Several Underappreciated Details About Aen Elle
1. Auberon is over 1500 years old in âhuman timeâ.
The Aen Elle left the Continent before the Conjunction of the spheres (1500 years ago). Time passes differently in the world of the Alder Folk than on the Continent. Time does not matter in their world (e.g. Tir na Nog was a land of everlasting youth). Therefore â
2. Knowing Ones (plural!) possess the same abilities Ciri, or Ciriâs descendant (x 1000), possesses. Which is â moving their own individual person between worlds.
ââŠthe gene that was specially constructed by us, may save the denizens of that world. We have reason to believe that the descendant of Laraâand of you, naturallyâwill possess abilities a thousandfold more powerful than that which we, the Knowing Ones, possess. And which you possess in rudimentary form. You know what this is about, donât you?â
âIn short, it concerns the possibility of transferring between worlds not only oneself, oneâs ownâindeedâinsignificant person. It concerns the opening of Ard Gaeth, the great and permanent Gateway, through which everyone would pass. We managed to do it before the Conjunction, and we want to achieve it now.â â Avallacâh
âAt that time (before the Conjunction) â youâll be astonished by what I say â one could move quite freely between worlds. With a little talent and skill, naturally. Beyond all doubt you understand what I have in mind.â â Auberon
âThe Conjunction came and even more worlds were created. But the door is closed. It is closed to all apart from a handful of chosen ones.â â Auberon
Aen Saevherne (e.g. Avallacâh & Auberon) carry Aen Hen Ichaer.
Due to carrying Aen Hen Ichaer, they are participants as well as conductors of the elvesâ most ludicrous genetic engineering project.
3. Avallacâh kept an eye on Ciri on the Continent.
âNews spreads astonishingly quickly. Astonishingly far. And astonishingly deep.â â Geralt
This is enabled by the scrying Aen Saevherne are able to do via special substances. The walls of Tir nĂĄ BĂ©a Arainne allow this (âThe walls of Tir nĂĄ BĂ©a Arainne have special qualities. And I, though I say it as shouldnât, have special abilities.â) as well as magic mirrors which show Ciri the present-future in Lady of the Lake (âHere are your friends! Have a look.â He turned around and abruptly tossed the fisstech-strewn looking glass to her. At first she only saw her own, blurred reflection in the dirtied glass. But almost immediately the looking glass brightened up milkily, filled up with smoke. And then with an image.).
At Tir nĂĄ BĂ©a Arainne, scrying works like this: âThink intensively. About how much she needs you right now. Declare, so to speak, the mental willingness to help. Think about how you want to run and rescue her, be beside her; something like that.â
One wonders how many times Avallacâh applied the same means to see how Ciri was doing, but from his speech it is clear he has done so.
âFirstly, itâs too late now, the serious evil has already occurred; youâre no longer in a position to save the girl from it. Secondly, now that she has taken the right road, the Swallow will cope wonderfully by herself. She carries too mighty a force inside her to fear anything. She doesnât need your help. And thirdly⊠HmmmâŠâ
âIâm still all ears, Avallacâh. All ears!â
âThirdly⊠Thirdly, someone else will help her now. You canât be so arrogant as to think that the girlâs destiny is exclusively bound to you.â
When Avallacâh comments about humans taking no issue with dying just as long as they get to f*ck beforehand, this is carried â alongside his disdain for Cregennan & contempt for humanityâs prodigious ability to reproduce â by likely having witnessed through the walls of Tir nĂĄ BĂ©a Arainne (or a magic mirror) Hotspurnâs & Ciriâs first/last moments.
âStay with me. Iâll keep my word, Snow Queen. Iâll cover you with emeralds⊠Iâll shower you in themâŠâ
âIndeed, this is a wonderful time for making jokes.â
âItâs always a good time for jokes.â
Hotspurn suddenly seized her, pulled her close and began to undo her blouse. Unceremoniously, but unhurriedly. Ciri pushed him away.
âIndeed!â she snapped. âA wonderful time for that too!â
âItâs always a good time for that. Especially for me, right now. I told you, itâs my spine. There may be complications tomorrowâŠâ
Ciriâs & Vysogotaâs conversations in the Pereplut swamps were not private.
During their talks Sapkowski employs a very pointed literary framing device. With tiny variations, for 7 times up until the chapter where Geralt meets Avallacâh (!), it goes like this:
âHad someone crept up to the cottage with the sunken thatched roof that night, had they peered through the slits in the shutters, they would have seen in the dimly lit interior a grey-bearded old man and an ashen-haired girl sitting by the fireplace.
But no one could have seen it. For the cottage with the sunken, moss-grown thatched roof was well hidden among the fog and the mist, in a boundless swamp in the Pereplut Marshes where no one dared to venture.â
These conversations culminate with Ciri & Vysogota digging around in elven legends, becoming convinced Ciri is the âchosen oneâ & finding a way to the Tower of the Swallow. Which seems to be a pre-arranged âco-incidenceâ in its own right.
4. Before Ciri meets Avallacâh in person on the other side of the Tower of the Swallow, she learns about his existence from a Dutch explorer called Buyvid Backhuysen, who wrote the apocryphal work focusing on mythical locations (& characters).
This is highly ironic, considering Avallacâhâs statement: âEverything has been foretold.â But also trollishly in-character for him.
An elf who can predict the future accurately plays a tour guide to humans a century or more before Ciriâs birth so said humans would write a book about him so Ciri would one day find the said book & gain directions to the Tower of the Swallow & become encouraged in her destiny as the âchosen one.â
The elfâs vanity does not allow him to not sign his chef d'oeuvre; he tells Ciri after her arrival: âYou came here yourself. But not of your own will. You were led here by destiny, helped a little by us.â
5. As an Aen Saevherne â one of the handful of chosen ones with similar abilities to Ciri â i.e. transporting oneâs individual person between worlds â Avallacâh can move around the Continent.
âWe trekked perhaps four hundred furlongs southwards from the ancient and far-famed city of Assengard, to a land called Centloch. ⊠Our guide, the elf Avallacâh, ordered us to seek among those dispositions one calling to mind a cloverleaf. And, in truth, we espied one such. ⊠Meanwhile, the mysterious Tower of the Swallow, in the elven tongue Tor Zireael, was said to rise up at its northern margin. At first, nonetheless, we saw nothing save fog. I was readying myself to ask the elf Avallacâh about the tower, when he gestured me to be silent and spoke these words: âAwait and hope. Hope shall return with the light and a good omen. Gaze at the endless waters; there you shall discern the envoys of good tidings.â â Buyvid Backhuysen, Peregrinations along Magic Trails and Places, Tower of the Swallow
In the aforementioned book Ciri & Vysogota read:
âThe elf Avallacâh marked our awe and spake: âThis is Tor Zireael, the Tower of the Swallow. This is the Gate of Worlds and the Threshold of Time. Feast your eyes on this sight, man, for not to everyone nor always is it given.â âBut when asked if we might approach and from proximity gaze on the Tower or propria manu touch it, Avallacâh laughed. âTor Zireael,â he spake, âis for you a reverie, and reveries may not be touched. And a good thing it is,â he added, âfor the Tower serves only the few Chosen, for whom the Threshold of Time is a gate of hope and rebirth. But for the profane it is the portal of nightmare.â
In short, the unicornâs quote in Lady of the Lake is misleading:
âThe Fox and the Sparrowhawk cannot seize power over Ard Gaeth, the Gateway to the Worlds. They captured it once. They lost it once. Now they can do nothing more than wander, roam among the worlds taking tiny steps, alone, like spectres, powerless. The Fox to Tir nĂĄ BĂ©a Arainne, the Sparrowhawk and his horsemen around the Spiral. They can go no further, they donât have the strength. Which is why they dream of Ard Gaeth and power.â
The Continent goes unnamed in the Saga. Therefore the unicorns refer to the world Ciri was born in for the readerâs sake by the last location in which Avallacâh appeared. However, this is not the only location in which he has appeared or can appear.
6. The Wild Hunt can move around the Spiral like spectres rather than as spectres.
âNow they can do nothing more than wander, roam among the worlds taking tiny steps, alone, like spectres, powerless.â
In chase of Ciri after her escape from Tir na Lia, the Red Riders portal into a Spiral world as themselves, without the ghastly guises.
This makes the Wild Huntâs ghostly appearance effectively âa party dress.â A horrifying âglamourâ (e.g. reverse of Pratchettâs Lords & Ladies).
7. Eredin BrĂ©acc Glasâs name references the manner in which he breaks the âglassâ veil between worlds upon traversing the Spiral.
âSomething creaked, just like canvas being torn. The terns rose with a cry and a fluttering, for a moment covering everything in a white cloud. The air above the cliff suddenly vibrated and became blurred like glass with water spilled over it. And then it shattered like glass. And darkness poured out of the rupture, while riders spilled out of the darkness. Around their shoulders fluttered cloaks whose vermilion-amaranth-crimson colour brought to mind the glow of a fire in a sky lit up by the blaze of the setting sun.
Dearg Ruadhri. The Red Horsemen.â
â Lady of the Lake
In turn, this references the âtwisted looking glassâ nature of the parallels/differences between the characters & setting in the Continent & in the World of the Alder Folk.
8. The Wild Hunt appears near Brugge, on the trail of False-Ciri.
Eredin pretends not to know Ciri upon first meeting her, despite having seen her on several occasions; even briefly getting on the trail of False-Ciri due to physical similarity.
9. Avallacâh & Ciri breakfasted together seemingly on the regular at Tir na Lia.
âNext morning she went at once to the stables without even eating breakfast. She didnât want to meet Avallacâh, didnât want to talk to him.â
10. (Meta-humour) In Arthuriana, the Lady of Avalon is often called the Lady of the Lake. Avallacâh is another name for Avalon. Avallacâh calls Ciri Lady of the Lake & insofar as Ciri is seen as the successor of Lara Dorren, who was supposed to be the Lady of AvallacâhâŠ
11. Cregennan of Lodâs & Lara Dorrenâs acquaintance & romance was relatively brief.
1 year post-Falkaâs birth, Vridank divorces Beatrix of Kovir, and marries Cerro.
At an unspecified point in-between the divorce and Falkaâs Rebellion 25 years later, Lara meets Cregennan of Lod for the first time. (âFalka had been born before Lara had even met Cregennan.â By way of this âevenâ in Fransescaâs sentence, it seems there was considerable way to go from meeting Cregennan to becoming pregnant by him.)
They strike up a friendship, probably on grounds of investigating the differences between elven and human magic, and sympathies toward elven human co-operation (in magic & life). The friendship goes on for some time as just that â friendship. âThe friendship â and later romance â between the two of them was at first joyfully acknowledged by both races, but there soon appeared opponents to their union.â
Friendship culminates in romance. Lara becomes pregnant.
Cregennan is assassinated. Lara is hunted down by humans, dies, giving birth to Riannon. Cerro takes Riannon in.
25 years after Falkaâs birth, Falkaâs Rebellion takes place.
Riannon is pregnant during that time (Riannon is younger than Falka).
So Lara knew Cregennan relatively briefly in elvesâ and magiciansâ terms. It also seems to me things progressed relatively fast once their romance began: from it becoming known they had become romantic to pregnancy to Cregennanâs assassination to Laraâs exile and death.