The work is often compared to the other great historical novel of the Napoleonic Wars, Tolstoy's "War and Peace". While Tolstoy's work has a greater emphasis on the historical detail and the effect the war has upon his protagonists, Thackeray instead uses the conflict as a backdrop to the lives of his characters. The momentous events on the continent do not always have an equally important influence on the behaviours of Thackeray's characters. Rather their faults tend to compound over time. This is in contrast to the redemptive power the conflict has on the characters in "War and Peace". For Thackeray, the Napoleonic wars as a whole can be thought of as one more of the vanities expressed in the title.