does anyone have any reliable sources on Orthodox Christian doctrine? Fact checking "either way my soul will die" but idk if these guys believe in immortal souls or not. In case you wanted to know the level of pedantry I like to engage in for these things.
motivated mostly by boredom, i decided to make a chart of the extremely complicated relationships between the main bunch of the younger crowd of war and peace. details and variations below!
i used draw.io to make the chart and decided to make the little character images using makowka's picrew.
first, only the family connections:
upon planning for this chart, i really did underestimate just how many people's cousin boris really is... anna mikhailovna is related to the bezukhovs on her mother's side and the rostovs presumably on her father's side, making boris almost everyone's cousin. based on the way prince vassily and anna mikhailovna talk about count rostov and her closeness with countess natalya, i assumed that anna's relation was to the shinshin family, hence why i didn't list boris as sonya's cousin, since she is stated as being count rostov's niece. in a previous edition boris was also stated as being andrei's cousin, so... truly the people's cousin.
regarding the kuragin-bolkonsky connection, anna pavlovna refers to marya as "a relation of ours" when speaking to prince vassily, so i assume that they're also some sort of distant convoluted cousins of some kind. in previous drafts it seems like their connection was more obvious, with andrei even spending time living with the kuragins when he was a child. sorry to the maryatole and andretole crowds, but also it's war and peace, what do you expect.
additionally, in previous editions of war and peace, berg was countess natalya's cousin, meaning he would also be related to the rostovs and boris. sorry to the verg crowd.
onto the romantic connections:
dashed pink lines indicate one-sided feelings (such as with dolokhov and sonya) or mostly insignificant courtships/flirtations (like boris and marya). i considered putting anatole/natasha and hélène/dolokhov in that category, but i figured they were plot significant enough to warrant a solid line. dashed purple lines indicated previous marriages.
and for fun, the non-familial nor romantic dynamics:
this one was probably the most fun to make. again, dashed lines are primarily for one-sided beef, lmao, like vera's bitterness towards hélène for not coming to her party or sonya being angry at every woman who ever looked at nikolai. i almost put a dashed line between julie and marya's friendship due to them growing apart after julie's brothers die, but i couldn't bring myself to :( plus doing that for them would open a can of worms in relation to the back and forth in the friendships between dolokhov and nikolai and pierre that i was frankly too lazy for.
i didn't mark characters who become friends after becoming in-laws, like lise and marya or natasha and marya, because those seemed like they were straddling the line between familial and friendship and i felt like marking in-laws would make the chart even more crowded and chaotic than it already was. however, this was fun enough that i'm considering doing it for all of the main characters (a.k.a. adding in marya dmitrievna, prince vassily, anna mikhailovna, etc.) so maybe i'll do it that time around.
natasha was standing in the middle of the drawing room with a pale yet steady face when i appeared in the doorway she grew flustered and i hurried to her i thought that she would give me her hand but instead she stopped breathing heavily her thin arms hanging lifelessly just in the very pose she used to stand in as a young girl when she went to the middle of the ballroom to sing but the look on her face was quite different peter kirolovich pierre prince bolkonsky was your friend he is your friend he once told me that i should turn to you pierre sniffed as he looked at her but he didn’t speak till then he had reproached her and tried to despise her but now he felt such pity for her that there was no room in his soul for reproach he is here now tell him to tell him to forgive me yes i will tell him to forgive you but he have me your letters no i know all is over i know that it never can be but still i’m tormented by the wrongs i’ve done him tell him that i beg him to forgive forgive forgive me for everything yes i will tell him tell him everything but but i should like to know one thing did you love did you love that bad man don’t call him bad but i don’t know i don’t know at all she began to cry and a greater sense of pity tenderness and love overflowed pierre’s heart he felt the tears begin to trickle underneath his spectacles and he hoped that no one would see we won’t speak of it anymore we won’t speak of it my dear but one thing i beg of you consider me your friend and if you ever need help or simply to open your heart to someone not now but when your mind is clear think of me pierre grew confused don’t speak to me like that i am not worth it stop stop stop you have your whole life before you before me no all is over for me all over if i were not myself but the brightest handsomest best man on earth and if i were free i would get down on my knees this minute and ask you for your hand and for your love and for the first time in many days i weep tears of tenderness tears of thanks and glancing at pierre oh pierre i leave the room smiling and restraining tears of tenderness tears of joy which choke me i throw my fur coat over my shoulders unable to find the sleeves outside my great broad chest breathes in deep the air with joy despite the ten degrees of frost and i get into my sleigh
why do some americans draw characters from "war and peace" black?? It is not agressive, just ask, cuz i haven't seen any person who posts "war and peace" now, only 2018-2023 posts
I assume the primary reason you see a lot of this is that 2017 there was a pretty popular (and in my opinion very very good) Broadway musical adaptation of volume 2 part 5 of War and Peace called Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812, in which some of the characters were played by black actors, so what you're likely seeing is depictions of the characters as played by these actors, or with designs inspired by the cast more generally.
If not just that there's probably something to be said more broadly about American cultural values and how we infuse the cultural diversity of the US (one of the only things I still find good in about American culture) into our cultural imagination when we engage with and adapt stories (I think of fanart as adaptation/translation in a way, even if its a more simple form of it). But I'm too tired rn to go any deeper than that, though if anyone else wants to say anything on that in the replies/rbs I'd be interested to see it.
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