It's Not Enough

[rocky41_7]

No offense but I'd let a magician rip my uterus out in exchange for becoming super hot in a heartbeat and not regret it. RIP to Yennefer of Vengerberg, but I'm different.

However, I maintain that Yennefer's resentment over her choice comes not from a burning desire to bear a child, but because Yennefer is desperate for total and complete control over her life. (CWs for brief discussion of Yennefer's suicide attempt).

Yennefer's Desire for Control
In S1E5 ("Bottled Appetites") Yennefer makes a nearly-disastrous effort to capture a djinn to use it to regain her fertility. Geralt implores her to give up, that she will lose control, not gain it, by trying to trap the djinn. As Yennefer contorts on the floor, battling a djinn far stronger than she had expected, Geralt makes another effort to persuade her to stop.

Geralt: Release the djinn! I'll give you my last wish!
Yennefer: You heroic protector...noble dog...permitting my success so long as you command it yourself! Fuck off! I'll do this myself!
Geralt: Dammit Yennefer, tell me what you want!
Yennefer: I want everything!

This is, I believe, one of the best insights into Yennefer's character. The whole episode with the djinn goes to show Yennefer's willingness to grapple for power. Not over others, necessarily--although I think it's relevant that the djinn episode opens on Yennefer having ensorcelled the governor's household and Geralt walks in on her observing dispassionately as her victims sexually and rhythmically cavort in front of her--but over herself. Her effort to trap the djinn, as Geralt notes, puts her life in danger and clearly causes her incredible pain, the unnatural cracking of her joins and tendons background noise to the above conversation with Geralt.

This experience goes to show us how far Yennefer will go to regain her lost womb, but more than that, it goes to show us how far Yennefer will go for control. Yennefer wants complete and total control over her life and she will risk anything to have it. Looking at her life thus far, it's not very hard to see why.

Yennefer's childhood sucked. She grew up partially elf-blooded in a racist society, visibly deformed and disabled in an ableist society, female in a sexist society, and poor. She was effectively thrown away by her family, the only ones who supposedly cared about her, and spent the remainder of her youth in a strict and dangerous boarding school. Tissaia may have seen the value in Yennefer and grown Yennefer's talents as best she could--perhaps Tissaia's sharp and uncompromising style was even best for the development of Yennefer's magical abilities--but she was not a loving or nurturing figure. While she and Yennefer seem to have developed a much better rapport with Yennefer's maturation, Tissaia was in no way a replacement for the loving family Yennefer always lacked.

On her first night in Aretuza, Yennefer attempts suicide, in despair and desperate for some form of control over herself and her future. Tissaia binds her wounds and mocks her for the effort when Yennefer comes to with Tissaia standing by her bedside. S1E2 ("Four Marks"):

Tissaia: Do you know how many people wouldn't blink if you died? 
...
Yennefer: You should have let me die. At least I had control over that.
Tissaia: Oh that's adorable, piglet. You weren't taking control. You were losing it.

As in "Bottled Appetites," Yennefer's acting out was an attempt to regain control, even if Tissaia viewed it as a failed attempt (in fact, Geralt's comments echo Tissaia's here, telling Yennefer that whatever she's doing is ceding power, not claiming it). Yennefer's suicide attempt is notable for the first time we really see her try to take control of something. It may have been a grief-fueled, immature effort, but it was there, and her anguish over her lack of agency was real. Abused at home and sold against her will, even our brief glimpse of Yennefer's life in Vengerberg showed us how little say she had in anything that went on in her life, a situation that was likely to continue.
 
The choice to barter her uterus for beauty is the first choice Yennefer gets to make in her life (S1E3 "Betrayer Moon"). The surgeon first tries to refuse her ("The Chapter would have my head.") and then to delay her ("I'll need time to prepare the herbs.") but Yennefer fights him down on both.

Surgeon: Don't be foolish. You can't be awake during the procedure.
Yennefer: I can.

The scene following focuses on the incredible pain Yennefer went through to get what she wanted, and she follows it with her next choice: to reject her assignment from the Lodge of Sorceresses in favor of choosing Aerdin.  Whether or not Yennefer would have been more content with her more glamorous initial assignment to Nilfgaard is up for debate, but for Yennefer it wasn't about which assignment was better or more influential or came with the best perks--it was about choice. She wanted to make her own choice, even if it might be the wrong one.

Yennefer's Desire for Love
The show then picks up again three decades afterwards, where Yennefer is bored and disillusioned with life as a sorceress (S1E4 "Of Banquets, Bastards, and Burials"). She has what she wanted--the power of her magic, her beauty, her choice of assignment. And yet she is not happy. Because there is something else that Yennefer needs for that: love. "Of Banquets, Bastards, and Burials":

Queen Kalis: I envy you, truly. A king's mage. Splendid!
...
Yennefer: I love...that I traded everything to get my seat at court. I love that I believed it would all be worth it.

Yennefer goes on to lament that rather than having a legacy, she spends her days "cleaning up stupid political messes" and describes her role as a "glorified royal arse-wiper." It could be a legitimate complaint that her job as a royal mage is simply not as glamorous as she dreamed it would be, or it may be that Yennefer was never going to be satisfied serving a regent. Yennefer believes power and admiration will make her happy. Yet what is admiration but a shallow, impersonal form of love?

Yennefer's childhood showed us two things she was deprived of, to her great detriment: agency, and love. This was true both in Vengerberg and in Aretuza. In S1E6 ("Rare Species") she gives us a much clearer picture of what she wants. She discusses her desire to cure her infertility, yes, but more than that. Yennefer never shows us any great yearning for the practical concept of motherhood. In "Rare Species," Geralt speaks privately with Yennefer about her reasons for pursuing the dragon:

Geralt: Yen. What are you really doing here?
Yennefer: I'm here for the dragon. There are certain healing properties it's rumored to possess.
Geralt: I thought your...transformation...healed all parts of you?
Yennefer: At the cost of losing others, yes.
...
Geralt: And seriously? You, a mother?
Yennefer: Do you think I'd make a bad one?
Geralt: Definitely.
Geralt: Yen. What could you possibly want with a child?
Yennefer: They took my choice. I want it back.

Here she says it explicitly: This is about choice. Yennefer doesn't care that she went willingly into the bargain, that she traded her uterus for beauty. Yennefer cannot claim to have been bamboozled; she went into that agreement with clear and actual knowledge of what it entailed. She was of an appropriate age (not a minor), she was told clearly the terms and consequences, she was not laboring under any medical distress or episodes of mental illness or intoxication, and she did not act under duress or coercion. Yennefer knew exactly what she was getting into--it's only now, decades past, that she's decided she regrets her choice, or rather, that she wants both--her beauty and her fertility ("I want everything!"). She resents the loss now that she's found beauty hollow, or at least not as totally fulfilling as she might have imagined when she told Istredd admiration and adoration were what she was owed ("Four Marks").

Later in "Rare Species," Geralt and Yennefer have a very intimate exchange, and this is one of the most vulnerable views we get of Yennefer.

Yennefer: Do you regret it? Becoming a witcher?
Geralt: Hard to regret something you didn't choose.

Regret is clearly on Yennefer's mind after their earlier conversation, so she probes Geralt about his own. What she finds is that they both had comparatively little choice about the roles they ended up with in life. Yet Geralt, unlike Yennefer, seems at least resigned, if not accepting, of his lot. His expression at Yennefer's questioning clearly implies he never considered these questions before.

Yennefer resents a choice being taken from her. It's not important that she might never choose to get pregnant and bear a child, but she wants the option, no matter how remote the chance that she will actually use it. Yennefer spent her youth entirely deprived of agency, and now she clings to and grasps after every iteration of it. But there is something else Yennefer craves, another wish even deeper in her heart. She tells Geralt out on the hillside she wants her fertility back, she wants her choice back. But it isn't until they're lying in bed after sex, having this vulnerable conversation about choices and regrets, that she admits the other part of it. "Rare Species" (same conversation as last quote):

Yennefer: But if the choice had been yours. What would you have done instead?
...
Geralt: If I ever dreamed of being something...other...than what I am...it was too long ago to remember. Did you dream of being a mage?
Yennefer: I didn't have much of a choice either.
Geralt: Did you always want to become a mother?
Yennefer: ...I dreamed...of becoming important to someone. Someday.
...
Geralt: You're important to me.

If anything beyond the mere choice to birth or not to birth her own child, Yennefer is drawn by the idea of a child who loves her, to whom Yennefer, their mother, is their whole world. Yennefer wants to be loved. She wants to be valued. It's a deeply human desire, and Yennefer has lacked it much of her life. Istredd, her teenage sweetheart did not understand her, and so she ultimately rejected his affections and left him, despite her yearning to "be important to someone." How could someone who didn't really understand her love her for herself, rather than his idea of her? "Betrayer Moon":

Istredd: The Brotherhood--they've offered me a seat on the Research Chapter. Me. Okay? Neither of us has to go to court.
Yennefer: You can't be serious.
Istredd: We can travel the continent together. We can be together. We can forge a whole new destiny.
Yennefer: A life holding dustpans while you brush off forgotten bones? That's not destiny. It's slow suicide.

No relationship she's had since has seemed to fulfill her. Throughout the show, we see her drifting about the continent, playing games here and there, chasing fertility cures, but never closely engaging with anyone. Unlike Geralt, who has friends or at least friendly acquaintances in various places, Yennefer seems connected nowhere, to no one. She has achieved power that young Yennefer would never have believed, but she still has not grasped one of her oldest and deepest desires: to be loved. To be important to someone. To be treasured. She seems to have a chance for it now, with Geralt, but she can't or won't commit to it. Geralt seems to make his position fairly clear: he's falling in love with Yennefer and wants to spend all the time with her that he can. But Yennefer is skittish about the relationship and they seem to go years without speaking, despite the fact that the moments Yennefer shares with Geralt are often the happiest we see her in the show. The problem here is that her two desires have come into conflict.

Control vs. Love
To love someone, to be loved, requires some inherent vulnerability. Present internet culture will talk about the "mortifying ordeal of being known," but there is truth to it. To truly be close to someone--which must be the case, for real love, beyond shallow infatuation, crushes, and distant admiration--you must make yourself open enough to be known, on some level. To love and be loved by Geralt (and later, Ciri), Yennefer must open herself up and let them in. But this is an inherent loss of control, which we've established is something Yennefer finds abhorrent.

Very few of us ever have complete control over our lives. Most of us by choice or by necessity cede control to other presences in our lives, whether to parents, partners, employers, governments, etc. Some of these we may chaff against (Limited days off from work), while others we may take on gladly (Moving residences to care for an aging parent). What Yennefer wants--absolute control over her life--is a near impossibility. Achieving it is likely to cost her everything else, and she may find that that total control, in absence of all else, may make her feel safe--but it will not make her happy.

The choice Yennefer struggles with now is how much control--if any--she is willing to relinquish in order to be intimately known and loved. S2E8 ("Family"), the finale, suggests she has made some peace with this. One of the closing scenes is on her sitting beside Ciri and Geralt, discussing Ciri's powers and future. In the semblance of a classic family portrait, Yennefer sits on one side, with Ciri in the middle, and Geralt on Ciri's other side, as though they were her parents.

Yennefer has struggled much of her adult life with the fight between her two inmost desires--to be in control, and to be loved. What she seems to be uncovering near the end of season 2--following her betrayal of Ciri in an effort to regain the magic (power, control) she lost at the Battle of Sodden Hill--is that she can strike a balance between the two things. Time will tell if she manages it to her satisfaction.

Title taken from Karliene's Yennefer fansong, "All the Magic."

Comments

[rekishi]

Ah, Yen. I love her, and I mostly agree with you!

but she was not a loving or nurturing figure

I believe I described it in Yennefer's thoughts as "Tissaia didn't believe in coddling".

It's also the reason why she doesn't go in for the whole plan the Brotherhood is planning. Out of her own volition (see Sodden Hill) sure, but not on the behest of anyone.

The thing is, Yennefer could get a child. No shortage of orphans around, made so by war or otherwise, but that's not what she's interested in. Anyway, I don't think Yennefer would know the first thing to do with a child, infant or teenager.

[rocky41_7]

Very accurate. I'm not here to examine or critique Tissaia's relationship with Yennefer, but I think it's fairly clear Tissaia was never going to be any kind of "replacement mother figure" or anything for Yen.

Ahh you make another good point! If what Yennefer wanted was purely about being a mother, she could easily adopt. Now fiction loves to portray this as somehow inferior to birthing the child herself (infertility angst being not uncommon drama in fiction), but if Yen's primary concern was raising a child herself she could definitely pick up a war orphan. The fact that she doesn't, to me, also goes to the idea that her real beef here is not that she can't get pregnant, but that she feels she lost a piece of control over herself and her life.

[rekishi]

Oh, it was mostly an observation that we were expressing pretty much the same idea in different ways (and different media, as mine was a quote from the frog fic). But yes, if Yennefer had been looking for someone motherly, Tissaia would have definitely been the wrong person.

I agree that infertility angst is a common trope and, let's face it, the source material is written by a man which is probably an additional factor there (I have not been able to read the books because they're too male gaze-y), but Yennefer is a deeply pragmatic person in the end. She'd make it work. So yes, this is something else and control is probably it, as you've very eloquently made the point here.

[rocky41_7]

Oh same, I think we're in agreement on that XD I just meant it's like, possible you could criticize Tissaia for not being more nurturing with her young charges, but that feels like it's own discussion.

Yeah, you're right. I've heard enough horror stories about the misogyny of the books not to have any desire to read them myself. It's possible in the source material her primary concern is with having a baby, but the show at least feels like that's only the surface explanation. The core, I think, is that Yennefer is just a deeply unhappy person, and looking for anything she thinks will make her content.

[rekishi]

The show definitely makes good (and more complex) choices in this regard!

[shishaldin]

I love all of this. I think you really get it and that I understand a little more for having read this. :] The quotes you picked out really are telling and your elaboration is insightful. I don't have anything to contribute, but I appreciate such meta.

Yennefer's regret on all that is just... ahhhh, it resonates a lot because what might seem like a worthy trade could very well be a different story decades on.

[rocky41_7]

I'm glad you liked it! I was just thinking about her a lot all of a sudden and figured I might as well organize it and write it down XD Partially because I've seen some fan opinions that criticize Yen's plot as overblown fertility angst by a male author, which I don't think it really is (and generally I agree that fertility angst is a dull and somewhat insulting plotline, when adoption is rarely mentioned). Her fertility isn't the point; her control over herself and her future is the point.

Yennefer is just in a lot of ways a deeply unhappy person, and if that wasn't coalescing around the loss of her womb, it would be around something else. She needs something to target, something to tell herself "When I have this, I'll be happy." This is just that thing, but it could easily be something else if she didn't have this particular problem.