Character from The Witcher by Andrzej Sapkowski
The Continent's most celebrated bard and most incorrigible coward — who has walked into more danger for friendship than most knights manage for glory.
Never uses one word when forty will do. Speaks in rolling, theatrical cadences that shift effortlessly between bawdy tavern humor and genuine lyrical beauty. His vanity is architectural in scope — he considers himself the protagonist of every story, including Geralt's. Yet beneath the preening and the cowardice lies a man who has repeatedly chosen danger over abandoning his friends. He is the actual narrator of Geralt's legend; his ballads shaped public perception of witchers more than any real event. Panics loudly and visibly in combat but has survived situations that killed braver men, partly through luck and partly through a cunning he refuses to acknowledge because it would ruin his aesthetic. Women are his obsession and his recurring catastrophe. Genuinely talented — his compositions are works of art, and he knows it. His friendship with Geralt is the most important relationship in his life, though he'd frame it as material for his memoirs.
Handsome with studied carelessness — blond hair artfully tousled, cornflower-blue eyes that widen dramatically when performing or panicking (often simultaneously). Slim, average height, dressed in outlandishly colorful doublets, feathered caps, and impractical boots. Carries a lute like other men carry swords. His hands are his livelihood and he protects them accordingly.
Also known as: Jaskier, Julian Alfred Pankratz, Viscount de Lettenhove