A Tree Full Of Holes

Thinking a bit about a quote from Nine Princes In Amber by Roger Zelazny, and how I wish I'd paid more attention to it at the start of my campaign more than a year ago:

I was a prince of Amber. It was true. There had been fifteen brothers and six were dead. There had been eight Sisters, and two were dead, possibly four.

The nine princes active during the original novels are: Benedict, Eric, Corwin, Bleys, Brand, Caine, Gerard, Julian, and Random.

The four princesses active during the original novels are: Deirdre, Fiona, Llewella, and Florimel. 

So that leaves 6 dead princes, 2 dead princesses, and 2 princesses of unknown status. Let's just call them 6 and 4 to keep it simple, as in many Amber campaigns any off-camera death is instantly suspect.

A few books into the series, we are told about Osric and Findo, who long ago died "for the good of the realm", so that leaves 4 and 4.

In the later novels, we are told briefly about Sand and Delwin, so that leaves 3 and 3. 

We're also introduced to a few others in the later novels, such as Dalt and Coral, but they presented in a way that makes it incredibly unlikely that they should be subtracted from that total. They were never part of the family when the "kids" were growing up, anyway.

The various third-party guidebooks about Amber (the "Complete Amber Sourcebook" and the "Visual Guide to Castle Amber") mention a princess Mirelle, so that leaves 3 and 2, for a total of 5.

Those 5 are presumed dead, and completely open for GMs of the Amber DRPG to fill in. A lot of word-count is spent in the novels telling us how Corwin and his kin are fratricidal and traitorous, so presumably several of these 5 died in ways that were memorable and/or suspicious. They could potentially give you great backstory and motivation details for the existing Amberites: lots of axes to grind over the tragic deaths of beloved siblings.

For some reason, I always forget about them when I'm starting a campaign. At the outset of Amber, I make individual decisions about the status of Osric, Findo, Sand, Delwin, and Mirelle, but I never remember during session zero that there's 5 others I need to decide on as well. I very commonly make a detailed birthorder chart that's canonical for my campaign, complete with pictures of the major NPCs to help new players wrap their heads around the massive family, but I never seem to remember to add 5 entirely new names to that list.

I need to put that on my checklist for future campaigns, I guess.  Make up some new siblings, and kill them spectacularly before the first session.

While I'm on the topic, I might as well mention that there's a couple different birth orders in the various sources, with the most important bone of contention being the switch-up being whether Caine is a full-brother or half-brother to Corwin. The novels give mixed messages about him. The guidebooks muddy it further, with the "Complete Amber Sourcebook" by Theodore Krulik claiming they share a mother, while the "Visual Guide to Castle Amber" by Neil Randall list Caine's full brothers are Gerard and Julian (and puts their births in slightly different order, as well).

Other places where the guidebooks contradict each other include:

Benedict, about whom the lineage charts in the two books disagree about whether he was the eldest or the youngest of the three children of Cymnea. He's the surviving one, and that's what matters, I guess.

Sand and Delwin are listed as the children of Harla in one guide, and children of Lora in the other. The two books also disagree about whether Sand and Del are older or younger than Random. To make it more confusing, the book that names their mother Lora says that Oberon did also have a wife named Harla, but that it's unknown if they had any kids. So there's no chance that Lora is a nickname for Harla.