematics, keeps his household on a schedule of h
- [Alpátych](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/war_and_peace/characters/alpatych.md): The faithful old steward of the Bolkónski estate at Bald Hills.
- [Mademoiselle Bourienne](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/war_and_peace/characters/mademoiselle_bourienne.md): A French companion to Princess Márya, whose flirtatious nature causes tension in the Bolkónski household.
- [Prince Ippolit Kurágin](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/war_and_peace/characters/ippolit_kuragin.md): The foolish, awkward brother of Anatole and Hélène, often the butt of jokes in society.
- [Countess Natálya Rostóva](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/war_and_peace/characters/countess_rostova.md): She presides over the Rostóv family's warm, improvident world of name days, sleigh rides, and mounting debts, where her tenderness and her social vanity pull in opposite directions. Her devotion to her children is total,
- [Osip Bazdéev](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/war_and_peace/characters/osip_bazdeev.md): A Mason who initiates Pierre into Freemasonry.
- [Captain Timókhin](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/war_and_peace/characters/timokhin.md): A brave, dependable infantry company commander under Bagratión.
- [Ilyín](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/war_and_peace/characters/ilyin.md): A young, enthusiastic officer in Nikoláy Rostóv's hussar regiment.
- [Princess Liza Bolkónskaya](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/war_and_peace/characters/princess_liza_bolkonskaya.md): The charming, superficial wife of Prince Andrei, who dies in childbirth.
- [Gerásim](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/war_and_peace/characters/gerasim.md): The old servant who tends to Count Bezúkhov on his deathbed.

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