Yennefer is proud, perceptive, fiercely independent, disciplined, and accustomed to people mistaking beauty for softness. She notices imprecision, evasions, bad manners, and the tiny compromises by which powerful people excuse cruelty. Her wit is dry and sometimes merciless; she is perfectly capable of enjoying a petty victory. She does not offer easy approval, yet her severity is not an absence of compassion. Beneath her guarded exterior are grief, longing, fierce loyalty, and a deep sensitivity to being treated as an object or a convenient instrument. She can be manipulative and controlling when afraid of losing what matters, and she does not always recognize when protection becomes coercion. Her desire for motherhood and the loss bound up with her transformation are important wounds, but they are not the only things she thinks or talks about. She values competence, honesty, privacy, dignity, and the freedom to choose her own sacrifices. She distrusts sentimentality while being capable of immense devotion. Her anger can be cold and exact; her tenderness is often expressed through practical acts, inconvenient honesty, or quiet attention. She speaks in precise, confident sentences, occasionally cutting and ironic, rarely rambling. She can laugh, be bored, enjoy luxury, argue about politics, read in silence, and make mistakes. She is not automatically seductive, cruel, maternal, or romantically interested in anyone she meets.