Characters
Vera Sabouroff
The priestess of liberty
An innkeeper's daughter who sees her brother Dmitri sent to Siberia and swears the Nihilist oath to avenge him. Five years later she is the most wanted woman in Russia, with twenty thousand roubles on her head. She is fearless and eloquent, but she loves Alexis despite her vow, and when she draws the lot to kill him she ends by giving her own life to save his.
Alexis Ivanacievitch, the Czarevitch
Reforming prince and lover
The Czar's son, who joins the Nihilists disguised as a poor student of medicine because he loves the people. He saves the conspirators from arrest, defies his father in open council and becomes Czar when his father is shot. He keeps the crown to reform Russia and to offer it to Vera, which the Nihilists see as betrayal.
Prince Paul Maraloffski
The cynical Prime Minister
The Czar's Prime Minister and evil genius, a wit who talks of sauces and salads while he drafts martial law. Banished by the new Czar, he joins the Nihilists for revenge and gives them the key to the palace, expecting to rule again under the Grand Duke. He is the source of most of the play's epigrams.
Michael
Peasant turned regicide
A peasant and gamekeeper on Prince Paul's estates who loves Vera in the prologue and follows her to Moscow. Hardened by her teaching, he trusts the dagger over the pen, suspects Alexis from the start and shoots the old Czar from the street. In Act III he forces Vera to choose between her love and her oath.
Ivan, the Czar
Tyranny ruled by terror
The Emperor of Russia, a once brave soldier now eaten up by fear of assassination. He sees plots in every face, wants Vera tortured and orders martial law across the Empire. When his son declares himself a Nihilist he has him arrested, and moments later he is shot on his own balcony, dying with the word 'Murderer' on his lips.
Peter Tchernavitch
President of the Nihilists
The President who conducts the Nihilists' meetings, their passwords and their oath. He defends Alexis at first as 'the bravest heart among us', then leads the vote to condemn him as Czar. He admits Prince Paul into the brotherhood, planning to use him and then strangle him, and organises the plot and the signal of the bloody dagger.
Dmitri Sabouroff
Vera's captive brother
Peter Sabouroff's son, who went to Moscow to study law, heard men speak of liberty and joined the Nihilists. Caught printing their paper, he is marched in chains through his father's inn on the way to the mines, where he drops the note that sets Vera on her path. Alexis later recalls him from Siberia.
Peter Sabouroff
The indifferent innkeeper
Vera and Dmitri's father, an innkeeper who thinks the world's suffering is none of his business: 'Let God and the Czar look to it.' He hopes to grow rich from the prisoners on the new road to Siberia until he sees his own son among them. Michael later reveals that he died of a broken heart after Vera left.
General Kotemkin
The Czar's policeman
As a Colonel in the prologue he marches the prisoners to Siberia and tells Vera he will not forget her face. As General and head of the police he raids the Nihilists' garret, is sent away by the Czarevitch and never realises Vera stood before him. In the last act he gossips about the young Czar's reforms.
Professor Marfa
The pamphleteer
The Nihilists' writer, author of an article on 'assassination considered as a method of political reform'. He prepares their proclamations and letters, and admits that his forte is 'more in writing pamphlets than in taking shots', which gives Michael and Prince Paul an easy target.
Prince Petrovitch
Bored and grasping minister
A minister at the Czar's council who has been married twice and calls himself 'a perpetual martyr to ennui'. After the old Czar's death he demands sixty thousand roubles for his son's debts and says that starvation teaches the people self-denial, which Alexis overhears before banishing him.
Baron Raff
The idle diplomatist
A minister who sighs 'What a mistake it is to be sincere!' and is the butt of Prince Paul's jokes. The others turn to him for money in the last act. He is sure the young Czar's reforms will come to nothing, since 'Reforms in Russia are very tragic, but they always end in a farce', and Alexis throws the line back at him.
Count Rouvaloff
The courtier with sympathy
A minister who pities the Czarevitch's imprisonment and whispers advice to him at the council. After the old Czar's death he wants a house in the country and complains that the new Czar objects to his monopoly of the salt tax. He is banished with the rest.
Marquis de Poivrard
The reluctant governor
A courtier whose wife is admired by Prince Paul. When the Governor of Archangel is shot, Prince Paul has him appointed to the post and sent there that night, an appointment the new Czar later cancels. In the last act he asks for forty thousand roubles for his wife's diamond bracelet and is banished.