Thelusia:

Ancient Thelusia. Vast and mighty is the second ally of Amber, the second signature on the Golden Circle Signatory Treaty. Only Rebma sits higher in the Council of Nations overseen by Amber.

Thelusia is like the next-door neighbor you can't get to return your hedge trimmers and who never asks for his snow-shovel back. So many interactions occur between the kingdoms that the cultures are nearly identical. This has cosmological reasons as well as practical ones.

When a stage show goes on the road, its first stop is the Imperial Theater of the Dramatic Arts in Fantalin. While there are universities aplenty in Amber itself, the Imperial University of Thelusia houses the Amber Chair of Sorcerous Arts. This is in Fantalin. The Great Green Shrine of the Unicorn is the most massive temple of the Unicorn in the Golden Circle, dwarfing the Shrine of the Unicorn in Amber. The Athenaeum of Oberon, attached to the Imperial University of Thelusia, contains more original manuscripts from the Golden Circle than any known place. The Museum of Imperial Thelusia is the second greatest Museum in the GC containing more masterpieces than they can display.

Fantalin is the capital of a nation that comprises the entire known surface area of the planet it resides on. Even Amber shares her sphere with Rebma. Fully 1/4 of the military of Amber comes from Thelusia. It is the first major kingdom outside of Amber that is not in some way a Shade of Amber herself. It is big. All of the elder royals were unceremoniously dropped at Fantalin by no less than Oberon, and educated by the School of Royal Rights, Fantalin. Perhaps Random should revive the custom.

I would dearly love to poke fun at stodgy, loyal, ancient, and fanatically pious old Thelusia, and at my alma-mater IUT while I am at it. To tweak the noses of the Deans and professors that so dominate the culture and act as Miss Manners to its superior, Amber.

But I can't.

In Corwin's chronicles Oberon in the guise of Ganelon speaks of his youth in Avalon. It stuck in my memory. I have hoped, even prayed, since I read Corwin's Chronicle myself, that before Oberon slew him those words were originally Ganelon's. That Oberon repeated them to Corwin, at an appropriate moment, as homage to the man Ganelon once was. Corwin swears he repeated the tale intact.

Ganelon says, "Youth, love, beauty-I knew them in Avalon. Proud steeds, bright metal, soft lips, dark ale. Honor."

We should all have such a place. Fantalin, in Thelusia, was mine.