YMMV / The Last Wish

• Crosses the Line Twice: Nivellen, a former bandit and two-bit rapist eventually growing fond of his "curse". Up to the point where Fenne, one of his partners, convinced him to prank-scare local farmers by pretending to be a monstrous familiar of an evil witch. While she was riding on Nivellen's back, naked. All as part of their sexual roleplay.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • In-universe example happens in the first story. While discussing what will happen to Adda once she is cured, Geralt tells Foltest it's likely they'll find a perfectly healthy princess on the floor and his mutilated corpse. This is almost exactly what the king's men find at dawn, though they do rescue Geralt. Based on your temperament, it could also be Hilarious in Hindsight.
  • A purely Harsher in Hindsight example comes from the short story "A Question of Price." In the next book, we learn that Duny and Pavetta died a few years after getting married. A few years after that, the kingdom of Cintra falls to Nilfgard, resulting in the deaths of many of the other characters in that story. And then we learn that Duny became the Emperor of Nilfgard, the man who conquered Cintra, that he was only using Pavetta because her grandchild would have been the most powerful magician who ever lived and that he accidentally killed her when she tried to stop him from taking Ciri.
  • Dol Blathanna is eventually first taken back by force by Free Elves and then turned into "sovereign" country during the events of the Witcher Saga, decades sooner than Geralt predicted.
• Magnificent Bitch: Renfri Vellga, also known as Shrike, is a young princess cursed from birth and prophesied to kill her stepmother Aridea. Renfri escaped Aridea's attempt on her life and survived through quick thinking and ingenuity, going on to amass power and become a bandit leader, even quite possibly being responsible for her stepmother's death by poisoning. Upon finding the wizard Stregobor, who helped ruin her life, Renfri stalks him across the land. Overcoming countless obstacles in pursuit of Stregobor thanks to her wits, schemes, and tactics, Renfri finds him in the town of Blaviken. Renfri summons Geralt of Rivia to meet with him, politely conversing with him and asking him for his help in killing Stregobor. When refused, Renfri takes the town hostage to force Stregobor out of hiding so that she can kill him. Even when Geralt fatally wounds her, Renfri tries to trick Geralt into letting her kill him just before dying.
• Older Than They Think: A recurring criticism of A Grain of Truth, particularly among people too young to know better, is that it's an instant copy-cat of Disney's Beauty and the Beast. The story was published in 1989, two years before the animated film was released, but The Last Wish as an anthology wasn't published until later in 1993, giving rise to this whole conundrum.

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