Cintra

Cintra is a small but proud kingdom at the southern edge of the Northern Kingdoms, lying south of the great river Yaruga where it flows into the sea. Its neighbours are Sodden, Brugge and, across the border, the Nilfgaardian province of Nazair. Its coat of arms shows three golden lions on a blue field, and under Queen Calanthe, the Lioness of Cintra, it punched well above its weight among the northern realms.

For readers and players alike, Cintra matters for one reason above all: it is Ciri‘s homeland. The saga’s central bond between Geralt and Ciri is sealed at the Cintran court, and the fall of Cintra to Nilfgaard is the catastrophe that sets the whole story of the novels in motion.

In the games

None of the games takes Geralt to Cintra. By the time of The Witcher 3 the kingdom is long gone, but its legacy is everywhere: Ciri is the last heir of Cintra’s royal line, the Skellige jarl Crach an Craite is bound by oath to protect her, and Emhyr var Emreis, who hires Geralt to find her, is her father and the man who once claimed her mother at the Cintran court.

In the books

In “A Question of Price” from The Last Wish, Geralt attends the betrothal feast for Princess Pavetta at the castle of Cintra, disguised as a nobleman. A masked knight, Urcheon of Erlenwald, arrives to claim her under the Law of Surprise, as payment for once saving her father King Roegner’s life. His face turns out to be that of a beast, but Pavetta loves him, and when the suitors attack him her magic erupts and nearly wrecks the hall until Geralt and the druid Mousesack subdue it. The curse breaks, the knight becomes the man Duny, Calanthe agrees to marry Eist Tuirseach of Skellige, and Geralt claims his reward by the same Law of Surprise. Pavetta is already pregnant: the child is Ciri.

In Sword of Destiny, the young Ciri runs away from Cintra to avoid an arranged marriage with Prince Kistrin of Verden and meets Geralt in Brokilon, where he realises she is his Child of Surprise. Mousesack then arrives to bring her home to Calanthe. In the closing story, “Something More”, Dandelion brings the news that Cintra has fallen to Nilfgaard and that Calanthe threw herself from the walls, and Ciri, believed dead, turns up alive at the home of the merchant Yurga.

The fall itself, the Slaughter of Cintra, came in 1263 during the First Nilfgaard War. Calanthe was badly wounded at the Battle of Marnadal and withdrew to the capital, which held out for four days. When the Nilfgaardians broke into the keep, the queen leaped from a tower, and Ciri escaped the burning city with the help of Cahir, the black knight with the winged helmet who haunts her nightmares from the opening pages of Blood of Elves. Cintra was razed, and the Nilfgaardian army pushed north until it was stopped at Sodden Hill.

Cintra stayed under Nilfgaard’s thumb. Emhyr strengthened his claim by presenting a double of Ciri as the true princess and making her his empress, and the war finally ended with a treaty signed in Cintra itself on 2 April 1268. Afterwards the kingdom became nominally independent, but it remained firmly under Nilfgaardian control.