Topaz
32 years ago - Prince Topaz is born to House Topaz of Gemworld. His house allies itself with Dark Opal after the fall of House Amethyst.
17 years ago - 15-year-old Prince Topaz meets Amy Winston when she comes to House Topaz to unite the houses of Gemworld. When the magic of Dark Opal controlling his father is revealed Prince Topaz is forced to kill him, becoming the new Lord Topaz. He is forced to flee House Topaz, leaving it under the control of his older sister.
16 years ago - 16-year-old Lord Topaz returns to House Topaz to convince them to join Amy Winston's final attack on Dark Opal's castle. they are victorious, but He and Amy cannot be together as they are nobility from different houses.
14 years ago - 18-year-old Lord Topaz abdicates his lordship of House Topaz when Amy Winston chooses to remain in Gemworld. They are married by Citrina.
12 years ago - 20-year-old Topaz & Amy Winston's daughter Amaya is born, delivered by Citrina. Lord Garnet is her godfather.
1 year ago - 31-year-old Topaz is blinded while fighting Eclipso. When Amy Winston unlocks the elemental magic of Gemworld, he develops a magical sixth sense.
While the various characters introduced in the pages of Amethyst all were clearly designed to occupy a specific role in her narrative, no one's was quite as obvious as Lord Topaz. Frankly he was really well built for the role of dreamy love interest, but the whole thing was hampered by one tiny little but not so insignifigant story detail.
Topaz's Comic HistoryTopaz was one of the characters introduced during the original Amethyst maxi series in 1982. As we meet him he's betrothed to mary Lady Sapphire. The wedding proves to be a grand ball, introducing several of the characters that would go on to populate the series. Amethst arrives and disrupts the event, along with her follower Lord Garnet. Topaz quickly allies himself with Amethyst, revealing that he was actually already in love with her from the first time he saw her (although what time that could be, I'm not sure, I don't believe he DID see her before this). Topaz's father is revealed to be under the magical influence of Dark Opal, forcing Topaz to dispatch his own father. As the series went on, the growing whimsical attraction between Topaz and Amethyst would blossum, with him eventually going back to his House to convince his older sister to join the rebellion against Dark Opal.
In the following ongoing series, with Amy often disconnected from Gemworld on her own adventures, Topaz would basically be sidelined by a romance with Lady Turquoise which would go on to define his character. |
Our Topaz StoryI really don't think I need to tell you what the problem was here. Topaz was a great romantic foil for Amethyst, and all things being equal it would have played like a great magical fairytale, but that supposedly simple childs power fantasy of having a 13-year-old girl transposing into a 20-year-old having romantic fantasy adventures just opened up way too many issues, and poor Lord Topaz was unwittingly right in the middle of them Every depiction of their blossuming romance was just wildy problematic. The series basically had to shunt him off to the sidelines just to keep from referencing this too often.
So, simple solution: everyone is the same age. Amy doesn't change ages when she goes to Gemworld, and these two can just have the obvious romance that this premise actually deserves. We do still want to infuse their story with a little drama, so we introduced the idea that the children of the great houses can't marry each other, which is why Topaz actually abdicates his lordship. He gets to go on to become the father of future Teen Titan Amaya, which we think is great. We changed things up a little further by blinding Topaz in a fight with Eclipso, which is a reference to Amy's story after the Crisis, but we think this fits into his story really well. |