There’s only 10 chapters in this novel and we’re already on chapter 8.
There are ten books total, 5 per “chronicle.” One’s told from the point of view of Corwin, the second is from the point of view of his son, Merlin.
Each five book cycle is about the size of a modern fantasy doorstopper. We need shorter books, quite frankly. Am I just old? Maybe I’m just old. We were lucky enough to be able to watch “Vampire Hunter D” in theaters recently and that movie is a slim 80 minutes long and that’s a good length for a film. Efficient. No padding, no filler.
Can we get back to that?
Can we get more books the length of “The Hobbit”?
Anyway.
Corwin’s in jail. More than that, he’s in a dungeon. It’s dark, it’s cold, it stinks, he gets some bread and water and a little meat and no cigarettes but has no idea how much time has passed. Underfeeding someone is a great way to control them. A regiment of guards comes and takes Corwin someplace to get cleaned up and dressed in clothing befitting his rank, his colors and his sigil, and he goes along with it because there’s so many of them and he’s not FULLY a fool. Just mostly. He’s taken to a smith and he’s manacled and chained and lead through the great castle. He mentions passing “through rooms where we had played as children.”
Obviously he and at least SOME of his siblings were kids at overlapping time (probably) and they played, possibly with each other. How do you get from kids playing with each other to adults who hate each other and are willing to hurt and kill each other? Not just some reddit low contact/no contact golden child narcissist who’s the asshole/who’s right and why is it me stuff. These are people who hate and despise each other, are fine with killing each other as long as it won’t piss dad off too much. It’s sad! It’s really sad. It’s depressing. I hate thinking about it.
Corwin’s brought into a big dining hall and is seated at the foot of the table, right near Julian… Julian who stood against him! Julian who fought him! Julian, who Eric still hates! Corwin sets about insulting Julian and being obnoxious; when Eric enters he switches his insults to Eric including getting off a zinger about Eric being at the foot of the table (because he, Corwin, is at the head of the table, take that! the table has turned!).
The whole point of having Corwin at Eric’s coronation is to have Corwin debase himself by crowning Eric. It’s pretty humiliating, and also one of the most human things is Corwin just… thinking about their dad wearing that crown. Ultimately Eric is crowned (he crowns himself) and gets his final dig in.
“Your eyes have looked upon the fairest sight they will ever hold… Guards! Take Corwin away to the smithy, and let his eyes be burnt from out his head! Let him remember the sights of this day as the last he might ever see! Then cast him into the darkness of the deepest dungeon beneath Amber, and let his name be forgotten!”
To my immense fury, this line was lifted for some dragon movie decades later.
Corwin’s dragged off and his eyes are burnt out, every bit of them including the tear ducts.
At some point he pronounces a curse on Eric and it’s a really… it’s a slippery thing that Zelazny defines and redefines over the course of the books.
Perhaps it was then that I pronounced the curse, or perhaps it had been at the time that the whitehot irons had descended. I don’t remember. But I knew that Eric would never rest easy upon the throne, for the curse of a prince of Amber, pronounced in a fullness of fury, is always potent.
At one point it’s treated as a thing that happens at death, like a death bed confession but a curse. But here it’s just something you can make happen when you’re angry enough, when you’re furious enough. It’s one of the ways that Zelazny depowered his god-like characters.
Corwin is trapped in the darkness, the filth, the cold. He has no way to clean any part of himself, his toilet is a hole in the ground. He has no way to judge the passing of time, which is extremely disorienting. He isn’t getting enough calories, he’s weak and has reduced stamina. This would affect his ability to escape. But even if he did escape without his vision he can’t walk in Shadow. He’s trapped in several different ways. He’s powerless on multiple levels.
At one point while trapped in darkness someone comes to his door – his old friend Rein pops up to give him food, clean clothing, and cigarettes. He was present at the coronation and avoided Corwin then, but now he’s risking his neck to try to make things a little more comfortable for him. He lets us know how much time has passed, gives a quick update as to what’s going on in Amber, and drops the little bomb that Random is also in a cell.
That little fink walked the Pattern in Rebma (which is physically and mentally difficult) to teleport himself and a crossbow to Eric to try and murder him. That’s my boy. It’s no piranha in a chamber pot but it’ll do.
His Rebman wife, Vialle, requests to join him. This says a lot about Random and the effect he’s had on Vialle. Remember, they were not a love match. Marriage to Vialle was meant to be a temporary thing, a punishment. It’s been something like half a year since he got married.
Corwin muses on Rein and their relationship. It’s a nice little but where Corwin is humanized. He liked to sing and carouse and he fought in defense of Amber. He had friends. He admits that Rein’s better at poetry and lyrics than he is, a pretty big admission. He eats and drinks and smokes and thinks and although he admits that he may have gone a bit mad he also has something to keep him going – a thin strand of hope.
See, he survived bubonic plague. He was temporarily blinded by cannon flashback. Later on he runs down a list of various small body parts he’d lost and regrown. And while he’s imprisoned? He regains the ability to weep.
Two men instead of a regiment of guards come and get him out of his cell. He’s bathed, groomed, deloused, and dressed in clothing that is too large for him. It’s the first anniversary of Eric’s coronation. It’s already been a year; it’s only been a year. Caine is still in favor.
Corwin is there at the coronation and not there. He is a reminder of what happens to those who stand against Eric. He’s defanged, declawed, helpless. This is where he is, and this is what’s become of him. Watch out.
He’s so subdued, so powerless, that they don’t even manacle or chain him. They just shove him in a corner while the festivities range around him. There’s nothing he can do.
He gets drunk and wakes up back in his cell, no doubt brutally hungover.
References:
- Ermine, aka stoat, is a weasel-like animal that turns white in the winter. European royalty used to wear white ermine robes because 1) the color white was linked to purity and 2) since ermine are small it takes a lot of them to make a cloak, it’s expensive.
- Greensleeves is a song dating from the 1500s and falsely accredited to King Henry VIII. It was kind of standard courtly old-timey music in period films for a while. The song “what child is this” is set to the same tune. It’s a Romantic song, played on a lute.
- “A head of cheese” is hard cheese, not to be confused with “head cheese” (which isn’t cheese). I want to say that it’s a specific shape or size but it’s hard to find information about “head of cheese” as opposed to “head cheese” with the current search engines we have. Which, for you young people, is still way better than the search engines we used to have.
- A carton of cigarettes typically contains 10 packs of cigarettes for a total, generally, of 200 cigarettes. Some larger cartons contain 20 packs. Corwin’s apparently contains 12 packs, and he somehow knows they are Salems specifically. Salems are filtered and menthol, and perhaps that combination gives it away? They weren’t the only menthol filtered cigarettes at the time, though. Anyway, he’s putting away half a pack of smokes a day while getting inadequate calories and god, the withdrawal he must go through when he runs out… !
- Rein, as a name, means advice or counsel. It’s also, you know, the straps used to guide a horse.
- “Thee” is used in some versions of the Bible so modern readers assume it’s a formal way of saying “you.” It’s actually a very personal, affectionate, intimate way of saying it. That was the point of using it originally! “You” was more formal. Anyway, Corwin says “thee” because Rein is his buddy. He’s not just lapsing randomly into pseudo-historic Fantasy Speak out of nowhere. Rein risked his life to bring Corwin food, sympathy, and comfort. That’s a big thing.
- CARE packages are now just little packages of nice things that you send to someone. Some fluffy socks, cookies, a few bags of a regional potato chip, a book, a nice card, whatever. During WWII, however, it was a program to send food to Europe. That’s where the term comes from and it’s why CARE is all capitalized.
- “Voices Together Raised” is a reference to something and I can’t place it, which sucks. There’s a scholarly article which touches on it, I think, but I can’t access it.
- “Weirmonken” are… I don’t know… werewolves but monkeys? Weremonkeys? He refers to werewolves as “weir” previously in the novel.
- “Durance” means “confinement” or “imprisonment.”
