I was re-reading the Time of Contempt today and it's interesting how the games have done so very much to expand on the Scoia'tael. Like Keira Metz, Henselt, Triss, and so many other characters in the games--they've really gone and taken a minor element from the books and turned it into a major one.
For a lot of fans, the Squirrels are a major part of the Witcherverse and a group they have varying degrees of sympathy for. The thing is, of course, the novels actually make it clear the Scoia'tael are more Al-Qaeda than they are plucky freedom fighters. Hell, they're outright EVIL and Yarpen's big speech in Blood of Elves is how the Scoia'tael are destroying centuries of peace while also being evil racists themselves.
Yarpen Zigren: We have to live next to each other. We and you, humans. Because we simply don’t have any other option. We’ve known this for two hundred years and we’ve been working towards it for over a hundred. You want to know why I entered King Henselt’s service, why I made such a decision? I can’t allow all that work to go to waste. For over a hundred years we’ve been trying to come to terms with the humans. The halflings, gnomes, us, even the elves – I’m not talking about rusalkas, nymphs and sylphs, they’ve always been savages, even when you weren’t here. Damn it all, it took a hundred years but, somehow or other, we managed to live a common life, next to each other, together. We managed to partially convince humans that we’re not so very different.
Cirilla: We’re not different at all, Yarpen. We’re not different at all. After all, you think and feel like Geralt. And like… like I do. We eat the same things, from the same pot. You help Triss and so do I. You had a grandmother and I had a grandmother… My grandmother was killed by the Nilfgaardians. In Cintra.
Yarpen: And mine by the humans. In Brugge. During the pogrom.
Francesca Findabair is on my "Kill Bill" list of characters I really want to see Geralt (or Ciri now that she's a playable protagonist) take down before the game series ends permanently (the others are Emhyr, Philippa Eilhart, the Last Crone, Avallach, and the Eternal Fire's head).
The games, by contrast, really make the Scoia'tael seem like they're ExtremeTM but mostly honorable. Even their nastiest action like taking all of the villagers hostage in the Second Act of the Witcher is contrasted by the fact they're desperate. Iorveth, by contrast, is a heroic and noble figure who you really come to believe the viewpoint of when you're faced with the Flotsam Pogrom and the monster that is Loredo. Even then, though, the games present an interesting conundrum in that if Geralt DOES choose the path of not agitating the locals then hundreds of nonhumans survive. Iorveth is, objectively, making the world worse for his own people.
Besides, even he is trying to be more moderate with the whole Verden business.
Which leaves an interesting point, after the Failed Free Pontar business, What is the role of the Scoia'tael in the games now?
What do we want from them in The Witcher 3?
What would we have LIKED from them in the Witcher 3?
What sort of role should Iorveth and other Squirrels we know play/have played?
And what sort of future should the Squirrels have?
