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@wolfsdensblog

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Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon (False Cirilla), Empress of Nilfgaard, Queen of Cintra, Princess of Brugge and Duchess of Sodden, Duchess of Rowan and Ymlac, Heiress to Inis Ard Skellig and Inis An Skellig, Suzerain of Attre and Abb Yarra, Lady of Darn Rowan, wife of Emhyr var Emreis
"... it is a dull name, Your Imperial Majesty. A name just right for somebody who's a nobody. As long as I am Cirilla Fiona I mean something ..."
My eternal gratitude to @orsuliya, your help was very significant, all your notes were useful! I dedicate my work to you and all False Cirilla's admirers.
Words cannot relate how much the sight of Her Imperial Majesty pleases me!
They are the same 👑💖
I used that wonderful picture of Teryn for making my own one 🥺
Emhyr var Emreis
Smoldering in subdued sepia tones.
Original shot given by the awesome @alphagravy and my PS edits.
-. Pax Nilfgaardica: In Defense of the Empire .-
Why Nilfgaard Represents Civilization Against Northern Barbarism
The Witcher's geopolitical landscape is typically read through a simplistic lens: the Northern Kingdoms represent freedom, scrappy resistance, and cultural diversity, while Nilfgaard embodies imperial tyranny, conquest, and homogenization. This reading is not only superficial but actively contradicted by the text itself. A closer examination reveals that Nilfgaard, whatever its flaws, offers something the North cannot: genuine order, legal coherence, meritocratic administration, and - most surprisingly - greater dignity for the marginalized populations both sides claim to defend. Nilfgaard is Rome. The Northern Kingdoms are the Gothic tribes. And the conventional moral framework that valorizes the North while demonizing the Empire collapses under scrutiny.
The Myth of Northern Freedom
The Northern Kingdoms present themselves as bastions of liberty against imperial domination. But whose liberty, exactly?
Redania under Radovid V becomes a theocratic police state where witch hunts, pyres, and secret police apparatus replace whatever political freedoms previously existed. Mages -formerly advisors and scholars - are blinded, tortured, and burned. Philippa Eilhart, for all her Machiavellian scheming, suffers mutilation and persecution not for her crimes but for her existence. Nonhumans fare worse: the pogroms are systematic, sanctioned, brutal. This is "freedom" only if one defines freedom as the liberty of the strong to brutalize the weak without imperial oversight.
Temeria, despite Foltest's relative competence, remains perpetually unstable - threatened externally by Nilfgaard, internally by noble factions pursuing their own interests. Assassinations, coups, and power struggles define Temerian politics. The peasantry, conscripted and taxed into poverty, experience little practical difference between "their own" king and a foreign conqueror.
Kaedwen's Henselt is a brute whose army commits atrocities as policy. The sack of Vergen and treatment of civilians reveal that Northern "honor" extends only as far as ethnic and political convenience.
The Lodge of Sorceresses, meanwhile, manipulates thrones across the North for their own factional interests, caring nothing for the nominal sovereigns they ostensibly serve. Northern "independence" is a facade obscuring a reality of magical oligarchy, noble self-interest, and endemic instability.
And then there is Rivia - where Geralt of Rivia, the protagonist himself, dies (temporarily) trying to protect nonhumans from a pogrom perpetrated by the very humans he spent his life defending. If this is Northern freedom, it is the freedom of the mob to murder with impunity.
What Nilfgaard Actually Offers
Against this chaotic brutality, Nilfgaard offers something radical: order.
Legal codification and enforcement.
One law, applicable across the Empire. Roads maintained, trade protected, banditry suppressed. Peasants under Nilfgaardian rule know what is expected of them and can expect - within the boundaries of imperial taxation - predictable governance rather than the capricious whims of petty nobles.
Meritocratic administration.
Nilfgaardian military and civil service reward competence regardless of birth. The Emperor's officers rise through ability, not bloodline. This is not an incidental feature but a structural difference: where the North clings to hereditary privilege, Nilfgaard institutionalizes merit.
Respect for nonhumans.
This is perhaps the most damning contrast. Elves in the North live in ghettos, face routine persecution, and are massacred in pogroms whenever political tension requires a scapegoat. Elves in Nilfgaardian service ride as cavalry officers with honor and dignity. The Scoia'tael - elven guerrillas - ally with Nilfgaard not out of naïveté but because imperial service offers something the North never has: respect.
Dwarves, halflings, and other nonhuman populations fare similarly. Nilfgaard's religious and cultural tolerance is not born of liberal sentiment but imperial pragmatism: the Empire does not care what you worship or what language you speak, only that you pay taxes and obey law. This pragmatic indifference produces more actual freedom for minority populations than Northern "liberty" ever has.
Cultural sophistication.
Nilfgaard values learning, arts, architecture, and refinement. Its courts are centers of scholarship; its cities are planned and maintained. The North, by contrast, is frequently provincial - its courts sites of drunken brawls and petty intrigue, its towns medieval in the pejorative sense.
The Aesthetic Argument: Sorceresses as Civilizational Index
Consider the sorceresses, who in both North and South wield immense power but express that power through radically different aesthetics.
Northern sorceresses - Sabrina Glevissig, Keira Metz, Triss Merigold in her more ostentatious moments - use beauty as performance. Excessive makeup, revealing clothing, enchantments that amplify sexual allure: these are tools of manipulation, beauty weaponized for political advantage. The aesthetic is one of excess, spectacle, and vulgar display. Power announces itself through garish abundance.
Nilfgaardian sorceresses - Fringilla Vigo, Assire var Anahid - practice a restrained elegance. Beauty is disciplined, cultivated, integral to presence rather than deployed as spectacle. This is not prudishness but sophistication: the difference between a woman who needs beauty to command attention and one whose authority renders ostentatious display unnecessary.
This aesthetic distinction indexes a deeper civilizational difference. The North treats beauty as a commodity, a weapon, a performance. Nilfgaard treats beauty as a discipline, an achievement, a sign of cultivation. One is baroque excess; the other is classical restraint.
The North shouts. Nilfgaard need only speak.
The Roman Parallel
Nilfgaard is explicitly modeled on Rome: centralized imperial administration, road networks, legal uniformity, client kings, absorption of conquered territories into a coherent political structure. Even the armor - black, angular, reminiscent of lorica segmentata - evokes Romanlegionaries.
But the parallel runs deeper than aesthetic homage. Like Rome, Nilfgaard believes it brings civilization to barbarians. Like Rome, it commits atrocities in the name of order. Like Rome, it offers subjugated populations something their previous rulers did not: law, infrastructure, and participation in a supra-tribal political entity.
The Gallic tribes resisted Rome and were brutally conquered. They also, within generations, became Romans - citizens, senators, eventually emperors. The alternative was endless intertribal warfare, slavery raids, and the cyclical collapse of petty kingdoms.
The Northern Kingdoms resist Nilfgaard with the rhetoric of liberty but offer their own populations little that merits defense. The peasant conscripted by Foltest dies no more freely than the peasant conscripted by Emhyr var Emreis. The elf burned in a Novigrad pogrom envies the elf riding in Nilfgaardian cavalry. The mage blinded by Radovid's inquisitors would prefer Nilfgaardian bureaucracy.
The question is not whether Nilfgaard is flawless - it demonstrably is not. The sack of Cintra, the use of Scoia'tael as expendable shock troops, the coldness of imperial bureaucracy: these are real moral failures. But the question is whether Nilfgaard is worse than the alternative. And the text does not support that conclusion.
The Choice: Pax Nilfgaardica or Endless War
The North's great rallying cry is sovereignty - the right of Temeria to remain Temerian, of Redania to remain Redanian. But sovereignty to do what? To burn mages? To pogrom elves? To fight petty wars over dynastic succession while peasants starve?
Nilfgaard offers an end to the internecine warfare that has defined the North for centuries. One law. One peace. The cost is submission to imperial authority - but that authority, whatever its faults, builds roads, enforces contracts, and does not burn people for their bloodline or magical talent.
The North offers the freedom to remain fragmented, brutal, and unstable. Nilfgaard offers the discipline of empire.
Rome, too, was resisted by those who valued their tribal sovereignty over Roman order. History does not remember them fondly. It remembers the Pax Romana - the two centuries of relative peace, prosperity, and legal stability that Roman imperium made possible.
The Witcher invites us to see Nilfgaard as the villain. But the text itself, if read without nationalist sentiment, suggests something more uncomfortable: that the villain might be building something better than what it destroys.
And that its sorceresses, at least, have the good taste not to wear excessive maquillage.
Conclusion
This is not an argument for imperialism as an abstract good. It is an argument that within the specific geopolitical context of the Witcher universe, Nilfgaard represents a coherent, functional, and - by the standards of the setting - relatively humane alternative to Northern chaos. The North's self-presentation as freedom-loving and virtuous collapses under the weight of its own atrocities. Nilfgaard's self-presentation as civilizing empire, however arrogant, is borne out by the comparative treatment of soldiers, nonhumans, mages, and peasants under its rule.
The question is not whether empire is ideal. The question is whether it is better than the alternative on offer. And in the world of the Witcher, the answer - however uncomfortable for modern sensibilities - is yes.
Nilfgaard is Rome. And Rome, for all its faults, built something that lasted.
The North builds pyres.

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On the False Ciri issue
Hey, fandom !! :D
For quite some time now I’m openly indulging myself in the love for a very underappreciated character from the books (and God knows how hard that is with secondary characters…) who becomes empress in Ciri’s stead. She was meant to appear in the games and was even mentioned in TW2 yet was cut out before release. Ever since I got my hand on mods I tried to ‘reconstruct’ her with the help of mods using a modified version of Ciri’s head and eyes, Vivienne’s hair and a swaps.
Now I know that most people on Tumblr only know the games but please don’t reblog my False Ciri/Cirilla Fiona stuff and tag it as #Ciri, that’s sick and wrong because most of them are shipping posts. And even those which are not *sigh* I think everyone who makes edits and gifs for characters with not so much fans know what a shitty feeling that is (also it’s really bothering me).
I get asks about her nearly daily and so I decided to make a longer post to an ask I recieved today, half way through I decided to make an own post on the matter explaining it and adding quotes from the books. This got a bit longer but I’d be very thankful if all of you would read it (and share if you like). c:
I apologise for my english, I’m not a native speaker.
Small spoilers ahead but if you know the game, they aren’t spoilers anymore.
First, here is her Wiki Article.
Now, Fake Ciri is a term made by CDPR, I don’t know why because she has named False Ciri or Cirilla Fiona ever since and fake really has a very negative connotation it’s not like she’s a bad person.
She is of cintrean nobility though not of such noble origin as Ciri is yet she does look a lot like her. As Nilfgaard attacked Cintra she had to flee (nothing of her family so I suspect her family to be dead but she does make a small remark on them which suggests that it hasn’t been very happy there) and travelled just like Ciri through several refugee camps to end up working for a tailor in Brugge, Temeria. There the emperor’s men found her and abducted her to sell her to Emhyr even though they knew it wasn’t her. Emhyr did recognise it but send her to Darn Rowan as a kind of a placeholder until the real Ciri was found, whom he wanted to crown Queen of Cintra and he wanted to fullfil a prophecy by having a child with her which would save the world or some kind of weird shit. (SO, GUYS, PLEASE FOR FUCK’S SAKE DON’T TAG MY FALSE CIRI STUFF AS CIRI!! I don’t think I have to mention this but Ciri does not quite agree with the whole marrying and having a child with her father-part, while False Ciri, always called Cirilla Fiona… kinda does…?)
That time Nilfgaard was just conquered Cintra but there were still forces fighting against them so if the queen was found, made queen, and this queen would marry the emperor, Emhyr’s rule over Cintra and the mouth of the Yarra would be secured. Now it was suggested that Emhyr should marry the false Ciri, she would wear a thick veil at the wedding and she would be replaced by the real Ciri once they found her, which meant that she’d be murdered and silently get ridden of. Emhyr always disagrees with these suggestions but sends her to Darn Rowan, a fortress kind of somewhere at the end of the world where nobody would see her so nobody could ask awkward questions later. She is sent there together with Stella Congreve who is instructed to train her to be princess/queen Ciri.
(Art by Denis Gordeev)
He visits her once and tries to find out her real name but she’s scared (touches her necklace as if it’s choking her) and nearly cries (but does not because it would be against the etiquette), that’s when he notes to himself that they must have trained her unter the threat of death and torture. Somehow they make it through this audience and he gets all puppy-like the moment she looks directly into his eyes and speaks honest with him (I’ll put a quote here because I’m super bad at describing this):
I tried to put the quotes here but they’re a bit long so find them under the cut.
As the story continues the real Ciri is found, Geralt, Yennefer and Emhyr have a conversation, followed by the happiest cliffhanger ever, leaving Ciri in another kind of awkward moment but all book-readers jumped while reading it I can assure you. So later she explains Emhyr had some weird emotional father-daughter-moment (considering he wanted to have a child with her, Jesus), tooks his men and rode away leaving Ciri with Yennefer and Geralt.
Emhyr has another meeting with Cirilla aka False Ciri in Lady of the Lake where they have a walk and he tells her a story from his childhood but she’s still sad (She only has three short scene’s but mostly looks/is sad, understandable to be honest. First a war refugee, then abducted and threatened, now has to marry the emperor, cheers luv.) and he tells her to cheer up. Literally. And when the emperor tells you to cheer up, you better cheer up. He’s not mean (not until later of course) but you can tell he’s bad at this being charming thing.
To himself he marks that she’s brave much like his daughter ‘a diamond that doesn’t scratch’ though she’s very different to Ciri more like a princess, not arrogant or selfish or something but just better made for court and being a wife, while Ciri is… well, our Ciri as we know her. He decided that Vattier will not kill her, even though he doesn’t have much of a choice now that he sent away the real Ciri… Then he’s mean and then he’s even more mean, makes her cry, is sorry, feels bad and hugs her and calls her “My poor reason of state.”
I tried to put the quotes here but they’re a bit long so find them under the cut.
(Art by Jana Komarková)
In the next scene she’s only mentioned but her portrait is ‘shown’ to the monarchy and a few other people where it’s clear that all who don’t know of the secrect take her for the real Cirilla, Queen of Cintra, Empress of Nilfgaard and so on, and so on.
She was meant to appear in The Witcher 3 (and mentioned in The Witcher 2) though was cut out in the end (but I’m happy they included her in Gwent, I literally fed my half monster deck to the houds to get her) which doesn’t make any sense at all because Emhyr still has Cintra and now everybody would find out that he wanted to marry his own daugther and that he is Duny of Erlenwald. The last time Geralt sets off to save Ciri he also does it because of dreams, I don’t know why they needed Emhyr AND the Empress ending which basically messed up the whole storyline because the fantastic and ironic thing was that False Ciri, the girl that made it through a war-plagued land, a nobody, was put in the throne of Nilfgaard, and paid for Ciri’s freedom, to be with Geralt which she always wanted to be.
Not to mention that there would be other questions the Nilfgaardians and their opposition would ask about Ciri and her aptitude to be empress, like her knowledge of court manners, her training in ruling an empire (she witcher) and the virginity thing.
Under the cut are quotes from The Witcher Saga by Andrzej Sapkowski with all the scenes of False Ciri sorted in chronological order.They’re really not that long. Easy to read, no spoilers.
Czytaj dalej
YES.
Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon (False Cirilla), Empress of Nilfgaard, Queen of Cintra, Princess of Brugge and Duchess of Sodden, Duchess of Rowan and Ymlac, Heiress to Inis Ard Skellig and Inis An Skellig, Suzerain of Attre and Abb Yarra, Lady of Darn Rowan, wife of Emhyr var Emreis
"... it is a dull name, Your Imperial Majesty. A name just right for somebody who's a nobody. As long as I am Cirilla Fiona I mean something ..."
My eternal gratitude to @orsuliya, your help was very significant, all your notes were useful! I dedicate my work to you and all False Cirilla's admirers.
Words cannot relate how much the sight of Her Imperial Majesty pleases me!
Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon (False Cirilla)
- Your Imperial Majesty, Geralt of Rivia and...
- Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon, Queen of Cintra, Princess of Brugge and Duchess of Sodden, Heiress to Inis Ard Skellig and Inis An Skellig and suzeraine of Attre and Abb Yarra.
***
- Who are you, Sir?
- I'm a witcher. (Pointing to Ciri) She's my daughter by choice, I raised her.
Little Moth model🦋💚
Cr: ton-seul-ange

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Geralt at a meeting with Yennefer and Emhyr: Kiss my ass, Emhyr!
Geralt: *leaving*
Yennefer: 🗿
Emhyr: Dear diary...
Idk the artist but I love this dynamics 😂
Damn, I just love hugs🙂. Need more hugs from them
Emhyr var Emreis
and his most attractive feature: his imperial nose!
I can sing praises about his amber eyes but once you get his schnozz right, I am compelled to bow!
My PS5 photo edited shot.
My Emhyr var Emreis Headcanons (1 & 2)
1. Emhyr's physique
Contrary to some beliefs that Emhyr does nothing but sit on his bergère and sign papers all day , or is just standing in command, Emhyr is pretty active and keeps himself in shape. The emperor is a competent swordsman and rider: a throwback during his years as The Urcheon. You can see the results of these activities in his fit physique: That coat of his hugs a wide chest and narrow waist, the sleeves are slightly loose to accommodate his well tones biceps. There is not even a suggestion of a gut pushing against his belt.
2. Emhyr 's portraits are missing from his chambers.
Unlike most monarchs who have giant portraits of themselves, Emhyr has, instead, a gigantic portrait of Ciri as the child. A frowning, sulky child who hates her tight dress, and he occasionally looks at it, remembering her fondly.
His official portraits are nowhere in his office or chambers: he doesn't like being reminded constantly of his role or how he is suppose to be seen by his subjects, and so stash his portrait in the guest rooms and visitor's hall to remind them just who the sovereign is and that he is aware of everything.
(all pics are PS5 screenshots from my gameplay)

Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
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Emhyr var Emreis
Photo by @alphagravy, my photo edits.
Corporate Emperor
Emhyr var Emreis as CEO of The Great Sun Corp
Coming Soon to AO3
Created in Paintool SAI, Photoshop (Great Sun from GWENT, fuzzystatic and wood airbrush textures)