57 pages • 1 hour read
Andrzej Sapkowski, Transl. Danusia StokBlood of Elves
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1994A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
The White Rose of Shaerrawedd
The narrative’s description of the rosebush at Shaerrawedd—the site of a catastrophic elvish military defeat—contrasts the ruined palace with the beautiful flowers:
From rubble colourful with smashed terracotta grew an enormous rose bush covered with beautiful white-lilied flowers. Drops of dew as bright as silver glistened on the petals. The bush wove its shoots around a large slab of white stone and from it a sad, pretty face looked out at them (195).
The visual contrast between the destroyed palace and the fresh roses juxtaposes what the young elves died for with why the older elves left. The white rose itself represents the youthfulness and pure intentions of the young elves’ last stand; they wanted to stop humans persecuting them, but their deaths endangered their race even further.
The face carved into the slab is Aelirenn, whose moniker was the White Rose of Shaerrawedd. The rose bush is named in her honor, and its flowers grow year-round. The fact that the ruins are not overrun by the plant indicates that the elves who visit maintain the rose bush, keeping it alive the same way the memory of Aelirenn’s last stand keeps their hope alive. Ciri’s experience at Shaerrawedd is her first real lesson in the impossibility of neutrality, as well as how, when one does take a stand, it is not always clear whether it was the right choice. The episode as a whole contributes to the novel’s depiction of Racial Tensions Between Humans and Nonhumans.
Scars
Eskel, Rience, Lydia, Coën, and Triss all have significant visible scars (though Lydia’s is concealed with an illusion) that illuminate aspects of their characters. The burn Yennefer inflicts on Rience is not only a visual marker of his role as antagonist (literary villains often bear some form of facial scarring) but also makes it much harder for him to hide. Eskel has a large scar that stretches from his mouth to his ear, which Ciri finds frightening at first. Eskel’s facial scar disrupts the aforementioned villain trope, as the young witcher quickly proves himself kind, sensitive, and compassionate. Lydia’s scars are a physical representation of her unrequited love for Vilgefortz—a permanent sign of her devotion to him. Coën’s chickenpox scars signify the reality of his past; they are a reminder that before the mutations, the witchers were all human children. Triss hides the scars on her chest with high necklines even though she admits they are barely visible now. She conceals them not only because they complicate her relationship with her own body, but also because they remind her of Sodden Hill. Triss has some form of post-traumatic stress, and she likely feels survivor’s guilt after her wounds caused people to mistake her for dead.
The Black Knight
When Ciri fled Cintra, she was eventually seized by a Nilfgaardian knight recognizable only by his black armor. Ciri cannot remember her interactions with the black knight, and she is afraid he did something to her that she cannot recall. The black knight represents not only the horrors Ciri witnessed during the Massacre of Cintra but also the fear she feels about her past and her future: She has to let go of her fear in order to move forward, but she cannot remember exactly what her fears entail. The black knight features prominently in Ciri’s nightmares, where the feathers on his helmet transform into a bird of prey that attacks her. Ciri’s fear of the black knight dominates her worldview: “Those Nilfgaardians are going to pay for my grandmother, pay for everything […] I want to kill him, that black knight from Cintra with wings on his helmet, for what he did to me, for making me afraid” (136). Even after Ciri revises her motivation for joining a cause, the image of the black knight still haunts her; he is “fear embodied” in an unknown man “frozen against the wall of raging, red flames” (6). By the end of the novel, Ciri has not yet recovered her memories, nor has she fully relinquished her fear of the black knight, whose unknown identity makes him that much more frightening.
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