The Unvanquished features the Sartoris family, who embody the ideal of Southern honor and its transformation through war, defeat, and Reconstruction: Colonel John Sartoris, who is murdered by a business rival after the war; his son, Bayard, who learns a new kind of courage by refusing to kill; Cousin Drusilla, a young war widow who rides with Sartoris's cavalry; and Granny Rosa Millard, the matriarch, who must put aside her code of gentility to survive.