The crux of Blood & Wine can be explained as a textbook story of a manipulative romantic partnership. Our handsomely moody Dettlaff is described as being ‘naive’. Regis, his bonded bloodbrother, says Dettlaff doesn’t understand what it means to lie, or manipulate someone for your own means. I’m not really sure what that means, Dettlaff lacking the concept of a lie, but there’s enough to see Dettlaff as the perfect victim of someone versed in court politics and the manipulation of romantic partners. Syanna’s prime target.

Thing is, Dettlaff is also described as having a weird ‘pack’ mentality. This is apparently unique to him, thanks to Witcher-verse vampires having vast lifespans and therefore the trend of developing a specific skill or characteristic over many years. He hangs out with lesser vampires in particular, in lieu of human society (typical of vampires) or other higher vampires (which is atypical). 

‘He’s out to rescue a female from his pack,’ is what Geralt describes him. And Regis agrees. Dettlaff has many wolf characteristics, with Rhena being described as his ‘mate’, and Dettlaff’s fang/angry vampire face structure resembling a snarling canine. Common knowledge of pack mentality consists of an ‘alpha’ being, along with subordinates. True pack mentality is more complicated, shortly described as a genesis breeding pair and their children, extended family, and adopted individuals. None of this alpha male nonsense. 

(In-game, we only see three separate vampire humanoid forms. Dettlaff’s face differs from Regis’, which has rodent incisors and a horseshoe-shaped bat nose. Dettlaff instead has something of a muzzle, and canine anterior/fangs for griping and tearing.)

Regis’ description of Dettlaff’s mentality is probably the more romantic interpretation of the pack mentality. “One never leaves one’s pack voluntarily.” That definitely doesn’t apply in real life; you see a lone wolf, that’s a dispersal wolf, a young individual who’s left their family to seek another dispersal wolf. More than that, packs have splinter groups all the time, sometimes due to an abusive bully driving them off. Pack mentality is sticking together to form a cohesive group of individuals working together, The-Walking-Dead-style. No one individual is likely to be the ‘leader’ anymore than they’re the most sentient or strongest, and therefore that gives them credence that they have to fight contenders for. 

So Dettlaff’s whole ‘pack’ thing is probably the shitty outdated version. And since he (usually) hangs out with lesser vampires specifically, he’s the only sapient one of the bunch. Him and Rhena – at least in his mind. Which makes him the alpha male, and Rhena is mate. If I wasn’t so innocent, I’d say this is prime makings of an incel mra asshole in the making.

And this fuckboy-Dettlaff interpretation goes further. Right from the start, we get the implication that Rhena might have left Dettlaff out of fear. Dettlaff maintains that Rhena had ‘gone missing’ while Regis duly noted Rhena’s belongings had been taken, which is much more reminiscent of a girlfriend just up and leaving. “Left on her own, scared off, perhaps, by a bout of Dettlaff’s rage that revealed his other, more monstrous side.” 

So Dettlaff is unable to accept that Rhena had left him, and Regis believes it possible that Dettlaff was a frightening man, prone to rages. In fact, the best ending to the DLC involves giving Rhena a magic ribbon that saves her life right before Dettlaff kills her, and it’s one of the scenarios that forces the player to fight Dettlaff, instead of offering the choice to spare him. Because Dettlaff, upon realizing that he didn’t manage to sink his claws into Rhena’s abdomen, immediately flies into a rage and turns his aggression on both Geralt and Regis standing nearby, forcing the boss fight. 

In real life, this romance is already a nightmare scenario. In the world of The Witcher, we have the claim that Dettlaff, as a nonhuman unique in his fictional ‘pack mentality’, literally cannot understand why Rhena would even lie at all. But to any human woman, that difference probably wouldn’t matter much, if the outcome is the same.

But Rhena – Syanna, she’s a very specific human woman. She could be seen as the true Beast of Toussaint, and with good reason. For all of Dettlaff’s Angry Mantrum faults, he could also be seen as the equivalent of a neurodivergent person living in stressful diaspora. These two types of men exist as one person all the time. And Syanna must have recognized this.

You only get to hear Syanna’s full backstory if you chose to jailbreak her, instead of finding the Unseen Elder. There, Syanna describes meeting Dettlaff for the first time – he bared his fangs at an unshakable Syanna, who quickly captivated him within three dates. “He loved like an animal. Madly, deeply, unconditionally. Wildly.” To Syanna, Dettlaff’s imprint on her was too much dependence, especially for someone as averse as her. Syanna is, after all, borne into a world that shunned her greatly, and she knows this has affected the way she interacts with others nowadays.

(Syanna, dressed in a red-riding-hood cloak, talks about her relationship with Mr. ‘pack mentality’ wolf-imagery Dettlaff. In-game, you find this cloak at the bottom of a well after the Big Bad Wolf decided to finally drown her. To exit the Land of a Thousand Fables, you both have to jump down a well back into the real world to meet Dettlaff. But not before Syanna has one last sexy hurrah with Geralt, should the player chooses. She doesn’t seem like a woman who never had much hope for her life.)

There’s an unmistakable parallel to BPD, or other emotional or personality disorders, for both Syanna and Dettlaff. Intentional by the writers? Probably not, going by media industry track records of recognizing neurodivergent coding when they subconsciously include it. But it’s there, whether we like it or not. CD Projekt Red wanted to write about two people who couldn’t possibly uphold an honest relationship with each other, and this is the direction they took.

The trauma connection continues. Blood & Wine has a lot of symbolism and continuous themes throughout it, probably more than the base game has in its first two acts put together. One very relevant to Dettlaff and Syanna is ‘childhood’. In Syanna’s case, she is an example of a child abused never grows up the way others do, if they ‘grow up’ at all. For Dettlaff, we can claim he’s still in his formative years as a (possibly??) younger vampire, and this only made things worse.

It was smart for Dettlaff to hide in an abandoned toy shop for his mission in Beauclair. There’s nothing of value inside for thieves or scavengers, minimizing intruders. But when the player visits his nest, they see old toys that have been moved around, some repaired. A music box plays a tune that strikes Regis as vampiric, reminding him of their homeworld. A wall shows a charcoal sketch of Rhena’s face. There’s loose repair tools over the table. Dettlaff bides his time repairing and tinkering with the old toys when he hangs out there, waiting for his next target. He was drawn to the toys. Game put Dettlaff’s lair there for a reason.

(”I intend to live happily ever after.” – Dettlaff, meeting Geralt for the first time)

In Dettlaff’s boss fight, his third and final stage involves the player being locked in this Silent Hill-esque meat dome, where Dettlaff’s form becomes split amongst fleshy proxies and pulsing organs ooze everywhere. Regis says vampires exist without physical form, which means that Dettlaff’s final boss fight gives us an insight into what a true Higher Vampire really looks like; hella fucked up.

But look closely at the biggest egg-thing in the ceiling, and you’ll see a figure curled in the fetal position within it. It writhes when you strike the small, lower egg-things, and it pounds like a heart. 

(I also think it looks kinda like an insect, perhaps a nod to the moth pin Dettlaff wears. Moths and butterflies in Victorian Europe, which I surmised Witcher-verse vampires took after because of their whole Bloodborne-like aesthetic, represented the soul in passing. Mourning regalia had a lot of butterflies and moths.)

There’s a lot of ways to interpret fetus-Dettlaff. Perhaps its a subtle way of telling the player that this third form wasn’t even close to what Dettlaff could have become. Perhaps its a visual indicator of Dettlaff’s true age as a vampiric, long-lived being. Or perhaps it was just him trying to heal himself after receiving some blows by Geralt. 

But in context, Geralt has to defeat Dettlaff by destroying these pulsing organ-egg-things (that each have the enemy name ‘Dettlaff’), in which Dettlaff tries to stop you by ‘birthing’ fleshy proxies from this largest egg that you gotta contend with alongside. This stage ends with Dettlaff leaving this very egg as the flesh dome disintegrates. With the whole ‘naive-Dettlaff’ and toyshop-lair thing, this final boss fight honestly does look like it ends with Geralt slaying Dettlaff while he’s in this embryonic stage.

Syanna was, after all, his one-time lover. His first and last window into the world vampires don’t belong in. One could say that Dettlaff never got a chance to become the person he could have been. At least in comparison to Regis, who is very well-adjusted under every circumstance we see him in.

Also, yeah, about Regis. You’d swear half the game he’s throwing his hand out to stop Geralt from confronting Dettlaff on his bullshit. Call me a cynical bitch, but I’m at best exasperated by men defending other men under accusations and suspicions of male violence untowards women or a populace at large, especially under the guise of ‘we’re friends’. But its not like Regis is trying to convince me that I’m ‘too sensitive’ about his best mate, it’s about convincing Witcher Geralt that Dettlaff isn’t a serial killer and that there’s something wrong.

Still, Regis’ loyalty for Dettlaff is hard to understand. He’s not written to say anything terribly conclusive about being ‘bonded by blood’ with Dettlaff, other then that it’s more than owing someone your life. Humans don’t have any relationships that could transcend family or partnership – platonic or not. Yes, Regis, Dettlaff grabbing Syanna by the throat and slamming her into the wall was indeed ‘highly inappropriate’, even possibly reprehensible. Flying away to ‘cool off’ isn’t the mark of a man you want to make your boyfriend.

Regis isn’t just paying dues to Dettlaff by putting himself through what looks like an induced panic attack, the entire Tesha Mutna quest is a nod to the terrifying history vampires have in the world of The Witcher. Vampires have a huge footprint in history and literature as (sexual) apex predators, Geralt asks if Regis could use a ‘safe word’ during this process, and one of the books found in this quest even talks about grooming their free-range human livestock so that their blood is made more tasty by sexual tension when the vampire feeds on them. It’s creepy and horrifying and painful, and I think that’s what the Tesha Mutna mission was truly about.

Syanna’s equivalent of Dettlaff’s toyshop, on the other hand, is the entire illusionary Land of a Thousand Fables. By the time Geralt gets there, the illusionary world had grown ‘unkept’, so to speak, from years of neglect. Goldilocks has been mauled by the three bears, one of the dwarves is found dead with a poisoned apple, childhood perverted and so on and so forth. 

This whole ‘childhood’ theme around Syanna is somewhat the reverse of Dettlaff’s; Syanna was thrown and abused from her palace as a child, which was just the cherry on top of her existence as a supposedly cursed woman. (Mind you, the curse is specifically about ‘girls born under the Black Sun’, aka a total eclipse). For those familiar with trauma, you’d know that your development, so to speak, is stunted from the moment of pinnacle abuse. You can’t control your emotions the way adults should, you can’t manage or arrange your life the way you should, even your physical health seems to never ‘grow up’.

I mean, we know Syanna has a low opinion of others, and she says enough to make us suspect that she has a low opinion of herself and her own life. Her primary targets are men, probably thanks to her good looks. Dettlaff? Interesting vampire bf experience, but in the end you’re just my unwilling assassin. Roderick of Dun Tynne? Sure I promise we’ll leave Toussaint together if you let me base my criminal league in your castle. Hell, Geralt asks where she found a sword in the Land of a Thousand Fables, and she says she got it from Prince Charming. Is no man safe from her? Regis probably wouldn’t have even been a pile of bloody bits if he got involved with Syanna back when he was a swinging bachelor.

In the endings, we discover that the bootblack child was heavily involved with Syanna and Dettlaff both – he was the one who sent Dettlaff the slips of paper telling him his next target. I did thought it was weird Dettlaff would visit this shoeshining station so regularly, like how dirty can a broody vampire’s boots get. Turns out, the bootblack was his drop all along. And this bootblack child is very. Uh. Enterprising. He barters heavily for money, and cheats his customers with intelligent scams involving his chamber pot. He definitely doesn’t behave like any 8-11 year old I know.

Oh, and there’s another weird child that’s very tied to Syanna and Dettlaff; the Girl Who Sells Flint (aka little match girl) in the Land of a Thousand Fables, who becomes this other enterprising seller of drugs and whatever, hawking at customers. She’s the one who has Syanna’s life-saving ribbon, and you can only save Syanna if you get it from this child.

Both children are orphans, with their lost childhood and accumulating trauma, who grow up tough in the streets and therefore don’t behave like children anymore, and aren’t treated like children – the only one to do so is Regis, who has a much easier time communicating with the bootblack boy than anyone else. Probably not a coincidence that Regis is also the only one who can get through to Dettlaff. And when Regis sees Syanna after she shows her true colors, Regis talks as if Syanna was a little girl who had done some mischief. 

“Has the young lady agreed to help clean up the mess she’s made?”

(Syanna, offended) “She has. And stop treating me as if I were a child.”

(Regis, obviously angry) “Would you prefer I treated you like the lying manipulator you are?”

Ultimately, Syanna and Dettlaff’s story is sad and complicated. But for many, it’s a story that’s all too familiar. I’m pretty impressed by how much intricacy CD Projekt Red’s design and development have fitted into this franchise’s last hurrah. I’m honestly not too impressed with The Witcher 3 and  CD Projekt Red as a whole, like, I could have done without the forced Shani romance in Heart of Stone while Geralt is likely already committed to another woman, while Shani is literally only a couple years older than Geralt’s adopted daughter, just to name one example.

But Blood & Wine has a context very relevant. It’s something I needed to articulate as fully as a could, and even then there’s more that I probably missed.