The Witcher art blog

Both are possible.

He became king. His main rival, Eredin, was dead. When Auberon was still alive, he and Eredin were fighting against each other, and I believe they both had their own cronies and power. After the last battle, not only Eredin himself died, Caranthir, Imlerith also died, it should not be difficult to purge Eredin's remaining party.

He was "exiled". The third party took advantage of Eredin's death and Avallac'h's return to take power and disposed of Avallac'h for the murder of the former king, but Avallac'h was not that stupid, he would not sit idly by and wait for death, but his forces were in tatters after he fled with Ciri, so he had to stay away from Tir ná Lia to not be arrested.

He was still an Aen Saevherne. Ge'els became king and reorganized the country which was suffering from White Frost, while Avallac'h continued to research Elder Blood in his laboratory.

Thank you for the Ask. 🌹

The book version - hell, yes! The game version - not so much.

His character in the game is quite one-sided and I had the feeling it’s on purpose just to make him the ‘big bad antagonist’, without giving him more depth.

Even though he appears in the books only briefly, Mr. Sapkowski managed here to depict him in those short scenes as a complex character. Like most of the other characters in the Witcher universe, he’s not entirely just good or bad. (*“Shades of grey, I think.”; Iorveth)

He does have his pros and cons. Charming, yet threatening. Irritating, yet polite. Smart, observant. I seriously got the impression from the books, that he didn’t really want to kill Auberon. When Ciri told him, that Auberon is dead he was surprised for a brief moment. So that seemed to me really like an unfortunate accident. Eredin did want to probably 'help’ Auberon for his own selfish reasons (like making sure Auberon is able 'to perform’ and impregnate Ciri).

Hard to say what his ultimate motive was really, but I doubt the intention was to kill the King. That he took advantage of the situation later and in the games took Auberon’s place, is I think more related to him simply being an opportunist. (And because the game needed the 'big bad antagonist’).

So I actually like his personality in the books. I can understand why he at first was sceptical towards Ciri and made some nasty remarks. The Aen Elle have no real respect towards humans as such. But I keep on remembering, that he still managed to be polite later when talking to her and kept his condescending remarks really to a minimum. Going so far as to invite Ciri for lunch even though she clearly refused previously his offer to give Auberon the aphrodisiac.

So he still handled the whole thing with a certain amount of grace. He only got pissed and became quite nasty when he caught Ciri as she was fleeing. I can also here understand his reactions as he probably saw it as her breaking the agreement she had with the Aen Elle.

For me he’s an interesting character with a multifaceted personality and I like that. 😉

PS: Let’s also not forget that for me Eredin means someone like this:

And definitely NOT this: 😏