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The Chronicles of Amber: Difference between revisions
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* ''Nine Princes in Amber''
* ''The Guns of Avalon''
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* ''The Hand of Oberon''
* ''The Courts of Chaos''
▲== Merlin as narrator: ==
* ''Trumps of Doom''
* ''Blood of Amber''
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* ''Knight of Shadows''
* ''Prince of Chaos''
▲== Short stories: ==
* ''The Salesman's Tale''
* ''The Shroudling and the Guisel''
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* ''A Secret of Amber''
Amber, the one true world of which all others, including our Earth, are mere shadows.
A man wakes up in a hospital, with no idea of who he is. Among the small number of things he remembers is a great range of skills and experiences, the fact that he heals fast, and to never trust a family member. When he visits the sister who had him committed, he finds in her possession a strange deck of Tarot cards featuring familiar faces in Renaissance Fair clothes, one of which is his own. Trying to find out more about himself without revealing he has no memories, he gets carried into an knot of family intrigues, counter-plots, magic, swashbuckling, and assassination.
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The [[Book of Amber]] mixes happily different streaks of [[Science Fantasy|Fantasy and Science Fiction]] and all kinds of [[Another Dimension|Other Dimensions]]. It features both epic elements and a dark-ish [[Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism]].
See also the [[Tabletop Games|tabletop RPG]] ''Amber Diceless Role Playing''. There was supposedly a prequel series by another author but
{{franchisetropes}}
▲See also the [[Tabletop Games]] ''Amber Diceless Role Playing''. There was supposedly a prequel series by another author but they [[Canon Dis Continuity|never happened]], as confirmed by [[George R. R. Martin]] and [[Neil Gaiman]], two friends and colleagues of the late [[Roger Zelazny]].
* [[A God Am I]] - All the Amberites, starting with {{spoiler|Dworkin}} and including Oberon and Oberon's children. The first thing that any of Oberon's children do upon gaining the ability to wander through alternate dimensions is usually to find a dimension which they consider to be a paradise, complete with an entire society of worshippers. Considering that even the Amberites do not know whether they just find worlds or actually ''create'' them through their imagination, they might just be ''right''.▼
* [[A God Is You]] - The RPG. A personalized Shadow, for example, costs a single point during character creation, and even spending that much is a luxury, since the characters can just make their own any time they like. The developers openly encourage players to act as epically as possible: at one point, an FAQ poses the question of what to do if the characters start using the [[Psychic Powers]] offered by a high Psyche stat to effortless brush off hundreds of Shadow [[Mooks]] without a fight. The answer is, essentially, "So what if they do?"▼
* [[The Ageless]]: The Amber Royalty.
* [[All the Myriad Ways]] - With an uncomfortable twist. In ''[[The Chronicles of Amber]]'' it is Amber that is real: who ''cares'' what happens in all those tag-along parallel worlds (including our Earth)? The passage where Corwin and Bleys harvest a parallel world for soldiers really brings this attitude home, as does Random's attitude to a Shadow truck driver who runs them off the road.
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* [[Audio Adaptation]] - A full line of books on tape as read by the author himself.
* [[Author Avatar]] - An understated cameo as Roger, one of the guards near the Pattern room in Castle Amber.
* [[Author Existence Failure]] - The end of the Merlin books are a good stop, but there was a lot more that could be written before his death, to the point others have hamfistedly tried to extend it.
* [[Awesome Moment of Crowning]] - {{spoiler|Random and the Unicorn, Merlin confronting Dara.}} In neither case do we see the actual coronation but those are the moments that lock down who will be crowned- and who will be pulling the strings.
* [[Badass]] - All Amberites, but specifically Benedict, and Oberon himself.
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** {{spoiler|Let's be fair, that was Julian's idea. Eric's peak of bastardry was leaving him bleeding right smack in the middle of the plague.}}
* [[Be Careful What You Wish For]] - {{spoiler|Corwin ends up realizing that he only wanted the throne of Amber out of rivalry with his brother Eric.}} Also, {{spoiler|Merlin's mom Dara manipulates him onto the throne, only to find that he'd already thrown off her control before he got there.}}
* [[Big Bad Friend]]
* [[Big Brother Instinct]] - Gerard and partly Benedict.
* [[The Big Guy]] - Gerard.
* [[Big Damn Heroes]] - Corwin bringing reinforcements in ''Guns of Avalon.'' Notably, he wasn't planning a rescue: until he got there, he'd been intending to invade himself.
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* [[Body to Jewel]] - The Jewel of Judgment is the eye of Serpent of Chaos.
* [[Breaking Them By Talking]]: Brand to Benedict in Tir-na Nog'th, although in this case, he's just killing time {{spoiler|while using the Jewel of Judgement to paralyze Benedict.}}
* [[Brother-Sister Incest]] - Averted. Oberon makes a specific rule about it. Surprisingly, it's one of the few rules the family keeps, even though some siblings (e.g. Corwin in regard to Deirdre, Julian in regard to Fiona) do think about breaking it.
* [[Cain and Abel]] - To the power of ten, given the family relationships shown, and one of the brothers is actually named Caine.
** It's better than that: Over the entire first 5 books, {{spoiler|only one brother succeeds in deliberately killing a brother. Guess who it is?}}
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* [[The Chosen One]] - {{spoiler|Random}}, made king by the Unicorn in a rare personal (animal?) appearance.
* [[The Clan]]
* [[Cloning Blues]] - Minor shades of this in the Corwin cycle, where the Shadow reflections of Amberites lead to (notably Corwin and {{spoiler|Caine}}) form a few minor plot points. Then the full, classic version of this shows up in the Merlin cycle, when the Patterns and Logrus start creating copies of the core cast, personalities included.
* [[Combat Pragmatist]] - Corwin IS this trope. He will fight to win and use any dirty tactic possible to do so.
* [[Cool Sword]] - Corwin has Greyswandir, which has a silver coat on the blade (useful for killing werewolves) and Pattern-related powers. Brand has the blade's twin, Werewindle, although we don't learn its name until Merlin mentions it many books later, {{spoiler|long after Brand is dead}}.
* [[Cool Horse]] - Morgenstern, very much so. He can outrace a car, for one thing. There's also Benedict's tiger-striped horse, who is almost as cool.
* [[Cosmic Horror]] - Certain incarnations of Chaos.
* [[Cosmic Keystone]] - The Pattern, and the Logrus, and the Jewel of Judgment, and the Keep of Four Worlds, and pretty much ''everything'' by the end of the Merlin Cycle.
* [[Cycle of Revenge]]/[[Feuding Families]] - And branches of the families. Vendettas are pretty much inevitable and generally legal in Amber. Even escalating ones. There are caveats, of course, starting with obvious "and then collecting ''your'' head will be equally legal, should someone want to avenge ''these'' people". The issue was raised when Rinaldo avenged his father. Then Julian (who was actually close with {{spoiler|Caine}}, rather than just "not at each other's throats") made it very clear he's willing to get him in turn, as Merlin (and presumably others) expected, though was civil about it and they even chatted a little about Brand before he gone crazy.
{{quote|'''Bill''': …Oberon was particularly friendly with Karen in those days, too, and Osric offed three of them. Oberon acquitted him at a hearing, though, basing his decision on earlier cases, and he even went further by stating a kind of general rule —
'''Merlin''': Oberon also [[Uriah Gambit|sent him off to the front lines in a particularly nasty war, from which he did not return]]. }}
* [[Demonic Possession]] - The ty'iga.
** Turns into [[Grand Theft Me]] when she possesses {{spoiler|Nayda}}, who was dying at the time, and gets stuck.
* [[Disappeared Dad]] - Corwin to Merlin, Oberon to Corwin. Zelazny's own father died early.
* [[Disney Acid Sequence]] - ''Sign of Chaos'' starts out as one. Don't drop LSD and shift Shadow, kids!
* [[Doing
** [[They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot|Which is bizarre]], since most of the things he is described doing are abilities the second series ascribes to walking the Logrus.
* [[Doppelganger]] - Pattern/Logrus Ghosts.
* [[Driving Question]] - Who shot Corwin's tires? Who is behind the Dark Road?
* [[Dumb Is Good]] - Gerard. Inverted with military genius Benedict, who is the only other one above suspicion
** "Dumb" is relative here, though. Gerard isn't "a clever man" like his conniving family, but he's still a capable physician.
* [[Dude, She's Like, in a Coma]] - Merlin with {{spoiler|Coral}}. Subverted in that she's half-awake, "thought [he'd] never ask," and both of them are forced into it to escape.
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** Subverted in that, even knowing Bleys will betray him, Corwin really likes him a lot and even saves his life in a split-second decision which ultimately results in Corwin's imprisonment.
* [[Epileptic Trees]] - Invoked in the roleplaying game, which encourages this to come up with alternative explanations for everything and everyone.
* [[Establishing Character Moment]]
* [[Evil Redheads]] - {{spoiler|All the redheads take a turn at this, but only Brand stays evil.}}
* [[Expansion Pack World]] - the Merlin chronicles
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* [[Fanon Discontinuity]] - Some readers dislike the Merlin books so much that they simply choose to pretend that they don't exist. Fans of the Merlin books rarely go so far, but they don't need to since any issues with the Corwin books can be attributed to [[Unreliable Narrator]].
** And don't even start on [[Outlived Its Creator|John Gregory Betancourt's "Dawn of Amber" prequel series]].
* [[Fantasy Gun Control]] - Subverted: Everyone knows gunpowder doesn't work in Amber. Everyone wields swords. Corwin discovers a replacement powder and arms some troops with assault rifles. It's devastating. Of course, once there is powder that works, a fragmentation grenade can be made too, as Rinaldo demonstrated.
* [[Fate Worse Than Death]] - What's intended for Corwin when he's {{spoiler|blinded and}} tossed into the dungeons to be forgotten except for once a year when he's paraded around as a trophy of Eric's rule. No one expects {{spoiler|for him to grow his eyes back.}} Of course, that being Amber, eventually he thinks perhaps even this had a double bottom.
* [[
** His simulacrum claimed there was 47 illegitimates he knew of. But it's unknown at which point in time this snapshot of him was saved, so if that's true ''and'' he knew most of them, he still could go on for centuries ''after'' that.
* [[Faux Death]] - {{spoiler|Caine, Bleys and Oberon}}, as well as the protagonist Corwin, who starts the books presumed dead by most of his family. Furthermore, siblings presumed by Corwin to have died before the start of the novels [[Wild Mass Guessing|may actually be alive]].
* [[Fisher King]] - {{spoiler|Dworkin relating to the Pattern, the Pattern relating to Amber}}
* [[Finding Judas]] - Lots.
* [[Fridge Brilliance]] - The numerous clues
** To think of it, he's not timid, yet managed to avoid having bad relations with anyone in ''that'' family, for centuries. That's quite a feat.
* [[Fridge Logic]] - {{spoiler|Dara}} is responsible for setting in motion Brand's plans {{spoiler|to obliterate the Pattern}}. Brand is responsible for setting in motion the {{spoiler|invasion of Avalon by Lintra, who bears a child by Benedict who becomes Dara's grandmother. May be justified in that either a.) Chaos time is non-linear, or b.) Dara is a big fat liar. }}
* [[Friendly Enemy]] - Merlin to Luke, and the Amberites to each other in general.
* [[Functional Magic]] - The Pattern, the Trumps, the Logrus, Sorcery.
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* [[Genre Shift]] - Carl Corey thinks he's in a hard-boiled novel, until hints start dropping that he's actually an amnesiac fantasy hero. Not that this changes his personality much once he clues in. Or anyone else's behavior. He stops using outdated Fifties slang about three books in, at least. (Well, for the most part).
* [[Gentle Giant]] - Gerard.
▲* [[A God Am I]] - All the Amberites, starting with {{spoiler|Dworkin}} and including Oberon and Oberon's children. The first thing that any of Oberon's children do upon gaining the ability to wander through alternate dimensions is usually to find a dimension which they consider to be a paradise, complete with an entire society of worshippers. Considering that even the Amberites do not know whether they just find worlds or actually ''create'' them through their imagination, they might just be ''right''.
** The Ghostwheel during its already paranoid, but still naive phase began to wonder whether it is one. And then it met the big kids.
* [[God Guise]] - Justified. Corwin and Bleys look for the kind of Shadows where saviors/gods who just ''happen'' to look just like them are foretold.
▲* [[A God Is You]] - The RPG. A personalized Shadow, for example, costs a single point during character creation, and even spending that much is a luxury, since the characters can just make their own any time they like. The developers openly encourage players to act as epically as possible: at one point, an FAQ poses the question of what to do if the characters start using the [[Psychic Powers]] offered by a high Psyche stat to effortless brush off hundreds of Shadow [[Mooks]] without a fight. The answer is, essentially, "So what if they do?"
* [[Handicapped Badass]]: Benedict.
* [[Happily Married]]: Random and Vialle. Crosses over with [[Love Redeems]].
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* [[Hell Hound]] - Julian's hunting dogs. After they chase down Corwin and Random's car, they start to tear the metal body appart.
* [[Horse of a Different Color]] - Like blue. And tiger-striped.
* [[
** {{spoiler|Dara}} is said to be "the first of [her] line to bear all the markings of humanity," but whatever Lintra and her fellow hellmaidens were, she was probably close enough to not be this trope with Benedict.
* [[I Know You Know I Know]] - Oberon's entire family seems to have such a good grasp on what everybody else is thinking that it borders on telepathy. Corwin (while amnesiac) uses this to bluff info out of his sister. Then again they've had centuries, or possibly millennia, to learn each other's quirks and weaknesses.
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* [[Julius Beethoven Da Vinci]] - Corwin had a slight case of this Trope, though he just knew all those people, rather than being them.
* [[Last Second Chance]] - {{spoiler|Brand is offered this. He declines.}}
* [[Lampshade Hanging]] - Bill, over his status as a [[One-Scene Wonder]].
* [[Left Hanging]] - Several loose ends appear in the latter five books, which are left unresolved through [[Author Existence Failure]].
* [[Long-Lost Relative]] - {{spoiler|Luke/Rinaldo, Dalt, Coral.}}
* [[Loveable Rogue]] - Corwin, Random, Bleys, Rinaldo.
* [[Magitek]] - Ghostwheel, Merlin's magic-based computer that was capable of using the Trump power and eventually acquired additional power later. Also a case of [[
* [[Master Swordsman]] - also Benedict.
* [[Meaningful Funeral]] - {{spoiler|Oberon}} gets an epic send-off.
* [[Memetic Badass]] - Benedict is of course an epic-scale in-universe example of this, as seen above. Or with all the characters saying that if he ''wanted'' Amber, they'd all just have to roll over and submit immediately.
{{quote|
* [[Mind Your Step]] - Gerard insists there is a loose step on the stairs to the Pattern Room. <ref>[[Brick Joke|This one, damn it!]]</ref>
* [[Mirror World]] - Rebma and Tir-na Nog'th, and to a certain extent all of the multiverse apart from Amber and the Courts of Chaos. {{spoiler|And actually even them, although they're the very first shadow of their respective side's ''true'' world.}}
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* [[Order Versus Chaos]] - Tied into [[The Multiverse|the many variant universes]], though the main differences between Order and Chaos seem to be political. The [[Anthropomorphic Personification]] of these forces are also sentient, hate each other, and are [[Jerkass|not very nice to anyone else]] either. That doesn't mean that the people within either faction get along at all; there's also plenty of Order Versus Order and Chaos Versus Chaos.
* [[Out of the Inferno]] - Benedict at one point rides out of a forest fire.
* [[Our Monsters Are Weird]] - Since "the Shadows" include everything up to and including a bar where [[Alice in Wonderland|Cheshire Cat hangs out with his pals]], a lot of strange critters pop up now and then.
* [[Our Demons Are Different]] - It seems to just mean "a natural inhabitant of Chaos", with whichever degrees of sentience and magical abilities. There are many traditionally horned, fanged, and bat-winged demons in the Courts of Chaos, but there are also talking cats, furry snakes, mantis-dragon things with multiple limbs, spikes and three hearts, and trickster mathematical abstractions. And non-corporeal spirits capable of possessing mortals. Most of the Lords of Chaos wear demon forms (generally on "TREMBLE, MORTALS!" end of the scale) and the line between mere demons and full Lords of Chaos is never clearly defined.
** "Lord of Chaos" seem to require initiation in Logrus and maybe direct relation to the royal family. But unlike the Pattern, Logrus is open for everyone, and can be successfully navigated by any creature with will and luck to survive the process, or even by a drone spawned off a magical construct (even if It was angry about this cheating afterwards), so there's no obvious reasons why a demon couldn't. While the royal family is big even officially and… [[Father of a Thousand Bastards|see also: Oberon]].
* [[Our Vampires Are Different]] - Merlin thinks Rhanda was one, and her family in turn discouraged her teenage romance with him, thinking that he was one (and hoping she'd marry up). However, it turns out that she's a "shroudling," a people who live behind mirrors and who eat people the world would be better off without in their opinion. They can apparently do this across Shadow.
* [[Papa Wolf]]: Random becomes this to Martin...once he ''realizes'' he has a son, that is.
* [[Perfectly Arranged Marriage]] - Moire married off Vialle to Random simply because he was caught in Rebma again after abandoning her daughter Morganthe (who by that time gave birth to Martin and soon killed herself). Moire had somewhat low opinion on ''any'' Amber Prince except Benedict and Corwin (mostly because of his ballads, according to herself) either way. This worked out much better than anyone have expected.
** And then Random is crowned and Amber gets a Queen who is a nice lady trained as a courtier, which was lucky for them, considering their existing standard was simply "the last or next-to-last woman who happened to catch [[Casanova|Oberon's ever-wandering eye]]".
* [[Poisonous Friend]] - Pretty much all of the Amberites to each other.
* [[Reality Is Out to Lunch]] - And doesn't come back for tea. In the screwier parts of [[The Chronicles of Amber|Shadow]] the basic relationships between the elements of reality are changed.
* [[Reality Warping Is Not a Toy]] - [[Zig Zagged]]. Most of the Amberites seem to think it is a toy, but Corwin has some qualms about treating Shadows as toys...sometimes. {{spoiler|What Brand wanted to do to the multiverse was pretty bad: destroy and rebuild in his twisted image. However when Corwin draws a new pattern it has a positive influence, or at least reduced rocking the boat when the original Pattern was off (or maybe it just tilted the balance of power toward order, which may not have been a good thing after all). In any case, most everyone sees Dworkin's drawing of the orignal pattern to have been an improvement.}}
▲* [[Really Gets Around]] - Oberon, brought to the fore after {{spoiler|Coral and Dalt}} turn up.
* [[The Reveal]]: a number of them (this is a plotting family), but the re-appearance of {{spoiler|Oberon}} is the biggest.
* [[Rip Van Winkle]]
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* [[Sequel Escalation]] - Corwin has a magic sword and his trumps; Merlin starts with a magical AI and a [[Morph Weapon]] that also functions as [[Spider Sense]] (the enchanted rope Frakir), and he acquires a [[Ring of Power]] and a ''different'' set of Trumps that lets him reach places and people the other Amberites can't. Oh, and he's attuned to both the Pattern and Logrus, is a sorcerer and a shapeshifter, and can draw his own Trumps. The effect is enhanced by the different narrative styles used. Merlin is a technician who explains what he perceives, what he's doing, and why. "His" books casually explore the technical details of the setting, leaving human relationships as the mysteries to be uncovered. When Corwin's telling the story those aspects are mostly reversed; a more Romantic narrator, he tends to describe his less physical actions more as happenings taking place in his presence. We only really ''know'' the extent of Corwin's strength, stamina, and martial skills (which are far superior to Merlin's). {{spoiler|His magical abilities are only hinted at in the short stories.}}
* [[Shapeshifting]] - those from the Courts of Chaos have this power naturally, including Merlin. Also, the Unicorn.
* [[Signature Colors]]: Amberites and related characters have "their" colors:
** Dworkin: purple and orange.
** Oberon: green and gold
** Corwin and Deirdre: silver and black.
** Eric: black and red.
** Benedict: orange, yellow, brown.
** Bleys: red and orange.
** Brand: green.
** Caine: black and green.
** Delwin: brown and black.
** Flora: green.
** Gerard: blue and gray.
** Julian: White.
** Llewella: gray and green
** Random: orange, red, brown.
** Dalt: green and black.
** Rein: crimson.
* [[Silver Bullet]]: Allegedly, the only thing that can kill Julian's horse Morgenstern. {{spoiler|Brand is eventually killed with a silver-tipped arrow, because Caine came to suspect that nothing else will finish him.}}
* [[Shout-Out]] - The beginning of book 1 is a one to [[Raymond Chandler]]'s work. Corwin's personality is certainly influenced by Marlowe's.
** Book 3 is dedicated to Jadawin and Kickaha, main characters of [[Philip Jose Farmer]]'s ''[[World of Tiers]]'' series, and to Farmer himself.
* [[Stable Time Loop]] - Corwin gets a mechanical arm from Ghost!Benedict in Tir-na Nog'th. The arm gets to REAL Benedict, who uses it. Later on, Benedict and Dara are talking in the throne room and Corwin and the rest of 'em are trapped outside, only able to watch. An invisible Ghost!Corwin is there (they can see his sword) and Corwin realizes that it's his past self. Then Past!Corwin gets the mechanical arm from the real Benedict...
** But they stand in different places and say different phrases. So it's not
* [[Stalker with a Crush]] - In "The Shroudling and the Guisel," Rhanda tells Merlin that she's been watching him for years from the other side of mirrors and [[Dude, She's Like, in a Coma|visiting him in his sleep.]] Merlin just wishes she had woken him.
* [[Succession Crisis]] - The driving plot of the first five novels is the fact that there's no clear line of succession for the throne of Amber in Oberon's absence and the war between brothers vying for it. The crisis following the death of King Swayvill of Chaos in the last book prompts a rash of deadly duels and assassinations that drastically shortens the line of succession.
* [[Surprise Incest]]: Corwin falls for a girl who turns out to be great-grand-daughter of a half-brother, sired upon an [[Eldritch Abomination]].
* [[Taking You with Me]]: {{spoiler|Brand drags Deirdre into the Abyss.}}
* [[Tarot Motifs]] - The Trumps are supposed to be the primal source of the concept of Tarot cards.
* [[Tell Me About My Father]] - Dara takes this up to a new height, with a shrine to Benedict in her basement.
* [[The Strategist]] - Benedict is less a master warrior general, more of a primal font from which all such things flow. ''Corwin'' is scared of him. Quoting Random, with reference to a mighty Shadow serpent:
{{quote|
* [[There Are No Psychiatrists]]: Averted. Corwin has been a patient of Freud himself. {{spoiler|Dworkin, however, was placed in solitary confinement after he turned one of his psychologists into a frog. And refused to turn him back.}}
* [[Trickster Mentor]] - Dworkin.
* [[Unexpected Successor]] - Merlin's ascension to {{spoiler|the throne of Chaos}}.
* [[Unreliable Narrator]] - Arguably Corwin, especially when his viewpoint on a few characters is contrasted with Merlin's -- his sisters in particular. Almost the entire first Chronicle is told by Corwin to Merlin, giving Corwin reason to not be entirely truthful. (Corwin does mention, several times, that Amberites can never trust their relatives, [[From a Certain Point of View|thus implying...]]) Additionally, at the beginning of the story, Corwin is amnesiac and has imperfect recollections (e.g. thinking Random is his full-brother) until his memory is restored. The Diceless RPG makes great use of this to post different versions of the characters to be used by the [[Game Master]].
** Merlin is unreliable because however honest he may be, he's constantly blindsided by all sorts of things, thanks to being a bit of [[Genius Ditz]], mediocre judge of character, and having huge sore spots any thoughts around which he habitually avoided and suppressed. Which is also shown almost from the start: he was the only one who didn't figure out that Ghostwheel among all the other things is a superweapon. Then was surprised when it gone sentient and paranoid. And then, when they both ended up caught in crossfire between Logrus and Pattern.
** Merlin and Corwin's differing view of the Princesses of Amber is explainable in that Corwin is their respected and powerful older brother, while Merlin is a somewhat-dim nephew.
* [[Unwitting Pawn]] - Corwin manages both to be a pawn to one scheme, a [[Spanner in the Works]] to another, and work on his own plan simultaneously. Merlin manages to stay a pawn until the second-to-last page. Mostly because by Amber/Chaos standards he's mediocre at best in politics. When Pattern and Logrus tried to play a game with him ''overtly'' and force him to choose one, he was as disagreeable as he could afford to be.
* [[Up the Real Rabbit Hole]] - Subverted. The Amberites think of Amber as the only "real" world, but then Corwin finds a place that's even "realer."
* [[The Uriah Gambit]] - It's mentioned that this is what happened to Osric, a long-dead son of Oberon.
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