The Fool

The Fool
Character
Alias	Beloved Amber Lord Golden
Gender	Genderfluid
Species	White
Status
Abilities	Prophet
Residence	Buckkeep, formerly
Status	Alive
Relationships
Family	Bee, daughter
Books and Stories
Appeared in	Assassin's Apprentice Royal Assassin Assassin's Quest Fool's Errand Golden Fool Fool's Fate Fool's Assassin "Fool's Quest"

The Fool, also known as Beloved and at various times Amber or Lord Golden, is a major character in the Realm of the Elderlings.

The Fool frequently speaks in riddles, and at times appears to be prescient. Although the Fool frequently teases him, Fitz considers him a close friend.

Character

Appearance

The Fool's physical appearance changes throughout the series. He regularly suffers from a flu-like illness which leaves him bedridden for several days, after which his skin sloughs off to reveal darker skin underneath.

Farseer Trilogy

The Fool is introduced as a the odd-looking jester of King Shrewd's court. He is pale to the point of being nearly albino, with thin white hair and colorless eyes that many people find hard to meet. As the jester, he dresses in blue-and-red motley, or a black-and-white motley for winter. By the end of the trilogy, Fitz notes that the Fool has begun to undergo a change, and that his skin and eyes have become ever so slightly golden.

Liveship Traders Trilogy

The Fool masquerades as the female bead-maker Amber in Bingtown. Amber is described as tawny in both her skin and long hair, and her eyes are golden as well.

Tawny Man Trilogy

The Fool returns to Buckkeep in the guise of Lord Golden, a Jamaillian noble. Lord Golden has long, curly golden hair and wears extremely flamboyant and fashionable clothes. He participates in the latest beauty trends, decorating his face with markings that resemble those of Elderlings.

In Golden Fool, the Fool reveals that he has an intricate back tattoo which depicts several colorful dragons. This tattoo is flayed from his back along with his skin in Fool's Fate.

Fitz and the Fool Trilogy

After undergoing extensive torture, the Fool's appearance is unrecognizable to Fitz. He is short-haired and paler than he has been in years, appearing almost a corpse-like gray. The Fool is blind, his hands are deformed, and he is covered in scars and abcesses. When he visits Kelsingra, he returns to the guise of Amber.

Gender

The Fool's gender is brought into question throughout the series and never definitively confirmed. Fitz initially believes the Fool to be male, as the Fool presented when they first met. Starling Birdsong believes the Fool is female. When masquerading as Amber, she is never perceived as anything but female, though her features are noted as not especially feminine. Likewise, Lord Golden is never perceived as anything but male, except by Jek, who sees Amber in disguise.

When directly questioned on the matter, the Fool said that his gender was no one's business but his own.

History

Little is known of the Fool's early life. According to him, he was born in a small village to a mother and two fathers, which was customary in his land. His mother had black hair and green eyes, his fathers were brothers, and he had a sister with golden hair. He was recognized as special by the people of his village and eventually taken to Clerres. This last gives him sympathy towards Girl-on-a-Dragon, and he strives to awaken her and set her free.

The Fool believes that he is the White Prophet of that age, and Fitz is his Catalyst: The Fool predicts the future and uses Fitz to change it to his vision, which is not always easy on the Catalyst. The Fool tells FitzChivalry that they are to save the world by saving the Six Duchies. If you save part of the world, you save all of it, as that is the only way it can be done, or so he says.

The Fool has traces of Skill on his fingers from an accidental encounter with Verity's Skill-coated arms. First silver, it fades to grey, allowing the Fool to know the history of anything he touches with those fingers, which lends him great abilities with wood carving . He also leaves his fingerprints on Fitz's wrist, creating a faint Skill-link between them, that was also a result of the Fool's visioning the scene in the town square, and seeing herself with the rooster crown, which he/she eventually claims for herself as Amber during The Liveship Traders Trilogy.

It is said that the Fool knows everything before it happens and that he knows if anyone, anywhere speaks of him. Others say it is just his great love of saying 'I warned you so!' and that he takes his most obscure sayings and twists them into prophecies. Perhaps sometimes this has been so, but in many a well-witnessed cases, he has predicted, however obscurely, events that later came to pass. The Fool came to Buckkeep in the seventeenth year of King Shrewd's reign, but from where has always been a common question amongst the citizens of the keep. Many stories have arisen, one being that he was captive of the Red Ship raiders and Bingtown traders seized him from them. Another is that the Fool was found as a baby upon a small boat shielded from the sun by a parasol of sharkskin and cushioned on a bed of heather and lavender.

The Fool describes himself as having many facets, and masquerades as different characters through the Farseer, Liveship Trader, and Tawny Man trilogies. At turns, he is seen as the beadworker Amber and the foppish Lord Golden.

The Fool at times cruelly embarrasses Fitz, but is also closer to him than any other person. The Fool tells Fitz, if obscurely, about his origin, something no one else knows. The Fool says that he was born on an island very far to the south from the Six Duchies, and is unique, even to his kind.

The Tawny Man Trilogy

During the events of the Tawny Man Trilogy, he is confronted by Fitz, who is disturbed by rumours that he and the Fool's love for each other go farther then friendship. The Fool admits to him that his love for Fitz has no bounds, and distances himself away from Fitz when he tells that he would never want to bed him. Soon after, Fitz confronts the Fool again. This time he is worried about the Narcheska's tattoos, and the Fool reluctantly shows Fitz his own tattoos. The Fool says that he was given them by the same people that cherished him, on The Pale Woman's bidding. the Fool after accomplishing his mission, is tortured to the death by the Pale Woman, who is the false White Prophet, by being beaten, and having a large part of the skin of his back, containing the Pale Woman's dragon tattoo, removed. Fitz searches the Pale Woman's stronghold to find the Fool's body and takes him to relative safety via a Skill-pillar. On the other side, in the Stone Garden, he resurrects the Fool by using the Wit to draw the Fool's spirit away from the rooster crown, where it fled to, and re-construct the Fool's body. Fitz then brings the Fool to Prilkop (the Black Man) on Aslevjal, one of the Fool's kind, whose skin is completely black, as one day the Fool's skin will become. Prilkop was the White Prophet of an earlier Age, that ended with the cataclysm in which the Elderlings and Dragons were destroyed. He had waited on Aslevjal for the next White Prophet, that having been his last vision of the future. The Fool and Prilkop decide to return to their homeland to share all they had learned as Prophets. It is implied that at some point in the future, Fitz and the Fool will again be reunited.