Politics are the backbone of modern fantasy: We’re so accustomed to western fantasy being married with what’s called “courtly drama” that one of the most widely watched TV shows has more to do with family blood rivalry and ideological strife than it does a quest or ancient evil.
The Witcher 3, for being mostly about a daughter trying to find her purpose, and her frustrated parents trying to find her, is still concerned with politics. Yes, there are warring nations, and archbisops, priests, kings, jarls, and every other ruler that fiction allows, The Witcher 3 also obliquely concerns itself with sexism and misogyny.
Like any other grotesquely over-built fantasy, The Witcher 3 takes place in a world that seems to be both made exclusively for the player and yet impossibly realized. Based mostly on fourteenth century Europe, The player’s journey takes place in a world in the midst of upheaval.
Our protagonist is Geralt of Rivia, a “Witcher” – a member of a group ofsupernaturally mutated monster hunters that lives on the fringes of society. Often in the story, Witchers are treated no different than the creatures they’re hired to kill. Geralt is in a way, the perfect example of the rift between the evolving theocracy and ways of the old world being left behind.
While people are fit to go about their lives generally unaware of monsters and the supernatural, every village and nation in the world still seems to fear one thing equally: Those gifted with the ability to control magic.
Yennefer of Verenberg – the ex wife of Geralt, and Triss Merigold, an occasional foil and separate love interest. Both seem at first to be defined by their relationship to Geralt, but I find in examining these women you start to see how the game uses them to tell a story of oppression.
These women both showcase something interesting about the world of The Witcher 3.
It’s a world where the two competing factions are equally afraid of women and scornful of them at the same time. To be on the nose about it, despite the fact that religion is attempting to stomp out magic, their primary agents are called Witch Hunters.
People who practice magic may be treated with suspicion, but it’s only the incredibly powerful women like Yennefer and Triss that are outright feared and hunted. Yennefer uses that fear to her advantage, feeling empathetic to the plight of mages but at the same time keenly being interested only in furthering her own goals.
Triss, on the other hand, wants to see a world where knowledge reigns supreme and uses all of her time on getting mages to safety and evading capture. Both of these women are part of what you would consider a lower class, but Yennefer alone uses her power and reputation to put herself above Triss.
There’s a sense of emasculation when it comes to how the men of The Witcher 3 view women like Yennefer. Sorceresses are almost all young and beautiful women – educated and cunning often in comparison to the men around them being superstitious and petty.
Geralt himself is a good example of male power fantasies. He’s able to directly choose who he wants to be his heir and when, he’s also stronger and longer lived than normal men. To boot, all Witchers (not just Geralt) are supernaturally linked to Sorceresses, similarly infertile and almost exclusively youthful beautiful women who have no interest in regular men.
Neither Triss or Yennefer can have children (the small caveat of Geralt having a daughter being explained as a Witcher right to claim a child as payment), so it’s interesting that in hunting specifically Witches that the religious extremists in the game are attempting to exert power over women that would be unable to be forced into siring children for them.
With the sexual hierarchy of the world firmly set now, we get into the way that The Witcher 3’s secondary narrative arc is used. Yennefer and Triss, both characters close to the events of the story – are our nearest tie to how women in this world navigate it.
Yennefer and Triss are both more intelligent than Geralt, who’s the kind of man who can only see as far ahead as his own nose. Yet as perhaps the sole Witcher that has the respect of anyone who matters, neither of these women is above using Geralt as a ploy to navigate the shitty boys club and masculine bureaucracies they’re forced to deal with.
Both women in this story navigate the world differently. Yennefer herself is a good mirror for the collection of words we call a Liberal White Feminist. She consolidates her own power even if it means entrenching or working directly with those oppressing other women/mages. Triss seeks solidarity and direct influence with other oppressed mages as a good countenance to Yennefer.
Geralt is used frequently by both women. As Yennefer’s tether to the world of mortals, she also relies on his favor with basically every member of the ruling class who matters. Yennefer frequently employs
Geralt to dodge suspicion when she can. Triss relies on his tendency to be a begrudging hero to get bailed out of bad situation after bad situation.
I would suggest anyone who thinks of Triss as reliant on the men around her to remember that her magical skill means she could move mountains if she wanted to. She’s no shrinking violent, rather, she knows that she’s being forced to play the game the men of the world want her to.
this never happens in the game and geralt never uses this expression once, so we love this image that’s on the official website
What about these small narrative devices fascinates me is how they hold a mirror up to the real world. Women today are still being forced often to rely on men to navigate the power structures that patriarchy entrenches. In general, the women that rely on us do so knowing we’re the very ones that have been complicit in maintaining those power structures.
Over on Kotaku Dot Com is an article about how the makers of League of Legends run their company in a way that enforces awful male power structures and creates a hostile environment for women to just exist in, let alone work in. In that article is an example of a situation not unlike something Yennefer does in The Witcher 3. A woman who worked for the company brings up an idea in a meeting only to have it laughed off of the table. A month later, she has a male coworker bring up the same idea and receive praise for it.
At the end of this story, the woman recants that her male coworker found himself beet-red in the meeting and embarrassed that he doubted her claim. Of course this is just one example, but women have to deal with situations like this all the time.
Rarely in a modern videogame would you see situations like this explored. Usually if they are, they’re the main point of whatever you’re playing. While having games about those things specifically is good, it’s also important that other videogames be brave enough to explore what women have to go through.
In having gender politics that closely resemble our own, The Witcher 3 allows players to be face-to-face with how patriarchy effects women of all types. Rare for a videogame to approach a subject like this without specifically being about it, it also helps the world feel that much more real.
Yennefer and Triss, and really none of the women in The Witcher 3, allow themselves to simply suffer through what the world wants to deal them. They’re both willing to do whatever it takes to survive, and both still contribute to dismantling patriarchal systems.
Politics in The Witcher 3 are mirrors of our own, with the same anti-intellectualism and misogyny controlling much of their world. Worth paying attention to is how the women in the world are the ones actively working to change the status quo. Men, even the good ones, are often complacent until women tell them otherwise.
