Elin Ratzinger (or Wilma Wessely if you like)

Alright. Having sat down and hammered a blog post out of the earlier burst of delight for this upcoming expansion and its art, I discovered (& was pointed toward) additional potential inspirations for plot of The Witcher 3: Songs of the Past ⬇️God knows how much will be true 😅

Merch & spoilers drop for The Witcher 3: Songs of the Past. We'll see Letten & its mirror reflection - Nettel. Lettenhove. Nettelhove. 😀 It recalls the drowned town in Mickiewicz's ballad Świteź: at night, the lake mirrors the sky, showing stars above and stars below, and two moons. But underneath that beautiful reflection lies the truth of the sunken town of Świteź, cast there to save it from the invaders. The townswomen became flowers on the lake shore that kill anyone who picks them (as in Garden of Thorns). The water acts as a barrier between the present and the past, and the fishermen in the ballad have to cast a net to pull the truth out of the lake (in the form of a woman) - thus, one has to look beneath the surface of Letten to see the historical trauma preserved in Nettel. I also think this concept is, truthfully, the hint at and bridge to Ciri's upcoming trilogy, because it fits perfectly with Sapkowski's idea of the mirror barrier between times and places (that Ciri can cross), but more on that later. Given Green Man on the merch, I wonder if the concept of Oak & Holly King will make an appearance in Songs of the Past. The Waxing & Waning Year & who(se metaphysical status quo) rules; all that jazz. But we know something even more important from Paula Mejsner, the Lead Writer: "We are actually, once again reaching towards Polish romanticism, Polish postmodernist poetry. We'll be digging a bit into Shakespeare, and I think that even when watching the demo, you will see the traces of A Midsummer Night’s Dream versus Macbeth, because this is a contrast that we are actually also using as a base when it comes to our writing." This should be pointing to Słowacki’s Balladyna, which was inspired by both plays. Around lake Gopło, Prince Kirkor is trying to pick a wife. Goplana, the nymph-queen of the Lake, is in love with Grabiec who's in love with Balladyna. To get rid of the rival, the queen sends her fairy to make Kirkor fall in love with Balladyna, but the fairy botches the spell and makes Kirkor fall in love with both Balladyna and her sister Alina. The sisters compete for Kirkor by picking raspberries. Upon seeing Alina winning, Balladyna kills her with a knife. The queen Goplana turns the only witness to it, Grabiec, into a weeping willow so he cannot tell. (Draw your conclusions for how they might adapt this 😉 given that the willow we see in Songs of the Past seems to be female.) Balladyna lies about what happened & the crime stays with her as a bloody stain on her forehead that will not come off. Meanwhile, a shepherd-poet searching for an ideal woman, finds Alina's body and falls in love with the dead girl. Anyway, Kirkor & Balladyna marry, he rides off into battle, Balladyna becomes corrupted with power, locks her poor mother in a tower, takes a lover, tries to remove the stain of her murder, but gets deeper into a cycle of murders to maintain her position, as the natural forces (fairies) remind her of her crimes. At the feast, a sprite sings a song listing Balladyna's crimes, and she sees Alina's ghost. Instead of stopping, more killing follows, more appropriation of symbols of lawful kingship of the land. The lover defeats the husband Kirkor, but Balladyna poisons him too. Which leads to Balladyna judging the cases in which she had a hand in, and she sentences unknown culprits to death for them - and is then struck down by lightning as God carries out the sentences she passed, in truth, on herself. So putting this next to what we know of Songs of the Past: