The most utterly ripped near-retiree in the history of fiction.
First reported by GamesRadar, the new book by Witcher author Andrzej Sapkowski has finally revealed the birth year of series protagonist Geralt of Rivia. With Geralt now established as having been born in 1211, we can use some back of the napkin math to figure out how old he is at various points in the series. The figure comes from Rozdroże kruków (roughly “Raven’s Crossing”) which was released in November. It’s an interquel focused on Geralt that has not yet been translated to English.
First on the docket, Geralt is 59 at the start of the first Witcher game, 61 by the events of The Witcher 3 in 1272, and 64 at the conclusion of his saga with Blood and Wine in 1275. And you know what? He’s in amazing shape for a guy of retirement age, but I was honestly expecting Geralt to be older. Fantasy lifespan rules apply and witchers are supposed to live much longer than normal humans, though it’s never specifically codified how much longer, and they usually die in the line of witchering before they can find out. It also brings me no pleasure to report that this introduces a lowkey highkey problematic age gap of 38 years between baby Geralt and the sorceress love of his life. Yennefer of Vengerberg, you’re canceled. We’re not calling you out, we’re calling you in.
Continuing on the “Geralt is too young” train, if this birth year applies to the Netflix series, that means Geralt was only 20 years old in the first episode where he kills Renfri and earns his “Butcher of Blaviken” title—this event seems to be undated in the timeline from the books. When I told my partner about this, she immediately felt sad for Geralt going through such a traumatic event so young, but I have more practical concerns.
A mega ripped master swordsman retiree is something I can suspend my disbelief over—this is fantasy, you can do magic and Elf stuff and live a long time, we’re all on the same page here. But have you ever met a 20 year-old who looks like Henry Cavill? You’re practically still a boy at that age, only bodybuilding influencers on Instagram taking the scariest experimental horse steroids are going to look like that at age 20. I guess witchers are canonically not natty, but god damn, what do they put in those potions?
Regardless, once we know the year The Witcher 4 is set, we’ll be able to figure out Geralt’s age there too. My mind is a steel trap, no minutia of fantasy canon nonsense can escape it. I failed too many calculus exams in my youth to let that happen.
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