As we all know, Elves are snooty. They’re usually taller than humans, more elegant than humans, and think they’re sooooo great just because they have pointy ears or whatever.
This is complicated by the fact that, if you take a look at most fantasy worlds, they might just have a point. Usually, if something in the world is an “Elvish _____,” it’s shorthand for quality. Elvish sword? Better than a normal sword. Elvish armor? Better than crap, second-rate human armor. That’s because Elves have several human lifespans’ worth of leisure time to lounge around looking pretty and learning how to make armor just right. Humans, who keel over and die at just about the same time an equivalent elf would be starting their junior year in college, don’t have the time to cultivate that level of skill.
This familiar trope holds true in the Witcher universe, with an unexpected twist. I’ll compare Sapkowski’s Elves (or the Aen Seidhe, at least) to Tolkien’s Elves. In The Lord of the Rings, the time of the Elves is coming to an end, so Elrond and company depart peacefully to vaguely-defined lands in “The West,” which is thematically associated with the sunset, to gracefully and prettily disassociate themselves from this fallen world.
The Aen Seidhe of Sapkowski’s books aren’t given any such opportunity. Though they existed in the Witcher universe before humans ever arrived on their shores, they were eventually overwhelmed and submitted, eventually, to either vassalization or a lower-caste existence. A dwarf (in this case) named Yarpen Zigrin describes their fundamental disadvantage in The Blood of Elves:
“Because you multiply like rabbits.” The dwarf ground his teeth. “You’d do nothing but screw day in day out, without discrimination, with just anyone and anywhere. And it’s enough for your women to just sit on a man’s trousers and it makes their bellies swell… Why have you gone so red, crimson as a poppy? You wanted to know, didn’t you? So you’ve got the honest truth and faithful history of a world where he who shatters the skulls of others most efficiently and swells women’s bellies fastest reigns. And it’s just as hard to compete with you people in murdering as it is in screwing – “
Here’s a fantasy universe stripped of comforting abstraction and rendered in the cold, brutal arithmetic of murdering vs. screwing. Humans are at least the equal of Elves in the former, and their superiors in the latter, so humans have become the dominant species on the continent. No peaceful journey to the West for the Aen Seidhe of the Witcher universe. Instead, a humiliating epilogue of slow, inexorable, infuriating decline.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “The Witcher 3: Snooty Elves”
Bob Case MrBtongue is the Pele of complaining about videogames and will soon be the Garrincha of complaining about TV shows. You can find his Youtube channel at youtube.com/user/MrBtongue.
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