Continuing tidbits on Vasily:
7. Vasily grew up in a wealthy family, but was disowned by his parents.
Some of this backstory appears in Blindsided, of course, but we get a more personal look at what it meant to grow up a child of privilege and then have that ripped away; by the time we see him in Pariah, he’s more or less made peace with what happened, but there’s still room for him to wonder from time to time what his life might have been like had he (impossibly) bowed to his parents wishes.