🤐 SPOILER ALERT 🤐

Emperor Emhyr var Emreis (Bart Edwards) is one of the most fearsome individuals lurking in the shadows of The Witcher Season 3. As a bloodthirsty monarch with legions of devout followers, he spells trouble for heroes like Geralt (Henry Cavill) and Yennefer (Anya Chalotra). And… Emhyr is also the father of Princess Cirilla “Ciri” of Cintra (Freya Allan). 

While people throughout the Continent assume Ciri’s dad is a knight of no renown who died in a tragic boat accident, there’s more to this story. Keep reading for a complete guide to Emhyr, his past and how a person once known as a hedgehog knight ended up as the face of an empire — including what happens in Season 3. 

Who is Emhyr? 

The Witcher fans first come to know Emhyr as the emperor of Nilfgaard. But, in the Season 2 finale, we learn the emperor is one and the same as Duny, the assumed dead husband of the late Cintran princess Pavetta (Gaia Mondadori) and Ciri’s father. 

Emhyr’s presence becomes more and more prominent throughout The Witcher. As his Nilfgaardian army takes more land, Emhyr’s thirst for power only increases. Emhyr is happy to use the unpredictable mage Fringilla (Mimi Ndiweni), loyal soldier Cahir (Eamon Farren) and an entire army of elves as his puppets. They’re all pawns in Emhyr’s play for domination of the Continent. The final — and most important — piece of the puzzle comes in the form of his daughter, Ciri. Emhyr is convinced a reunion with Ciri will complete his plan, which is only getting stronger. As Radovid (Hugh Skinner) tells Jaskier (Joey Batey) in Season 3, Episode 7, Emhyr used the distraction of the Thanedd Coup to take the Continent by surprise and officially begin the Second War.   

Does Emhyr have any aliases?

Yes. Prior to his reemergence as Emperor Emhyr, he wormed his way into the Cintran royal family with two names: Lord Urcheon and Duny. He’s also called the White Flame by Nilfgaardians, since his supporters believe he’s the one who’ll lead them through the prophesied time of the White Chill and the White Light.

Also, in the Season 3 finale, we learn Emhyr’s full title: Emperor Emhyr var Emreis, Deithwen Addan yn Carn aep Morvudd.

Katalin Vermes/Netflix

How is Emhyr Ciri’s father? 

The story of Ciri’s parentage is explained in Season 1, Episode 4, in which Pavetta’s mother, Queen Calanthe (Jodhi May), holds a banquet to determine who will win the hand of her daughter. Toward the end of the evening, Lord Urcheon of Erlenwald — a cursed hedgehog knight who no one really knew — arrives to claim Pavetta as his bride by the Law of Surprise. 

Urcheon, aka Duny, says he saved the life of Calanthe’s now-dead husband King Roegner from sure death years prior. For payment, Duny accepted the promise of the Law of Surprise, which entitles a savior to that which the person they saved possesses but doesn’t know about yet. When he heard King Roegner was expecting a baby daughter, Duny never expected to claim her. But destiny intervenes — Duny and Pavetta are now in love. 

Calanthe only agrees to the union after Pavetta, in a supernatural rage, nearly kills the entire banquet of people. Immediately after their wedding — and Geralt invoking the Law of Surprise for saving Duny’s life — it’s revealed that Pavetta is pregnant and expecting Duny’s baby. That child is Ciri. Sadly, Duny and Pavetta’s wedded bliss is short-lived — a raging storm at sea appears to kill the couple soon after Ciri’s birth.

Except Duny lives. In the Season 2 finale, we finally see the face of the oft-mentioned Emhyr. Initially, he’s shot from behind as he explains the pain of losing a child. Then, as Emhyr turns around, we see he and Duny are the same man. Ciri’s father has been the White Flame all along. 

But, he doesn’t want anyone to know it. In the Season 3 premiere, Emhyr sets fire to the Cintran royal portraits, destroying anything that can prove his past as Duny and his paternal connection to Ciri. Clearly, Emhyr is playing the long game. 

How do Emhyr and Pavetta meet? 

By using one of the loopholes of the curse. When Emhyr was still going by Duny — and living as a hedgehog person — he’d turn into a regular man at the stroke of midnight. Once, he waited for the curse to break and attempted to watch Pavetta from afar, he tells Calanthe in Season 1, Episode 4. While Duny never thought a princess would marry him because of his affliction, he wanted to glimpse the woman promised to him by destiny. 

Yet “destiny intervened and our hearts collided,” Pavetta tells her mother. During the night in question, Duny and Pavetta slept together. Duny awoke with Pavetta in his arms but returned to his hedgehog persona. The curse is only permanently broken once Calanthe allows Duny and Pavetta to marry. 

What do we know about Emhyr’s past? 

Very little — and that’s just the way Emhyr likes it. The few scraps we do know mostly come from general Nilfgaardian history. Unlike the Northern Kingdoms, Nilfgaard was an empire and one of the largest in the world. Then a tumultuous period hit. The emperor was usurped and all the mages were jailed; powerful men like Cahir’s nobleman father were also imprisoned. 

In The Witcher, it’s unclear what happened to the original emperor’s children — including Emhyr — during this period. All we know is that at some unknown point Emhyr was cursed to live as a hedgehog person. Eventually, Emhyr envisioned a new future for his home kingdom. 

In Season 3, Episode 2, he stops for a conversation with a dwarf blacksmith and reveals how he retook his empire. In the late summer of 1260, Emhyr was down to his final men in his battle against the Usurper and knew it was his “last chance” to vanquish his enemy.  

“I realized the only way that I could reclaim my throne was to infiltrate the castle, kill everyone that stood between me and the man that had stolen my life,” he says. So, he traded his boots to a dwarf for a Mahakaman steel sword and decapitated the Usurper with the weapon. Then, according to Nilfgaardian history, Emhyr freed the mages and laid the foundations for a bigger, better (and scarier) Nilfgaard. 

What does Emhyr’s Season 3 ending mean? 

In the Season 3 finale, Emhyr welcomes someone heralded as Cirilla to the Cintran palace for her coronation. She is adorned in a gown befitting royalty and has the same white-blonde hair Ciri is known to possess. But… the “Ciri” in Cintra is not the Ciri we’ve all come to love. Instead, it’s Teryn (Frances Pooley), the kidnapped, part-elf mage novice from earlier in the season. 

In Episode 2, Geralt finds Teryn in a cave of horrors and realizes that, via magic, the girl has been enchanted to believe she is Ciri. Teryn even has Ciri’s memories. As we learn throughout Season 3, it’s The Witcher supervillain Vilgefortz (Mahesh Jadu) who abducted Teryn and spelled her into losing her identity.

The finale clarifies exactly where Teryn falls in Vilgefortz’s plan — and it all has to do with Emhyr. Vilgefortz needed a fake Ciri to pawn off on Emhyr, whom he has been working with all along. Now Emhyr believes he has the key to his long-gestating plan — Ciri — and is well on his way to continental domination.   

But, unlike Emhyr, we know his daughter is nowhere near Cintra. Keep your eyes peeled for The Witcher Season 4 to find out what this latest twist means for Emhyr’s bloody chess game. 

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