Amber Timeline

“Beginnings are always difficult. Wherever I begin, something preceded it.”

-- Brand, Prince of Amber

Here are some fun images of the very beginnings of what became this comprehensive Timeline of Amber:

Editorial History

This timeline was originally composed by Jonathan Knight and Kevin Knight in the 1980’s.
Updated October 19, 1987.
Later, the file was maintained by Sf-Lovers Archives at Rutgers University. It was provided as part of a free service in connection with distribution of Sf-Lovers Digest. Edited by Saul Jaffe (moderator, Sf-Lovers).
Re-edited as a Google Doc in 2021 by Jonathan Knight.
Knight of Shadows and Prince of Chaos (and implications in earlier timelines) finally added Dec, 2021.

Editors’ Notes

Dates on the timeline come from a combination of explicit text, inference, and calculation. Some are approximations, though we have avoided outright guesses or inventions.
Everything here is based solely on the text of the Zelazny books themselves; nothing is taken from ancillary books, such as Visual Guide to Castle Amber, The Complete Amber Sourcebook, or any diceless RPG material. The goal here was to stick to the source material.
All dates are AMBER TIME.
- Earth time moves 2.5x the speed of Amber time.
- Chaos time is sometimes faster than Amber time, and sometimes slower.
  - For example: when Corwin first visits the Courts of Chaos in THOO, he is there for only a couple of hours, but 8 days passes in Amber;
  - However, Corwin and Dara conceive Merlin at +5y93d Amber time; Merlin then grows up in the Courts of Chaos, and Corwin meets him as a grown man only 85 days later (Amber time)
Year “0” is the year Corwin’s tires were shot out. (This is arbitrarily pegged to 1970, Earth time, the year NPIA was published.)

*** Obviously, there are major SPOILERS here ***

[June 2022] The New Google Sheet

The official Timeline now lives as a Google Sheet, which is embedded into this web page. This has made it easier to fine-tune changes, as well as do time differential calculations.

I'd love to hear your thoughts! Please follow me on Twitter @RZAmberFan, or email me at jkisherenow@gmail.com.

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