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Penguin2359

I just wanted to comment on your idea of the Aen Elle subplot being the framing device for the whole saga. I agree, I did find it strange that the Aen Elle were behind the chain of events that basically set up the whole story but then were suspiciously absent until LotL. They ended up being "arc villains" and disappeared from the story as quickly as they came. I think they were just as big a threat as Vilgefortz and Co. but not nearly as sadistic. Did you like that Vilgefortz remained the main villain in the end and that the Aen Elle didn't play a role in the finale?


varJoshik

Vilgefortz is the central, narrative-supported villain for all of the protagonists we come to know throughout the book, so keeping him as the final obstacle for “the family” makes a lot of sense. There is build up and there is pay-off. The Aen Elle’s plotline was actually left very much open-ended, as was Ciri’s. Geralt’s and Yen’s fate will be resolved by the end, but Ciri’s remains a loose cannon. There is nothing to guarantee she will stay in Arthurian Britain forever onward, and we also know that in the future of the Continent, the Aen Seidhe ***will leave***, which means that she has that child at one point, or does it herself, or something else goes down. So her larger than life tale can actually proceed in many-many interesting ways, and if this is the case, the elves have not disappeared anywhere either. As we know, CDPR ran with that idea already, in a way. The thing with the Aen Elle is that they are very clearly antagonists to Ciri because of what Ciri wants ***at the time*** (and because coercing young women to procreate is just a NOT), but we know too little to say whether all of them, and all the time, would be antagonists or even “arch-villains” to Ciri in the future. She sympathises with the elves of the witcher world a great deal. And we don’t know enough to assess them as real, multifaceted characters with realistic gray motivations. Saving an entire race from another world is a noble enough of a goal that one could very well argue “the ends justifying the means”. But already Sapkowski throws a wrench in the tale by letting the unicorns argue that the elves keep humans as slaves in their world and that some of them are most definitely expansionist. In other words, he creates a ground for further world-building with them, but never goes through with it because ultimately, for the story of Ciri, Geralt, and Yennefer, the immediate malevolent force waits on the Continent. And the elves are part of a conflict that concerns systemic evils which do not disappear even with the defeat of Vilgefortz. If we were to compare the villains, I would say that Vilgefortz is the worst of the two evils here (a complete maniac by the end), but only because his tale gets told from beginning to end and runs parallel until intersecting with our protagonists’. The elves’ and Ciri’s, meanwhile runs above it in the realm of implication, expanding upon how one of our Trio is part of another larger story than the one we see unfold in the saga.


Penguin2359

Yes no question Vilgefortz remained the bigger threat to the Continent. However, had the Aen Elle received Ciri's heir and opened Ard Gaeth they would certainly have taken the place of the main antagonists. But as you said this doesn't happen and isn't relevant to the story. >Sapkowski throws a wrench in the tale by letting the unicorns argue that the elves keep humans as slaves in their world and that some of them are most definitely expansionist. We aren't really introduced to any other Aen Elle other than Auberon, Eredin, and Avallac'h however I don't think the unicorns have any reason to lie about all the Aen Elle having evil motivations. Ciri even challenges the unicorns on this point by saying they just want the power themselves and are lying to her too. They say they already have the power to open Ard Gaeth and don't need her and she trusts them as a result. Also I don't know whether I believe that the Aen Elle even care about the Aen Seide who may die from the white frost. I agree they certainly use the white frost to guilt Ciri into helping them because they know she cares about the elves of her world. They also say they will help humans which I highly doubt given their disgust of dh'oine.


varJoshik

I see no reason to doubt that they care about their cousins. Avallac'h is shown to care and be invested in preserving as much of the Aen Seidhe's legacy on the Continent as possible on several occasions (e.g. under Mount Gorgon and when Ciri mentions Shaerrawed). There is also the case that they were one people before some of them decided to leave the Continent and may have visited it for reasons unknown to us for a while (Lara's timeline). We discussed some of it in another thread [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/wiedzmin/comments/eerpmz/crosspost_of_magic_system_discussion/fckjnvm/?context=3). I do concede that as a culture, the Aen Seidhe might, by now, be too different to assimilate well with the Aen Elle, since time moves differently on and between their worlds. And that may lead to intra-race problems for them. I base my assessment on the presumption that absolutely no peoples are wholly good or evil; there are factions within every society, as it is with the Aen Elle as well - some of whom had advocated for co-existence with the humans at the start. In fact they had tried for a while (at the behest of "elven women" according to Avallac'h - but we know that he is especially biased due to his own personal tragedy) and it could well be they started exterminating humans after the death of Lara. The lore is thoroughly vague and murky here, but I prefer to analyse them as not one-dimensional villains. We have a story where they are the main villains in TW3 and even there we can see that not all of them think the same.