The best Witcher waifu

That sounds very generous to her in my ears. She leaves Geralt twisting in the wind without his memory after he essentially sacrificed his soul to the Wild Hunt to save her, and refrained from reaching out to any of their mutual friends to tell them that she's even alive, let alone still relevant to their internal relationships. And then she accuses him of and browbeats him for infidelity for seeking comfort in the woman who was actually there for him after she left them high and dry to think her five years dead. And when he tries to explain and defend himself she cuts him out and refuses to listen to a word.

If they're really supposed to be in any kind of ongoing relationship then that's definitely emotional and verbal abuse given the position she's left him in - and you can add physical abuse to that if he persists in trying to defend himself to her at Kaer Morhen and she teleports him into a lake. Especially after some of the crap she pulls on him in the books. And if not then it frankly seems like a really, really bad start. I was shocked when I played the game for the first time, not too long after reading the series. And Geralt is definitely henpecked and borderline spineless for taking it without serious comment or putting her in her place at any point no matter how you play the game. She acts like an unsocialized 4-yearold towards him and treats his friends and family like dirt in their own home during the Kaer Morhen arc for no reason except because she's ornery, showing no respect for anyone.

If it was me I'd have marched right back up all those stairs, dripping and fuming, given her a serious piece of my mind and kicked her out of the tower and forced her to move into one of the holding cells instead, sans any cot or bed since she decided she didn't need hers in the first place, or out of the fortress altogether until she was ready to act like a damned adult for Ciri's sake. And there wouldn't have been another breath about continuing the relationship.

Honestly? That people find it acceptable, let alone admirable for Geralt to have to swallow that bullshit just because they're supposed to be working together to find their step-child seems pretty worrying, fucked-up and deeply sexist to me. If the genders had been reversed then the player base would have been clamoring for Geralda to tear herself (and Ciri!) away from such a toxic and obviously sociopathic dominating male influence, and saying that submitting to his arbitrary and unreasonable treatment would be proof of her own maturity and "love and respect" for... Yennifon? would have been viewed as disgustingly patriarchal.

Same for the pathetic and untrue notion that Triss is "submissive" just because she doesn't go out of her way to antagonize Geralt at every turn, and the two of them consistently treat each other with fair consideration. That's called acting like mutually respecting adults where I'm from.

So yeah, I romanced Triss with zero compunctions after that horseshit the first time around, even though I'd really been looking forward to meeting Yen. I've since unbent enough to do one playthrough where I romanced her, and it was sweet, and does turn out much more copacetic-sounding than I would have expected once Ciri is safe and the big the stressors in their lives seem to have been resolved. But I'm a roleplayer, and based on her treatment of Geralt throughout the first two thirds of the game I feel like it's a serious leap of faith for him to pursue her and bet on that being the result as opposed to a lifetime of listening to more demeaning and passive-aggressive and completely unreasonable garbage.


I was actually thinking more specifically about the situation he approaches her in at start of the first game if you begin the romance, standing over her like a dutiful, concerned lover, putting the moves on and waxing poetics while she lies in bed still hurt and recovering from a torturous spell she just woke up from after he poured a healing potion down her throat. Getting into a relationship with an amnesiac might worryingly cross the finer points of modern Western consent ethics(?), but to say that she manipulates him into it or even that she's the one who jumps into bed with him seems pretty ridiculous to me, and completely inconsistent with what actually happens.

The sizable part of the player base who have never played TW1 can be forgiven for making assumptions, but that's as much ground as I'll give on that front. So far as I can tell Geralt definitely decides to pursue her of his own accord if he goes that route. He's perfectly aware and rational and not a child, and any "betrayal" of other, prior commitments he might otherwise have felt beholden to even after the Yen's death are completely his own responsibility after he rejects learning about his own history and previous relationships. And Yen's for not being there and helping him through it, or at least setting things straight from afar when she easily could have, obviously. Blaming Triss just because he falls for her seems totally unfair. At worst, it's unprofessional and a little childish of her to admit her feelings and let him jump into bed with her.


And I'll take your word for that 'mostly happy to be included and has a sense of self-importance because of it'. Now that you mention it I might vaguely recall something about her feeling flattered for being included like that, but it's just been too long since I read those particular passages. She's certainly very much a junior and a bit-player in that company in any case, and unlike Yen whose objectivity they don't trust at all she actually has important influence over events to lose by pointlessly standing up against them, at least the way I remember it being framed. But yeah, it's been a little too long, and I wasn't very focused on that part of the story at the time.

Me too. But doing whatever he has to to find Ciri and standing up to someone who tries to walk all over him just because she feels like it aren't mutually exclusive. If Yen really wants to find Ciri too, as she naturally does, then her being willing to accept Geralt's help after she recruited him shouldn't be conditional on getting to treat him and everyone else in his life like garbage. That's insane. And call me a romantic, but I guess I just want better for him than that.

In any case, thank you. And thank you for throwing up the video, it really makes a bunch of points I'd never thought of before.