# Pétya Rostóv — War and Peace character guide

> Pétya Rostóv in War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy.

**Role:** supporting

**Also known as:** Pétya, Pétya Rostóv

**First appearance:** 0010-vii

## Snapshot

The youngest Rostóv, a boy who has grown up on tales of hussars and glory and cannot bear to be left behind when the war calls.

## Who they are

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 wants to be a hussar the way other boys want to be heroes, with no real sense of what war asks of a person. His determination to serve, against his mother's pleas, places him at the edge of the 1812 campaign and makes him a quiet emblem of how the war consumed Russia's youngest and most hopeful.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/war_and_peace/characters/pyotr_rostov
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