Her Grace Beatrice Dunne-Barimen

Duchess of Kolvir, Kingdom of Amber

Beatrice is the daughter of Brand and Moira Dunne of Shadow Earth. Moira was the only daughter of formerly wealthy landowners in county Sligo, Ireland; after considerable reasearch, Beatrice has been able to discover that her parents met - apparently by chance - at a festival in Dublin in October of 1941. Beatrice knows little else about her mother, however; she vanished when Bea was very young, too young to remember much about her.

She was raised in the Dunne manor house just outside the town of Sligo; the house was at best run-down, as years of neglect had taken their toll long before Beatrice was born. Much of the upstairs was unusable, and the outbuildings were rapidly approaching hopeless. None of the caretakers Brand hired to watch over his daughter cared enough to tend to the buildings, so it was left to Beatrice's hands. She learned to wield hammer and nails before she turned ten, if only to keep her room habitable.

Beatrice had a lonely childhood. The nearest children her age were in Sligo itself, several miles away, and her caretakers were there to make sure she learned what her father thought appropriate and that she survived, not that she was well-loved. While she could and did sneak out, she wasn't able to make it down into Sligo to meet any of the local children until her teen years.

Her father's presence was erratic as his treatment of her. He sometimes stayed for a month or more, and other times only for a few hours. He brought her toys and books and presents some days, and others he made the same toys and presents vanish. Sometimes pets she'd found or been given vanished. Sometimes it was people she'd become too attached to.

Beatrice tends to dislike talking about her childhood - and her father.

Her father also took the time to teach her sorcery and Trump artistry; Beatrice both dreaded and enjoyed those lessons, as he was as likely to conduct them when he was in a good mood as when he was in a bad one. But the knowledge fascinated her. A section of the Dunne manor's cellar remains a magical and artistic workshop to this day.

Some time during her childhood, she discovered an ancient typewriter in that same cellar, and a fascination with the written word was born. Despite the age of the machine - and the fact that she had to repair it twice due to her father - Beatrice churns out book after book. Her first novel was published in 1965; she generally has two or more books published in any given year. Her novels appear as a series of young adult books detailing figures of Ireland's history, and as a series of Lovecraftian horror stories under the pseudonym "B. Randall." The latter was due entirely to her father's influence; her initial stories were in the horror genre, and he insisted on the name to keep her anonymous.

In her twenties, Beatrice finally rebelled against her father. She has admitted to trying to subvert sorcery lessons, and to attempting to bar him from her home when he returned to Ireland. She kicked out the servants Brand had hired and took over the management of the household herself. She spent more time away from home and with friends she'd made and the occasional boyfriend. She has never quite specified how long this rebellion lasted, but she always makes very clear - when she speaks of it - that her father did not take this lightly, and that she paid dearly for it.

It was during this period that she first met Morgan, at the grave of William Butler Yeats in Drumcliffe, less than ten miles from her home. She has commented since that it was love at first sight - in the middle of a cemetary and all.

The intervening years between Beatrice's meeting with Morgan and her departure for Amber were seemingly uneventful; she published books steadily, took up and stopped smoking, and accumulated an astonishing amount of clutter. She also managed to rehabilitate her home. Only one room in the house remains unfit for humans, and that has been left intentionally because she's fond of the current inhabitants: a pair of ravens. She keeps that door locked to keep out curious visitors, and has bespelled the hole in the wall and the former windows so that the birds are undisturbed by wind, weather, and intruders. She even managed to reclaim part of the stables and one outbuilding; the other remaining buildings were sacrificed for repairs on the buildings she saved and the stone wall that encircles her property.

More recently, however, it has come to light that those years were not as uneventful as she tends to let people believe. There have been mentions of the Irish Republican Army, of riots and bombs and the death of friends. Only a few people know so far: Morgan, Martin, Antonia, and likely the staff of Summerisle, though how much they understand of it is something she hasn't asked.

Despite the turmoil Brand's reappearance in her life genereally caused, Beatrice had one reason to look forward to it: Brand's stallion, Loyal. She had made friends with him as a child, as he was often the only being on the grounds she thought actually liked her. And then, when Brand died, he came to Ireland to find her and bring her a homeland she'd never seen: Amber.

Loyal conveyed a certain sense of urgency to her, in his way, and she agreed to leave the only home she knew. She knew of Amber - her father had not been shy about stating his opinions about the realm, or about his siblings - but she had not left Shadow Earth. She had barely been beyond the borders of her own country. But she knew she had to go eventually, and with a large grey stallion neighing impatiently on the lawn, she pried herself away from her comfortable world and rode away into Shadow with him.

Somewhere on the road to Amber, Beatrice met up with Artemis, who was looking for her. The two rode into Arden - and from thence to Amber - together.

Beatrice was extremely skittish when she arrived; cousins didn't seem to bother her, but she had a very hard time dealing with her aunts and uncles. She later explained that Brand was very effective at telling nightmarish stories of his siblings to his young daughter; even now, she rarely seeks out the aunts and uncles, and though her nervousness has receded considerably, she does sometimes still get skittish again.

Not too long after her arrival, Fiona convinced Morgan to check on this new cousin. The potential relationship that had simmered between them in Ireland flowered in Amber; the romance has continued to just recently, despite more than a few side trips on Morgan's part. She was a regular part of Poker Night; she only occasionally played, perferring to watch or listen to the music instead.

Thanks to a certain amount of misunderstanding, some impetuousness, and a fiery temper, the relationship between Beatrice and Morgan has now ended.

Beatrice continues to live part-time in Ireland; when she's not in Amber, she's back in the manor house in county Sligo. In Amber, she is most often found at Raven's Nest. It's also not unusual to find her in the castle library, surrounded by stacks of paper in her handwriting.

She still writes, and curious cousins are always welcome to ask for a copy of her latest book.