The Origins of a Fairy Tale

I’ve watched everything that NetflixOriginally started as a disc-by-mail service, Netflix has grown to be one of the largest media companies in the world (and one of the most valued internet companies as well). With a constant slate of new internet streaming-based programming that updates all the time, Netflix has redefined what it means to watch TV and films (as well as how to do it). has done based on The Witcher, and, honestly, I’ve hated most of it. I really loved the first season of the series, thinking that it was a pretty cool, episodic, fantasy series with solid characters and great monster-of-the-week adventures, but I also appreciated how it slowly built towards an epic conclusion that promised more. Those strengths made the first season into appointment viewing, and I absolutely expected that with a solid start like that the series would go on to have many more great years.

It didn’t. The following seasons were awful, and everything else the series tried to do, like spin-off films, a prequel series, and a sidequel about characters no one liked anyway, all failed as well. It’s enough to make one wonder, “how did Netflix think this idea, this television series, could work at all?” What led them to take what source material they had, a series of books by Andrzej Sapkowski, that could lend themselves well to creating another Game of Thrones style hit. Netflix just needed its creative team on the show to not drop the ball incredibly hard… which the team then went and dropped as hard as they could.

But that first season, it’s so good. It was good enough that I thought there might be a thread of good material there that would be worth going and reading all on its own. There are nine books in the series, and then three (with one more on the way) video games based on those books, so something had to be good there, right? You don’t get this massive media franchise on the backs of a terrible series of novels. I mean, not unless you’re Twilight (and even then the ardent fans will defend that series). I had to know if The Witcher was a series that was worth reading, so I went back to the beginning of it all for the first of two short story collections that would lead into the main The Witcher saga.

The Last Wish collects six stories about the titular hero, Geralt of Rivia, along with one framework story to tie all the tales together. Geralt is a witcher, a man who, as a boy, was turned into a kind of powered-up mutant so that, once he was fully powered and fully trained, he could go out into the world and fight monsters. Witchers handle the threats no one else can deal with, but the number of witchers has been declining over the centuries as human civilization has pushed further and further out across the world and the monsters have become less and less prevalent. Geralt is one of the last witchers, and there may come a day when even he is no longer needed anymore.

The meat of the book follows Geralt on his various adventures, battling monsters. It opens with him in Temeria where, at the behest of King Foltest, Geralt is sent into a crypt where a striga resides. This nasty beast is actually Foltest’s daughter, the result of a union between him and his sister, Adda, that resulted in this horrible, cursed thing. But Geralt knows there might be a girl somewhere inside the beast, and with Foltest’s own demands ringing in his ears, Geralt heads in to try and free the girl from the curse, even if it might risk her death or his own.

This first story, “The Witcher”, sets a tone for the tales to come. Geralt is strong, skilled, knowledgeable, and good at what he does. But he doesn’t just hunt for the sake of it. While it would have been easy to go into the crypt and kill the striga while it slept, Geralt was willing to risk his own life in an attempt at saving the girl. He doesn’t want to kill her, and in fact doesn’t like to kill any sentient creature (as we learn in later stories); killing beasts is reserved only for those that lack intelligence and simply want to kill indiscriminately. He hunts monsters, not creatures.

This moral code is a strong part of his character. Others, like many of the city leaders, barons, kings, and queens he meets and negotiates with, call him out on the fact that while he says he, as a witcher, has a code, the Witchers’ Guild has no such code. Many witchers will kill anyone and anything for enough coin, but Geralt isn’t like that. He was trained to fight monsters, and he has a very specific definition about what it means to be a monster. Sometimes they can be humans even, if they act monstrous enough, as we see in another story.

We see that in “The Lesser Evil”, the third story of the collection. Here Geralt happens into Blaviken, a town that doesn’t really need his skills or his help. A sorcerer lives there, though, Stregobor, and the sorcerer tells Geralt there is a dangerous mutant chasing him and that he needs help. That mutant turns out to be a skilled and dangerous princess, one that Stregobor betrayed and tortured some years back, and she wants her revenge. The princess, Renfri, is willing to do a lot to get to Stregobor, including killing many, many people in the village unless she gets what she wants. This leads Geralt into a confrontation with her, one which he doesn’t want to engage in, because he can’t see a way out of making a choice between killing her or letting her kill innocents just so she can have her (well deserved) revenge.

This story again speaks to Geralt’s moral code. He doesn’t want to kill, even when money is tossed liberally at him (as Stregobor would do). But he can’t let innocents die if he can prevent it. He knows what his job is and even if Renfri isn’t a mutant (that part is never made clear, it’s just Stregobor’s word against hers) she has a monstrous plan. So Geralt has to stand in her way, and that forces him to become the bad guy of one person’s story even while trying to be the just warrior in another.

This first collection really works to explore Geralt’s character, to define who he is as a protagonist. I hesitate to call him a hero, not because I think the title doesn’t fit but because the character of Geralt is so well defined that I know he wouldn’t much care to be called a hero. He’s there to do a job, and whether that puts him on the side of “right” or “wrong” isn’t what motivates him. Despite the morally complex situations he frequently finds himself in, his morality is actually quite simple: kill monsters, get the job done. Anything beyond that isn’t really a consideration for our gruff protagonist.

That is, outside of the two people that help to humanize him. The first is Dandelion, his one friend. Dandelion is a bard, a very verbose, energetic, charismatic, flamboyant, and sometimes sexually gregarious poet and singer. He’s about as far from Geralt, personality wise, as can be, which is part of what makes him a good companion for the (at times) stoic witcher. Dandelion adds life and color to Geralt’s adventures, and while the stories never explain why the two become friends (nor do I think that should be explained) you can understand by the interactions why they were drawn to one another. It’s a friendship of opposites, each enjoying the company of the other because of their differences.

Meanwhile the final story, “The Last Wish”, introduces us to another key member in Geralt’s life: the powerful sorceress Yennefer of Vengerberg. When Dandelion gets himself cursed by a djinn, Geralt has to drag him to someone versed in magic that can help to break whatever the djinn has done to the poor bard. Geralt and Yennefer have a gruff series of interactions, but it’s clear the two are drawn to one another. And when the curse is broken and Geralt has to throw himself in to save Yennefer from the djinn, and her own hubris in thinking she can control the djinn’s powers, it leads them to an on-again, off-again relationship that would become a larger factor in Geralt’s life going forward.

His attraction, and eventual love, for Yennefer, also helps to humanize Geralt. He’s called an unfeeling mutant, designed to kill and not to have emotions. But Yennefer’s part of the story helps us to see that he really isn’t an empty husk (as if we had any doubts before that). He can care and feel, he just does it his own way. And, yes, sometimes he’s stupid and doesn’t know how to express himself properly, but that’s all part of being human (even if he thinks he’s more mutant than man).

This first set of stories is strong because it illustrates our protagonist so well. It sets up a fantasy world, one packed full of fairy tale creatures and monsters (each with their own fun twists), and then puts a protagonist at the center that feels out of place in the adventures. He’s a breath of fresh air, the one person going, “this doesn’t seem right at all,” even when high fantasy is trying to go on around him. And it makes us like him more because he’s out of place but the most grounded person there. His heroic tendencies, and his humanity, make him fun to read about and we get invested in his life by experiencing all these adventures with him.

The Last Wish is a great opening salvo for the eventual The Witcher saga to come. It sets many pieces in motion that could pay off down the road, but most importantly it gives us a hero (even if he wouldn’t want to be called that) we can enjoy. Geralt isn’t a perfect person, but the stories here do set him up perfectly, and I think that’s even better.