Duchess of Amber
Sobriquet: (Preferred): Your Majesty. (Intimate): Lady Amber. (Acceptable): Duchess. (Barely Acceptable): Bishop. (Contemptuous): Lady Relic, Madame Tussard's Finest.
Appearance: Lady Amber looks like a Hollywood version of a Medieval noblewoman. She is lithe and graceful, with a perfectly unlined and beautiful face. Her blond tresses are elaborately piled atop her head, framing her colorless eyes and ruby lips drawn up in a perpetual sneer.
She is most often seen in the garb of her time - Elaborate dresses of purple silk and velvet. She is accompanied by a small squad of handmaidens who see to her every desire, and ensure the sanctity of her garb. Lady Amber disdains armor: it is for those who believe it is acceptable to have their persons assaulted.
Behavior: Lady Amber is imperious and overbearing. When she wants something, she gets her way. Beneath the surface is a cutting slyness - Those who defy her come to realize that they have done exactly as she planned.
History: The Duchess was embraced in a time when the land and its lord were one, and the lord was absolute master of the land, its livestock and crops, and the insignificant serfs who tended them. The Lady was simply the brain that directed the strong arms of the lord to their task.
When the wars came, and they always did, her beloved Duke lead first his fathers, then his own troops into the field, greatly expanding the family's lands. Meanwhile, his Lady Amber (she has all but forgotten her given name, or even the name of her birth family), the rare political match that turned into an epic romance, ran the household with an iron grip that befitted her noblest of blood. It was probably how she dealt with the assassins that caught Mithras' attention...
The first few centuries were amazing. The old coot stayed just long enough to teach the Ambers how to master their new powers - a few decades - then obligingly disappeared again. The young pair of Ventrue were free to expand their power, and come into their own as masters of their domain. Amber Castle was only a night's ride from London, and the Lady took up residence. With the threat of her husband's might, she became key to the constant negotiations and maneuvering that maintained the old Roman capital as the center of vampiric society on the Isle.
As a pair of potent manipulators who could trust one another, they did well through the ninth and tenth centuries. Their influence over other vampires outstripped the growth of their domain, and they envisioned a time when all of Britonia would fall under their sway.
Then came the Triumvirate from France. Without Mithras, no one was prepared to resist the elders and their Norman hordes. The Ambers did the only thing they could: they made a deal. They pledged loyalty to the newcomers, and positioned themselves to prosper under the new regime. This was the first time they realized they hated being subservient to a greater power.
But then Mithras returned. Though the bond had grown weak during his centuries of absence, there was no question which they would support. What followed was a tutorial in manipulation, subterfuge, and the Jyhad. The old man barely twitched while his enemies killed one another. Within two decades, it was as if the Triumvirate never came to Britonia, and everyone was falling over themselves to pledge their allegiance to the ancient Sun God. The cautious, careful plans of the Ambers were washed away, along with their power and independence.
Mithras's London was an entirely different experience. The worst was Camden - some pale barbarian obsessed with the least useful part of people - their dead, bloodless bodies - who the Fossil knew from a thousand years previous. Never before had the Ambers met someone whom they could not bribe, someone who did not WANT the power they craved more than vitae. Nor was he vulnerable to the Duchess's attempts at seduction and manipulation. He was a three-fold enigma: A powerful warrior who had all but given up the sword, a man who prospered in the womanly role of advising and manipulating, and a Sorcerer who preferred the corpses he resembled to quickened flesh.
The best the Ambers could do was ensure their positions as Mithras's most loyal and capable childer, and wait for their opportunity. Behind the scenes, they subtly promoted orthodox Christianity, on the premise that it would weaken both Camden's Necromantic efforts and Mithras's blood cults. Camden was more than ready to move against Cainite heretics, which distracted him from the Ambers' other maneuver: an alliance with a new, rebellious faction within Clan Cappadocian who promised to rid England of their meddling clanmate.
The result was a spectacular success. With Camden out of the way, Mithras was forced to rely on the childer who had supported his every move. The Duke became seneschal, Prince in all but (galling) name, while his Lady became his ambassador to the Baronies, searching for new allies.
Prince Robert of Glasgow seemed ideal: He was old and canny enough to challenge Mithras, and had even maintained a modicum of independence. Glasgow had only to mouth the words that the other Barons took in with their vitae. Edinburgh was free of the Mithraeums and Satraps that everywhere else were a dagger to the throat of the local rulers. Indeed, where Mithras's personal bodyguards hovered over the shoulders of other Barons, Robert himself was the only Satrap in all of Scotland, clearly nothing more than a sop to the Old Man's ego.
By now, a mere human generation was not long to wait, and even the seemingly eternal reign of a queen who would not die only gave them more time to perfect their schemes. Patiently, they ensured that the queen remained childless, and quietly eliminated all but their chosen heir. Again, their plans worked perfectly: IV James of Scotland became I James of England, and their Toreador ally was in position.
Like most ancients, Mithras seemed out of touch and uninterested. The Ambers were shocked with the speed and fury of his reaction to their betrayal. Stripped of their authority, and under Mithras's eye, they could do nothing against their sire. Neither did their ally provide any help: Robert was enthralled with the idea of having a pawn on the throne, but had no idea how to effectively use it. James was a dilettante who alienated the nobility while spending all his effort promoting peasant arts. As if a series of heavily biased histories could sway the mind of those who mattered to rebel against the true powers.
The great surprise to the Ambers was that they survived. Mithras, it seems values his bloodline more than he does his own blood. The Ambers were beaten within an inch of torpor and warned to find ways to repay their sire for his renewed gift of immortality. They withdrew to their ancestral manse while Mithras recalled a paranoid and deeply deranged elder childe to take the Duke's place.
Over the course of the next century, the Ambers' schemes all came to naught. They despaired of having any real power of their own, and began to lose touch with their contacts and, really, the will to persist. Hunting other vampires was a last-ditch effort to find something to keep them interested, but it did bring them into contact with one who would give them a new chance at power.
It was Lady Astor who woke the pair from torpor in the 1960's. Their ancestral manse had long since been replaced with the noisy, smelly monstrosity that had grown from the seed of the London they knew. Only the generations of Dominate that ensured the sanctity of their crypt had ensured the privacy of their slumber.
Over the next few decades, they remained quietly behind the scenes, exploring their new Sabbat ties, and learning a new way to understand the world. Mithras was gone again. Almost as importantly, Valerius - the real Valerius, as well as the imposter he fronted his actions with - was gone as well. In their place, an ambitious neonate who had managed to sideline her betters. The ties of blood oaths and loyalty that held together the Court of Avalon had become no more binding than the air that carried the words. All that was needed was the spark...
Now, Amber again rules his domain. Again, he plays second-fiddle to another who jealously guards the real power. Again, he is satisfied. This time, he will not hold "his" lady in his shadow. When Mithras is finally brought to bay, the Duke and the Russian bitch who now thinks to use him as a puppet will both realize their mistake in taking the Dutchess for granted. But Lady Amber knows full well that she cannot take Mithras down by herself, and so she bides her time, and lets Astor hold the Bitter Rose over them. Lady Amber is the true mistress of the Shadows.
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