The Witcher made the depiction of refugees and renegades/revolutionaries pretty exemplary. Look at the Scoia'tael elves. Deprived of land by humans, a once great empire turned to squatters, but many of them aggressive racists even beyond humans and not all of them pure personalities fighting for justice, but often using the excuse of justice for personal gain. To Larian's credit, they did this well with ironhand gnomes. Wulfren is a self serving asshole, but some in his crew are actually pretty decent if not honestly good people.
The supposed evil empire compared to the Romans turns out to be far more benevolent to magic users than if you let the Redanians gain independence from the Empire incursion and then mass genocide of casters and suspected casters takes place. Morality in The Witcher isn't obvious and partisan. There are good and bad individuals in every faction.
The female leader of the Sorceresses is shown to be a corrupt, manipulative woman who was at both times the victim of her status as sorceress by having her eyes gouged out, but then you see she was the one to propel the vicious anti-mage attitude by meddling in politics, assassinating the male brotherhood of casters as she was a female supremacist, and bullying the crown prince to a point of seething hatred for all casters which translated to an era of mass burnings and impalements for casters both male and female. There is no simple always oppressor/always victim category that is easily and permanently applied to one group of people in the game. Characters have agency and are not a walking soapbox. Even the witchers who are abused as children and outcasts are pretty varied. Some are good like Geralt, others are amoral, and others are downright evil and use their powers for self-advancement.
Last edited by Zenith; 11/09/23 04:20 PM.
