Nikolai Vsevolodovich Stavrogin is the only son of Varvara Petrovna, the richest woman in town, and the center of Demons: everyone wants him as a banner, and he refuses every request without finding where to spend his own strength.
He was educated from the age of eight by Stepan Trofimovich, served in the Guards cavalry, fought two duels, spent time in an infantry regiment where he was demoted to private, and travelled for more than three years through Europe, Egypt, and Iceland. He returns to town at twenty-five, handsome in a way that unsettles people: the chronicler says that his face, so perfect, looked like a mask. Six months later he drags an old man by the nose, kisses Liputin's wife on the mouth, and bites the governor's ear, and the town calls what it saw an illness.
He secretly married the lame woman, Marya Timofeyevna. From him come the ideas that others take seriously: Kirillov, the man-god; Shatov, the people who carry God. Pyotr invented him abroad to make of him Ivan Tsarevich, the chief who hides. He crosses the book accepting no debt, and when the Lebyadkins are killed, he tells Liza that he did not kill them and was against it, but he knew and did not stop the murderers.
He ends up hanged, after writing to Darya that he fears suicide because he fears showing magnanimity, the "last deception." The doctors rule out madness. The novel leaves open what lies behind the mask, and the chapter "With Tikhon" is what gives it depth.