This is a man who has done everything wrong.
I think about Brand and mental illness a lot. His plan was not exactly well thought out and he lost control of it several times. He was a volatile character, someone who actually would murder a sibling on a whim as opposed to Random who just talked about it. (“But Random DID try to murder a sibling!!!!!” I hear you say. That wasn’t on a whim though. Impulse? Yes. Whim? No.) Corwin, I think, refers to him as bipolar or manic depressive- I forget which. This is probably not meant to be literal any more than someone who folds their clothes promptly is necessarily OCD. And even if it is literal it shares a road with the whole “bipolar people are crazy and dangerous!!!!” thing.
It’s something I might play around with at some point.
At the very least he’s a dude who did not do well in the pressure cooker of Amber Family Politics.
Anyway.
If I had a nickel for every character who’s lost an eye in Roger Zelazny’s “Chronicles of Amber” I’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot but it’s weird that it happened twice.
And both do so while grappling with a universe-shaping power. The parallels to Odin are striking, especially in the context of the world-ending in the first cycle. I expect if there’d been a third cycle Coral would have wound up suspended upside down for a while.
(Is an eye among the body parts Jurt loses? If do that’s three nickels.)
Someone loses an eye in Zelazny’s “Changeling” as well. I don’t think it’s very Odin-y though.
