#perhaps soon

First, it’s important to note that in Four Marks Geralt meets Filavandrel who ends up agreeing to not kill Geralt. This happens in 1240 and while Geralt tells Filavandrel to leave this part of the continent and rebuild the King of the Elves doesn’t listen and ends up leading an uprising against Cintra in 1262.

I feel like a lot of people missed this line from Four Marks but while Ciri is in the Cintran Refugee camp Ozol says in response as to why he has a necklace of elf ears “Doing my part to avenge human lives lost in Filavandrel’s uprising” Ciri asks, “Filvandrel?” and he responds, “The elves call him King. Last year, he tried to claim Cintran Land. My brother got an arrow in the brain. Every day, I make sure his death is not in vain.

Then later when his mother calls Calanthe a bitch he says, “Mother stop. It wasn’t Queen Calanthe’s fault. Nilfgaard only got past Cintran borders because of elven spies.”

His brother responds, “Technically it was the elves’ land first.”

And while the mother is killed by the dwarf that works for the family (which I believe is a reference to the creation of the Scoia’tael who will likely play a role in the upcoming season but that’s for another post) I doubt there are any elves in Cintra who know enough information to even pass it onto Nilfgaard so we can see how deep this non-humanism runs in Cintra. 

Since the slaughter of Cintra occurred in 1263 that means this uprising took place in 1262 as I mentioned before. It’s important to note that from the way the show has presented Filavandrel as a King of the Elves and not just as a member of the noble family as he was in the books, this means that the elves likely are more centralized and when Filavandrel called them to arms he called many elves, an entire army in fact. 

Because Dol Blathanna, geographically speaking in the show is sort of in-between Aedirn and Kaewden, sort of near the Blue Mountains. In order for Filavandrel to have tried to claim Cintran Land, that means his army made it through Aedirn, then Temeria. He had a fighting force and this uprising likely wasn’t just a quick battle. Ozol mentions that it ended last year, but I am willing to bet that the fighting likely occurred over a period of years and that’s how Calanthe gained this title as somehow who massacred the elves. 

She and her army killed most of the elves that were in this uprising and trying to reclaim their land. It’s important to note that Dara’s family was killed in this uprising and again people often forget this conversation Dara and Ciri had while in Brokilon in “Of Banquets, Bastard and Burials”

Dara: Castle?

Ciri: I’m Princess Cirilla, of Cintra. [Dara backs away] What’s the matter?

Dara: Your grandmother slaughtered my family!

Ciri: No, that’s not true

Dara: She ordered it. After Filavandrel’s uprising.

Ciri: She wouldn’t do that

Dara: Her soldiers...They laughed when they did it, killing, raping. They laughed the hardest when they were swinging babies from their legs, smashing their heads in. I was the only one left. Because I hid. I should’ve saved them. or fought and died. 

Ciri: I don’t know what to say 

Dara: Say nothing. They’re gone now. I would do anything to forget who I was. 

It’s likely that once the uprising was over, Calanthe hunted down the elves and slaughtered them indiscriminately. We know that hardy any elves live among humans and the ones that did were practically outcasts. We can see this clearly enough from Chireadan who is one of the few elves living among humans we meet and the Rinde guards assume he is abetting Geralt simply by being near him. 

I will say, it shows a lot about how sheltered Ciri was that Calanthe had literally been slaughtering elves such as Dara’s family just the previous year and somehow, she didn’t know. Her character arc in the first season is of a pampered princess who think that sneaking out of a castle to play is the peak of rebellion yet she doesn’t even know her grandmother was committing genocide learning that her world was built on a lie. Ciri has to do a lot of work to re-learn the real history of Cintra and I’m excited to see how the show builds this up.