Born a prince in the Royal Court of Amber, the first year of his life was spent in the lap of luxury, only the finest foods and training for the royal heir. But his mother, Saphire FireStar, was not comfortable with the idea of her son being raised a stuffy royal, so since his father had dissapeared she took him and began traveling.
The majority of his young childhood after that was spent traveling the southern states of Earth Realms United States of America, which has given him a deep southern accent, a large appreciation for southern foods and a love for a good pipe.
Around the time he was 12 his father returned and without so much as searching out his mother began courting another woman. The ordeal was a major scandal, in the end his father was with his mother and he had a baby sister that he adored named Ti'Anna.
In the years following Atrus became a strong mage but prefered ranch life to that of a royal, but he had also developed a bad personality because of his father's infidelity and lies to his mother. So after walking the pattern of Amber at the age of 21 he began his first trip shadow walking, which spanned 5 years. Upon his return he had found not much had changed around the ranch. He had a new brother and sister named Katran and Telanis and his young sister was now a woman with her eyes on a ranch hand. A permanent rift grew between them when Atrus over reacted to Ti'Anna's virginity loss, a rift that pains Atrus to no end but he knows he can not fix. After that fight he went back to shadow walking.