#kaedwen is scotland

[zhraek]

my headcanons (and not hcs cuz it's a fact) for the witcher countries but i'm not sure if you want you can add something of your own

kovir and poviss - finland (i'm not sure but its position and weather conditions reminded me very much of this country) kaedwen - russia (some moments that were shown in the books and games reminded me very much of some things about russia… that i heard irl… in a bad way btw) redania - poland (it's obvious) temeria - ukraine mahakam - germany aedirn - serbia (i'm not sure tbh) skellige - scotland (obvious too) cidaris - lithuania verden - croatia lyria and rivia - czechoslovakia before separation (obvious) cintra - estonia (obvious) toissant - italy cuz nilfgaard is literally the roman empire so

[bloededhoine]

If Temaria is modelled off of multiple aspects of France (I agree), what do you believe to be Toussaint? I hear many tie between Italy and Portugal, but I sway towards Portugal more myself imo. I love dissecting lore LOL

ok dissecting lore is THE SHIT thank you anon

toussaint's extra cool because there isn't really a native toussaint culture, the area was first settled by elves, sapkowski's elves favour mannerism, hence the design of the ducal palace

btw mannerism is an italian high renaissance art style, here's some comparison

after elves, vampires showed up and then humans, but these humans were kinda just vagabonds who noticed that the elves hadn't touched the mines and left a lot of metals n shit behind

toussaint became an actual nation in the early 1200s when anna henrietta's great-great grandfather showed up and started making some changes based off what he noticed from the surrounding states: nilfgaard and temeria

nilfgaard is modeled off the roman empire, hence all the wine, gladiator-esque fights, and iberian vibes, ie the guard's helmets and architecture outside the city

the devs really did an amazing job with this

of course we get that french shit from temeria, ie the names (vivienne de tabris, palmerin/guillaume de launfal, etc) and the language. lots of the npc's in toussaint are actually speaking french!

on the subject of languages because i can: i think common speech is the lingua franca of the continent and all the kingdoms (especially in rural areas) primarily use the language of the country they were modeled off of.

so some temerian miners living idk near toussaint?? probably spoke exclusively french as there was no need for them to know a trade language.

when those temerian peasants started mining in toussaint, they brought their language with them, where it mixed with the hen llinge (weird mish-mosh of goidelic and random european languages) from the elves that already lived there and the nilfgaardian language (based in hen llinge) in the south and voila! new language!

tl;dr: in my opinion, toussaint is architecturally italian in urban areas and iberian in rural areas, the general culture is a mix of french and italian, and the language is french combined with sapkowski's elven pseudo-goidelic