When Does The Witcher Take Place?

The entire storyline of The Witcher is one that spans decades or even hundreds of years, depending on how you look at it. As such, this entire storyline is one that can get confusing when it comes to when it takes place, especially if you don’t know which events came first. Of course, the first season of The Witcher didn’t make things easier due to the three different timelines that we had to follow. So, when does The Witcher take place?

The current events of The Witcher take place during 1263 of the calendar of the Continent. However, season 1 of The Witcher was quite confusing because different events took place in different timelines, depending on whose storyline was the focus. But the major events all happened from 1263 onwards.

There are a lot of people who are confused regarding when the events of The Witcher took place. But the thing is that most of season 1 took place in jumbled timelines that allowed us to understand the history of the three main characters. However, season 2 is more straightforward and no longer includes different timelines. That said, let’s talk more about when The Witcher takes place.

The Witcher Timeline Explained

One of the most confusing shows that you can watch on Netflix is season 1 of The Witcher because how there are multiple timelines that you need to keep track of. Unlike most shows that have straightforward timelines that follow the numerical order of the episodes, season 1 of The Witcher has a more jumbled timeline that depends on the focus character of each scene. That is why it should be useful to understand the timeline of events of The Witcher to know when exactly the series takes place.

The very first events in season 1 of The Witcher were the days of Yennefer’s pre-mage years when she was a simple girl with a curved spine that made her look ugly and deformed. These events took place in 1206. 

Much of Yennefer’s training years also took place in the next few years after she was taken in by the mages to be turned into one. She ascended into a mage and ended up going through a process that allowed her to change her appearance at the cost of not ever having her own child. This event took place at 1210.

Meanwhile, Geralt, who has been a Witcher for quite a while already, first appears in the series in episode 1, which takes place in 1231. This was when he became the famed Butcher of Blaviken after he killed Princess Renfri and her man in Blaviken. Renfri, of course, was the one who told Geralt about “the girl in the woods,” who happened to be Ciri decades before she was even born. Nine years after the Renfri incident in Blaviken, Geralt became friends with a young Jaskier, who became his unwanted travel companion.

Right around the same year as the meeting between Geralt and the traveling bard named Jaskier, Yennefer had already been a court mage for three decades but had lost interest in her job. In fact, an assassin came for Queen Kalis of Lyria, who was the very same mage that she served. Both the queen and her baby died in the assassination, as Yennefer survived and went on with her life as an independent mage that served no king or queen.

Three years later, in 1243, Triss Merigold asked the help of Geralt to deal with the Striga monster that had been terrorizing the kingdom that she was serving. Then, six years later, in 1249, Geralt ended up accompanying Jaskier in Cintra, where Princess Pavetta was to hear marriage proposals. He became an unwanted player in the fate of the kingdom of Cintra because he saved Princess Pavetta’s lover from certain death and invoked the Law of Surprise as a reward. But what no one knew was that Pavetta was actually pregnant with Ciri, and that was how she became Geralt’s child of surprise.

In 1256, Geralt and Yennefer met for the first time while the Witcher was trying to cure Jaskier’s injury after an encounter with a djinn. That was when Geralt and Yennefer became lovers for the very first time. But it took a while for them to meet each other once more as they only met again in 1262 when they ended up on a quest to search for a dragon.

Then, in 1263, Geralt returned to Cintra after he found out that the Nilfgaardian Empire was on its way to launch an attack on the kingdom. He wanted to claim his child of surprise because he knew that Ciri wasn’t going to be safe in Cintra. Meanwhile, Yennefer went back to Aretuza to call for a meeting involving all of the wizards so that they could discuss what they should do about Nilfgaard’s actions.

Everything that happened after that event took place in 1263. That means that the Battle at Sodden Hill and the invasion of Cintra by the Nilfgaardian Empire took place in the same year. Meanwhile, Geralt also escaped his imprisonment in Cintra in the same year, as he headed to the woods, where he met Ciri for the very first time after she had escaped a man that was posing to be Mousesack.

When Does The Witcher Take Place?

Now that you understand more about the timeline of The Witcher, we can say for certain that the events right after the final episode of season 1 are all easier to understand. That’s because every event that occurred right after Geralt and Ciri met for the first time happened linearly. In that regard, there are no more jumbled timelines after that meeting, as everything happened chronologically based on the episode numbers.

As such, the events in season 2 all happened right after the meeting between Geralt and Ciri. This means that the main events of The Witcher all happen in 1263, and the days that followed that fateful encounter between the two main characters of the storyline. 

Of course, the entire storyline of The Witcher is one that will last for years, especially considering that Ciri is still maturing and learning more about her powers while also training in the art of using the sword. As such, we can expect the storyline of The Witcher to proceed for another nine or so years in terms of in-universe time. That’s because, in the games and the books, the events of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt happened in 1272.

But the timeline of the live-action adaptation of the Netflix series seems to be a bit different compared to the timeline of the games and the books. That’s why it is also possible that the events in the series won’t get separated by years compared to the games and the books.