Universes · 12 events
The Witcher chronology and timeline
The chronology on paper ended before the first disc. The Netflix timeline starts the clock from zero. This page lines all three up.
Three clocks, one continent
Andrzej Sapkowski published the short stories and the five saga novels between 1993 and 1999. CD Projekt Red started The Witcher in 2007, years after the last novel closed, with Geralt in an amnesia the books do not describe. Netflix arrived in 2019 and shuffled the first season’s stories as if they were contemporary.
The three orders on this page are not “which is best”. They are three clocks: a chronology of the continent, and a timeline for each medium. On the books tab, Season of Storms — published in 2013 — returns to a younger Geralt in the middle of a saga already finished. On the games tab, the first disc is the first step. On the series tab, Netflix episode one is year one for the streaming room.
Items from one clock stay visible on the others: a game at the end of the books tab is not a mistake. It is the point where the new medium starts.
Books
Short stories
The witcher is still a hired blade in loose tales, before the continuous saga.
The Last Wish
Games: Premise of the games
Series: Base of season 1, out of order
A collection. The djinn, the wish, the first time Geralt and Yennefer bind themselves with a badly worded sentence. Published in Polish in 1993. It is the door of the books and, in the series, the material the first season cuts into slices out of order.
Sword of Destiny
Series: Scattered through season 1
1992 in Poland, the second story volume. Ciri enters for real. “Something more” stops being a phrase and becomes the girl. Without this book the novel saga has no Child of Surprise.
Season of Storms
2013. A late novel, slotted before the continuous saga — Geralt still walks alone. It arrived fourteen years after The Lady of the Lake. In publication order it is last. In inner order it returns to the start. It is the asterisk the Books tab has to show.
Geralt and Ciri’s saga
Five novels. A continent at war, the Child of Surprise.
Blood of Elves
Series: Season 2, in part
1994. First novel. Ciri at Kaer Morhen, the second war on the horizon. The saga stops being a tale and becomes a march. Netflix only truly arrives here in season two, with cuts.
Time of Contempt
Series: Season 3, in part
1995. Thanedd, the coup, Ciri alone in the world. It is the novel where the continent’s politics swallow the witcher. Geralt leaves the story of “beast to kill” and enters the story of “man who arrived late”.
Baptism of Fire
1996. The company. Regis, Milva, Cahir, the baron. Geralt builds a band to find Ciri and the book becomes a road. No game reconstitutes this march with the same names in the same roles.
The Tower of the Swallow
1997. Ciri in Bonhart’s hands, the desert, the tower. The hardest novel in the saga. The series has not covered it chapter for chapter; the games treat it as a past already closed.
The Lady of the Lake
1999. The end of the saga on paper. Rivia, the pogrom, the flight to another world. Sapkowski closes Geralt and Yennefer in a way the games will refuse: CD Projekt wakes them. Netflix has not reached here.
After the paper
The three games and the series, once the book clock had already closed.
The Witcher (2007)
Geralt wakes with no memory at Kaer Morhen. CD Projekt starts after the last novel and treats amnesia as a licence. 26 October 2007. On the games tab it is the first step. On the books tab it is what happens when the paper had already ended.
The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings
17 May 2011. Pontar, the kings who fall, the political map the first game only brushed. Amnesia is resolved. It does not adapt Baptism of Fire; it invents another war on the same continent.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
19 May 2015. Ciri again, the Wild Hunt, the Skellige isles. It is the game that talks most with the novels and still does not replace them: the Ciri here has already passed the lake. On the games tab, the close. On the books tab, an epilogue Sapkowski did not write.
The Witcher — season 1 (Netflix)
20 December 2019. Three lines — Geralt, Yennefer, Ciri — cut together. Stories from The Last Wish and Sword of Destiny appear out of the paper’s order. It is year one for the streaming room and, on the books tab, a reshuffle. It is not the start of the saga: it is another clock.
See also the timeline index and universes.