Headscratchers / The Chronicles of Amber

• In Trumps of Doom why didn't Fiona just tell everyone who Luke really was? Even if you argue that she wasn't sure about Merlin there was no reason to keep the others in the dark.
  • Immediately after seeing a picture of Luke, she disappears for one and a half books. By the time she reappears, it's public knowledge. Her disappearing is probably a gambit, rather than simple self-preservation. Rinaldo went after his father's killer first, as well as one of his father's betrayers. By leaving Amber with Bleys, she can try to draw him into a trap. Telling the others means telling Random, who might order her otherwise.
    • And she couldn't be bothered to leave a simple note? Because of her Merlin was trapped and the Ghostwheel was nearly taken over.
• In the first series, Corwin reveals a substitute for gunpowder. We later learn that a number of these weapons and their ammo are left in Amber's armories to provide for its future security. Yet in the second series we learn that an enemy of Amber apparently discovered the origin of this gunpowder-substitute and has been mass-producing it. It doesn't seem likely that this person just started bringing samples of every pink powder in every universe to Amber and testing them for explosiveness... is it really plausible that Benedict, who had enough data to infer the nature of the powder, wouldn't have taken precautions - fairly extreme ones - against any of the stuff being taken from Avalon by anybody outside the family?
  • Everyone in the family, including Brand, knew where Benedict was staying and whose residency it was before that. Everyone in the family also knew that Corwin and Benedict had some sort of severe falling out immediately prior to Corwin arriving in Amber with his own rifle battalion. As far as precautions, Benedict's attention is elsewhere during the war, and afterwards he's in Amber. No doubt he has spies in Avalon, but they're no more omnipotent than he is, and security may have relaxed without the constant threat of the hellmaids. Also, considering that the rouge originally came from Corwin's Avalon, and that Benedict's Avalon is a shadow of that place, who's to say that jeweler's rouge from a shadow of that shadow wouldn't have the same effect?
  • Some of the ammo could have been stolen, lost or captured, maybe even in the battle with the forces of Chaos at the end of Guns of Avalon, and given even a small sample, the stuff would be fairly easy to reproduce, given a shadow with physical qualities similar to Avalon and some raw materials. In our Earth, which is not too far from Avalon and thus may have similar physical laws, basic jeweler's rouge is just powdered rust...
• In Guns of Avalon, Corwin and Ganelon are riding (in shadow) towards Benedict's Avalon when they come upon a deserter from Benedict's army, who had fled a battle in (Benedict's) Avalon. They interrogate him and send him on his way, but then they keep walking in shadow to find Benedict's Avalon. Wouldn't seeing the deserter mean they were in the same world as Avalon and fairly close to it geographically? Or are we supposed to think that the deserter is a shadow of a deserter in Benedict's Avalon, and that that world was a shadow of the world containing it? Because it doesn't normally seem like everything casts a perfect shadow at all times.
  • Since it's possible to follow a Prince of Amber through shadow, it's likely that fleeing when one is approaching can cause you to end up in a different shadow, too. The deserter just had the fortune / misfortune to be fleeing via a route that aligned roughly to how Corwin was approaching Benedict's Avalon right as they got near, ending up in an adjacent shadow as a result.