Outrider Amber reporting for duty!

It is finally time for me to talk about the famous Outrider & Gliding Champion of Mondstadt, Amber! I’ll be honest, I never really thought that I’d be doing a constellation analysis for her or even for other characters that I don’t really care much about but I decided that I will try to do constellation analyses for all of them EXCEPT for Aloy

To start off, Amber’s constellation is called Lepus, which means “hare”. Rabbits don’t generally use Lepus as part of their scientific name, but they are considered part of the Leporidae family, Leporidae meaning “those similar to Lepus” (thus meaning “those similar to the hare”). Although hares & rabbits look very similar, there are some differences between them: one of them is that hares are generally larger & faster than rabbits, they’re also not domesticated unlike rabbits

****There are times when the constellation’s names will be a bit from what we may expect (a good example that I’ve done already is Cyno’s constellation analysis; the animal we tend to associate w/ him is the jackal bc of Anubis but his constellation [even in CN translation] literally translates to “golden wolf” which is an actual animal but it is not the same as the jackal); I usually try to stay consistent to what the constellations translate in both EN & CN unless I can’t make a good case for it for some reason (the hare & rabbit are very similar so there is bound to be a lot of interchanging between the terms across different languages; in CN, it translates to “Little Rabbit Constellation” but it should be noted that the CN character used for “rabbit” doesn’t really make a distinction between rabbits & hares, it’s used to refer to all leporids, so the translation itself could very well be referring to a young hare as well)

TLDR: a note about technicalities on translations of constellations & translations being different from each other (I’m going to try my best to stick to “hare” as opposed to “rabbit” in this thread mostly bc their speed & wildness are more in line with Amber’s lore, just remember that hares≠rabbits ^_^)****

When we look at Amber, you can tell that her character design is meant to look like a hare, especially w/ her headband representing the ears & having the same design in her constellation; she’s also agile as it is part of her job as an Outrider, which is essentially a scout

To emphasize her agility, our first meeting with her was when she was running & jumped out from the forest we were walking in; in addition, she is the gliding champion of Mondstadt as well, which speaks to her skill in controlling her glider while maintaining speed in the air

Aside from the obvious connection to swiftness, hares are symbols for a number of concepts, some of which we might not necessarily think are related to them while others can be more easily connected

They are related to fertility/abundance, innocence, the moon (nocturnal creatures), good luck, spring, love (usually associated w/ romantic love, having connections to Venus/Aphrodite), resurrection & rebirth (in line w/ spring when flowers grow after winter), wisdom/knowledge, mischief (fun fact: hares could sometimes be the familiars of witches before black cats became more associated with witches)

Some of these concepts can be found sprinkled throughout Amber’s lore; the ones that I find prevalent are mischief, wisdom/knowledge, rebirth, and the moon

It turns out that Amber was quite the troublemaker when she was younger & it was usually her grandfather, the senior/leading Outrider, who had to clean up after her messes; looking at her now in the game, we see that she doesn’t seem like someone who would cause trouble for others

As someone who tries her best to help/guide others, she has her own sense of wisdom which wasn’t present in her childhood; she has been a mentor to Collei mostly

The Windblume’s Breath event with Collei can speak to this wisdom

There is a point where she, Eula, and Klee see Collei & Sucrose interacting w/ each other; Klee wants to join in but Amber stops her bc she understands that Collei still struggles interacting w/ others & what she needs at the moment is someone who can relate to her like Sucrose before she can go on to interacting with more extroverted people including Amber herself

Now w/ the concept of rebirth, this is shown more so figuratively when the Outriders group started to deteriorate due to her grandfather no longer being there; at some point, it was just her alone

We can see a bit of transformation happening for Amber, going from a mischievous child to a mature & helpful Outrider in her Character Story; it almost feels strange to think of her as a former troublemaker when she has helped a lot in Mondstadt

Now the moon is an interesting aspect to consider when we look at how it fits into the overall world building; aside from the fact that Amber calls Mondstadt (Moon City in German) her home, rabbits and hares are often times associated w/ the moon due to them being usually nocturnal but what stands out to me is that she is the first person with a Vision we meet & she hails from the first nation that we visit which has connections to the moon; I think that although she might not have strong ties to the moon itself, she does help to establish the importance of the moon in the world of Teyvat with her intro to Mondstadt

I know we like to joke at times that Mondstadt may be the favorite child of HYV but I think there’s something to be said about how Mondstadt helped to establish much of the lore for many of us especially with Istaroth & the Moon Sisters presented to us early on; there’s also the duo of time & wind being established as important concepts by Mondstadt as well

So if anything, Amber’s connection to the moon seems more as a driver of the game’s starting lore rather than as a symbol to her own lore

Maybe the answer of the truth points to Mondstadt after all 👀