The Hussite: the Witcher fails to go to Hungary

The other magical series by Andrzej Sapkowski
(~2400 words, reading time: 10-12 minutes)

Andrzej Sapkowski, “Poland’s Tolkien”, is best known for his award-winning, amazing world-famous game series- and shockingly terrible Netflix series inspiring epic saga, the Witcher, consisting of two collections of short stories, a pentalogy of novels, and two prequel books. One day I might put into words how much I love the Witcher books, how perfectly the games have captured its magic, and how baffling it is that Netflix managed to bungle it as badly as it did. But it is not this day. Today I talk about The Hussite trilogy.

In this post I express my tragic, bittersweet love for The Hussite Trilogy, Sapkowski’s other epic series, going by the titles The Tower of Fools (with the original title being in German, Narrenturm, a medieval mental institution), The Warriors of God (original in Polish, Boży bojownicyi, the endonym of the Czech Hussite warriors) and Light Perpetual (original title in Latin Lux Perpetua, as in the prayer). In short, I loved it, it’s fantastic and very much the same Sapkowski I know and love from the Witcher. It makes you roar with laughter, it makes you cry like a baby, it makes you go wtf, it makes you question everything you know of the genre and the topic, while at the same time it is teasing, punishing, slightly meandering, unfocused, it demands a lot from the readers and leaves them absolutely stunned at the end, asking “is this really how it ends?”. But unlike in the Witcher, where the developers of the game series came to the readers’ rescue and basically rewrote the canon to (a) make the games possible, (b) finish the story in a more traditionally narratively satisfying way, and (c) make people happy, I don’t think anyone is coming to save The Hussite. Or the reader from Sapkowski, this time. We’re at his mercy and we can either enjoy what he’s doing to us or we can cry. Or both.

The setting

“‘Peace!’ he bellowed as he struck. ‘Peace! With you! Love thy neighbor! Your neighbor! Like yourself! Whoresons!’”

I only explain this because the books don’t go into a super deep detail into the background. Totally not because I enjoy writing on obscure Eastern European history.

The series is set during the Hussite Wars which spanned from 1419-1434, one of the most transformative periods for the Kingdom of Bohemia and arguably the birth of Czech national identity. Jan Hus was a Czech reformer executed by the Catholics in 1415 which triggered a revolution from his followers (largely common Czechs), a series of civil wars (against the Catholic Church, the largely German nobility, and the disagreeing and sometimes, rather weird, Hussite sects), five catastrophically unsuccessful crusades (led by Sigismund, King of Hungary, Croatia, Germany, and ‘of the Romans’), a number of “glorious rides” (plundering expeditions by the Hussites into neighboring territories), and an internal war between the Hussites themselves (the radical Táborites vs the moderate Ultraquists).

The Hussite Wars paved the way for the Protestant Reformation, led to the adoption of novel weapons and tactics through the use of war wagons and firearms by the Czechs, and ushered in a period of revolutionary fervor that saw the dominant Catholic social order lose all control over the continent’s wealthiest and most advanced country. And left it destitute and in ruins. It awakened the Czechs to the various systems of oppression that had entrapped them and (sometimes) united them in common cause against their German quasi-overlords, their Hungarian wannabe overlords, and the totalitarian Roman overlords who at that point had been ruling both earth and heaven for almost a thousand years. They suddenly and unwittingly discovered that they have the power and savvy to resist the might of all of Catholic Europe. And that they can use that might in some of the worst ways imaginable.

The wars that put Bohemia at the center of the world’s attention also eventually led to its erasure from the map. The widespread destruction led to a catastrophic decline in the region’s population, prosperity, and power. Prague’s relative status in Central Europe dwindled in favor of Krakow and Vienna, the latter of which would come to rule over the Czechs at the end of the 15th century. They would only be freed after World War 1.

The story begins in 1425. Jan Žižka, the best and most famous commander of the Hussites died the year before after five years of war. His fanatical followers, robbed of their “father”, call themselves Orphans and eagerly look for opportunities to vent their anger in the name of social justice. The Tábor, the main Hussite base of operations, is commanded by Prokop the Shaven, a brilliant leader of his own right. He has to deal with the untamed Bohemian nobility, a hostile European knighthood that, despite its poor performance on the battlefields, keeps massacring his faithful Hussites, an economic embargo, dubious allies, more dubious adventurers, as well as the conflicting and contradictory revolutionary sentiment within his own ranks. Eventually, something (or many things) will have to give. But it’s not yet clear what.

While the Trilogy takes us into the heart of revolutionary Bohemia, most of it is actually set in, and is about, Silesia. 1425 finds Silesia in a complicated situation. It’s an ethnically mixed province with divided loyalties. It is a nominal part of the Crown of Bohemia but the ruling dukes and bishops didn’t submit to the Hussites. It’s a part of the Holy Roman Empire which is dominated by Germans and ruled over by a Hungarian king, but the majority population is ethnically closer to Poles. Some people look to Sigismund, the leader of the Catholic nobility, some towards Jogalia, the pagan-born Lithuanian king of Poland, yet others curry favor from one of the many Popes that exist at the moment, and they are all unsure about where the chips are going to fall.

All in all, the Catholic social order is still very much active in Silesia, a strange and ever-fluctuating division of power between the church, the nobility, and the burghers, with all its hypocrisy, corruption, and curtailing of individual freedoms. The only special thing about Silesia is that the alternative, the revolution promising social justice and the kingdom of heaven is just next door on the other side of the Sudetes. Which brings us to the story.

The story

“No… They can’t be this stupid!”

To keep spoilers to a minimum, The Hussite is the coming-of-age story of a young physician and mage-apprentice Reinmar (known to his friends as Reynevan) of Bielau (or Bielawa). He is a German noble on his father’s side and Polish on his mother’s side but he simply identifies himself as a Silesian. He studied in Prague, one of medieval Europe’s greatest centers of learning, and fled from there in 1419 at the outbreak of the Hussite revolution. Like most learned men, he has no business with religious zealots so he leaves his studies behind to return to his native Silesia. And like most learned men, his ambitions in life amount to banging hot women.

In the first book, Reynevan’s lustful and carefree life gets interrupted right when he’s in the midst of his favorite activity. It turns out that banging hot women who are married to someone else goes against the ruling social order of Silesia. A tragedy of errors see him fall afoul of both the nobility and the church and he’s promptly charged with rape, murder, sorcery, and blasphemy, among others. He’s compelled to flee to the safest place his benefactors can think of: Hungary. On the road he encounters legendary historical figures (some of whom take strange forms), acquires delightful and loyal friends, and faces many-many crossroads. At every one stands an old penitentiary cross, one of Silesia’s numerous mementos of crimes past and belated contrition. Despite the best efforts of his friends and allies to beat the stupid out of him, young, naive Reynevan, chooses the wrong road each and every time in an effort to force his values on the ruling social order. Which is obviously impossible. Accordingly, instead of Hungary, the land of peace and plenty, his choices take him to the only place where such ideas can go: the Narrenturm.

The second book finds Reynevan in the heart of the revolution. Prague sneezes and the rest of Europe catches the cold. Reynevan, a little less hapless and a lot more wrathful this time, navigates the treacherous politics of Revolutionary Bohemia, finding a deeper meaning to his existence in the process. Some of that deeper meaning is earthly, some of it is spiritual, and some of it lies at the intersection of the two. Predictably, and unfortunately for all involved, Reynevan’s new-found deeper meaning leads him and the Bohemians to unleash their orgy of bloody vengeance against Silesia. The Hussites’ social justice is mercilessly imposed on every priest, every knight, and every townswoman in their path. The chalice faces the cross in the sunlit fields while enchanted wolves face deadly birds in the forgotten pagan ruins of Silesia. As for Reynevan, after listening to deluded and sanctimonious speeches, putting entire towns to the sword, brutal executions of the representatives of the social order, and making several deals with the devil, his once red-hot fury starts burning a little less brightly. Some happiness finds its way into his life again. Soon it becomes clear, however, that happiness is not meant for revolutionaries and Reynevan has to make yet another choice: he can either put aside his extremism and compromise with the social order (assuming that such a compromise can be trusted) or he can carry on his fight for social justice to the bitter end (assuming that there is a light at the end of the long and bloody tunnel) and truly become worthy of the Warriors of God.

The third book sees Reynevan lose all direction. He wanders atop the battered ruins of Silesia. The dramatic choice he had made was all but an illusion, his happiness and his ideals are both hopelessly out of reach. He begins to see behind the curtain of the fight between social order and social justice: neither the oppressors nor the victims were what he thought they were. The forces that move this world don’t reveal themselves from any book he can read and can’t be destroyed by any weapon or spell he can wield. But sometimes he can lay a satisfying punch to their face. The current of history flows on, unmoved by his actions, and all he can do is swim or sink. Excommunicated by the Catholics and distrusted by the Hussites, he is a reluctant participant of the next series of glorious rides, taking him to Silesia again, Saxony, Thüringia, Franconia, the Ore Mountains of Bohemia, and, finally, to Poland. Despite Reynevan, for the first time in his life, having true agency, his mistakes and divided loyalties see all of his plans fail, or at least succeed in ways he doesn’t intend and isn’t exactly pleased with. His ever shortening list of earthly and heavenly interests see him set increasingly less ambitious goals for himself – and he can’t accomplish even those. But once our hero has nothing left, he can finally overcome his vanity, the last thing standing between him and Lux Perpetua.

The good and the bad

“Congratulations, good man. You've managed to piss me off.”

Reynevan’s journey is interesting, timeless, emotional, and probably the least interesting part of The Hussite Trilogy. Just like in his other series, Sapkowski’s at his element when he’s guiding you through the world in shorter episodes. And in his telling, Eastern Europe of the 15th century is no less magical than the fictional world of The Witcher.

His side characters are a delight. Scharley the rogue, Samson the gentle giant, and Urban Horn the spirit of vengeance own every scene they appear in. We also get “girl on the run” and “sacred prostitute” and a bunch of other archetypes but each of them is interesting enough to be unique, and some of them twist the archetype in interesting ways. Really the only missing ingredient here is a strong female main character as Nicolette kind of underdelivers for me and Rixa is too little too late. I’m not even just saying it for diversity’s sake, it’s just a missed opportunity to spend so much time and effort on Reynevan’s relationship with Nicolette and even devote some chapters on her only for us to find out basically nothing about her and for her to be outshined so much by the side characters of her own storyline. Especially from the guy who gave us Ciri and Yennefer.

The antagonists, I’d say, are even better than they were in the Witcher. Through Bishop Konrad’s story and his colleagues in the Inquisition, we get a nuanced and interesting view of the rotten and yet stabilising nature of the Catholic church. Birkart Grellenort delivers the most pain to our main characters and does it in an absolutely brutal and terrifying style. If you ask me, thematically, these guys outshine Vilgefortz’s odd and vague misogyny, even though Vilgefortz had the better one-liners ("[Y]ou demonstrate astounding and foolish perseverance: you invariably desire to row upstream and piss into the wind. [...] Know that today, here, [...] you have pissed into a hurricane."). They are a bit ruined by their (lack of) conclusion, but if I say that too loudly I’m afraid Sapkowski will appear behind me and smack me over the head with a hardcover edition of Lux Perpetua shouting “YOU DON’T GET THE POINT!”. And maybe I don’t.

What I do get is that Sapkowski somehow managed to combine historical fiction with historical fantasy that is at times Renaissance humanism, at times the Protestant Reformation, at times the Scientific Revolution, at times the French Revolution, at times colonial conferences, at times 19th century Slavic proto-ethno-nationalism, at times 20th century German racial purification, at times corporate capitalism, at times cold war spy thriller, and yet at all times 15th century Eastern Europe. If you liked the Witcher, you’re interested in history, and you have a forgiving nature for plot cul-de-sacs, gratuitous Renaissance magic for world-building, and general miscellaneous weirdness, you’ll love this series. I sure did.

November 2, 2025