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Cahir Mawr Dyffryn aep Ceallach
Jan. 21st, 2022 06:25 amof fire, lady of the lake
via https://ift.tt/3nMTJt9
It strikes me to write out a little comparison here, of this character as he appears in the books, as opposed to how he appears in the Netflix show. This is not because I dislike the Netflix show, it’s just that in the absence of a second season, I went ahead and based all my fic on the book character, ha ha oops.
They have taken him in a very different direction for Netflix, and that’s their prerogative and I won’t say it’s either better or worse, it’s just different, and unfortunately I have become very fond of the book version. Not just because of his actual merits as a literary character, but also because he happens to suit the purposes of the fan fiction story I want to tell very well. So, at any rate, since the books are something a lot of fans find sort of inaccessible or impenetrable, I wanted to just lay out what we know.
Cut for length, and of course book spoilers! Bonus, the end has an explanation of why Nilfgaardian names are Like That, if you were wondering.
Cahir is one of several beloved book characters who is unknown to game fans, and this is a spoiler of course but it’s unavoidable: the reason he’s unknown to game fans, along with several other characters who have been much-discussed of late, is that of course the games take place after the events of the books. So it is safe to say that, just like most beloved book characters that a game fan scratches their head upon hearing of, he does not survive the books. That is the first of many spoilers to come, so if you do not wish for spoilers, well, you are in the wrong place.
Cahir is, both in Netflix and in the books, the Nilfgaardian officer in black armor with bird feathers sticking dramatically off his helmet, who captures Ciri during the fall of Cintra, and gets her safely out of the burning city. Ciri is terrified of him, and for years afterward has nightmares featuring his monstrous silhouette, larger than life, with the fearsome feathered wings of his helmet looming. It’s actually the opening sequence of the book Blood of Elves, one such nightmare, and it’s very vivid and terrifying.
There, however, Netflix and the books part ways, never to reconnect.
In the books, Cahir is one of a number of knights sent to fetch her. All the others are killed; he alone survives. He is no more or less important than the others— all are elite warriors, but none are of any particular rank, and it is by coincidence that he is the one to survive and succeed. At some point his rank is given as “count”, and he is related by blood to several important people, but he is not a general or of any particular military rank.
He gets Ciri safely out of the city, and keeps custody of her until he collapses with exhaustion. She makes her escape then, and when he comes to, he loses his mind, frantic at the loss of her. He has to eventually give up and report back to Nilfgaard that he has failed. He is summarily imprisoned for his failure, and spends some time in prison in Nilfgaard, disgraced.
But then when rumors of Ciri come to them again, Nilfgaard has no choice but to send him to retrieve her: he is the only one who has seen her face, and would know reliably who she is. He is given a do-or-die mission to retrieve her, and is sent with a detachment of Scoia’tael, led by Isengrim Faoiltearna, to Thanedd Island. (These events are recounted in Time of Contempt.)
In the chaos, as a coup and counter-coup unfold on the island that contains Aretuza, Cahir pursues Ciri, and manages to corner her in a courtyard. He and she recognize one another; she is terrified, again, of his helmet, and his “ruthless eyes” burning from the eye slit of the helmet— the description of him from her nightmare at the beginning of Blood of Elves is repeated almost word-for-word. But this is after her time training in Kaer Morhen, and she has a sword. So it… doesn’t go well for Cahir.
Fortunately for him, her frenzied attack on him knocks his helmet off, revealing his human face— “There was no black helmet, no raptor’s wings, whose whistling had tormented her in her nightmares. There was no black knight of Cintra. There was a pale, dark-haired young man with stupefyingly blue eyes and a mouth distorted in a grimace of fear, kneeling in a pool of blood. The black knight of Cintra had fallen beneath the blows of her sword, had ceased to exist. […] The terrified, cowering young man bleeding profusely was no one. She did not know him; she had never seen him before. he meant nothing to her. She wasn’t afraid of him, nor did she hate him. And neither did she want to kill him.”
Moments later, Geralt joins the fight, after Ciri has fled. Cahir, wounded by Ciri (she permanently damaged his hand), does not resist. Geralt looms over him. Cahir whispers a plea for mercy. Geralt asks for one reason not to kill him, and Cahir explains that he is the reason Ciri did not die in the fire when Cintra fell. He saved her life. Geralt leaves him there.
Cahir escapes from Thanedd with Isengrim. Meanwhile, Vilgefortz’s accomplices, Rience and Schirru, have also been instructed to find Ciri. In the papers of Codhriger and Fenn they find a description of a Cintran refugee who looks similar to Ciri and is of the correct age; Codhriger had attempted to convince Geralt to hand this decoy over to Emhyr, but Geralt had refused.
Schirru and Reince capture this hapless girl and send her to Nilfgaard, saying that Cahir had captured her and said she was the real Ciri. (Remember, he was the only one to have seen her.)
The girl is presented to Emhyr as Cirilla. He greets her kindly, acknowledges her, immediately gives her an estate, and sends her off to it, but then makes it clear privately that he knows she is a decoy. (Unlike in Netflix, in the books Emhyr’s true identity is not revealed until near the end.) Mysteriously to the reader at this point and to the bafflement of the people present, Emhyr says: “Those traitors probably told themselves that I would not recognise her. But I will know the real Ciri. I would know her at the end of the world and in the darkness of hell.”
(Netflix is clearly going a wildly different direction with Emhyr as well, and that I’m actually sort of excited about, because while Emhyr is a fantastic antagonist, some of his plotline is so fucking creepy. But I hadn’t meant to opine, here, so I’ll leave it at that.)
Emhyr calls for Cahir to be arrested and tortured, to the dismay of his father Ceallach, who is present and acting in his capacity as a steward. Ceallach attempts to protest, and Emhyr says if the boy is only an idiot he will be merciful and merely behead him.
Time passes, word comes to Isengrim that Cahir is wanted for treason. Isengrim complies (Cahir has sort of been annoying him, insisting that he has to go and find Ciri, and has been borderline unhinged about it), and ties him up and leaves him locked up in a coffin, for some illicit weapon dealers to hand over in a prearranged rendezvous with Nilfgaard.
Geralt, who has spent the intervening time recovering from getting his shit wrecked by Vilgefortz at Thanedd and has just come out of hiding in Brokilon, accidentally intercepts this delivery. He opens the coffin and discovers Cahir, recognizes him, and does not kill him. Nor does he free him, he just leaves him a knife to free himself, and departs, with pursuit close behind them.
Thus unfolds the events of the Hansa subplot, which is recounted in various places. The relevant progression for Cahir is that at first he follows them, and they think he pursues; he helps them, at various points, and speaks to them once but Milva drives him off. Later he saves her, and winds up joining the company, and Geralt is the last to accept him. But he reveals that he has dreams of Ciri, and they’re identical to dreams that Geralt also has– and it turns out, they are true dreams, showing what Ciri is going through at that time. And at one point when Geralt is convinced Ciri has died, Cahir believes that she has not.
He feels that he is tied to her by Destiny. When pressed, he admits he is in love with her. When asked what he realistically hopes to happen, he reveals that he wants her to come to Nilfgaard and then maybe he can be in her bodyguard or see her sometimes.
Mmkay.
Everyone but Geralt likes him a lot because he’s a very good bro, he’s very noble, he’s kind especially to Milva, he says wonderful things about women’s rights (it’s apparently an important cultural phenomenon in Nilfgaard that women are absolutely in charge of their own reproductive capacity, and this is spelled out explicitly), he’s very patient, he’s a good sport, he’s brave. The only thing he repeatedly is cranky about is that he insists he is not Nilfgaardian, he is Vicovaran. Vicovaro fell to Nilfgaard only in the time of the Usurper, so he would have been born in a free country, possibly, depending how old he is. (I’ll get to that.) Clearly, the national identity remains, but is absolutely meaningless to the Nordlings with whom he travels.
There’s eventually some great bro stuff with Geralt when Cahir is injured in an encounter with Schirru (see above re:conspiracy stuff) and they have to make their own way to safety with Geralt literally carrying a fainting Cahir, it’s very noble, then a bunch of other shit happens.
Anyway, Lady of the Lake unfolds, the plot climaxes, and Cahir, as has been sort of portended, nobly dies for Ciri.
I feel like he’s sort of– underutilized even in the books, there’s the edge of so many themes he just sort of pokes out of. But he’s a very good slightly-fanatical doomed hero. A+, I love it.
Netflix is clearly going a whole different direction with him, so, good for them, let’s see where that lands, very interested, but he’s not my Good Doomed Boy so like.
In closing let’s have a few more Facts About Cahir:
Physically he is described as tall, dark-haired. His eyes are blue, described in varying ways; the Polish word specifically compares them to blue tungsten oxide, which is a remarkable dark blue. He is also young, Geralt specifically looks at him in the casket and speculates that he is under twenty-five. Later Dandelion observes that he is yet too young for his beard to come in thickly as it would on a more mature man. (Well, the actual quote, and bear in mind this is several days after having last seen him: “[The poet] remembered the young face, which hadn’t grown much more stubble since the adventure under the beech tree.” He is furthermore described as having the bearing of a soldier, and being hard to disguise. His Nilfgaardian accent is faint but present.
Finally, his home life is very slightly described for us, in his last flashback scene. Darn Dyffra is the family stronghold, described as being “a castle” and clearly having several buildings and a curtain wall. Cahir is ten when his oldest brother Aillil dies in battle in Nazair during the early wars of Northern conquest, and is too young to join the men in vigil over the casket– his grandfather Gruffyd, his father Ceallach, his other older brother Dheran are the named characters. It is clear that many young men have died in these wars– that would be on a campaign either early in Emyhr’s reign, or under the reign of the Usurper, when Nilfgaard began to expand northward. It also says Cahir has three sisters of unspecified ages (actually that’s said earlier, when he is discussing reproductive rights with Milva, so at least some of those sisters are likely older than he is).
His mother is the daughter of a Nordling woman, who his father calls a “She-Wolf from the North” (but only behind her back). (Other relations: Mawr’s sister Cinead var Anahid is related to the sorceress Assire var Anahid, in such a manner as to make Assire Cahir’s great aunt, which does come up later. Fringilla Vigo also admits she’s stayed at his house, when he was a child, and that’s why he keeps squinting at her as if he knows her; he does, but can’t remember.) His mother, after Aillil’s death, exhorts him to promise to always hate Nordlings, which slightly surprises him because he knows his grandmother is one, but he, in the flashback, promises to obey her.
Anyway. There’s Blorbo From My Books, which is the version of the character I’m using in my fics. Look for a more poetic and less succinct summary of the events of his life and death in chapter 19 of Fit For Pearls, going up momentarily.
Oh, and his name, his fucking name– the only thing I will say against Netflix that I can say unambiguously is against them is that they have him indignantly introduce himself in Cintra, within Fringilla’s hearing, and he does so whilst appending a rank I’ve never heard before, and omitting his own personal name, which is the only part of that entire moniker that actually belongs personally to him.
Here is how the very long Nilfgaardian names work:
[Personal Name] [Mother’s Personal Name] [Family Surname] aep [Father’s Personal Name].
We know this easily from Cahir because we meet his father in a present-day scene with Emhyr, and we meet his mother in the flashback. Her name is Mawr, his name is Ceallach.
Cahir’s full name, with which he identifies himself at every opportunity, is Cahir Mawr Dyffryn aep Ceallach.
His acquaintance, who he faces on the bridge across the Yaruga the first time he picks up arms against Nilfgaardians to save his Hansa comrades, recognizes him and calls out to him, identifying him as “aep Ceallach”; clearly, this is how people are addressed. He responds, stunned, with a name of Mortesen for the other Nilfgaardian, and then the encounter is aborted before they can catch up any more, but.
That’s how those names work. For the record. Someone like Emhyr var Emreis is known by his personal name and family name, because he’s more famous than his father / his family is more prominent than his father. (Emhyr is also known as his ruling name, the White Flame Dancing on the Barrows of his Foes, because he gets to do that because he’s the Emperor.) Someone like Cahir, who is young and not of any particular rank, is known by his patronymic appellation, because his father is a prominent person.
Just in case you were wondering!
Fine print: I had some assistance and cheering in writing this from some of my Discord pals (thanks especially to crou for info about the Polish word for his eye color!) but in the end did not have this final version proofread so any inaccuracies are sincerely my own personal misunderstanding/oversight. Again, not making any judgements on the merits of any adaptations or superiority of any media over others, just liked this version of this character and wanted to explain more about him. Anyone who wants to know more, the five books that deal with the Ciri plot are: 1) Blood of Elves 2) Time of Contempt 3) Baptism of Fire 4) Tower of Swallows 5) Lady of the Lake. (Your picture was not posted)
