Life in Amber has changed a great deal since Random became King, not least because of the change from a Renaissance tech level to a Steampunk one.

Government

Amber Castle

The Kingdom of Amber is a highly centralized state. The main seat of power is Amber Castle which is located on Mount Kolvir, with Amber City below it. King Random and Queen Vialle are the absolute rulers, but are advised on a day-to-day basis by a Council made up of Senior Family members

  • Prince Benedict, Lord Protector of Amber and Earl Marshal
  • Prince Caine, Head of the Security Services
  • Princess Fiona, Mistress of the Arcane
  • Princess Florimel, Head of the Diplomatic Service
  • Prince Gérard, Lord High Admiral
  • Duke Artur Acker, Mayor of Amber

And the Great Officers of State, which now include women, for the first time in Amber’s history:

  • Rudolph Cavanagh, Lord High Steward of the Household
  • Spencer Gough, Lord High Chancellor/Chief Justice
  • Treasa Finley, Lord (Lady) High Treasurer
  • Avon Mynatt, Lord President of the Privy Council
  • Amie Hannigan, Lord (Lady) Keeper of the Privy Seal
  • Romy Moran, Lord (Lady) Great Chamberlain
  • Teàrlach Tyrhann, Lord High Constable/Head of the Castle Guard

Other members of the family and senior members of the palace staff are called on to offer specialist advice on various matters.

The Royal Family live in Amber Castle, which is situated about halfway up Mount Kolvir. King Oberon’s Way connects the Castle to the heart of the City.

The City, itself, is semi-autonomous, with it’s own Common Council.

The age of majority in Greater Amber is twenty-one, although among the nobility, it is not unheard of for trust funds and inheritances to only become available to the benefactee at twenty-five.

People

There are people of five different degrees of “reality” living in Amber, all of whom are basically human or humanoid.

  • The Royal Family: the rulers of Amber, who are descended from Cornelius the Great through Dworkin Barimen, and have powers and abilities not shared by the rest of the residents of Amber.
  • The Nobility: descended from the earliest residents of Amber, who came into being when Dworkin drew the Pattern. Some of the noble families have royal blood to some degree, due to marriages between the Royals and the Nobles. These are equivalent in reality to the Lords and Ladies of Chaos. Noble Houses include: Bayle, Kenyon, Tyrhann, Wrenley, Hannigan, Finley, Mynatt, Celyn and Cavanagh.
  • Amber Denizens: the residents of Greater Amber appear to have come into being as the centuries have past, and the Royals and Nobles realised that they needed people to do the actual jobs around Greater Amber.  These are equivalent in reality to the Thelbane demons. These are the businessmen, factory workers, shopkeepers, labourers, farm workers, fishermen, etc, who keep Amber running.
  • Golden Circle visitors: the Golden Circle worlds have inherited a certain degree of reality due to their proximity to Greater Amber, and therefore the people from these worlds fall somewhere between Amber Denizens, and the people of Open Shadow.
  • Visitors from Shadow. This is the smallest group of visitors to Amber, as they would need either some way to get there on there own, or to have stumbled onto the Royal Ways out in the Golden Circle, or were brought into Amber by someone else.

Reactions to Amber Moving up the Tech Scale

How well the people of Amber have reacted to the change from Renaissance to Steampunk since Random was crowned has varied. In general, the Nobility have embraced the change better, and some of them have become the industrialists and businessmen  of the new world order. For the general denizens of Amber, some have taken it in their stride, while others are struggling with the change, especially in Amber City. The changes are less obvious out in the Amber Hinterland. The fact that the Guild System remains in place in Amber City has helped a lot of people come to terms with things.

The Mayor of Amber City, in agreement with the King, has set up the Amber Transition Initiative, to help educate those who are struggling in how things now work. It holds schools and workshops in towns and cities across Greater Amber.

Social Attitudes

Under King Oberon (and both Eric and Corwin), men were usually considered before women in many cases, although not to the degree that they “owned” their women and children and had complete control over their lives. Women were allowed to work, but were usually found in more junior positions, and while marrying wasn’t an automatic excuse for them to be asked to leave their jobs, having children usually was. Women were able to join the Amber Army (but not the Navy), but only in support roles.

This began to change under Gerard’s Regency, not least because a lot of men (and some women) were drafted into the army which went down to Chaos, many of whom did not return. As a result, women stepped into more senior positions that were vacated by their menfolk, and also into potentially combat-facing roles within the Army, for the defence of Amber.

King Random has enshrined better rights and equality for women in his new vision for Amber. As such, there hasn’t been the pressure for women to step aside to give the men their jobs back in the post-Patternfall years. Instead, the employment market is now much more based on merit, rather than gender. There are also more women in senior roles in the Army, although the Navy remains male-only.

Education

All children in Amber are given a free education until their fourteenth birthday, meaning that the population as a whole is generally numerate or literate, albeit to varying degrees, depending on the schools they went to. After that, they can choose to stay on at school for another two or four years, depending on circumstances and parental permission: children in Amber City and the larger towns in the Hinterland are more likely to continue in education to sixteen or eighteen than their more rural and agricultural peers.

The University of Amber has a good reputation for scholarship in both Greater Amber and the Golden Circle. At the university level, in most cases, parents (or students) are expected to contribute towards their childrens’ further education, including Talented students studying for their BMg, although there are bodies which offer scholarships and grants. The exception is students studying the Magical Technology courses, who are funded by the authorities, to expand the common knowledge and ability in that area.

Transport

Transport around Greater Amber is a blend of old and new. There are still horses and horse-drawn carriages and carts, but the new steam carriages and steam omnibuses are becoming more prevalent outside Amber City. In the city itself, however, the streets aren’t really wide enough for the larger steam transports. Horses and horse-drawn vehicles, along with the new-fangled bicycles and steam bikes are all common in the City, however.

The Amber Airship Corporation runs airships from the Garnath Gateway to Amber City.

Major Festivals

The major celebrations in the Amber calendar are the Summer and Winter Unicorn Days. These are times of gifting, celebration and reverence for the Unicorn, symbol of Amber. Each festival lasts three days, starting respectively on 21 June and 21 December, respectively. There are also lesser celebrations on the 21 March, the 21 September, and the four “Quarter Days”: on the 1st of each of February, May, August and November. The Quarter Days are traditionally days historically used for settling debts, especially rent.

New Year’s Eve is also celebrated in Greater Amber. For followers of the Church of the Unicorn, it is believed that the Veil between the World of the living and the World of the Dead is at it’s thinnest at the turn of the year, when the moon is dark. As a result, this is when many Amber Denizens remember their families, alive and dead, and occasionally see their loved ones. Church services are held by the for those who wish to attend as twilight falls on New Year’s Eve (usually around 4pm), and as the sun rises on New Year’s Day (around 8am), each lasting around an hour. The period in between is a good excuse for a party.