# Countess Natálya Rostóva — War and Peace character guide

> Countess Natálya Rostóva in War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy.

**Role:** supporting

**Also known as:** Countess Natálya Ilyníchna Rostóva, Natálya Rostóva, Mamma

**First appearance:** 0010-vii

## Snapshot

The Rostóv matriarch whose fierce, anxious love holds a chaotic Moscow household together, even as her children's choices strain her nerves and her finances.

## Who they are

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, but so is her dread of losing them to war, marriage, or ruin. In the novel's early-middle stretch, her anxious scheming over Nikoláy's prospects and Natásha's happiness makes her the emotional barometer of a family learning that love alone cannot pay its bills.

## Links

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