Meet the Karamazov Patriarch — The Brothers Karamazov

Some people are brilliant at money and bankrupt at being human. Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov is the type: he started with almost nothing, sponged dinners as a toady, and still died with a hundred thousand roubles in cash while remaining the district's most senseless buffoon. The narrator introduces Alyosha as the third son and frames Fyodor's life through his disastrous first marriage to Adelaïda Ivanovna, an intelligent heiress who eloped with him believing he was some bold progressive spirit when he only wanted her dowry and status.

The marriage collapses almost at once. She sees contempt where she expected rebellion; he grabs twenty-five thousand roubles of her money and tries to deed her village and town house into his name until her family blocks him. Fights follow, rumor says she beats him rather than the reverse, and finally she runs off with a poor divinity student, leaving three-year-old Mitya behind. Fyodor installs a household harem, drinks recklessly, and tours the province playing the wounded husband, sharing details a decent man would hide because performing injury flatters his vanity.

When he tracks her to Petersburg she is already dead, typhus or starvation in a garret. Drunk, he runs into the street shouting Psalms of release or weeping like a child; both may be true. People, even wicked ones, are more naive than we assume. That contradictory funeralside honesty sets the tone: this patriarch will poison everyone he touches, starting with the son he kept.