#Someone pull out that witcher quote about lesser evils | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

hamliet · 4 years

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Tragic Snow White: Renfri as a Mirror to Ciri

So in my initial review of The Witcher (the show version) I talked about how I thought it was fitting that Renfri’s story was the one the show adapted first, because it perfectly articulated what the story’s main questions and themes would be. At the time I’d only read the first two books and hadn’t even started the main saga, and now that I’ve finished the main saga, I think Renfri’s story is even more important than I initially thought.

The story is a tragic foil to the entire Witcher saga, with Renfri as a foil of Yennefer to an extent, but especially a foil--even more of a parallel--to Ciri. It pretty much tells you exactly how the entire saga will end, even.

Spoilers for the books and potentially disturbing subject matter below.

Vilgefortz is to Ciri what Stregobor is to Renfri.

Stregobor and Vilgefortz both want to control little girls because of the circumstances of their birth.

Stregobor hunts Renfri because she was born during an eclipse known as the Black Sun (which is an alchemy reference, fyi). He believes all the girls born then are evil and hunts them to vivisect them. He claims Renfri was strangling puppies even as a child, but he is hardly a reliable source of information, so it’s impossible to say. All we know is that he persuaded Renfri’s stepmother, the Queen, to hire a huntsman to murder Renfri. But she lives, just like Snow White... or not. Here’s how she summarizes it to Geralt:

Like Renfri, Ciri is a princess whose life is thrown into chaos and violence. For Ciri, though, it’s because her kingdom fell, and she has to run. Vilgefortz and Emhyr (and like, the mages, also the elves, also half the world) hunt Ciri because of almost the exact opposite reason: after years of genetic experiments, Ciri is prophesied to give birth to a son who will save the world from a coming calamity. However, no one thinks that Ciri might have opinions on what is done to her own body.

Vilgefortz, in particular, is notably similar to Stregobor in that what he wants to do to Ciri is absolutely grotesque: artificially inseminate her and then rip out her placenta to study it, so that he might obtain power. Both men look to treat these girls’ bodies to suit their own selfish needs for prestige while under the guise of the “greater good.” It’s disgusting, and as Geralt says to Emhyr:

“The ends justify the means,” the Emperor said flatly. “I do it for the future of the world. For its salvation.”

“If you have to save the world like this,” the witcher lifted his head, “this world would be better off disappearing. Believe me… it would be better to perish.”

Like Ciri, Renfri takes on another identity that isn’t really who she is. She becomes known as Shrike for her method of killing, but she asks Geralt not to call her that. Ciri goes by Falka when she runs around with the Rats, the name of an ancestor of hers who was a princess sent away by the king as a baby, who grew and led a rebellion, killing her family in revenge before ultimately being executed herself.

Shrike and Falka are the worst of Renfri and Ciri, and so it is meaningful that Renfri asks Geralt not to call her Shrike. She tells him to kill Stregobor to save the town, because she cannot renounce her vengeance, going so far as to risk her safety to sneak into his room and ask him. She asks him not to make her Shrike, not to let her kill, but she cannot let Stregobor live after all she has suffered.

Geralt believes Renfri can change, urges her to leave her past, cares deeply for her, yet ends up having to kill her because he wasn’t able to fully understand the depths of Renfri’s pain (I’m not saying he should have killed Stregobor, merely pointing out that he does fail here). He cannot make a decision and reacts instead of acting, and by then no good options are left. Yet, at the very least, he refuses to allow Stregobor to touch her body. The Witcher is a decently straightforward fictionalization of the argument that women have the right to control their bodies.

We see Geralt responding to Ciri’s predicament as if she is a second chance for Geralt after Renfri. Instead of being reactive, he is proactive, trying to protect her before the fall of Cintra and then trying to destroy her enemies. However, he still struggles to understand just what it was that Renfri was asking him for. It wasn’t just to act. It was to empathize with her pain. Ciri, too, winds up feeling abandoned by Geralt, and after a series of terrible events, winds up following a similarly murderous path just like Renfri. In trying to prevent a repeat, Geralt almost caused a repeat.

However, thankfully, this does not happen, because Geralt and Yennefer’s genuine love for Ciri, even if imperfect, helps Ciri pull out of her spiral, whereas Renfri was never given the chance. Yennefer is absolutely instrumental to this, because, like Renfri, she’s a bitter, emotional, and violent person, determined to get what she wants. And that is why when Yennefer is so determined to self-destruct just to control the djinn, Geralt chooses to empathize and use his last wish to, presumably somehow, tie her fate to his to save her. Ciri has seen this empathetic part of Geralt even as he tries to cloak it in other coping mechanisms, and so she has hope, while Renfri did not know Geralt beyond their time in Blaviken.

Notably, the narrative does not condemn Renfri for this even though she dies. It’s seen as a tragedy, with Renfri as someone worth mourning. Additionally, her death and her questions haunt Geralt. Her questions are the ones he essentially finally answers with the above quote to Emhyr: what is the lesser evil? And his answer is that you can’t make a right world on the foundation of hurting someone--anyone.

As Renfri states, Geralt is terrible at making decisions, and this is why he has to repeatedly struggle to make decisions and learn to pursue people and to give people second chances--Yennefer, Jaskier, Regis, Cahir, Angoulême, Ciri. Through helping others redeem themselves, he redeems himself; through finding others, in learning to empathize with them and to trust them, he finds himself.

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