Keep reading

Love(less) Sorcerers: Parallels Between Avallac’h & Vilgefortz

Speaking of mirroring, what about Avallac’h & Vilgefortz?

Context (skip to the next section for character analyses)

To dissect the parallels & contrasts between Vilgefortz & Avallac’h it’s helpful to first identify how humans & elves generally differ in the Witcher Saga; to point to the collision of the profane (or rational) & the profound (or supernatural).

For starters, elves are implied to be as close to “high fantasy” as it gets in the Witcher – inhabiting another world shaped in the manner of a Celtic paradise (much like in JRR Tolkien’s Valinor) – while undergoing “corruption” by the “low fantasy” elements which Sapkowski introduces through the Conjunction of the Spheres.  It’s a neat device to throw together the hard-nosed scientific materialism of realist fiction and the fanciful literary world of fairy tales, myths, and fantasy. Everything looks beautiful and ever-lasting among the elves – their undertakings profound, their feelings poetic – yet roots of evil exist all the same, and not at all far below ground.

For the Otherworld of the Aen Elle in the Witcher is also the equivalent of an afterlife, derived as it is from Celtic mythos. The Red Riders, for example, appear, in the Irish myth about a King named Conaire Mor as malevolent heralds of death and messengers of the afterlife. This “Other World” of the elves is also a transcendent sphere of prophetic visions, a place where the souls of the dead reside and can still touch with the living (e.g. while at Tir na Lia, Ciri talks with the vision of Vysogota). But for our present purposes the world of the Alder Folk is like the land of the dead in another very important sense – it hosts the kind of Power which is long receding & fading on the Continent, overrun by humanity.

A classic leitmotif of much of fantasy is the extinction of the Old World and the Old Way. Elves in the Witcher foster – as befits elves in Fantasy – a kind of “ecologism” in their relationship to the land and primordial magic, and elves leave worlds that become poisoned with technological (as opposed to magical) progress. As Auberon explains, once it was easy and possible – to leave. Once, in the genre’s classics. In fantasy along the lines of Tolkien, that’s what everything magical eventually does – it leaves the world behind after the final confrontation with its great Evil. In the Witcher, the Great Evil does not take corporeal form in a Dark Lord. It does not take form anywhere but in the hearts of all of its characters – the evil is small, systemic & nobody is free from its corrupting influence. Because The Continent is already run over with the profane: Eden, if there ever was Eden at all, has already fallen. The magic of the supernatural and the profound “laws” of fairy tales do not function as they ought in a world of “low fantasy” – happy endings can at best be only bittersweet. In the Witcher therefore, the Old World is also going extinct: monsters & witchers are dying out, unicorns have disappeared from the Continent, the Elder Races are being killed off, marginalised and assimilated, magic is disappearing, and the elves – who flaunt their Otherness the most out of all the Elder Races – are trying to leave again. The supernatural is either dying out or trying to escape a world that is being conquered by the profane, led by the rational, progress-oriented humanity.

Humanity at its most powerful functions as the rational, de-mystifier of reality. In contrast, elves flaunt their mystical, supernatural nature, operating in the fog between Nature and Fable where at their most powerful anything is possible.

The Sorcerer

Avallac’h & Vilgefortz differ from each other the most in a) concealment of power (or the lack) & b) the mysticism of their approach to obtaining power (or the lack). Their parallels, however, emerge through their formative experiences with love and women; through the resulting feelings of (un)worthiness and how it shapes them.

Both men are powerful sorcerers likened to wily, old foxes. In detail we meet each of them for the first time in conversation with the witcher Geralt, whom the sorcerers toy with and humble while discussing the history and future of the world. Art serves as backdrop in both conversations, which is remarkable in that art plays to appearances of truth – and appearances can be deceptive. Both Vilgefortz & Avallac’h acknowledge the fact (the latter actively forges mankind’s history) but neither particularly cares as long as the story that is being told serves their purpose. The true purpose herein being Ciri.

Both sorcerers arrive at a painting or sculpture of Lara Dorren & Cregennan to kick-start the true subject of their conversation with Geralt. Vilgefortz ends up threatening Ciri’s safety, tempting Geralt to join him to prevent harm. Avallac’h meanwhile assures Ciri’s safety, trying to persuade Geralt to leave things to Fate. Contrary to the elf, Vilgefortz expresses an open desire to shape fate. And “open” is the keyword, since Avallac’h himself is eventually open too in Lady of the Lake – about having “helped fate a little” for Ciri to have gotten to the Tower of the Swallow in the first place. Both men are in truth ruthless pragmatists ready to shape reality so as to serve their ends, yet Vilgefortz actively despises mysticism while Avallac’h wraps the pursuit of his motivations up in the profound (drapes of Purpose, Plan & Result). Poetry, as Geralt notes. Elves, they’re so poetic you could…

(Consider though that Avallac’h displays faith in the Prophecy, his zeal driven by more than mere self-possession. Or is it really still faith in himself, given he is the authority on prophesising? Vilgefortz meanwhile does not believe in any divinity but his own. Both wizards see themselves as the natural elite with aspirations to godliness – Vilgefortz contends magicians are “nature themselves” by subjugating the physical reality; Avallac’h, harbouring truly modest aspirations of control over all time and space, first presents himself as a “godly”, omniscient being with an angelic halo around his head.)

At any rate, the sorcerers’ meetings with Geralt arrive at a philosophical conclusion: at Thanedd, Geralt owns up to being a fatalist – not wishing to pick sides, preferring to react. Meeting with Avallac’h concludes in the opposite – Geralt accuses the Sage of fatalism (which is not wholly accurate) and, stirred by his love for Ciri, is no longer able to stand aside and merely adapt to the actions of others. For this confession, Avallac’h – who can empathise with the partiality love brings but also has the chessboard working for him already – ends up providing Geralt with “legs” in the form of a knocker, who carries the witcher to the rescue of his friends. In contrast, Vilgefortz who disdains having his will to power dominated by love – and who is still actively manoeuvring at Thanedd – warns Geralt one more time, but once the witcher stands against him, shatters his leg.

Love

Arriving at the main parallel between the two wizards, therefore, we arrive at a question of how each relates to love.

Vilgefortz came to hate the sorceress he was in love with; the woman reminded him too much of his mother, who had found him unworthy to keep. As helpless to control his fate as he had been as an orphan, Vilgefortz found himself unable to dominate the sorceress and felt her domination of himself was humiliating. Out of the need to control and master derives much of Vilgefortz’s later philosophy and misogynistic behaviour – he equates Power, for which he hungers and in the wielding of which he is exceptionally talented, with the ability to subdue and control nature while also equating women with nature.

Avallac’h retains his love for Lara hundreds of years after her death; it survives amidst coagulated bitterness, hatred, and martyrdom. He acknowledges Lara’s feelings toward Cregennan, publically directing his hatred toward the human who took his love from him; yet some of this gracious acknowledgement is given almost as a matter of course, as if it was a matter of displaying the virtuosity of his own soul. Remember, the drapes of poetry matter to elves. Even while sneering at elven commingling with humans, Avallac’h pays lip service to the free will and calculations of elven women: in the bestowal of their favour resided power – if bestowed correctly, naturally – but alas, a beautiful exercise of idealism and free will led to destruction and loss of control (over all time and space, no less).

The mixture of complicated feelings Vilgefortz felt for the unnamed sorceress can prove illuminating in thinking about Avallac’h’s feelings post-Lara’s death as well: ‘… a mixture of fear, regret, fury, pangs of conscience and the need for expiation, a sense of guilt, loss, and hurt. A perverse need for suffering and atonement.’

Vilgefortz redefines his love for the sorceress as hate. Avallac’h never stops defining his feelings, however vicious, as love.

Power

In their dealings with Ciri, both men are interested in power. Power, which put bluntly comes through handling a woman’s body. Interestingly though, love’s illusion-inducing quality features into each sorcerer’s choice of means for achieving power. And the elven sorcerer is quintessentially “elven” and the human warlock perfectly human in this. Avallac’h maintains several poetic illusions before himself and Ciri, including one of “choice”, whereas Vilgefortz does away with all feel-good stories and gives no choice whatsoever.

For starters, the story of Elder Blood should come full circle: destiny – that elusive, unknowable force of poetry – should oblige Ciri to meet Aen Elle’s request. Destined and destiny – strange girl woven into movement and change, into annihilation and rebirth. Profundity aside, Avallac’h also argues his claim (!) through an inherently noble aim – saving the Aen Seidhe from extinction; allowing elves (and everyone who is similarly in danger) to leave that Old World that is dying (ice age is secondary to the fact that for the elves and everything supernatural, the world has been ending for some time already on the Continent). He also pushes on contractualist fairness: debts are a form of fundamental social contract that must always be honoured, the Aen Saevherne honour debts, and Ciri as a descendant of Aen Saevherne inherits a debt of honour. That’s a lot of effort put into reasoning with an incubator. Why bother?

Because Vilgefortz wastes no effort post-Thanedd on justifications, reasoning, or, heavens forbid, mysticism about Destiny and Elder Blood.

Ciri is a piece of rare biological matter and he, Vilgefortz of Roggeveen, requires Ciri’s placenta. Her womb. Ciri or what’s left of her can go to Bonhart after. Vilgefortz confesses to being envious of Ciri’s talent, dying to try it himself – him, the one who dominates nature the perfect representation of which is a woman. Unlike Avallac’h, Vilgefortz expects nor seeks co-operation. Unlike Avallac’h, he does not deem Ciri’s showing up at Stygga destiny (which would be poetic – for death to show up at hell) nor anything more than brave stupidity. He will not put up with the will of another, he will not wait, and he will not “do it more normally” either. Not “as nature intended.” Because nature is Woman’s domain and conspires against men like him. Conspires through this illusion of “love” which is bound to arise when acting as nature intends us to; when acting in the manner Avallac’h would have had Ciri act to relinquish her power back to the elves.

Avallac’h seeks Ciri’s surrender to fate in co-operation with him, voluntarily, willingly. Without violence and compulsion. As it should have been with Lara; in a tale where happy endings are possible. Where Vilgefortz needs Ciri’s placenta and nothing more, Avallac’h needs Ciri’s child and possibly something more. Several times it is implied he would prefer to retain Ciri, and aside Eredin’s warning of Avallac’h and Auberon never intending to let the Swallow go, Avallac’h also expresses hope Ciri will choose to stay with her child. A mother’s love tends to overshadow all else. The parental bond – a bond of destiny – has love welding it in place. It took Lara away; there is no reason to think it would not happen again with a young, inexperienced girl.

Therefore what Vilgefortz would deem an illusion and mysticism actually serves as a valid strategy; it’s just that Vilgefortz despises such elusive means of domination, seeing as he was once the target of them via an unnamed sorceress. Avallac’h, on the contrary, doesn’t discard any knowledge that can advantage him. Or perhaps he just cannot help it, because unlike Vilgefortz he has never stopped defining his feelings, however hateful deep down, as love. Neither his own position as that of a martyr – something profound and elevated, rather than simply “a shit turn.” Because as Vilgefortz notes the emptiness he felt after leaving the sorceress wasn’t the absence of the woman herself, but the absence of everything he had been feeling – the profundity of suffering. So in order to exert control over fate, Vilgefortz neutralised himself to this paradox via his hate, while Avallac’h weaponized it through his love.

Especially since unlike Vilgefortz, the man, Avallac’h, the elf, is not keen on unnecessary harm, “his face, exceptionally, contorting” at the prospect of Ciri angering Auberon and having herself sent to his laboratory. Vilgefortz has no qualms about harming Ciri (or anyone else), for aside being a sadist, humanity – as befits humanity in Fantasy – ploughs the land and rips nature’s gifts from Her by exerting mastery over Her. To elves nature hands Her gifts freely.

Or perhaps that’s the illusion a powerful narrative would have us believe?