#nivellen

Okay, let's get into one of my favorite topics ever- the short Witcher story from the book The Last Wish- A Grain of Truth. I absolutely adore this one, I have a huge tattoo of it and I love analysing it and appreciating the details. And the one thing I don't think I have EVER seen anyone mention is the motive of the real reason behind Nivellen being uncursed at the end of the book. Every time I see someone talk about this, they always bring up the motive of true love, and how the reason why Nivellen finally got uncursed was because Vereena truly loved him, as stated in the very last line of the book:

But I don't believe that to be the full story! I think in order for Nivellen to actually be uncursed, he not only had to find true love, he had to lose it.

And the sentences that tip you off about this are as follow:

Not just love is getting mentioned over and over, but also, blood. And they didn't raid just any temple- but the temple of Coram Agh Tera, the Lionheaded Spider. Those guys had skulls and bones on the altar and green fire, u think they'd hand out normie curses like u need true love and then all good? You should figure the curses would more be to the style of "Now you have mechanical breathing". Finding true love to be uncursed is not drastic enough if you truly want to punish someone, losing true love on the other hand seems much more cruel. Nivellen took away the priestesses' agency by assaulting her and also cost her her life, him losing someone he cares about feels like a fitting cosmic punishment.

Second of all, Sapko loves his trope subvertions, the whole story is a parody of Beauty and the Beast and it has many nice contrasting moments with the original tale. I doubt he would want to make the plot a 1:1 copy with just "what if the beauty WAS the beast tho huuuh". Like it's more nuanced than that and I think it would be really smart and poetic for the usual good ending of "lived happily ever after with their true love" to just be straight up impossible. Very in tone for the Witcher. You WILL suffer.

Nivellen at lenght describes his daliances with the girls he paid to stay with him. And some of them truly seem like they could've loved him. Sure, he paid their fathers for these stays, but for example he describes Fenne living with him for a whole year and what a good time they had. He felt a connection to several of these girls, and love, true love can happen. Like he had a true connection to Vereena that he knew nothing of and she didn't even talk to him lmao, it's not THAT unrealistic that one of the girls would love him, even if they left. Yet he remained cursed.

"Of course, I'd long ago stopped believing that a virgin's kiss would transform the way I looked. And I'd come to terms with it."

Next, one could argue Vereena didn't truly profess her love to Nivellen until her last moments, and right after he is uncursed, so that's our hint for the true love needed to fix him. But it's actually only directly after she is dead, not impaled, that he changes.

She was still alive when saying this, sliding along the pole. Only when Geralt cuts her head off and it hits the ground, we are informed of Nivellen's transformation. Maybe you could argue the uncursing just took a hot minute but idk.

Lastly and most importantly- Nivellen earlier states as Geralt is leaving that they already love eachother! He loves her! She very likely at this point already thinks of Nivellen the same way, she didn't achieve "true love" as she was sliding down the pole. Which is why it truly makes no sense for just true love to be the dealbreaker here, since it would imply he would have long been uncursed.

So yeah, these are my arguments for why I think this story is not actually centered around finding true love, but the power of grief surrounding losing it. Love and blood, both possess a mighty power after all.