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A character in Anna Karenina

Count Alexey Vronsky

A rich, handsome cavalry officer who courts Kitty for fun, falls seriously in love with Anna, and gives up his career for her.

What they want

He wants Anna, and later he wants a life of his own work and friends that she can share.

The book

Anna KareninaLeo Tolstoy, 1877

A woman leaves her husband for a cavalry officer, and a landowner in the country tries to work out what life is for.

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Who they are in the book

Spoiler-free

Vronsky is an officer in a smart regiment, the son of a worldly mother, and used to getting what he wants. Anna changes him more than he expects.

He is loyal to her, and he pays for it with his army career. What he cannot give her is the society and the son she has lost.

How Count Alexey Vronsky Is Portrayed

Appearance, manner, and tone — as the book sketches them, in our words.

  • Two hundred roublesIn Part One, Chapter 18, after the guard is killed at the station, he quietly gives two hundred roubles for the widow.
  • Following herIn Part One, Chapter 30, he gets off her train at a station in a snowstorm and tells her he has come to be where she is.
  • Frou-FrouIn Part Two, Chapter 25, at the officers' steeplechase, he makes a clumsy movement in the saddle and his mare breaks her back.
  • The revolverIn Part Four, Chapter 18, humiliated by Karenin's forgiveness, he shoots himself in the chest and survives.
  • Painting in ItalyIn Part Five, Chapter 8, he paints Anna's portrait in the French style he likes, then gives up when he sees Mihailov's portrait of her.
  • The volunteerIn Part Eight, Chapters 4 and 5, he is on the train to the Serbian war with a squadron he has paid for, suffering from toothache.
Their ending, and the commentary — spoilers aheadHow the book leaves them, what happened after, and what the record says. Open when you're ready.

After Anna's death Vronsky leaves Russia to fight for the Serbs. At the station he tells Levin's half-brother, Sergey Koznishev, that life is worth nothing to him. As a weapon he may be of some use, he says, but as a man he is a wreck.

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