Literary choices.

I have embarked on my last leg of the Big Four Russian Novels Relay - LNT's Anna Karenina (completing the quartet of LNT's Voina i mir / War and Peace and FMD's Prestuplenie i nakazanie / Crime and Punishment and Brat'ya Karamazov / The Brothers Karamazov). As I read it, I appreciate that AK is the ONLY major 19C Russian novel with a female protagonist, even if she's a co-protagonist. Such a marked difference from the 19C British and (to a lesser extent) French novel explosions - why is this? Thoughts?

At any rate, the armchair comparativist in me dreams of a Novel Fantasy League, where anything can happen among any of the great characters of the great novels. In such a league, one of the most pressing questions for me is this:

IF Dorothea Brooke, of Middlemarch (arguably the best heroine of any 19C novel) had to choose a 3rd husband - heaven forbid Will Ladislaw's demise! - from across Europe, which one of these would she (that is, George Eliot) choose? Which would we (that is, Dorothea lovers everywhere) prefer? Why or why not?

PIERRE BEZUKHOV (from Voina i mir)?

PRINCE ANDREW (from Voina i mir)?

RODION RASKOLNIKOV (from Prestuplenie i nakazanie)?

DMITRI RAZUMIKHIN (from Prestuplenie i nakazanie)?

ALYOSHA KARAMAZOV (from Brat'ya Karamazovy)?

IVAN KARAMAZOV (from Brat'ya Karamazovy)? OR

KONSTANTIN LEVIN (from Anna Karenina)?

(I take it for granted that, the third time around, Dorothea Brooke Causaubon Ladislaw would not even consider SVIDRIGAILOV, DMITRI KARAMAZOV, or VRONSKY. But then again...what if?)

Thoughts? Bets?