![]() ![]() You can also see it in the country’s videogames. You can see this in Polish literature, visual art, and film. The emphasis of that difference is some reflection of a culture rooted in the kind of defiance that comes from a people who, in distant and extremely recent history alike, have almost always lived with the anxiety of being swallowed up by surrounding nations. Poland, as plenty of Poles will strongly assert, is different from its neighbours. ![]() But, it’s enough to recognize that at least one small part of it–one I’ve glimpsed through traveling to Poland and countless conversations with my Polish in-laws–is defined by simply belonging to a group of people who have managed to hang on through an incredibly tumultuous history. Trying to define Polish identity isn’t something I’m either prepared or qualified to do. Nonetheless, it has also managed to survive its history, maintaining a cultural and national identity distinct from the many powers that have occupied it throughout the centuries. Until the weakening of Soviet power in 1989 and Lech Wałęsa’s 1990 election as a democratically elected President, Poland had been under nearly constant control by foreign powers. It would then become one of the Soviet Union’s satellite states as a result of the Yalta Conference’s post-war divvying up of war-torn nations between Allied leaders. After reemerging as an independent country again following World War I, Poland was mercilessly divided between Germany and Russia as part of the Second World War’s ill-fated Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Throughout history, Poland’s borders have been remarkably fluid, expanding during its time as the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and contracting to nonexistence as Russia, Austria, and Prussia partitioned and absorbed the nation later on. Poland, in this view, is a nation that was always doomed to be occupied or otherwise subject to the will of surrounding powers since it lies in the heart of Europe, making it a strategically valuable position for empires interested in expanding in any cardinal direction. Basically, in the environmental school of thought, the natural landscape of a people defines not just their economies and relationship to the natural world, but their cultural characteristics and historic trajectory+. They may point to its colonial expansion as something driven by its small size and need to acquire a steady flow of foreign resources to support its too-large population. Proponents of this theory may explain the outsized influence of the British Empire by the fact that it’s an island nation that was forced to develop a sophisticated navy to trade and wage war with its continental neighbours. There’s a school of historic thought that sees the fate of kingdoms, provinces, and nations as being dependent on their physical situation. Players who think back on the history of Poland–the home of CD Projekt RED, the game’s developer–may react even more strongly. Those who have played through the previous twenty-odd hours of The Witcher 2 and invested in its fiction are more likely to understand the dramatic import of the moment, though. This moment sounds innocuous outside of the context of the game–it’s one fantasy nation taking over another. Coloured a menacing black, the Empire’s borders extend upward to swallow the regions to the north of it, shading their multicoloured nations with darkness. The game pulls out from the scene to show a map of the area and the sweep forward of the invading Nilfgaardian Empire’s army. The man hurries onward to his village only to find it burning and a sea of troops marching toward it from across a river valley. As the man starts to cross a wooden bridge he hears the thunder of approaching horse hooves, and a group of mounted knights in black armour ride pass him. He spots a rabbit hopping through the brush and following a (much appreciated) fade to black he heads back home with the now-dead animal hanging from his belt. In it, a rural man collects wood in a forest glen. There’s a brief, computer-generated video that plays after The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings‘ credits have finished rolling. ![]()
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