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wild-blue-wanderlust · 17 days ago

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‘Her Sweet Kiss’ Analysis

(AKA: how Jaskier sees Yennefer.)

I’m going to make my way through this bard’s whole discography.

This analysis is a lot longer than my Burn Butcher Burn analysis, and a lot more is discussed than just the lyrics, so I’ve split it into three sections.

The first section is context, which delves into what inspired the song, and why his view of Yennefer is so negative. This section covers the events of episode 5 and explains why those events are important to Her Sweet Kiss.

The second section is the lyrics, which is the main body of the analysis, and delves into the song itself, the language and methods used in its writing, and what my interpretation is of Jaskier’s opinions based on how he portrays himself, Yennefer, and Geralt through the story he tells in the song.

The third section is the placement, which focuses on how the song is used by the writers to foreshadow events, fill in some blanks, develop Jaskier’s character, and frame Yenralt.

The Context: What Jaskier Knows About Yennefer

In Episode 5, it’s heavily implied that Jaskier has amnesia in relation to the Djinn, and by extension, Yennefer.

While his throat is cursed from Geralt’s first wish — “I just want some damn peace!” — Jaskier isn’t unresponsive. He talks to the healer, attempts to talk to Geralt, makes facial expressions that are clear reactions to things happening around him, and waves at Yennefer.

But afterwards, he doesn’t seem to remember any of it. He asks Geralt if he knows Yennefer, despite having been present when the two met. He asks Yennefer if he slept with her when he wakes up healed and she’s at the end of the bed, and describes the orgy as if it were simply a dream.

He never mentions the Djinn or his cursed throat. Geralt does tell him that he can’t let Yennefer die because she saved Jaskier’s life, and he doesn’t protest that, but he also doesn’t look like he fully believes or understands it.

On another note, He says to Geralt “please don’t tell me this is the moment you’ve finally decided to care about someone other than yourself”, and after having been travelling on-and-off with Geralt for a decade now, as stated earlier in the episode, it’s clear that he doesn’t understand how Geralt can care about this woman so quickly when, as far as Jaskier can tell, Geralt doesn’t care about him at all, even after so long. (Jaskier being unaware of the lengths Geralt went to in order to save his life, the way Yennefer has to keep asking Geralt if Jaskier is ‘just a friend’, or the conversation where Geralt states that he doesn’t want the last thing Jaskier remembers to be the horrible things Geralt said to him).

Jaskier then proceeds to stand around waiting until the house collapses, which makes him believe that Geralt is dead. He’s left questioning why he went after a ‘mad witch’, before then seeing the two of them having sex through a window. After that, we know that Geralt repeatedly sees Yennefer, and that they keep having sex, and Jaskier attempts to steer Geralt away from her with little success.

Something else in relation to the timeline that strikes me as important is that I think there’s a pretty big jump between episode 5 and episode 6. In episode 5, Jaskier says that he and Geralt have known each other for a decade. Ciri, who is thirteen in season one, would only have recently been born at that point. But the mountain breakup happens in episode 6 and when Jaskier is being tortured by Rience in the second season, he says he hasn’t seen Geralt “in months” rather than ‘in years’. Meaning this third wheeling for Yenralt would’ve been going on for the best part of another decade.

So, to recap:

He wakes up in bed with Yennefer, covered in blood, and she starts a ritual

He escapes and sees Geralt, is relieved, tells him about the crazy witch

Geralt goes into the house to save said crazy witch

The house collapses and Jaskier laments Geralt, thinking he’s dead

He sees Geralt and Yennefer having sex through a window and is dragged away

Geralt and Yennefer run into each other multiple times since, Jaskier is third wheeling, this goes on for a decade

Jaskier tries to stop Geralt from going to hunt the dragon when they find out Yennefer is going, but this is what makes Geralt agree to it

After the dragon hunt, the mountain breakup happens

You can imagine why he wouldn’t be her biggest fan. I think this is important for understanding his views on her and on Geralt’s relationship with her, because I think there’s a lot of jealousy there as well as some feelings of betrayal, and there’s also definitely a lot of reason for Jaskier to be afraid of Yennefer, based on the things he remembers versus what he’s forgotten.

I want to make it clear that Yennefer is one of my favourite characters, and I do not hate her or think that Jaskier’s view of her is correct. I actually love the way their relationship develops in season 2 and 3. But I’m analysing things from Jaskier’s point of view here, and at this point he (understandably) hates her.

The Lyrics: Jaskier’s View on Geralt’s Relationship with Yennefer

The fairer sex, they often call it / But her love's as unfair as a crook

The term “fairer sex” is referring to females, and means that females are ‘pleasing to the eye’. Jaskier could be saying that yes, Yennefer is attractive, but she’s dangerous. But I don’t think that’s actually the definition of ‘fair’ that Jaskier means. He also uses the word “unfair”, and that doesn’t mean unattractive. He’s using the ‘fairer sex’ term to equate to moral fairness. It’s fun wordplay, because that isn’t commonly the use of the phrase.

It steals all my reason / Commits every treason / Of logic, with naught but a look

This line mirrors a conversation between Yennefer and Geralt, but I’ll get to that in the placement section.

I want to touch on the “my” pronoun here, because Jaskiee isn’t the one being ‘seduced’ in the song, nor the one who feels that way with Yennefer (Geralt states that she makes him “say more than [he’s] said in weeks” and that he always regrets it). It’s possible that Jaskier is saying that Yennefer’s love for Geralt affects him personally by making him jealous and therefore stealing his reason.

A storm’s raging on the horizon / Of longing and heartache and lust

The storm idea is self-explanatory I think — the storm represents something negative. The first few times I listened to Her Sweet Kiss, I thought that all three of the adjectives used were supposed to represent Yennefer, but upon closer inspection I like to think of longing, heartache, and lust each representing a different character in the song (therefore, one is Jaskier, one is Yennefer, and one is Geralt).

I think he’d see “longing” as himself; he longs for Geralt, for the love that he gives to Yennefer. Geralt would be “heartache”; anguish and sadness, negative emotions that Jaskier is used to seeing Geralt feel, and since it particularly relates to sadness caused by the absence of a loved one, it’s the heartache Geralt feels when he isn’t with Yennefer. Finally, that leaves Yennefer as “lust”; I don’t think that’s what her character truly is but it fits with Jaskier’s interpretation of her at this time, and is the most shallow of the three emotions, which would fit with Jaskier’s negative view of her.

The reason I believe viewing them each separately fits better than seeing them all as Yennefer is because I don’t think Jaskier would ascribe her so much emotional depth in a song that is clearly meant to portray her as a negative force. It would show a lot of empathy and that would fit his character, but I don’t think that’s how he’s trying to portray her.

Though I also would personally attribute the adjectives to different characters if I were talking about my own view. I’d make Yennefer “longing”; she is desperate for a child and something to make her feel less emptiness at this part of the story. For Jaskier, I’d make him “heartache”; while Geralt isn’t absent physically, he is emotionally, and he is absent when he’s with Yennefer. Finally, I’d say that Geralt is “lust”; I can’t personally see a lot of chemistry between him and Yennefer in episodes 5 and 6, and the way he talks to her so mockingly (in the bathing scene and when Yennefer tells him she wants to be a mother) aggravates me. Plus, he bound her to him with a Djinn wish while barely knowing her.

To be clear, I love Geralt. But I have very negative feelings about Yenralt as a ship. Especially in season one. It feels very out of character for Geralt.

She's always bad news / It's always lose, lose

These lyrics interest me purely from the standpoint of knowing it’s been a decade since Geralt and Yennefer met in episode five, and clearly a lot must have happened for Jaskier to take the perspective that interacting with Yennefer always brings negativity. There’s a possibility that Jaskier sees how obsessive Geralt is over her and that’s what he’s referring to, as he clearly thinks that Geralt is looking at Yennefer with rose-tinted glasses.

So tell me, love, tell me, love / How is that just?

The love in question he is referring to is Geralt, of course. Depending on when he decided on this lyric, he could be asking a few different questions here. Either, ‘how are Yennefer’s actions just?’, ’how is it just that you love her more than me?’ or, if this part was written after the mountain breakup, ‘how is it just that you blamed me for what happened between you and her, when she’s clearly the problematic one?’.

But the story is this: / She'll destroy with her sweet kiss / Her sweet kiss / But the story is this: / She'll destroy with her sweet kiss

The repetition of this emphasises this point that Jaskier is trying to make and shows his desperation for Geralt to listen to him. He’s not letting it go, he really wants Geralt to hear this.

Her current is pulling you closer / And charging the hot, humid night / The red sky at dawn is giving a warning, you fool / Better stay out of sight

Seeing Yennefer as a current pulling Geralt in implies that he doesn’t have any autonomy in the situation and it puts the blame of the relationship onto Yennefer. Which I find ironic considering Yennefer is the one bound by a wish that Geralt made. If Jaskier knew about that wish I’d say this reeks of misogyny, but luckily for my favourite bard, it’s actually more likely he has no idea about the wishes at all, least of all that one.

The idea of her controlling the humid (therefore uncomfortable) weather plays into the idea of her being a bad influence. The use of weather metaphors is actually quite intriguing because weather is a natural and inescapable phenomenon, but in contrast Jaskier sees all of this as preventable if Geralt just stays away. It also speaks to the idea of Yennefer being dangerous, as a force of nature.

Jaskier doesn’t understand how Geralt can ignore the signs that seem so obvious to him. The red sky at dawn lyric references an ancient rhyme: “red sky at night, sailors’ delight / red sky at morning, sailors take warning”, because it alludes to a storm coming, which refers back to the previous lyric of a storm on the horizon.

Because of the original rhyme referencing red sky at night being a good thing, I’d suggest that Jaskier is saying that Geralt’s relationship with Yennefer is toxic because they have sex and then, as we know from one of their conversations in episode 6, one of them always leaves in the morning before the other wakes up. So yeah, the relationship is great during the night, but by morning it isn’t. So it’s better to “stay out of sight” altogether.

I like how Jaskier calls Geralt a fool here. This song isn’t as angry as Burn Butcher Burn or Whoreson Prison Blues, but it definitely sets up those later songs well with establishing the clear hurt that causes Jaskier’s shift in worldview, just expressed in a sassy and far more concerned way than after the mountain breakup.

I'm weak, my love, and I am wanting

Once again calling Geralt “my love”, and this constantly shifting term of address between loving Geralt and calling him a fool really foreshadows how Jaskier’s character is going to develop while also portraying this inner conflict he has.

Jaskier admits that part of the reason he dislikes Geralt being with Yennefer is because he wants what she has with Geralt for himself. He recognises his own apparent weakness, perhaps believing this is why he doesn’t have the relationship with Geralt that he desires.

This also mirrors one of his later songs, Extraordinary Things, in which Jaskier states that “it’s not a want, it’s a need”.

If this is the path I must trudge / I welcome my sentence / Give to you my penance / Garrotter, jury and judge

I’ll talk more about this part in the placement section of the analysis. It’s my favourite bit of the song and I have a lot to say about it.

The literal path that Jaskier is trudging is Geralt’s, following ‘The Path’ he takes as a Witcher hunting monsters, which Jaskier decided to follow him on for two decades. What I find interesting here is the idea that he ‘must’ take it, that he doesn’t have a choice — because he does. Nothing and nobody is forcing him. In fact, Geralt actively discourages him being there rather than forcing him to stay. But it’s more dramatic to assign this finality to his situation. What's significant is that there’s also a sense of determination here. He isn’t helpless to his situation, he welcomes it and he’s firm in his position.

A “penance” is a self-inflicted punishment to make up for wrongdoings. Jaskier giving Geralt his penance is saying that, for one thing, he knows that continuing down Geralt’s path while he’s with Yennefer is only going to hurt Jaskier himself more. He’s also saying that, for the wrongdoings he has committed (which I think are probably him being ‘unworthy’ as a travelling companion, since this is a sentiment that comes up often throughout episode 6) he’s going to let Geralt decide his fate. And, ironically, Geralt does, in the end of this episode. And the things he says to Jaskier on the mountain lead to Jaskier no longer trudging the same path as he stated he would.

Notably, the act of giving Geralt his penance kind of stops it from being a penance at all, since penance is self-inflicted. Unless Jaskier views himself and Geralt as two halves of a whole, or the very act itself of leaving his fate in Geralt’s hand is his punishment, because Jaskier already is sure that Geralt doesn’t want him around and knows that he will be abandoned, in which case the punishment is willingly subjecting himself to that heartbreak.

A “garroter” is someone who kills someone else by strangling them. It comes from ‘garrote’, which can refer to any handheld weapon used to strangle another. The jury are a group of randomly-chosen people who have to attend a court hearing and decide whether or not an accused person is guilty. A judge is the person who decides the punishment/sentence after someone is found guilty.

If Geralt is the jury, he’s given the power to make decisions about who Jaskier is without having the qualifications to do so, only based on the evidence presented to him, which isn’t always easy to understand. Such as deciding that Jaskier is an unworthy travelling companion, that he’s “just a bard” and that they are decidedly not friends.

If he is the judge, he gets to decide what happens to Jaskier in the future. Such as by abandoning him on a mountain, but also by having saved his life more than once prior to this.

And if he’s a garrotter, then he violently ends Jaskier’s life by preventing him access to something he needs to live. Which, literally, is oxygen. But metaphorically, it’s love. Connection. Inspiration. Even just acknowledgement, a lot of the time.

If he’s all three, then he has a very large amount of power over Jaskier’s life, his image, and his actions.

There’s also something to be said about the order in which Jaskier presents these three ideas. If we go based on order being equal to importance, his life being the least important is quite tragic but also does align with his values. Jaskier’s image is important because he’s a bard and he has to present himself and others in specific ways to ensure that they are treated somewhat decently. It’s not a shallow value to have — Jaskier’s image, his music, is how he survives in a society trying to oppress him and his loved ones (but I’ll probably talk more about that whenever I analyse Toss A Coin to Your Witcher, Extraordinary Things, and Song of the Seven). His actions are the most important of the three because personal freedom is very important to Jaskier, along with his ability to always do the morally right thing. Doing that is more important to Jaskier than anything else, including living or living safely.

But the story is this: / She'll destroy with her sweet kiss / Her sweet kiss / The story is this: / She'll destroy with her sweet kiss

I find it interesting that these lyrics don’t change here, because in Jaskier’s music he usually changes the chorus, but this time he doesn’t. Which further cements the idea of him trying to get this through to Geralt and repeating it again and again and again until he listens.

But the story is this: / She'll destroy with her sweet kiss / Her sweet kiss / But the story is this: / She'll destroy with her sweet kiss / The story is this: / She'll destroy with her sweet kiss

The Placement: How Her Sweet Kiss is Utilised

So, this song plays three times in episode 6.

The first takes place at the very start of the episode. It literally fades in from the intro screen to the sound of Jaskier singing and then he’s the first thing you see on screen. The episode both starts and ends with this song.

In this scene, Jaskier is staying out of Geralt’s way while he’s killing a monster in a cave, and he’s interrupted in his playing when he notices that the men who asked Geralt to kill this monster are trying to steal Roach, and Geralt’s things. He tries to stop them, but isn’t successful on his own. This sparks the comment from Geralt that Jaskier isn’t worthy as a travel companion.

And that was almost foreshadowed while Jaskier was playing, as the part of the song he’s singing is, in my opinion, the darkest part of it. I touched heavily on these lines in the lyric analysis section but I do have more to say on them here:

I’m weak, my love, and I am wanting / if this is the path I must trudge / I welcome my sentence / give to you my penance / gorgeous garrotter, jury, and judge

I’ll get to the slight change in the lyrics in a second but, like, starting with this? You know you’re in for a wild ride.

These lyrics being written and sung before they’re really given as deep a meaning as the episode gives to them. It’s foreshadowing. And maybe at that current moment the weight of them isn’t as much as it is by the end, it’s just dramatic flair on Jaskier’s part. Here it represents an intense amount of loyalty and devotion in spite of pain caused by Geralt wanting Yennefer over him. That is something that Jaskier can cope with, even if it is undeniably painful. But it grows into something a lot worse and by the end those dramatic ideas have come to fruition.

It’s also significant that the song is in the process of being written, composed, and edited as the episode progresses, because as I mentioned in the context section, it has been years since the Djinn incident. There’s something about this song that Jaskier is really struggling with. We’ve seen him compose songs in less than an hour, with Toss a Coin to Your Witcher, but writing one about Yennefer and Geralt took him years.

One thing we see him struggling with is the lyrics. When he sings it here, he says “gorgeous garroter” before pausing and trying “lovely garroter” instead. He goes back and forth for a bit until he’s distracted by the guys trying to rob Geralt.

Now, that’s the biggest oxymoron I’ve ever heard in my entire life. Someone who ends your life via strangulation, and you’re describing them as lovely and gorgeous. Jaskier, you are down terribly.

But isn’t it also fun how he ultimately decides to drop a positive adjective there altogether, after everything that happened in the episode?

The second time that Her Sweet Kiss plays, it’s just the instrumental. It follows a particularly tender scene involving Jaskier and Geralt, the “do what pleases you” scene on the cliff, but Jaskier is not actually present in the scene where his song plays. To me this could imply two things. Either this is the moment in which he’s finishing the song, and that’s what he’s doing while the scene is occurring, or he’s eavesdropping on the two of them and the song is supposed to represent his presence.

I think the second is more likely purely because I think it makes sense that the song is only finished after the breakup. I also think the second is more likely because, as I mentioned in the lyric section, there are lines in the song that directly reference a part of this conversation between Yennefer and Geralt, which Jaskier should have no way of knowing.

The dialogue is:

Yennefer: I was afraid that mountain would take you from me. Now I’m afraid it took your senses instead.

Geralt: Only my nonsense.

Yennefer: I quite like your nonsense.

The lyrics that directly relate to this are

“It steals all my reason / commits every treason / of logic, with naught but a look”

A detail that I really appreciate about this scene is that the chorus, the part where Jaskier would be singing “she’ll destroy with her sweet kiss” if the lyrics had been included, plays at the exact moment that Yennefer and Geralt do kiss, and that’s just a detail that makes me happy.

But it’s a little weird to me that they decide to play this song at all here. The writers of the show want the audience to root for Yenralt, but with this song in the background I honestly find that really difficult. I don’t like them together anyway but having this song play in what is supposed to be a moment of closeness and harmony just falls flat, because that’s not what the song portrays.

However, it is useful for symbolising Jaskier potentially listening in, and I think it also serves to show the audience just how different Yennefer truly is from Jaskier’s portrayal of her.

The last scene where the song plays is actually the end credits, after the famous mountain breakup scene, where Geralt is abandoned by Yennefer and subsequently abandons Jaskier too. It’s definitely painful for Jaskier, who I think expected this for a while, and would probably think that if Geralt had just listened to him about Yennefer, then he wouldn’t have lost him.

Whatever you do, don’t imagine Jaskier singing the full finished version of Her Sweet Kiss for the first time as he makes his way back down the mountain alone.

Rewatching the mountain breakup I also want to point out that Geralt compares Yennefer to a tornado there, and considering the weather metaphors throughout the song I find that to be a cool detail.

Anyway, the song plays in its full glory during the end credits — bringing the episode full circle, as it both started and ended with Jaskier singing. He is the lense through which the audience is told the story of The Witcher. By now, it has a lot more depth and meaning to it than it did at the beginning of the episode, and it is finally finished after the years it took to write it, mirroring how Jaskier’s time with Geralt is also over.

For now.

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