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[laniidae]

Character Base

• Character Name: Renfri, Princess of Creyden
• Age: 18
• Canon (Date/Year Released)/Canon Point: The Witcher (Netflix) | December 2019 | Following her death in Blaviken

• Items Coming Along:
◑ Her sword
◑ Her dagger
◑ Clothes
◑ A lintar (a coin worth approximately a dollar in Renfri's homeland)

• Content Warnings for Character:
Renfri's backstory contains themes of rape, murder, and occult-themed experimentation. I typically prefer to avoid the topic of her rape in threads and would prefer not to invoke or address it outright without prior OOC discussion. Content warnings for The Witcher in general include blood, violence, gore, death, war, mentions of sex, and monsters, in addition to the warnings above that pertain to Renfri specifically.

Character Background

• History: Netflix fandom wiki

• Core Relationships:

POSITIVE:

◑ HER BAND — Renfri's story is inspired by Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, and in all versions of her story, she has a gang that follows her as leader. As she says herself, "My men, they love me and I love them"; she also describes her gang as "sav[ing her]", and explains that they will be "by [her] side" as she seeks her revenge on the wizard Stregobor for his crimes against her. And indeed, this summation of their relationship bears out in practice: when we first meet Renfri and her gang, the men are harassing Geralt for his presence in the tavern, but not only do they immediately stop when she calls them out and chastises them, they also apologize to her (tersely) for their behavior. It's apparent that they do, in fact, accept her as their leader, and follow her orders without question, behaving as a support network for her in a world that has otherwise largely forsaken her.

◑ GERALT — The one reservation Renfri does express about her gang, however, is that they don't "see" her — implying, in context, that Geralt is someone who does. Throughout her story, Renfri's circumstances are held up as a foil to Geralt's; she observes herself that they are both "monsters who men created" — Geralt, a former human who was deliberately mutated to make him more effective at hunting monsters (a witcher), and Renfri, a former princess who was "created" a monster by the persecution inflicted upon her because of the Curse of the Black Sun. She laments at one point that she could have been anything, and that her previous life as a princess was full of potential, but that it was all taken away from her because of Stregobor's conviction that she was a monster simply due to the circumstances of her birth. Even when Renfri and Geralt cross swords in the market at Blaviken, Renfri seems to regret the necessity of it; she states that, while she was not altogether unreceptive to Geralt's attempts to persuade her to abandon her quest for revenge, her need for it was simply too deep-seated for her to divert from that course. She appears somewhat more at peace when Geralt holds her as she dies, and he in turn takes her brooch with him and mounts it on his sword as a perpetual reminder to himself of his meeting with her, and the events that transpired from it.

NEGATIVE:

◑ STREGOBOR — Renfri's personal nemesis is Stregobor, the wizard she blames for "stealing [her] whole life from [her]". Stregobor believed in a prophecy called the Curse of the Black Sun, a prediction that "foretold the end of the human civilization in the hands of sixty girls born during the Black Sun, which would turn them into cruel creatures, who would bring about the return of the goddess Lilit and the end of the world." As a result of this belief, Stregobor and other wizards like him hunted down girls who were born during the eclipse, eliminated them either by locking them in towers or by outright murdering them, and autopsied them in an attempt to study their "mutations". At the time of Renfri's canonpoint, she is the last surviving member of this class of women, and the one determined to seek revenge on Stregobor for his actions against her. Though Renfri had previously been a princess living a life of contentment and privilege, the fears Stregobor perpetuated about her caused her stepmother to reject and condemn her; additionally, Stregobor paid a man to take Renfri into the woods and kill her. However, similar to the woodsman in the traditional Snow White tale, Stregobor's man did not murder her; unlike in the traditional tale, he "raped her, robbed her, and let her go". This is also one of the events that Renfri cites to when describing how Stregobor "made her a monster", as rather than fleeing from the man after he released her, she used her mother's antique brooch to stab him through the ear, making her a murderer by necessity. Renfri attributes all of her flaws to Stregobor's machinations, observing that she "could have been so many things", including a great queen, but instead was condemned to the life she lives now because of Stregobor's actions.

◑ HER STEPMOTHER — In a much more minor sense, Renfri also lays some blame upon her stepmother Aridea for her personal circumstances. Apparently on good terms with Stregobor, Aridea fed him information about Renfri that supported his theory of her as one of the girls afflicted by the Curse of the Black Sun. As Renfri's stepmother, and therefore someone whose children stood to gain politically if Renfri was removed from the line of succession in Creyden, it's implied that Aridea had already wanted Renfri out of the picture and was more than happy to seize upon the Curse of the Black Sun as a means of achieving it. Renfri is fully aware of Aridea's animosity toward her and, in the short story, observes that Aridea was lucky to have died in her bed before Renfri could get to her, as Renfri had "special plans" to kill her. She was originally slated to appear in the Netflix version, but her scenes were ultimately left out of the final cut.

Character Personality Through Key Moments

(2+) Positive Experiences:

◑ GOAL-ORIENTED — As excruciating as the horrors of Renfri's experiences may have been, there is no doubt that they have made her goal-oriented. As she describes herself to Geralt, "I had to survive. I stole rather than starve. I killed rather than be killed." She is a harsh realist who has come to believe that her ends justify her means, and who is willing to embrace whatever means are necessary in order to achieve her goals. She also pursues those goals through a variety of avenues, from persuasion and deception to cunning to outright violence. In attempting to seek her vengeance against Stregobor, she first makes plans to kill him herself with the help of her gang, but after encountering Geralt she tries to persuade him that assisting her by killing Stregobor for her would be the titular "lesser evil". When he rejects her attempt at persuasion, she deceives Geralt into thinking she has abandoned her quest for revenge in the hopes that he will not act against her, then returns to her original plan: to prey on a wizard's obligation to act in defense of the town they are responsible for by taking the townspeople hostage at the upcoming market and killing them one by one until Stregobor comes down from his tower. She has no difficulty adapting her plans on the fly to accommodate for new variables, and is only ultimately frustrated when Stregobor betrays his oath to the town and refuses to leave his tower, preventing her from gaining the necessary access she needs to kill him and achieve her goal.

◑ ADAPTABLE — As mentioned above, supporting Renfri's ability to pursue her goals is the fact that she is adaptable. Though she started out as a presumably privileged princess whose focus would have been on riding, dancing, and other such courtly pursuits, Renfri was quick to embrace necessity after the attempt on her life in the woods and began developing a skillset that would better serve her in surviving as a bandit. She is evidently charismatic enough to win the loyalty of her gang of men, to the extent that they never once question her orders or defy her commands. Stregobor himself also observes that, while she earned the nickname "Shrike" for her early propensity for killing men by impaling them on sticks, she quickly developed proficiency with a sword and dagger as well. Indeed, Renfri's skills with a sword are shown to be some of the fastest and most aggressive in the series; during her attack on the Blaviken market, she is shown to be capable of keeping up with Geralt and even pushing him around (albeit while he is deliberately avoiding seeking a killing blow against her). She attacks rapidly, viciously, and is visibly ambidextrous, effortlessly switching hands on her blades as she attacks without pause at high speed. It is also implied that she has cultivated a number of other skills relating to her life as a bandit and brigand.

(2+) Negative Experiences:

◑ SELF-DISDAIN — Renfri has spent her entire life being termed and treated as a monster, which has cultivated in her a perspective of self-disdain. In the forest prior to the market (and therefore, the execution of Renfri's plans), Geralt tries to convince her that the best way to prove she isn't the monster that Stregobor believes she is would be to abandon her quest for revenge, leave Blaviken, and try to start a new life for herself elsewhere. Geralt makes it clear that there is no such thing as "the lesser evil"; there is merely evil, and that evil is produced by a person's actions, not by the atmospheric conditions of their birth. No matter how Renfri might try to justify her revenge, the fact of the matter is that what would make her monstrous would be acting on it. Later, in the market, it becomes clear that Renfri has taken Geralt's opinion to heart, but is simply willing to embrace the reality of being a monster rather than following an idealistic perspective of change. She makes a direct comparison between herself and Geralt, a known mutant, when she remarks, "They created me just as they created you. We're not so different." She also taunts him when he tries to use magic to once again persuade her to leave Blaviken, stating that magic doesn't work on her but "silver does", to which Geralt protests angrily, "Silver is for monsters." It is apparent by the time of her death that Renfri has decided to simply embrace the same perspective that everyone around her has always held of her (save Geralt): that as she is an irredeemable monster, she might as well act like it.

◑ MISSED POTENTIAL — Though Renfri is committed to her goals, she is not without remorse for her own missed potential. Though she is resigned to living as the person her experiences have made her and does not believe that she is capable of changing the nature imposed upon her, she does still exhibit moments where she reminisces about her life as a princess and seems to long for what might have been. When she first meets Geralt in the tavern, and he sees her slam back an entire mug of beer in a single go, she almost sheepishly remarks, "My mother, God rest her, would be mortified." Most of her signs of personal lament are tied to memories of her mother; when discussing how she killed Stregobor's man in the forest by driving her brooch through his ear, she makes it a point of describing it as "[her] mother's antique brooch" — the same brooch that she visibly wears in all of her appearances, regardless of how else she is dressed, and which Geralt ultimately takes with him as a memory of her. Additionally, in the forest, Renfri remarks that she "could have become so many things" and references Queen Calanthe of Cintra, a character who is ultimately renowned for her prowess as a warrior and who, at the time of Renfri and Geralt's meeting, has "just won her first battle". It's apparent that Renfri sees how the same skillset she uses to further her goals as a bandit and "monster" could be just as applicable to be a strong queen, if only her circumstances were different, and in her own way she laments that her life took the course it did.

Deer Country Attributes

• Canon Powers:

◑ In all versions and variants of Witcher canon, Renfri is said to be both magically resistant and unusually capable of "bewitching" people she comes into contact with. Because ambiguity about whether or not Renfri truly is a "monster" is the entire foundation upon which her story's significance rests, it is never confirmed whether Renfri truly is mutated in some fashion, or if her alleged mutations are merely theories imposed upon her by others who are afraid of her. However, all versions agree that she is to some degree abnormally resistant to magic, and that she seems to have an unusual ability to manipulate people through their attraction to her beauty. She is also shown capable of prophetic visions; upon her death in the Netflix series (and while entranced by the gleaming of Geralt's silver medallion in her original short story), she falls into a trance and voices a prophecy that ultimately proves true — that "the girl in the woods" will be Geralt's destiny, in the Netflix version, and that he will be stoned and chased out of Blaviken in the short story.

• Blood Type: Paleblood
• Omen: Shrike
• Blessed Day: July 21, the date of the Black Sun
• Patron Pthumerian: The Reckoning

• Blood Power Manifestation:

◑ Canonically, Renfri is capable of prophetic visions and in fact was said to be one of the harbingers of the return of Lilit, a goddess (or demon) whose return would allegedly bring about the extermination of the human race. Because of these canon associations, Renfri's paleblood abilities will likewise manifest in the form of prophetic visions and the ability to influence others' perception of her (both with player permission!). With practice, her visions will allow her to become an even better fighter through receiving short-range precognitive flashes that will enable her to dodge incoming attacks and strike at weaknesses that are about to open. With practice and assistance she'll also be able to deliberately evoke visions and make fully-fledged prophecies, though these will be less reliable and more apt to change. Additionally, her telepathic/hallucinogenic abilities will function in a handful of ways, both by augmenting her alleged canon ability to charm others and enabling her to more easily persuade others to follow her will, but also by invoking terror and panic in others.

Writing Samples

One: TDM Top-Level
Two: Thread with Dani
Three: Thread with Zuko

The Player

• Player Name: Alex
• Player Age: 18+!
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