You know all the shit that went down with Dad and Merle, right? Good. I'll start with Merle's coronation as King of Chaos. Let's just say that he STILL wasn't happy about it.
Then I showed up. Well... All right. Sand found me and told Dad about me. Hang on; it gets a bit confusing. See, I was actually born BEFORE Merle - umm... sorry... Merlin - who is only my half-brother but is a hell of a lot OLDER than I am. Go figure. And then I spent a while deluding myself into thinking I could actually stay friends with an Aunt.
So, to continue with the narrative... Dad brought me to Amber. Which, I have to admit, was probably the first really interesting thing that happened to me.
Following that (by quite a while), Sand showed back up, and proceeded to tell us all that her brother Delwin had gone nuts and was marching towards Amber with an army of brain-dead conscripts, bent on destroying us all.
So we "mobilized" and started taking care of him and his insanity. What this summed up to was all of us getting to lead bits of army under Uncle Benedict's rules against Delwin's troops while Sand took off behind the lines (without Uncle Benedict's permission, I might add) and tried to kill her brother. She didn't succeed that time, but she led a Wild Hunt later on (with Uncle Julian as her Master of the (Hell)Hounds), slaughtered Delwin, and then disappeared into Shadow for quite a while. Not only was Uncle Benedict pissed off at her by then, but Uncle Julian wasn't too pleased, since he had to bring home the remains.
Next time I saw Sand was at Delwin's funeral. It wasn't pretty.
Not much happened for a while after that. Sand eventually came back to Amber and was extraordinarily bitchy. Then the real Delwin showed up and told us that everyone with spikards had better watch out. Well, that, and that the Delwin we'd fought was actually a Chaosite spy named Vogel, placed there by Swayvil at the time Delwin walked the Pattern. How the hell that worked, I don't know. We did get some entertainment, though; Sand spent quite a while refusing to acknowledge Delwin's existance.
Oh. Before the battle, I brought in my granddaughter, Alice. Odd girl, even if she is my descendant.
Either way, things were pretty messy for a while. Spikard shit hit the fan; we took care of it. Then things quieted down again, and Dad and I took off to explore his Pattern's universe. That's where I've been until just recently. Anything else you might hear from me is at least secondhand."
Lots of kids showed up. I mean LOTS. Everybody had 2 or 3 or 4 kids. Well, everyone except the dead ones. We assume.
Even Rinaldo had a kid. Caitlin. She's fun.
All right. Uncle Merlin didn't have a kid. Yet. I think he may be working on that. But he does have a niece - Niobe. She's a lot of fun too.
Anyway.
Like I said, LOTS of kids. Some of them were actually born in Amber, but a bunch weren't. Take Jessica, for instance. Benedict's daughter. We didn't even know she existed until Benedict showed up with her and said, "This is my successor." (And then she proceeded to kick the ass of anyone who challenged her, so we didn't argue.) Then there's Mercury (who is, from what I've heard from my great-grandfather, a less moral version of Random as a kid. I wouldn't know; Random seems pretty responsible to me...). Random and Vialle's youngest. Born right here in the Palace, and raised right here in the Palace.
What else happened? Umm... let me think.
Oh! Weeeeeeeeeird stuff. First Benedict died. At least, we assume that. He disappeared in the middle of a battle, and someone found him later, him and his horse, just laid out in some field north of Amber. Funny parts? Not a mark on him. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Not even a scratch. No clue how he died. And Jessica didn't seem the least bit surprised. Just nodded, assumed her duties, and arranged for the funeral rites. Which reminds me - if you hear one of Bleys' triplets mention their theory about Benedict, here's what it is: they think Jessica is really Benedict shapeshifted. We all think they've drunk one too many of their father's favorite beverages.
Then Llewella died. Get this - she apparently drowned! That's right. Drowned. Someone found her floating face-down in a tub, her face all contorted and her lungs full of water. Bathwater, in fact - there was an autopsy, and Fiona found pieces of the soap she'd been using. Disturbing.
Then Gerard keeled over. Killed by something a hell of a lot bigger and stronger than him: three Fire Angels. At least, that's what Uncle Merlin thinks it was. Lots of strange tracks around, and a spot that looked like he took one of them out with him. But no sign of a second corpse. And apparently whoever it was cleaned up after themselves well. No magical traces.
Next rock in the tomb that whoever's pulling this stuff is gonna need was Bleys' death. Know the saying, "third time's a charm?" You got it; he was assassinated. In a friendly Shadow, no less. No one had the bad taste to be amused at the irony. At least, not in public.
So what's the most recent shit going down?
Vialle just died of some illness she'd had for a while.
No one has heard from Martin in quite a while.
For that matter, no one's heard much from the rest of Random's kids.
Grandmother and Grandfather - er... my great-granddad; it's easier - are still off wandering Granddad's Pattern.
Flora's still... Flora. She's training her daughter Remora as her protege. Successfully, I might add.
Fiona's missing, too, come to think of it. Uncle Merlin hasn't mentioned seeing her in the Courts recently. And she hasn't been here.
Julian's still running Arden. Though I can't wait till he finds out that Valerian is doing the whole Robin Hood schtick behind his back. That, I want to see.
Morgan is running the Navy. Not that it matters much; I swear he has about as much personality as Gerard. He certainly has as much strength; I watched the two of them wrestle one time. I left after half an hour, but I heard later that Gerard just barely won.
Sand's wandering around somewhere; she shows up every once in a while, meanders around Amber, refuses to talk to Ander, and then wanders off again. God only knows what she's up to.
Delwin's hiding out in Shadow again. I don't know where he is, and I don't really want to. He's stranger than Sand, and that's saying a LOT.
Random's still King, of course.
Oh. I almost "forgot" about Dalt. He's still hassling us from Eregnor. Though I hear he's decided to be nice to Sand, for some ungodly reason, and I know he's friendly to Rinaldo and Coral and Nayda and Caitlin.
Rinaldo? King of Kashfa. I think his mom died a while back, in some sort of explosion. And he's pissed to have to stay in the marriage with Coral, but he's a good dad for Caitlin.
Coral's not too happy about the wedding, either. She's not too happy about Caitlin being Rinaldo's, either. Way I hear it, she really wanted Uncle Merlin's kid, but it miscarried pretty painfully. And she's still got that jewel for one eye.
Dworkin is, as far as I can tell, mad as a hatter. They tell me he's much saner than he was, but if this is sane...
As for the Courts... Uncle Merlin's King, obviously.
His bizarre mother is still floating around. I keep the hell away from her; I don't want to find out what she'd do.
Mandor is... well, to put it bluntly, I firmly believe he's been screwing Fiona since Uncle Merlin introduced them. He's got two kids with her, though they don't speak to one of them.
Despil's just kind of... there. He's doing odd things Uncle Merlin asks him to do, but I haven't a clue what he does otherwise.
Jurt, on the other hand, has been a bit busy. Married Uncle Merlin's old flame Julia and had a kid with her - Niobe. Julia died recently, and Jurt's been hibernating at Sawallways since then.
I think that's about it, actually. On to other things. Like lunch."