Letho

Letho of Gulet, better known as the Kingslayer, is a witcher of the School of the Viper and the main antagonist of The Witcher 2. He looks like a big, bald oaf, and people tend to underestimate him, which is exactly what makes him so dangerous. Behind the muscle is a patient, cunning schemer. After Nilfgaard destroyed his school at Gorthur Gvaed, he struck a deal with Emperor Emhyr: murder the kings of the North and pin the blame on the sorceresses, in return for the restoration of the Vipers.

Letho in The Witcher 3
Letho only appears in The Witcher 3 if Geralt spared him at the end of the second game. In that case, Geralt can find him in Ghosts of the Past, hiding at the booby-trapped Reardon Manor in Velen. Emhyr never kept his promise, and now that Letho is an inconvenient witness, assassins and bounty hunters are after his head. After the two witchers fight off a group of hunters together, Letho realises his old friend Louis sold him out. If Geralt rides with him, they deal with Louis and head to Lindenvale, where Letho lets the bounty hunter Arnout Vester shoot him with a poisoned bolt to fake his own death. Geralt can either kill the hunters, ruining the plan, or play along so they leave convinced the Kingslayer is dead.

What happens to Letho?
Whether Letho is alive at all depends on the final choice of The Witcher 2. If he survived, Geralt can invite him to Kaer Morhen at the end of Ghosts of the Past. He then fights in The Battle of Kaer Morhen, joining Geralt and Lambert to close the Wild Hunt’s portals in the woods and holding off Imlerith, and attends Vesemir’s funeral afterwards. If he is not invited, he says goodbye and heads east to Zerrikania. If Geralt does not follow him to Louis, the two simply never meet again.

In the earlier games
Years earlier, Geralt saved Letho’s life, and the Vipers later helped the witcher chase the Wild Hunt and took care of Yennefer after Geralt traded himself for her. In The Witcher 2, disguised as a monk, Letho cuts King Foltest’s throat in front of Geralt, leaving the witcher to take the blame. He works with Iorveth’s Scoia’tael in Flotsam, beats Geralt in a fight but spares him, and kidnaps Triss to reach Aedirn. At Loc Muinne the two witchers finally talk it all through, and Geralt decides whether to let him go or kill him.

Across the games

The Witcher 2

In The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, Letho of Gulet is the kingslayer. Disguised as a blind monk, he murders King Foltest in front of Geralt, leaps from the window of the solar, survives the fall and escapes with the help of the Scoia’tael. Vernon Roche‘s information places him near Flotsam, where he had been carrying out killings for Iorveth’s Squirrels before their paths diverged. When Geralt confronts him in the ruins of the elven bath, he learns that Letho is a witcher, that other kingslayers worked with him to murder two northern kings, and that Geralt had once saved his life. Letho beats Geralt and leaves for Aedirn.

Letho later kidnaps Triss Merigold, mortally wounding Cedric, and forces her to teleport them to Aedirn. A vision reveals that he had ordered his accomplices to kill King Henselt and that the kingslayers had worked with Sile de Tansarville before falling out with her. At the Loc Muinne summit, brought in by Nilfgaardian envoys, he publicly accuses the sorcerers of ordering the assassinations.

His true purpose is revealed too late: Letho had served the Nilfgaardian Empire all along, sowing chaos in the North before a new war. Using the Lodge of Sorceresses‘ ambitions, contacts and money, along with the unwitting Scoia’tael, he removed two key northern monarchs and cast suspicion on the sorcerers who had once halted Nilfgaard at Sodden. The story ends with a final meeting between Geralt and Letho, in which the kingslayer alone can confirm or deny what Geralt suspects.