Cheeky devil! =P

OP...I thought everyone knew the bad guys wear either black or red. Just sayin.... ;^)

I think an argument could be made that they could look at themselves as the good guys. They are a united nation, who if able to conquer the north would bring relative peace across the land, and get rid of racist policies and ghettos where the elder races are piled together. Seems to be the way Nilfgaard operated from what I have read in this post, I am looking forward to seeing how they are in the novels.

They're not for anything like equality or peaceful coexistence among the races. They're not hell-bent on exterminating pointy-eared or stumpy bearded folk the way many Nordlings are. But neither are they above establishing puppet states like Dol Blathanna, with the purpose of using these to sow enmity between the Nordlings and the nonhumans.

It's as if the British were to make treaties with the Native Americans then induce them to wage war against the Colonials. Oh wait, they did that.

All I am saying is that if in the Nilfgaard Empire the elder races aren't huddled into ghettos and hung for looking at a human sideways... its a better picture than living in the north from I have seen in the games.

Not having read the novels, when I played through TW1 and read about the "Black Ones" as living near Zerrikania, I totally thought that Nilfgaard was a land of technologically advanced "Africans" that nearly conquered the north. At the time I found it deliciously awesome that Sapkowski turned the trope of "white conquerors" on its head; I was actually slightly disappointed when I met Shilard and the Nilfgaardians in TW2. *chuckle*

Bingo.

So then I guess book spoilers are okay here? I was surprised to see what the OP said about Geralt and the emperor in his first post. One of the biggest plot twists in the novels...period.

You think that's a surprise? Wait until you find out who the Emperor actually is.

Chronologically, all of these things happened before the events of the game. It's really no different than a discussion about a book mentioning something that happened in a previous book since it's assumed to be common knowledge.

It gets a little more complicated given the fact that they're two different mediums and not all of the stories are available in English, but in general only things relating to later portions of the game are considered spoilers around here.

You clearly haven't been to Warsaw lately. Things are changing.

Sadly, some people aren't. But that's for another discussion.

Nilfgaardian culture is considered higher, more suave and superior. Think Nordlings are medieval blokes and Nilfgaardians are the mixture of Roman and Ręanois'soincay'.