The Idiot [Blackstone] characters

Appears from the start

A young Russian prince returning from years of treatment for epilepsy in Switzerland. Nearly penniless and inexperienced in society, he meets strangers with an openness that others mistake for foolishness. His sympathy and lack of calculation make him an unsettling presence among people accustomed to pride, suspicion, and social maneuvering.

Appears from the start

A dark, intense young merchant's son whom Myshkin meets on the train to St Petersburg. He is returning after inheriting a fortune and speaks with consuming passion about Nastasya Filippovna, for whom he is ready to spend recklessly.

Appears from the start

A talkative, shabby official who questions Myshkin and Rogozhin during their train journey. Quick to collect useful information and attach himself to wealth or influence, he is comic, intrusive, and more observant than his manner first suggests.

First appears in chapter 2

A prosperous general and distant connection of Myshkin's family. Practical and socially ambitious, he receives the unexpected visitor cautiously while balancing business, his household, and a delicate marriage arrangement involving his secretary.

Also known as Ganya

First appears in chapter 2

General Epanchin's capable but proud young secretary. His family needs money, and he is considering a financially advantageous marriage to Nastasya Filippovna despite his resentment of the bargain and his concern for his social standing.

First appears in chapter 3

A beautiful young woman known to Myshkin first through her portrait and through other people's anxious discussion of her future. Formerly under Totsky's control, she is at the center of a proposed marriage to Ganya and is widely judged by a society that also fears her independence.

First appears in chapter 4

General Epanchin's forceful, candid wife and Myshkin's distant relative. She is curious about the nearly forgotten prince, fiercely involved in her daughters' lives, and impatient with evasiveness or social pretension.

First appears in chapter 4

The youngest Epanchin daughter, intelligent, proud, and closely watched as a desirable prospective bride. She responds to Myshkin's guilelessness with a mixture of curiosity, teasing, and resistance to the plans others imagine for her.

First appears in chapter 3

The older man whose guardianship of the orphaned Nastasya Filippovna became exploitative. Wishing to make a respectable marriage elsewhere, he supports the plan to marry her to Ganya with a large payment attached.

Also known as Kolya

First appears in chapter 8

Ganya's good-hearted adolescent brother. Friendly and direct despite the strains within the Ivolgin household, he readily befriends Myshkin and moves between several of the novel's divided social circles.

First appears in chapter 8

Ganya's father, a retired general whose grand claims and elaborate stories contrast with his diminished circumstances. His drinking and unreliability embarrass his family, though Myshkin treats him with patience.

Also known as Varya

First appears in chapter 8

Ganya's clear-sighted sister, protective of her mother and unwilling to flatter either her brother's ambitions or Nastasya Filippovna. She faces the household's humiliations with firmness and practical judgment.

First appears in chapter 23

A consumptive young man associated with Kolya and with the group that challenges Myshkin over an alleged moral debt. Fiercely intelligent and conscious that he may die soon, he rejects condescension and insists on speaking for himself.

Also known as Keller

First appears in chapter 23

A former army officer, boxer, and would-be journalist who joins the visitors pressing a claim against Myshkin. His bluster and dubious schemes coexist with an impulsive desire to confess and to be thought honorable.

First appears in chapter 25

A wealthy, polished young officer moving in the Epanchins' Pavlovsk circle. He is treated as a plausible match for Aglaya and approaches Myshkin with outward courtesy, even when gossip and rivalry make their position awkward.