“It’s not worth worrying about storytellers. If they don’t have enough material they’ll make things up anyway. And if they do have authentic material at their disposal, they’ll distort it. As you correctly observed, this isn’t a fairy tale, it’s life. Lousy and evil. And so, damn it all, let’s live it decently and well. Let’s keep the amount of harm done to others to the absolute minimum. In a fairy tale, I grant you, the queen has to beg the witcher and the witcher can demand what’s his and stamp his foot. In real life the queen can simply say: ‘Please don’t take the child.’ And the Witcher
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