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So. Iorveth is a character mentioned briefly in the Witcher books (largely notable for having led a unit of Nilfgaard-sponsored Vrihedd cavalry [made up of Scoia’tael guerrillas] in the Second Northern War that had suffered a defeat, with some of its members being captured and tortured and executed, and others fleeing in disarray through the woods; we only get mentions of his name, and no descriptions of him). For the Witcher 2 game, CDPR took this named-but-undescribed character and expanded his backstory slightly. W2 is set after the events of the books. In the books, at the end of the second war, part of the treaty terms is that Nilfgaard, who lost, handed over all of the Vrihedd officers to the nations of the victorious North, for them to conduct show trials and execute the hapless officers. In the book we get a POV from one of them, Isengrim Faoiltiarna, who is brought to Dillingen to be executed. He watches several of his comrades set upon by men with knives, and then manages to open the lock of his handcuffs and make a desperate, daring escape through a window; he survives and flees the North (and meets up with several other characters doing the same, including Sigismund Dijkstra).
CDPR changed the description of the Vrihedd execution slightly, and does not give details but sort of gloms Iorveth onto Isengrim’s story, including giving him a prominent and disfiguring facial scar. (Isengrim’s scar is described in great detail, but he has both eyes. He appears in the Gwent game and some of the filenames of discarded bits of W3, but has no video game appearances.) So in this post-second-war setting, Iorveth is now the most prominent remaining commander of the Scoia’tael, and has become a larger-than-life legend; the nations of the North have formed special forces expressly to fight against him and his guerillas. In this game cutscene, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqfvnqaweny&t=348s Iorveth tells Geralt:
The Blue Stripes are uncommon, let me assure you. Efficient, ruthless and well led - they’re your version of the Scoia'tael. But you’re right, there are other units. Each kingdom has a few of them, smaller or larger. They were a reaction to our operations behind the lines during the wars with Nilfgaard. These units recruit only those who have nothing left to lose. They’re persuaded it’s all for a greater good and are spoon-fed dreams of revenge for the death of their loved ones. They gradually lose any vestige of humanity, kill when ordered to without hesitation. Of course, the same happens to regular soldiers, only these special units actually enjoy hunting elves.
Cut for length, this is just an analysis of Iorveth’s character and costume design, which I thought I ought to write because so many readers have confessed that they’re not familiar with Witcher 2, and while Roche appears in 3, Iorveth (sob) does not. But, yes, with a specific focus on the badges, because I had a fic commenter ask me if they were necessary (??), and I thought I might explain how important they are in a canon and cultural context.
So as part of Iorveth’s costume design, he’s described as wearing a mixture of Elven and human gear, implied to be largely salvaged. (Interestingly, none of it is Nilfgaardian, implying either Nilfgaard never directly supplied the Vrihedd with any gear, OR it was all discarded at the betrayal, OR, well, any number of juicy headcanons could go in here.) And a salient feature of that costume is that across his chest, he has a belt that he has adorned with the badges of the leaders of several (all?) of these Northern special forces units, who he has defeated and killed. [image: image]
[Image description: a two-page spread from the Witcher 2 artbook, with images of Iorveth both in concept sketches and in his finished game model, and explanatory text of his origins and armament. Includes brief mention of the badges.]
(An interesting side note on his Wildly Invented Fantasy Bow: the double arms do seem to be a bit of an homage to a Penobscot bow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/cable-backed_bow, a variant of cable-backed bows.)
The badges as presented in his character model are disappointingly lacking in detail. Ostensibly, they should represent the major nations of the North– prior to his defeat of Roche (depending on gameplay), where he gets the Temerian fleur-de-lis-decorated badge Roche wears as part of his uniform, he should have badges from Kaedwen, Aedirn, Redania, and the Order of the Flaming Rose. A mod exists https://www.nexusmods.com/witcher2/mods/279 to give him these, but as he appears in the game, he has the Flaming Rose and then three other badges with fleur-de-lis in varying colors, which makes no sense unless you come up with some elaborate explanation of why everyone would use Temeria’s device.
A section from the transcript of W2, in which Iorveth explains what the badges are:
[If Iorveth defeats Roche in single combat]
IORVETH: The Temerian Special Forces, created by Foltest to combat the Scoia'tael after the first war with Nilfgaard. Veterans, professionals, the best of the best. This is the end, Roche. See these emblems? Temerian lilies - that’s all I lacked. I’ve defeated the commanders of all the special forces in the North. Now, I shall unite the Scoia'tael…
[image: image]
[img description: a clear image of Iorveth, actually from a W3 mod but depicting his canon appearance in W2 except shinier [pardon, every W2 screenshot i found was so fucking dark], showing the five badges he ends the game with if you have him defeat Roche; four of them have fleur de lis on them, which is a somewhat-baffling choice.] [image: image]
[image description: an image of Iorveth from W2, with the Trophy Emblems Retex mod applied: now the badge on his shoulder bears the unicorn device worn by soldiers of Kaedwen, the badge immediately under the strap buckle bears the chevron from Stennis’s Aedirnian soldiers, the Flaming Rose badge is unchanged, and the lowest badge bears the Redanian eagle. Roche’s Temerian blue and white fleur de lis badge is not present.]
So! Now let’s discuss context.
Firstly, on salvaging/looting: In the pre-modern era, and I know the Witcher is set in a nebulous fantasy non-past setting but it is definitely meant to be analagous to pre-modern, clothing and gear is disproportionately expensive to how a modern audience would think of it. So in pre-modern warfare, a standard practice after every battle is that the victor’s camp followers would strip every corpse prior to burial, salvaging everything of value– clothing, jewelry, possessions, shoes which were extremely valuable, and especially military equipment and gear. Clearly, everything Iorveth is wearing is meant to be salvaged or looted, either in this fashion or by plundering the stores of defeated settlements or forts. Note the texturing on his mail-shirt in several of the images above– it is meant to be damaged and visibly mended, showing heavy use and possible salvaging. (There are historical records of far more than just clothing https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33085031 being scavenged from war dead.)
But, secondly, the taking of military trophies: the insignia of a military unit has held a mystique greater than the properties of a physical object for a long time. Rome’s legions bore eagle standards, and recovering a lost one– not the people it represented, but the object itself– is the plot of The Eagle of the Ninth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/the_eagle_of_the_ninth, for example. In early-modern Japan, regimental flags were the subject of great reverence https://kamuycentral.wordpress.com/2017/10/03/ogatas-half-brother-the-flag-bearer/#more-195. There is ongoing current contention https://www.twincities.com/2017/08/20/minnesota-has-a-confederate-symbol-and-it-is-going-to-keep-it/ over a standard of the 23rd Virginia Regiment that was seized by the First Minnesota at the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863 during the American Civil War, at the cost of the lives of 80% of the soldiers in the Minnesota unit. And for many Native American tribes, trophies in the form of standards or effigies of defeated enemies https://twitter.com/waterpotential/status/953859615124541441?t=dm6txj7mjdmvxlic34immw&s=19 serve an important cultural https://twitter.com/ruth_hhopkins/status/896424773827383296?t=9bvzyjdl7xlbfb099wxgdq&s=19 and ceremonial role to this day; a replica of Custer’s standard from the Battle of Little Bighorn/Greasy Grass https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/battle_of_the_little_bighorn in 1876, for example, is trampled ritually in the dancers’ entrance to a Black Hills powwow in 2014. (Around 4:35 timestamp here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swo1blbusqk.)
Within the world of the Witcher, there seems to be similar attention devoted to military unit standards; there’s a whole quest in Witcher 2 https://laurelnose.github.io/chapter-2-iorveth/#dunbanner surrounding the eponymous dun-colored banner of a unit called the Dun Banner.
Iorveth is a defeated survivor, a genocide remnant, a larger-than-life legend of vengeance. It’s possible that every stitch of clothing, every rivet of armor he’s wearing is salvaged or stolen. Bedecking him with badges taken from the uniforms of the corpses of his defeated enemies is an incredibly resonant costuming choice and, yes, a canon detail I have kept in my fic. (Your picture was not posted)
