I did a fyodor analysis a bit ago, so why not do nikolai? im going to do a somewhat different format of analysis for nikolai, starting off with his surface persona,
Nikolai is all flamboyance and theatrics. A magician, a clown, a dramatist of the grotesque, he twirls, teases, and toys with his enemies—and his allies, like they’re part of some deranged circus. But none of it is for fun. Not really, Nikolai isn’t joy. He’s freedom weaponized. And his laughter is just the sound of someone screaming so beautifully, so desperately, they forgot how to stop.
1. Psychopathy vs. Performance
Nikolai walks the line between insanity and performance art. He’s not simply mad—he’s performing madness with surgical intent. Behind the smiles, his actions show,
• A disregard for human life
• A tendency to create emotional whiplash in others— compassion in one moment, cruelty in the next.
• A need to destroy control structures, including moral ones, which suggests trauma rather than aimless sadism.
• He's unpredictable, not because he lacks reason, but because his logic belongs to another world entirely.
2. Self delusion vs. Self awareness
He insists he wants "freedom"—from rules, morality, even pain. But everything he does contradicts that,
He suffers when friends die (emotional attachment)
He kills to feel unbound—but mourns it afterward
He is a man desperately trying to amputate his own soul—and failing.
3rd of all, the philosophy of Freedom,
Nikolai worships freedom the way a zealot worships a distant god, screaming up to the sky, tearing apart everything around him in hopes of ascending.
But his idea of freedom is terrifying, it consist of the following,
• Freedom from consequence
This radical freedom repeats existentialist themes (like Dostoevsky or Camus, the actual authors.), but taken to extremes. To Nikolai, freedom isn't the right to just live— it's the right to detach entirely from meaning, to transcend the burden of empathy, purpose, and guilt.
He wants to kill the part of him that feels—and he masks this with jokes and tricks, because crying would be too honest.
Last time I contributed the mythology of rats to fyodor, now I will use jesters, for, of course, Nikolai!
He dresses like a jester; a historical figure both mocked and feared. The jester could say anything, even to a king, because truth is safest when it’s disguised as comedy. Nikolai wears that role to mock the world—but also to shield himself from it.
The White Mask (facial appearance) represents,
Purity, emptiness, performance. It’s a lie he wants to believe in. That he’s nothing. That he’s free. But he’s not.
His desire to “cut the rope” is a metaphor for severing all bonds: moral, emotional, spiritual. But in truth?
The more he cuts, the more tangled he becomes.
Nikolai is not a villain. He is a man trying to annihilate the cage he sees in every breath, every rule, every feeling—and in doing so, he becomes something worse than evil,
A hollow man with a smile carved into his skin,
bleeding behind the curtain.
He is what happens when you cut every string, and still feel the pull.
