#cant even say that at least he could also have an affair with anatole... andrei is too principled

[sneakydraws]

if natasha and andrei had Actually gotten married, what do you think their marriage wouldve looked like? especially if the whole anatole fiasco did or didn’t happen in this alternate universe.

cant decide on weither to say did or didn’t because either way it’d be an interesting thought.

hi hiiii omg once again so honoured to be the wap men expert!! i'll be real i fully assume it would have ended up much like andrei's first marriage...

natasha is unlike lise in that she isn't in the least artificial or fond of shallow chit-chat (which is part of what draws her to andrei) but i think the "housewife whose whole life is her family, uninterested in politics, society affairs or high minded ideas" persona she grows into as an adult would have become just as tiresome to andrei as lise's charming socialite persona had. not only because he likes people whom he can spar verbally with a bit, but also (largely, even) because he would not have been able to avoid being disillusioned with ANYONE whom he'd put on a pedestal as tall as the one poor natasha ended up on. i've talked about this before but i think andrei is drawn to people he thinks are better than him and idealises them terribly, which then inevitably leads him to crash and burn once the object of his affection proves to be just another oridnary human. this is why i don't think it really matters whether the natasha we see in the epilogues rings true to the young natasha of the rest of the book - even if tolstoy imagined a more flattering future personality for her, i don't think it could have lived up to the ideal in andrei's mind. natasha's failed elopement with anatole was exactly this, but if it hadn't been anatole it would have been something else, and even if there hadn't been any massively dramatic event to bring her down in andrei's eyes, he would have been disappointed sooner or later whenever she'd fail to be the manic pixie dream girl in his mind.

now that you mention it, i can totally see a scenario wherein they marry, andrei - be it gradually or suddenly - realises she's not all he built her up to be, he sulks and distances himself from her instead of putting in the effort to get to know and appreciate her as she is, thus creating a situation not unlike that with lise. natasha, hurt and confused as to why he's so cold to her, would then be as susceptible to seduction as she was when andrei left her alone during her engagement, so i could totally imagine an affair with anatole happening then!