The Witcher ( ) is a series of six fantasy novels and 15 short stories written by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski.
The series revolves around the eponymous "witcher," Geralt of Rivia.
In Sapkowski's works, "witchers" are beast hunters who develop supernatural abilities at a young age to battle wild beasts and monsters.
The Witcher began with a titular 1986 short story that Sapkowski entered into a competition held by Fantastyka magazine, marking his debut as an author.
Due to reader demand, Sapkowski wrote 14 more stories before starting a series of novels in 1994.
Known as The Witcher Saga, he wrote one book a year until the fifth and final installment in 1999.
A standalone prequel novel, Season of Storms, was published in 2013.
The books have been described as having a cult following in Poland and Central and Eastern European countries.
They have been translated into 37 languages and sold over 15 million copies worldwide as of December 2019.
They have also been adapted into a film (The Hexer), two television series (The Hexer and The Witcher), a trilogy of video games (The Witcher, The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt), and a graphic novel series.
The video games have been even more successful, with more than 50 million copies sold as of May 2020.
Books
Overview
{{anchor|The Witcher stories}}Short stories
In 1985, Andrzej Sapkowski was a 38-year-old travelling fur salesman with an economics degree and a love of fantasy literature.
He decided to enter a short story competition, limited to 30-pages, held by Polish science fiction and fantasy magazine Fantastyka.
Submitting "The Witcher" (1986), he had to wait about a year for the results, and came in third place.
Sapkowski feels that his work was the best in the competition, but the jurors relegated it to third because fantasy was considered to be for children at the time in Poland.
However, reaction from readers was overwhelmingly positive and Sapkowski wrote more stories in response to their demand.
The first four stories dealing with the witcher Geralt of Rivia were collected into a 1990 short story collection titled The Witcher — now out of print — by publisher Reporter.
It includes "The Road with No Return" ("Droga, z której się nie wraca"), which is set before The Witcher stories and features Geralt's mother-to-be.
SuperNowa then became publisher of the series and released the second short story collection, Sword of Destiny, in 1992.
Although The Last Wish was published in 1993, it replaced The Witcher as the first book since it includes all of its stories except "The Road with No Return" (the only story without Geralt).
Although new short stories were added to The Last Wish, they chronologically take place before those in Sword of Destiny.
Although "The Road with No Return" and "Something Ends, Something Begins" ("Coś się kończy, coś się zaczyna"), an alternate ending to The Witcher saga about Geralt and Yennefer's wedding that was written as a wedding gift for Sapkowski's friends, were later published in Something Ends, Something Begins (2000) and Maladie and Other Stories (Maladie i inne opowiadania, 2012), the other stories in these collections are unconnected to the series.
In some Polish editions, these two stories are added to The Last Wish or Sword of Destiny.
{{anchor|Saga}}''The Witcher Saga''
With the positive reader reception to his short stories, Sapkowski decided to write a fantasy saga.
He claimed that no one believed a publisher would publish a fantasy novel by a Polish author.
Blood of Elves, the first novel in The Witcher Saga, was published in 1994 by publisher SuperNowa.
The saga focuses on Geralt of Rivia and Ciri, who are linked by destiny.
Ciri, princess of a recently conquered country and a pawn of international politics, becomes a witcher-in-training.
Geralt is drawn into a whirlwind of events in his attempts to protect her.
Blood of Elves (orig. Krew elfów, 1994, English edition: 2008)
Time of Contempt (orig. Czas pogardy, 1995, English edition: 2013)
Baptism of Fire (orig. Chrzest ognia, 1996, English edition: 2014)
The Tower of the Swallow (orig. Wieża Jaskółki, 1997, English edition: 2016)
The Lady of the Lake (orig. Pani Jeziora, 1999, English edition: 2017)
{{anchor|Standalone novels}}Standalone novel
Season of Storms (orig. Sezon burz, 2013, English edition: 2018) – Set between short stories in The Last Wish.
{{anchor|Non-Witcher anthologies}}Non-''Witcher'' anthologies
In Polish:
Coś się kończy, coś się zaczyna (Something Ends, Something Begins) (2000) – Stories by Sapkowski, including two Witcher stories: "The Road with No Return" and "Something Ends, Something Begins".
Maladie i inne opowiadania (Maladie and Other Stories, not to be confused with the English e-book sampler of the same name) (2012) – Stories by Sapkowski, also including "The Road with No Return" and "Something Ends, Something Begins".
In English:
Chosen by Fate: Zajdel Award Winner Anthology (2000) - English anthology, by SuperNOVA in cooperation with the Silesian Club of Fantasy Literature, included a translation by Agnieszka Fulińska of "The Witcher" short story entitled "The Hexer".
The story also appears, with a different translation, in The Last Wish and in A Polish Book of Monsters.
A Polish Book of Monsters (2010) – English anthology edited and translated by Michael Kandel, with a translation of "The Witcher" short story entitled "Spellmaker".
Maladie and Other Stories (2014) – English e-book sampler with a translation of "The Witcher" and  "The Edge of the World" short stories, and also the first chapters of Blood of Elves and Baptism of Fire.
Spin-offs
In 2013, with Sapkowski's permission, the Polish publishing house Solaris published a collection of eight short stories, Opowieści ze świata Wiedźmina (Tales from the World of The Witcher), written by eight Russian and Ukrainian fantasy writers (including Andrei Belyanin and Vladimir Vasilyev) set in the world of The Witcher and featuring characters from the saga.
In 2017, Szpony i kły (Claws and Fangs), a similar collection of eleven short stories by eleven authors, chosen through a competition organized in 2016 by the Polish magazine Nowa Fantastyka, was published by SuperNowa.
Setting
{{anchor|History and races}}Background
The stories are set on an unnamed Continent,Maciej Nowak-Kreyer, Book of the Continent in Wiedźmin: Gra Wyobraźni Handbook, p152, 2001, Wydawnictwo MAG, Warsaw,  which was settled several thousand years earlier by elves from overseas.
When they arrived, the elves encountered gnomes and dwarves.
After a war between the elves and dwarves, the dwarves retreated into the mountains, and the elves settled in the plains and forests.
Human colonists arrived about five hundred years before the events in the stories, igniting a series of wars.
The humans were victorious and became dominant; the non-human races, now considered second-class citizens, often live in small ghettos within human settlements.
Those not confined to the ghettos live in wilderness regions not yet claimed by humans.
Other races on the Continent are halflings and dryads; werewolves and vampires appeared after a magical event known as the Conjunction of the Spheres.
During the centuries preceding the stories, most of the Continent's southern regions have been taken over by the Nilfgaard Empire; the north belongs to the fragmented Northern Kingdoms.
The Witcher saga takes place in the aftermath of the first major war between the Nilfgaard Empire and the Northern Kingdoms, with a second war beginning in the middle of the series.
Major characters
Geralt of Rivia (Polish: Geralt z Rivii), also known as Gwynbleidd (Elder Speech: "White Wolf") and the Butcher of Blaviken, is the protagonist of the series and its adaptations.
A witcher who travels the Continent and makes a living hunting monsters that plague the land.
He is linked to Ciri by destiny.
Péter Apor argues that he embodies the "neo-liberal anti-politics" spirit of the Polish popular culture of the 1990s.
Geralt has been played by Michał Żebrowski in the Polish shows and movies.
Currently he is played by Henry Cavill in the Netflix series The Witcher.
Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon (known as Ciri, from the name Zireael in the Elder Speech (meaning "Swallow"; Polish: Jaskółka)), also known as the Lion Cub of Cintra, Child of the Elder Blood, Falka, and the Lady of Time and Space, is the princess of Cintra, daughter of Pavetta and Duny (also known as the Urcheon of Erlenwald) and granddaughter of Queen Calanthe.
She is also Geralt's destiny and adopted daughter, around whom much of the plot is centered.
Ciri is a descendant of Lara Dorren and has the Elder blood, which gives her access to powers that allow her to cross space and time.
Ciri has ashen grey hair and green emerald eyes, a trait that runs in her family.
In the Polish 2002 film and 2002 TV series, she was played by .
(Polish: Yennefer z Vengerbergu) first appeared in the collection of short stories, The Last Wish, featuring in the short story of the same name.
She is a powerful sorceress, is a mother figure to Ciri, and becomes Geralt's lover.
In the Polish 2002 film and 2002 TV series, she was played by Grażyna Wolszczak.
Dandelion (Polish: Jaskier) is a poet, minstrel, bard and Geralt's best friend.
The Polish word jaskier refers to the Buttercup flower (Ranunculus).
Some of his more famous ballads were about the relationship between Geralt and Yennefer.
By the time of the saga, he is already in his 40s though it is said that he appears to be in his 30s and is sometimes mistaken for an elf.
He accompanies Geralt in many short stories and ends up joining his hansa while searching for Ciri.
He is played by Joey Batey in The Witcher TV series. (TV series)
In the 2001 Polish Wiedźmin film, he was played by Zbigniew Zamachowski.
of Maribor, a sorceress and a friend of Geralt and Yennefer.
She took care of Ciri for some time and is like an older sister to her.
She was a member of the Lodge of Sorceresses.
Triss is in love with Geralt.
The image of Triss Merigold from The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings appeared as cover girl in the Polish edition of Playboy in May 2011.
She also appeared in a live model calendar for the game in Russia.
Geography
Although no map of the universe created by Sapkowski has been released, fans have created several maps.
According to Sapkowski, the existing maps are "mostly accurate", and he uses a version created by Czech translator Stanislav Komárek.
The Continent can be divided into four regions.
The Northern Kingdoms (where most of the saga occurs) consists of Aedirn, Cidaris, Cintra, Hengfors League, Kaedwen, Kerack, Kovir and Poviss, Lyria and Rivia, Redania, Temeria and Verden and several minor duchies and principalities such as Bremervoord or Ellander.
The Nilfgaard Empire occupies most of the area south of the Northern Kingdoms.
The eastern part of the Continent, such as the Korath desert, Zerrikania, Hakland and the Fiery Mountains, is mostly unknown.
The book series mentions overseas countries with whom the Northern Kingdoms trade, including Zangvebar, Ofir, Hannu and Barsa.
Language
Sapkowski created a language for the series known as Elder Speech, based on Welsh, English, French, Irish, Latin and other languages.
Dialects are spoken on the Skellige Islands and in Nilfgaard.
In an interview, Sapkowski explained that he wanted the language to be reasonably legible to a reader, to avoid footnotes.
As he said: "In my book, I do not want for an orc telling to another orc 'Burbatuluk grabataluk!'
to be supplied with a footnote: 'Shut the door, don't let the flies in!'
"НО МЫ ЖЕ СЛАВЯНЕ!
РАЗГОВОР С АНДЖЕЕМ САПКОВСКИМ, An interview with Sapkowski for Russian monthly magazine "World of Fatnastics" Chronology
"The Road with No Return" - untranslated
"A Grain of Truth"
"The Lesser Evil"
"The Edge of the World"
"The Last Wish"
"A Question of Price"
Season of Storms
"The Witcher"
"The Voice of Reason"
"The Bounds of Reason"
"A Shard of Ice"
"Eternal Flame"
"A Little Sacrifice"
"Sword of Destiny"
"Something More"
Blood of Elves
Time of Contempt
Baptism of Fire
The Tower of the Swallow
The Lady of the Lake
Epilogue to the Season of Storms
"Something Ends, Something Begins" (non-canonical  alternative ending) - untranslated
Translations
The stories and novels have been translated into 37 languages worldwide.
The name "Witcher"
Sapkowski chose wiedźmin as the male equivalent of the Polish word for witch (wiedźma).
In his book 2005 book-interview Historia i Fantastyka Sapkowski noted that the word "witcher" is a natural male version of the English word "witch", and implied that the similarity between those two words, as well as between the German terms, was the inspiration coining wiedźmin as a new Polish word.
Polish video game designer Adrian Chmielarz claimed to have invented the translation of wiedźmin into English as witcher around 1996-1997.
Although wiedźmin is now usually translated into English as "witcher", an earlier translation of the title was "hexer" (the title of the 2001 film adaptation and the first official English translation in the 2000 short story collection Chosen by Fate: Zajdel Award Winner Anthology); Hexe and Hexer are the German words for female and male 'witch' respectively.
CD Projekt used "witcher" for the title of its 2007 English release of the video game, and Danusia Stok used it in her translation of Ostatnie życzenie that was published the same year.
Michael Kandel however used "spellmaker" in his 2010 translation of "Wiedźmin" short story for A Book of Polish Monsters anthology.
Adaptations
As  many adaptations of The Witcher works are based on stories not written by Sapkowski, it has been suggested The Witcher has become a shared universe.
Comic books
From 1993 to 1995, Sapkowski's stories were adapted into six comic books by Maciej Parowski (story), Bogusław Polch (art) and Sapkowski:
Droga bez powrotu (The Road with No Return) – Based on the short story "Droga, z której się nie wraca"
Geralt – Based on the short story "Wiedźmin" ("The Witcher")
Mniejsze zło (The Lesser Evil) – Based on the short story with the same title
Ostatnie życzenie (The Last Wish) – Based on the short story with the same title
Granica możliwości (The Bounds of Reason) – Based on the short story with the same title
Zdrada (Betrayal) – Based on an "unused idea for a short story"
In 2013, Dark Horse Comics announced a comic book series called The Witcher, based on the video-game series and made in collaboration with CD Projekt Red.
It began publishing in 2014.
Most of the stories are based on original plots not written by Sapkowski.
Film and television
The Witcher was adapted into a 2001 film and a 2002 TV series, both titled The Hexer and directed by Marek Brodzki.
Michał Żebrowski portrayed Geralt in both.
In several interviews, Sapkowski has criticized these screen adaptations: "I can answer only with a single word, an obscene, albeit a short one."
In 2015, Platige Image planned an American film adaptation of the novel series to arrive in 2017.
In May 2017, they announced that they would be producing a The Witcher TV series in cooperation with Netflix and Sean Daniel Company, with Tomasz Bagiński as one of the directors and Sapkowski as a creative consultant.
Created by Lauren Schmidt Hissrich, it stars Henry Cavill as Geralt.
On October 10, 2018, it was announced that Freya Allan and Anya Chalotra had been cast as main female characters, Ciri and Yennefer.
The first season was released on December 20, 2019, with all eight episodes available.
A second season was announced on November 13, 2019.
The anticipated release date for the second season is December 17, 2021, featuring many of the same characters and some new stars.
Netflix released an animated film, The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf, on August 23, 2021, with their TV series showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich as producer and writer BeAu DeMayo, and animation provided by Studio Mir.
A live-action prequel series, The Witcher: Blood Origin, was announced by Netflix in July 2020, set 1200 years before Geralt's time to show the origin of the Witchers.
The prequel is also being developed by Hissrich.
Games
Board games
A tabletop role-playing game based on Sapkowski's books, Wiedźmin: Gra Wyobraźni (The Witcher: A Game of Imagination), was published by MAG in 2001.
Another tabletop game based on the video games, produced by R. Talsorian Games, was planned for release in 2016 but was delayed and finally released in August 2018.
CD Projekt Red and Fantasy Flight Games released The Witcher Adventure Game, a board game designed by Ignacy Trzewiczek, in 2014 in physical and digital forms.
The digital version is available on Windows, OS X, Android and iOS.
The board game The Witcher: Old World was announced in February 2021.
Designed by Łukasz Woźniak and produced by Go on Board in partnership with CD Projekt Red, the game is set prequel to the main video game series with deck building and role-playing elements.
In May 2021, the game raised more than $3 million on Kickstarter and was planned to be shipped in June 2022.
Card games
In 2007, Kuźnia Gier developed two card games based on CD Projekt's The Witcher video game.
One, Wiedźmin: Przygodowa Gra Karciana (The Witcher: Adventure Cardgame), was published by Kuźnia Gier; the other, Wiedźmin: Promocyjna Gra Karciana (The Witcher Promo Card Game) was added to the collector's edition of The Witcher in some countries.
Video games
In 2007, a video game developed by CD Projekt Red was released, The Witcher.
A sequel, The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, was released in 2011 by the same team.
The final game of the trilogy, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, was released in 2015.
Sapkowski had no involvement with the video games, giving the studio license to create a completely new story using his characters.
All three games were positively received, with Metacritic giving them an 81, an 88, and a 93 out of 100.
They were also extremely successful commercially, selling more than 50 million copies as of May 2020, over 30 million copies being from The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt alone.
CD Projekt Red developed a card game named "Gwent" that was included in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt as an in-game activity.
They have created two stand-alone video games based on it, titled Gwent: The Witcher Card Game and Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales, both released in 2018.
References
External links
; Novel series
Official website of Andrzej Sapkowski
; Video game series
Official website
