So, to start off, just who is Letho of Gulet, the atypical antagonist that helps make this story so intriguing? Well, if you ask him that question, he’ll answer it quite bluntly: “I’m Letho of Gulet, I’m a Kingslayer.” This answer certainly isn’t wrong, after all, Letho’s assassinations of King Foltest of Temeria and King Demavend of Aedirn are the main catalysts that set the plot of the entire game in motion and even give it its name, but it does leave out one detail which is key to understanding just who you, as Geralt, are dealing with and what makes Letho such an interesting foil for the white wolf. Letho, like Geralt, is a witcher. He’s not just a human, elf or dwarf, like 99% of the other characters Geralt interacts with throughout the game, instead he’s another of the few remaining genetically enhanced mutants engineered and trained from childhood to take on the most dangerous and deadly monsters the Continent has to offer.

This means that, while they might be from different Witcher schools, Geralt the Wolf and Letho the Viper, the Kingslayer has a more in common with the White Wolf than pretty much anyone else in the game. Both men are members of the same rare and seemingly dying breed of monster hunters who are largely feared and despised by the general populace due to their perceived lack of emotions and fearsome killing potential, and, as a result, their lives have a lot of similarities. They’ve experienced the same relentless persecution and hatred from those they serve, they both know the feeling of fighting for your life against bloodthirsty beasts day in and day out, usually only earning enough coin to survive for a few days and they also both know the world-weariness that can come with spending months on end on the road, travelling from village to village, looking for work. They’ve even met before and helped each other out, though Geralt’s amnesia prevents him from remembering this when they first meet in the Witcher 2.

Now, in fiction, it certainly isn’t unheard of to have an antagonist who has experienced a similar life to the story’s protagonist or has common traits, but, generally speaking, it’s not the typical path most writers take when designing a villain. Traditionally, antagonists are almost polar opposites to the protagonists of their stories, in order to provide the most stark contrast in values and characteristics possible, as this is a relatively straightforward way to fuel the central conflict that drives the narrative forwards, by framing the story around two people or groups of people whose interpretations of the world fundamentally clash in a way that makes them completely incompatible. In these cases, the antagonist is the yang to the protagonist’s yin, allowing the story to illustrate and explore the philosophical concept of duality. However, this isn’t to say that by having a number of similarities between its protagonist and antagonist, The Witcher 2’s story abandons exploring duality, it just does it in a more subtle way than most tales.

That said, the idea that the political figures of the continent might want to utilise the skills of a witcher to achieve their goals certainly isn’t a strange one. After all, what kind of warmonger wouldn’t want a mutagen-enhanced super soldier with lightning fast reflexes and an array of magical abilities at their disposal? Indeed, it speaks volumes of both the distrust humans have for witchers and the dedication that the witchers themselves have towards their traditional vocation of dealing with the continent’s monsters that they haven’t already been tempted into becoming fixtures at royal courts all across the continent, utilised in a similar manner to sorcerers and sorceresses. Surely many rulers would be willing to overlook their prejudice against witchers in order to gain an invaluable weapon of war, much in the same way they put aside their distrust of magic when a mage can use it to help them defeat their enemies? In fact, many of these rulers would probably end up feeling more comfortable with a witcher in their court than a mage. Most witchers would seemingly likely be less likely to get involved in debating and influencing policy and wouldn’t come with many of the eccentricities that mages are often hated for. Also, they’d be relatively easy to compensate, simply by offering more coin than the pittance often earned on monster contracts and giving the witcher a taste of a life that’s more comfortable than the difficult existence they usually endure.

However, the fundamental message of the Witcher 2 is that, no matter how much sense this arrangement would make for both sides, it must never be allowed to become the norm. Letho of Gulet is the primary character the game uses to deliver this message, as he uses his skill-set to cut a bloody swath through several countries, leaving them engulfed in chaos. All it has taken is for one ruler to convince a tiny group of witchers, lead by one particularly exceptional individual, to get involved in politics and the next thing you know, the shape of the entire continent’s political landscape has been turned on its head. Even Geralt’s actions throughout the game, as he pursues the Kingslayer, generally only serve to add yet more unpredictable twists and turns to this dangerously shifting landscape. This is because having a witcher like Letho or Geralt on your side or against you in a war or political situation isn’t just akin to having another particularly skilled soldier, spy or assassin at your disposal or to deal with. It’s more like having a terminator in the mix.

In the medieval fantasy arms race, where the traditional implements of warfare have already been augmented by the addition of magic, witchers can completely change the face of conflict and the Witcher 2 poses an important question about this. What if, in a world where monsters, believe it or not, will eventually begin to become more scarce, more and more witchers begin to seek other forms of employment and what if they seek this employment from those who can offer them the most, the highest bidders, if you will? Those who have entire treasuries at their disposal and a mass of titles and land to hand out to those willing to bow before their crowned heads?

Part of the way it does this is by making sure that Letho, Serrit and Auckes aren’t shown to be one-dimensionally evil and morally reprehensible witchers, the kind that you’d be able to condemn and hate without a second thought. While they’re possibly a little naive to the full gravitas of their actions, those killing the northern kings for Emperor Emhyr aren’t utterly vindictive or malevolent characters. They’re just witchers, who’ve lived hard lives, arguably slightly harder than Geralt’s, given that their school’s headquarters, a mountain stronghold called Gorthur Gvaed, was destroyed by the Nilfgaardian Army during Emhyr’s predecessor’s reign, leaving its students to flee into the world, homeless and also banned from entering Nilfgaardian cities. Because of this, their decision to accept Emhyr’s offer, which, at least in theory, was to restore the Viper school in exchange for the witchers killing a few Northern monarchs, makes a degree of sense. Sure, it’d be easy for Geralt to argue that, if put in their position, he’d have stuck to being neutral and turned it down, but given how important the continued existence of Kaer Morhen as a winter home for him, Vesemir, Lambert and Eskel seems to be to the white wolf, who can say what he’d really have done.

This is what makes Letho and Geralt such a strong protagonist/antagonist dichotomy. In many ways, their lives mirror each other, with their shared vocation, their close relationships with the other witchers from their schools and their incredible fighting skills, but they still find themselves on opposite sides, largely because of one key factor. They have different definitions of to what degree it’s acceptable for a witcher to get involved in both war and politics. Letho seems to believe that, when it comes to this, a witcher should think about taking care of himself before he considers any moral quandaries. Sure, killing the Northern monarchs might have huge negative consequences for other people that he’s never met, but for Letho it could mean a chance at a better life for him and his fellow vipers than the one they’ve had to lead so far, while also allowing them to avoid the negative consequences that could well come with trying to turn down the Nilfgaardian Emperor.

This is certainly quite a selfish ethos, but it’s also quite a pragmatic one. Geralt, on the other hand, though his actions in-game are largely dictated by the player, seems to draw the line at doing certain things, no matter the reward and largely tries to stick to his moral credo of trying to choose the lesser evil in any political situation. Letho could argue that this makes Geralt a bit of a hypocrite, that the white wolf is defying the witcher’s code of neutrality by moulding the world to his vision through his choices and that if he truly wants to take a moral stand, he should take a leaf out of his fellow wolf witchers’ books and abstain from politics altogether as far as possible. Geralt might retort that his massive involvement in politics during the Witcher 2’s plot largely comes as a result of Letho having involved himself in it, with Geralt possibly feeling that he has a duty to stop Letho from bringing too much negative attention to their profession through his actions. Odds are it’d be quite a heated conversation.

A short time later, he watches as Letho slowly comes back to life and then reveals his plan. By using a special poison, he’d hoped to expire in front of the bounty hunters so that they’d think the job was done, to fake his own death in order to escape the life of a fugitive. Depending upon Geralt’s actions, this plan may have worked. Either way, in the sheer semi-suicidal nature of this gambit, we see a reflection of the desperate and miserable life that Letho of Gulet now leads because of his choices. He’s gone from being the bane of the world, a near unstoppable force that irreversibly altered the course of history to a loner on the run, abandoned and betrayed by everyone, save possibly the man he once nearly condemned to the executioner.

At this point, Letho can disappear from Geralt’s life once and for all, or he can play a role in one final key event before he goes. Geralt can invite him to Kaer Morhen, to fight in the first battle against the wild hunt. Once this battle is over, Geralt and Letho say a definitive goodbye and the white wolf begins the final act of his adventure, which culminates in a final battle with the hunt. However, no matter how difficult the final showdown with Eredin, the hunt’s leader, may prove to be for Geralt, it’ll present a very different challenge to deciding the fate of a man who was never his foe, but instead, was a slightly darker reflection of himself.