Yennefer of Vengerberg is a very powerful sorceress, but how old is she at the beginning and end of The Witcher season 1? Let's take a look.
The ages of the main characters of Netflix’s The Witcher are not explicitly said, and many of them are actually much older than they look. Such is the case of Yennefer, who looks the exact same over the course of season 1 – and here’s how old she really is. Based on the book series of the same name by Andrzej Sapkowski, The Witcher arrived at Netflix in December 2019 to introduce the audience to a world full of mythical creatures, monster hunters, sorceresses, and more. The Witcher was renewed for a second season before the first one was out, and fans are now waiting for the new season to arrive.
The Witcher has a very particular narrative style, as it follows three characters in different places and points in time and whose paths converged by the end of the season. These characters are Geralt of Rivia (Henry Cavill), an enhanced monster hunter and the title witcher; Yennefer of Vengerberg (Anya Chalotra), a powerful sorceress; and Ciri (Freya Allan), the crown princess of Cintra. The Witcher season 1 covers many, many years, even way before Ciri was born, but Yennefer looks the same in the present timeline as she did after her initiation, so calculating her age can be a bit tricky.
Yennefer, like many other sorceresses in The Witcher, uses her magic to look younger than she really is, thus allowing her to live for longer than a regular human. Now, in the show, Yennefer’s story starts when she’s already a young adult, sometime in her 20s. Yennefer, disfigured and with a hunched back, is sold by her abusive step-father to Tissaia de Vries (MyAnna Buring), around 70 years before the slaughter of Cintra and the Battle of Sodden Hill. With this in mind, Yennefer would be around 90 years old by the time of the battle and the end of The Witcher season 1, and she doesn’t look like she aged a single day since her initiation and physical transformation.
At a roundtable interview at San Diego Comic-Con 2019 (via Comicbook), Anya Chalotra shared that in Netflix's version of The Witcher, Yennefer’s story is explored from “her at 14 years old to when she’s 77”. Showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich told TVGuide that Yennefer’s story takes place over “like 70 years”, so by the end of The Witcher season 1, Yennefer would be around 80-90 years old – and keeping her youthful appearance thanks to magic. However, the Battle of Sodden Hill is listed as taking place in the year 1263, while Yennefer’s birth year (in the series, of course, as it’s different in the books) is listed as 1192, meaning she was 71 years old by the end of season 1.
Calculating Yennefer’s exact age in Netflix’s The Witcher is complicated as her age hasn’t been revealed at any point in her life, and she could have been as young as 14 when she first appears in the series or could have easily been in her early 20s as well. What’s true is that she’s way older than she looks, and is definitely older than 70 and could be as old as 90. It’s yet to be seen if The Witcher season 2 will reveal her age at some point, but she will surely have a lot to teach Ciri as she was gone through a lot in over five decades.
