I know that a lot have been said about Yennefer’s storyline in The Witcher 3, “pro et contra” have been discussed thoroughly and her behavior seems to be explained, too. I also realize it’s been a long time since the release of the game, but still I want to share my thoughts, because this character is worthy of note, even though many years have passed.
I’d like to tell what I think of Yennefer’s interaction with the witchers at Kaer Morhen. Actually, it’s more about how three witchers react on her and her requests. In my opinion…
“I know your opinion!” (Oh, God)
Before I start, let us presume that narrative in this chapter is written solidly and in the way it intended to be written, and mistakes are minimal. Otherwise any explanation of any character’s behavior along with discussing the story itself is pointless.
When you arrive at Kaer Morhen and meet Vesemir, he lets you know that the witchers are deeply offended by Yennefer’s behavior. At first, it seems they have their right of not liking her – it’s all fine, because she has rather a difficult temperament. But what is really important is her position –
a mother trying her best to rescue her daughter – witchers’ behavior and understanding of this is close to… zero. They think of her as if she came to the resort and considered them her servants. What I mean is that they know she tries to find and help Ciri, they also know every lost minute can be fatal, it means no time for courtesies – and that is why Yennefer demands they help her. After all, Vesemir, Eskel and Lambert do care for Ciri, don’t they? And if the only way to get her back is taking orders from the person they dislike – how possibly their dislike can still be of any importance?
Vesemir’s argument on that matter is that Yennefer won’t deign to tell them what she’s planning to do – so he finds her guilty of arrogance and, maybe, hypocrisy. Actually, it surprised me very much that the witchers (Vesemir and Eskel) suspected the enchantress in planning something different than rescuing Ciri, something profitable to herself in some way. Because I can’t find any other explanation of Eskel’s remark that Yennefer used Geralt before (?) and could do so again. In this context Yennefer should’ve been a moral prick to seek for benefits – when I had this impression of her, I wouldn’t even let her in Kaer Morhen. So, out of many reasons, Yennefer was right not telling witchers everything. Once she does that, witchers confront her. You can easily imagine that they would’ve been even less cooperative if she told them all upon her arrival.
Geralt’s behavior is incomprehensible and dumb, too. It’s a nice thing that RPG lets players choose replies, but this chapter felt to me as an exception, because it’s impossible to avoid Geralt’s offended manner of speech as it’s included in his “neutral” lines. Here is the fragment I’m talking about:
- The guys… they’re not exactly happy with you.
- Why is that? (funny, it’s the very question I’m asking myself in this… article)
- Because you are not willing to say what you are planning. You’re treating them like pages, not including them – us, actually, because I feel that way, too.
I find it the meanest thing to say, especially the last piece of it –
“I feel that way, too” and even more so because there’s a chance Geralt knows everything by now (if you helped Eskel and Lambert first) – what the witchers were really doing instead of helping while Ciri is in danger and Yen is struggling to save her. This conversation, however, is amusing, because Yen’s previous line is about troubles she had with witchers and Geralt is like –
“well, next time you should be nicer with them… aaaghm, us”. I wonder what she did him wrong – made him swim in cold waters of Ard Skellige?
Though the whole thing is hilarious, I’d like to note the voice acting and animations in this scene – you can see Yennefer regrets she has to keep the secrecy.
It’s also absurd when Lambert delays his journey, Eskel has picnic and spends time admiring the views, and Vesemir… well, we shall come back to him later. It’s absurd because Yennefer told them about the Wild Hunt and the curse – is that not enough to wake their enthusiasm up? It seems not. As I said,
she is a mother striving to rescue her daughter. Honestly, you have to be a real bastard to not help her, yet that’s what they do. Then Geralt appears – and everything’s fine. But let’s admit – he could play gwent in Novigrad taverns for a year, come to Kaer Morhen and find Vesemir toy with Uma.
As it comes to the old witcher, his attitude towards Yennefer is shown in the first dialogue with Geralt at the gates of the castle. He laments about the sorceress throwing the bed out of the window. Then he comes to the realization this whole thing is about Triss – which is, of course, so unevident. But it is apparent that throwing beds is Yen’s peculiar habit. In other words, you have to be extremely indifferent to everything linked to Yennefer (her relationships with Geralt included) to not see the reason of her fury or dislike her badly to avoid the obvious facts. Anyway, it took him a long time to make this conclusion, and meanwhile he was hammering beneath her window. That’s what I call vengeance. Let’s think it over now. Yen arrives at Kaer Morhen, tries to lift the curse, feels desperate, because nothing works, and most likely has hard times to fall asleep. And that’s when uncle Vesemir’s moment of glory finally comes. He meets it with a hammer in his hands. It’s childish of him and it’s all fun, but it misses the context –
CIRI. IS. IN. DANGER. Dammit.
Usually Yennefer is the one who is blamed for rudeness, but Vesemir’s behavior is even more crude in the scene with the sorceress and Uma. In fact, his rudeness is almost borderless. In this conversation he dares to mention that the witchers have helped her – so he takes control from now. But there is no helping to recall – only Lambert’s boose, Eskel’s picnic and Vesemir’s constant “dog training” instead of finding the source of disturbance, for example. Anyway, being a dominant male, the old witcher provides us a vague explanation of his behavior – it turns out he knows an alternative way to cure the cursed creature. This idea didn’t come upon him suddenly, but he wouldn’t share it with Yennefer until the last moment, because she wouldn’t tell him her plans, either. In other words, he felt righteously offended. But it’s not the point – as all this time Vesemir wanted things to be his way, he agreed with Eskel’s and Lambert’s inaction. It’s clear that the witchers aren’t eager to take orders from the sorceress and that is where Yennefer needed his authority, but no, not when his man’s ego suffers. And if you come think of it, maybe Vesemir had some other reason to idle – imagine, he does his ritual before Yennefer finishes her preparations and it turns out his method doesn’t work. In that case he’d actually had to do what she says. The mere thought of it must be unbearable to him, so he kept his secret probably thinking to himself like
“ha, I’m gonna win the contest”.
Now let’s summarize – Vesemir wouldn’t tell about the other method and wasted time, wouldn’t encourage his wards to get the job done, wouldn’t determine the source of disturbance, but he would make Yennefer enjoy her stay instead. Which is wonderful. And after all this he says
“you got our help” and finally reveals his plans. Just in time, Vesemir! And Geralt’s reactions are great disappointment. You can choose to say something like “time’s running”, but you can’t say to witchers that they had a week and still did nothing before he arrived. At this point, I guess, I should be glad there remain three lines in defense of Yen –
“Fuck you, Lambert”,
“Mind your manners” and
“Got something against Yen?”. Yennefer deserves to stand up for, but the game just wouldn’t give you a chance to do so. Irritating, really, especially when you have plenty of options to complain.
That’d be enough to say, I think. It’s just the quest at Kaer Morhen really bothers me, many things there are… strange. And I realize the intention to make Yennefer as difficult character as possible so she would trigger controversial emotions. But it only triggers annoyance, because there is nothing scandalous about her, she is still the most reasonable and everyone else’s behavior is foolish and hard to explain. Her character is the one closest to life, while others remain to be cartoonish. To a certain extent, it just because it’s permissible for gaming characters to act inconsistently, to wait for a player to trigger their actions. But Yennefer is more vivid, lively character in this regard – she acts as if there is nothing else but the main quest, the only storyline, so you don’t have time to play gwent, visit brothels or look for a frying pan, and it causes many absurdities and, in particular, a delusive impression of Yennefer being rude, impatient and sometimes immoral. Inherently, this thought leads to genre and narrative issues, but maybe I’ll deal with it some other time.
