Dandelion

A celebrated poet, incorrigible womaniser and trouble magnet, and above all Geralt’s closest and most loyal friend.

Dandelion, born Julian Alfred Pankratz, Viscount de Lettenhove, is the most famous bard in the North and Geralt’s best friend. He studied the seven liberal arts at Oxenfurt, taught there for a single year, then set off to see the world. He is vain, talkative, chronically unfaithful and gifted at getting into trouble, but also a genuinely great artist and a friend who never lets Geralt down. His best-known song is the ballad of the Lion Cub of Cintra, and in The Witcher 3 he is the voice behind the journal.

Dandelion in The Witcher 3
When Geralt learns that Ciri went to Dandelion for help in Novigrad, he heads for the Rosemary and Thyme, a brothel the bard inherited and now runs with Zoltan. Dandelion has vanished. In Broken Flowers and the quests that follow, Geralt pieces the story together: to get Ciri’s phylactery repaired, Dandelion agreed to steal Sigi Reuven’s treasure for Whoreson Junior, only for Caleb Menge to snatch the loot and throw the bard in prison. In A Poet Under Pressure Geralt, Zoltan and Priscilla ambush the prison convoy, and Dandelion finally tells what happened to Ciri.

Once free, he sets about turning the place into a cabaret called the Chameleon in Cabaret, and asks Geralt for help when Priscilla is attacked in Carnal Sins. He survives the story, joins Geralt and Zoltan at the White Orchard inn in the epilogue and narrates the ending.

In Blood and Wine, if the duchess throws Geralt into prison, it is Dandelion who talks Anna Henrietta into letting him go in Burlap is the New Stripe. He can also be the guest waiting at Corvo Bianco.

In the earlier games
In the first game he is a keen dice poker player and follows Geralt into exile in Murky Waters. The Witcher 2 opens his story on the scaffold in Flotsam, where Geralt saves him, and it turns out he has been spying for Vernon Roche.

In the books
Dandelion met Geralt at a fête in Gulet, where a girl’s four angry brothers were after him, and their first adventure together earned him his elven lute. In Blood of Elves he is tortured by the mage Rience until Yennefer saves him. Later he rides into Brokilon to find the wounded Geralt and joins the company that sets off to rescue Ciri.

Across the games

Dandelion turns up in Act III in the Trade Quarter. In Dandelion’s Lute the bard is in trouble again, and Geralt gets his lute back for him. As thanks, Dandelion invites him to his concert at the New Narakort at eight o’clock. In The Source, after Alvin is kidnapped by Salamandra, Geralt follows Dandelion to the kidnappers’ hideout.

In Act IV at Murky Waters, Dandelion is the one who hears that a peasant woman named Alina has taken in Alvin. In the Alvin quest he spends time at the local inn picking up gossip about the boy’s new family. When Alvin teleports away, he and Geralt decide to go back to Vizima to look for him. In The Heat of the Day Geralt plans to ask him to talk sense into a young man, and in Free Elves Dandelion keeps telling Geralt to stay out of the conflict before the two return to Vizima together.

In the Epilogue, in The Ashes of Vizima, Dandelion stays behind to write more songs about recent events while Geralt goes after the Grand Master.