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aenhenichaer · 3 years ago

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Several Underappreciated Details About Aen Elle

1. Auberon is over 1500 years old in “human time”.

The Aen Elle left the Continent before the Conjunction of the spheres (1500 years ago). Time passes differently in the world of the Alder Folk than on the Continent. Time does not matter in their world (e.g. Tir na Nog was a land of everlasting youth). Therefore –

2. Knowing Ones (plural!) possess the same abilities Ciri, or Ciri’s descendant (x 1000), possesses. Which is – moving their own individual person between worlds.

“…the gene that was specially constructed by us, may save the denizens of that world. We have reason to believe that the descendant of Lara–and of you, naturally–will possess abilities a thousandfold more powerful than that which we, the Knowing Ones, possess. And which you possess in rudimentary form. You know what this is about, don’t you?” “In short, it concerns the possibility of transferring between worlds not only oneself, one’s own–indeed–insignificant person. It concerns the opening of Ard Gaeth, the great and permanent Gateway, through which everyone would pass. We managed to do it before the Conjunction, and we want to achieve it now.” – Avallac’h

“At that time (before the Conjunction) – you’ll be astonished by what I say – one could move quite freely between worlds. With a little talent and skill, naturally. Beyond all doubt you understand what I have in mind.” – Auberon

“The Conjunction came and even more worlds were created. But the door is closed. It is closed to all apart from a handful of chosen ones.” – Auberon

Aen Saevherne (e.g. Avallac’h & Auberon) carry Aen Hen Ichaer.

Due to carrying Aen Hen Ichaer, they are participants as well as conductors of the elves’ most ludicrous genetic engineering project.

3. Avallac’h kept an eye on Ciri on the Continent.

“News spreads astonishingly quickly. Astonishingly far. And astonishingly deep.” – Geralt

This is enabled by the scrying Aen Saevherne are able to do via special substances. The walls of Tir ná Béa Arainne allow this (“The walls of Tir ná Béa Arainne have special qualities. And I, though I say it as shouldn’t, have special abilities.”) as well as magic mirrors which show Ciri the present-future in Lady of the Lake (“Here are your friends! Have a look.” He turned around and abruptly tossed the fisstech-strewn looking glass to her. At first she only saw her own, blurred reflection in the dirtied glass. But almost immediately the looking glass brightened up milkily, filled up with smoke. And then with an image.).

At Tir ná Béa Arainne, scrying works like this: “Think intensively. About how much she needs you right now. Declare, so to speak, the mental willingness to help. Think about how you want to run and rescue her, be beside her; something like that.”

One wonders how many times Avallac’h applied the same means to see how Ciri was doing, but from his speech it is clear he has done so.

‘Firstly, it’s too late now, the serious evil has already occurred; you’re no longer in a position to save the girl from it. Secondly, now that she has taken the right road, the Swallow will cope wonderfully by herself. She carries too mighty a force inside her to fear anything. She doesn’t need your help. And thirdly… Hmmm…’ ‘I’m still all ears, Avallac’h. All ears!’ ‘Thirdly… Thirdly, someone else will help her now. You can’t be so arrogant as to think that the girl’s destiny is exclusively bound to you.’

Two observations follow:

When Avallac’h comments about humans taking no issue with dying just as long as they get to f*ck beforehand, this is carried – alongside his disdain for Cregennan & contempt for humanity’s prodigious ability to reproduce – by likely having witnessed through the walls of Tir ná Béa Arainne (or a magic mirror) Hotspurn’s & Ciri’s first/last moments.

‘Stay with me. I’ll keep my word, Snow Queen. I’ll cover you with emeralds… I’ll shower you in them…’ ‘Indeed, this is a wonderful time for making jokes.’ ‘It’s always a good time for jokes.’ Hotspurn suddenly seized her, pulled her close and began to undo her blouse. Unceremoniously, but unhurriedly. Ciri pushed him away. ‘Indeed!’ she snapped. ‘A wonderful time for that too!’ ‘It’s always a good time for that. Especially for me, right now. I told you, it’s my spine. There may be complications tomorrow…’

Ciri’s & Vysogota’s conversations in the Pereplut swamps were not private.

During their talks Sapkowski employs a very pointed literary framing device. With tiny variations, for 7 times up until the chapter where Geralt meets Avallac’h (!), it goes like this:

“Had someone crept up to the cottage with the sunken thatched roof that night, had they peered through the slits in the shutters, they would have seen in the dimly lit interior a grey-bearded old man and an ashen-haired girl sitting by the fireplace.

But no one could have seen it. For the cottage with the sunken, moss-grown thatched roof was well hidden among the fog and the mist, in a boundless swamp in the Pereplut Marshes where no one dared to venture.”

It’s almost so on the nose in its repetition as to be intentionally misleading. Which it somewhat turns out to be, since we learn under Mount Gorgon that it is possible to see what is happening with the people you wish to see. Given the Aen Elle’s overarching plotline of driving the Blood of Elves back into their hands, it also seems appropriate that you would have actors “behind the scenes” keeping an eye on things.

These conversations culminate with Ciri & Vysogota digging around in elven legends, becoming convinced Ciri is the “chosen one” & finding a way to the Tower of the Swallow. Which seems to be a pre-arranged “co-incidence” in its own right.

4. Before Ciri meets Avallac’h in person on the other side of the Tower of the Swallow, she learns about his existence from a Dutch explorer called Buyvid Backhuysen, who wrote the apocryphal work focusing on mythical locations (& characters).

This is highly ironic, considering Avallac’h’s statement: “Everything has been foretold.” But also trollishly in-character for him.

An elf who can predict the future accurately plays a tour guide to humans a century or more before Ciri’s birth so said humans would write a book about him so Ciri would one day find the said book & gain directions to the Tower of the Swallow & become encouraged in her destiny as the “chosen one.”

The elf’s vanity does not allow him to not sign his chef d'oeuvre; he tells Ciri after her arrival: “You came here yourself. But not of your own will. You were led here by destiny, helped a little by us.”

5. As an Aen Saevherne – one of the handful of chosen ones with similar abilities to Ciri – i.e. transporting one’s individual person between worlds – Avallac’h can move around the Continent.

“We trekked perhaps four hundred furlongs southwards from the ancient and far-famed city of Assengard, to a land called Centloch. … Our guide, the elf Avallac’h, ordered us to seek among those dispositions one calling to mind a cloverleaf. And, in truth, we espied one such. … Meanwhile, the mysterious Tower of the Swallow, in the elven tongue Tor Zireael, was said to rise up at its northern margin. At first, nonetheless, we saw nothing save fog. I was readying myself to ask the elf Avallac’h about the tower, when he gestured me to be silent and spoke these words: ‘Await and hope. Hope shall return with the light and a good omen. Gaze at the endless waters; there you shall discern the envoys of good tidings.” – Buyvid Backhuysen, Peregrinations along Magic Trails and Places, Tower of the Swallow

In the aforementioned book Ciri & Vysogota read:

“The elf Avallac’h marked our awe and spake: “This is Tor Zireael, the Tower of the Swallow. This is the Gate of Worlds and the Threshold of Time. Feast your eyes on this sight, man, for not to everyone nor always is it given.” ‘But when asked if we might approach and from proximity gaze on the Tower or propria manu touch it, Avallac’h laughed. “Tor Zireael,” he spake, “is for you a reverie, and reveries may not be touched. And a good thing it is,” he added, “for the Tower serves only the few Chosen, for whom the Threshold of Time is a gate of hope and rebirth. But for the profane it is the portal of nightmare.”

In short, the unicorn’s quote in Lady of the Lake is misleading:

“The Fox and the Sparrowhawk cannot seize power over Ard Gaeth, the Gateway to the Worlds. They captured it once. They lost it once. Now they can do nothing more than wander, roam among the worlds taking tiny steps, alone, like spectres, powerless. The Fox to Tir ná Béa Arainne, the Sparrowhawk and his horsemen around the Spiral. They can go no further, they don’t have the strength. Which is why they dream of Ard Gaeth and power.”

The Continent goes unnamed in the Saga. Therefore the unicorns refer to the world Ciri was born in for the reader’s sake by the last location in which Avallac’h appeared. However, this is not the only location in which he has appeared or can appear.

6. The Wild Hunt can move around the Spiral like spectres rather than as spectres.

“Now they can do nothing more than wander, roam among the worlds taking tiny steps, alone, like spectres, powerless.”

In chase of Ciri after her escape from Tir na Lia, the Red Riders portal into a Spiral world as themselves, without the ghastly guises.

This makes the Wild Hunt’s ghostly appearance effectively “a party dress.” A horrifying “glamour” (e.g. reverse of Pratchett’s Lords & Ladies).

7. Eredin Bréacc Glas’s name references the manner in which he breaks the “glass” veil between worlds upon traversing the Spiral.

“Something creaked, just like canvas being torn. The terns rose with a cry and a fluttering, for a moment covering everything in a white cloud. The air above the cliff suddenly vibrated and became blurred like glass with water spilled over it. And then it shattered like glass. And darkness poured out of the rupture, while riders spilled out of the darkness. Around their shoulders fluttered cloaks whose vermilion-amaranth-crimson colour brought to mind the glow of a fire in a sky lit up by the blaze of the setting sun. Dearg Ruadhri. The Red Horsemen.” – Lady of the Lake

In turn, this references the “twisted looking glass” nature of the parallels/differences between the characters & setting in the Continent & in the World of the Alder Folk.

8. The Wild Hunt appears near Brugge, on the trail of False-Ciri.

Eredin pretends not to know Ciri upon first meeting her, despite having seen her on several occasions; even briefly getting on the trail of False-Ciri due to physical similarity.

9. Avallac’h & Ciri breakfasted together seemingly on the regular at Tir na Lia.

“Next morning she went at once to the stables without even eating breakfast. She didn’t want to meet Avallac’h, didn’t want to talk to him.”

10. (Meta-humour) In Arthuriana, the Lady of Avalon is often called the Lady of the Lake. Avallac’h is another name for Avalon. Avallac’h calls Ciri Lady of the Lake & insofar as Ciri is seen as the successor of Lara Dorren, who was supposed to be the Lady of Avallac’h…

11. Cregennan of Lod’s & Lara Dorren’s acquaintance & romance was relatively brief.

Falka is born.

1 year post-Falka’s birth, Vridank divorces Beatrix of Kovir, and marries Cerro.

At an unspecified point in-between the divorce and Falka’s Rebellion 25 years later, Lara meets Cregennan of Lod for the first time. (“Falka had been born before Lara had even met Cregennan.” By way of this “even” in Fransesca’s sentence, it seems there was considerable way to go from meeting Cregennan to becoming pregnant by him.)

They strike up a friendship, probably on grounds of investigating the differences between elven and human magic, and sympathies toward elven human co-operation (in magic & life). The friendship goes on for some time as just that – friendship. “The friendship – and later romance – between the two of them was at first joyfully acknowledged by both races, but there soon appeared opponents to their union.”

Friendship culminates in romance. Lara becomes pregnant.

Cregennan is assassinated. Lara is hunted down by humans, dies, giving birth to Riannon. Cerro takes Riannon in.

25 years after Falka’s birth, Falka’s Rebellion takes place.

Riannon is pregnant during that time (Riannon is younger than Falka).

So Lara knew Cregennan relatively briefly in elves’ and magicians’ terms. It also seems to me things progressed relatively fast once their romance began: from it becoming known they had become romantic to pregnancy to Cregennan’s assassination to Lara’s exile and death.

12. Elder Blood - a bloodline of the sailors of time & space.

Skelligers know that when someone of Elder Blood dies, the sea rages.

“The blood of the queens of Cintra,’ Crach began, ‘is uncannily bound to the sea. When one of the women of that blood dies the sea falls into sheer madness. It’s said that Ard Skellig bewails the daughters of Riannon. For the storm is so strong then that the waves striking from the west squeeze through crevices and caverns to the east side and suddenly salt brooks gush from the rock. And the entire island shudders. Simple folk say “See how Ard Skellig sobs. Someone has died again. Riannon’s blood has died. The Elder Blood”.”

Equally, a thunder storm breaks out over Tir ná Lia upon Auberon’s death - the demise of a carrier of Elder Blood. Interestingly, Auberon Muircetach’s name reveals more. Muircetach is quite definitely from Irish Muirchetach, which means “mariner.” It is symbolically appropriate, as elves did sail the seas of space and time quite freely before the Conjunction, and in such capacity Auberon might as well have lived up to his name.

13. Ciri read/heard about the mythic figure of the Alder King.

In line with how Ciri discovers how she herself is nothing but a legend, it is casually revealed in Time of Contempt that she has either read or heard about a figure called the Alder King.

“A furious gallop, her eyes watering from their speed. Lightning sliced the sky, and in its flash Ciri saw alders and willows on either side of the road. But they weren’t trees. They were the servants of the Alder King.”

#the witcher meta #aen elle #Auberon muricetach #lara dorren #avallac'h #eredin bréacc glas #cregennan of lod #ciri

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