Prince Andrei Nikolayevich Bolkonsky (Russian: Андрей Николаевич Болконский) is a fictional character in Leo Tolstoy's 1869 novel War and Peace.
He is the son of famed Russian general Nikolai Bolkonsky, who raises Andrei and his sister Maria Bolkonskaya on a remote estate.
[1] At the beginning of the novel, the handsome and intellectual Andrei, disillusioned with married life and finding his wife preoccupied with trivialities, becomes an officer in the Third Coalition against his idol, Napoleon Bonaparte.
He has an epiphany while lying on the battlefield gazing up at the vastness of the blue sky, realising the triviality of human affairs under the immobile eyes of nature and that he has the potential to be happy.
Shortly afterwards, Andrei is rescued from the battlefield by Napoleon, who takes a liking to him, although Andrei no longer sees him as a great man but as "...a small, insignificant man compared with what was happening between his soul and this lofty, infinite sky with clouds racing across it...with his petty vanity and joy in victory."
Completely disillusioned with his former wartime ambitions, Andrei spends the following few years at home, raising his son and serving under his father.
He is driven back to Moscow, where Sonya (Natasha's cousin) notices him when the Rostovs are helping transport wounded soldiers.
Although Prince Andrei's wounds begin to heal and health slowly returns, he eventually loses the will to live and dies in Natasha and Marya's care.
Andrei enlists in the army and desperately tries to reach a high rank because he believes history is made at the top of command.
The Battle of Austerlitz made him see the chaos in war, and the inability of even the great figures of history to change the course of events.
During this period he is also shown to be fairly humanist, he frees his serfs and tries to improve their living conditions under influence of the thoughts Pierre expressed to him.
Reflecting on his experiences at Austerlitz, he now becomes convinced that in order to prevent the chaos on the battlefield he experienced, the military code needs to be changed.