Mar
30th
2016
Points of Canon: Friends Forever #26 · 12:03pm Mar 30th, 2016
I just got my hands on it, so I thought, why not extend the practice to comics? This post covers noteworthy worldbuilding statements present in Friends Forever #26, notable in particular for being the first piece to feature the mysterious and elusive Prince Blueblood in years.
Spoilers follow.
- Prince Blueblood addresses Shining Armor as ‘prince’ right off the bat, saying “There are so few of us these days, you know?” He continues treating Shining Armor as an equal from then on.
- In a situation completely absent any female likely to be vying for his attention, Blueblood behaves like an absentminded jerk, treating guards as valets and their armor as mirrors. In fact, at the moment the room contains all four alicorn princesses and he ignores even the eligible one (Twilight) completely. Then he sits into the crystal throne of the Crystal Empire and breaks the thing with no apparent ill intent of any kind.
- Blueblood addresses Celestia as “Celestia,” no titles or diminutives or statements of relation.
- Blueblood makes a statement to the effect that Cadance is an orphan. I’d have to go look it up to see if it agrees with the chapter book that details Cadance’s story.
- Shining Armor uses snowshoes to navigate the road toward Yakyakistan.
- Blueblood reiterates his statement about princes by telling Shining that “We’re practically the only princes in Equestria.” – emphasis mine.
- Blueblood makes a 90 degree turn in his behavior when he’s on a mission, as he turns from absentminded jerk to focused, considerate gentleman, who is perfectly aware that everyone else is not a prince, but adheres to the principle of noblesse oblige. He makes a show of noticing those of lower station and being nice to them. Notably, none of the crystal ponies carrying his palanquin appear to mind the weight, even though Shining Armor makes a show of not riding in it, and the yak doing Blueblood’s hooficure actually nearly refuses a tip from him, but gets one anyway.
- When Shining refuses his help and gets the yaks angry, Blueblood does not insist on taking over the negotiations until Shining gives up, and then fixes everything without even rubbing it in with more than a good-natured “You poor foal.” In general, he is far more aware of what “tactful” means than his previous appearances would suggest, and far more aware than Shining Armor seems to be in general.
In short, the comic presents Blueblood as a Bunny-Ears Lawyer with a moderately annoying set of bunny ears. Shining Armor ends the comic with a lesson almost explicitly citing this.
The whole story contrasts sharply with how deliberately mean Blueblood has been during the Gala. Considering that Celestia vouches for his diplomatic ability right off the bat, the Gala becomes an even more bizarre aberration.
Interesting. If I'm understanding this correctly, Blueblood is only a snobbish jerk when nothing is expected of him, correct? That's certainly an engaging interpretation, although I do still prefer the usual fanon of him deliberately acting like a complete jackass in order to fend off social climbers. The diplomatic competence is something I'll certainly squirrel away for later reference. Many thanks!
3836564
It's actually more than that. If you examine the post I link to in the beginning, Blueblood's behavior during the gala is consistently demeaning towards Rarity, but he doesn't really interact with much of anypony else except Applejack. Who kind of gave away she's Rarity's friend when she waived the payment. In the comic, Blueblood is not exactly demeaning towards anyone, even the staff -- he is absentminded, bouncing around the throne room of the Crystal Palace like a kid in a candy shop. The moment he's on a job, he stops being absentminded. He's still snobbish, but this snobbishness comes off as perfectly natural and even justified, it gets reinterpreted as dignity.
I.e. I think the common fanon assumption "Blueblood is a jackass to fend off social climbers" needs to be adjusted to "Blueblood targets those he picks out as social climbers, and then deliberately squishes them until they run off and cry, but is otherwise fairly tolerable and when on a mission, even charismatic."
Annoying as it is, I think the most likely explanation is that the whole series of scenes with Rarity are Celestia enlisting her nephew into teaching Rarity a lesson about not being a lady for the sake of random prince
on awhite horse. :)It makes sense that Blueblood was deliberately putting on an act to dissuade/punish/educate Rarity for her social-climbing attempt at the Gala. His "change of character" in the comic follows the set of rules that he explicitly conveys to Shining Armor, so perhaps he has similar sets of rules to deal with other situations.
3868076
Very possible. Me, I keep getting that Cinema Sins vibe that there's a very interesting story that caused the one that we saw at the Gala, that would have been more fun to watch than what we actually did see, and this comic only made this vibe stronger. It's like something had to have caused Blueblood to target Rarity in particular...
3868092
Yeah... Celestia having a hoof in the situation makes for a much more interesting scenario. She would have had to know about Rarity's intentions before the Gala in order to set up the situation, which implies a level of scrutiny of the Element Bearers that's understandable but a bit creepy.
3868092 Maybe that baby dragon he grew fond of, the one that was crawling around the palace during his teenage years being adorable, sent him a fire-letter begging him to turn down Rarity so she would be open to others? And then Blueblood decided to take this a step or two too far?
3869145
I was planning to use just this sort of thing, actually. Because as far as I can tell, in her pre-show years, Spike actually had Twilight's social life, while she couldn't be bothered. He can talk Hoity Toity into coming over not once but twice, he's more excited about Moondancer's party than Twilight is, he gets called away to Canterlot on royal business, and in general he's far from just a baby dragon. There are a few good stories based around this idea, even.
So, Blueblood latching onto Rarity because Spike asked him to is quite plausible. The question is why is Blueblood so hostile, I mean, insist that Rarity use her dress to wipe up a puddle? When there's a tablecloth nearby, even?...
3869384 Maybe he's good friends with Spike, and Spike has been describing in letters his efforts to woo Rariry, and how Rarity has been treating him in return. I'm sure Spike has talked in only glowing terms of Rarity and her treatment of Spike. However, Blueblood is fairly cynical, and suspicious of mares.
Now imagine you're an incredibly handsome looking guy, and you are friends with this awkward, out of place younger fellow you watched grow up. Then you hear about how he has a crush on some girl, and spends all his time trying to please her, and she in turn treats him like this:
Now you have one night to get your revenge on this girl, how far would you go?
3869406
...damn. Thanks, that's brilliant, and I'm going to use exactly this sort of interpretation for when the Canterlot Wedding finally rolls into town in Aporia. :)
3869442 Just had another thought. If Sweet and Elite occurred after the Grand Galloping Gala, how did Rarity and Blueblood make up enough to be civil to each other in public? Well, if Spike was friends with Blueblood, you can assume the day after the Gala Blueblood got a very angry letter from Spike, demanding he apologize to Rarity for going way too far. It's not hard to imagine Blueblood sending some formal written apology to Rarity, and if Rarity knows Spike is friends with Blueblood, she's smart enough to guess the rest (she obviously knows all about Spike's crush on her). It's not enough for Blueblood and Rarity to become friends, but its probably enough so that they are fairly polite to each other in a public setting.
3870135
That works quite well. Alternatively, if "Sweet and Elite" occurred before the Gala, that's when Rarity first met Blueblood and targeted him, and Ticket Master happened just weeks later...
...Damn, now I have that idea for a short story collection titled "The Twenty Faces of Blueblood," detailing twenty different takes on him, each trying a new method of untangling the whole mess. :)
3870154 I don't know how movable "Ticket Master" is, I could have sworn at the beginning when Twilight is helping Applejack harvest apples for a bet, she said something about only being in town for a week. But I might be thinking of a fanfiction instead.
Anyway, there's a great story I read that is a collection of romances between Blueblood and each of the Mane 6 falling in love at the Gala, and each of them have a separate explanation for Blueblood's behavior that night. (He is autistic, he hadn't slept for three days, everything except he was a changling). If I remember the name, I will tell you.
3870192
Just doublechecked. Nothing about "only being in town for a week", I'm afraid, so I'd say it's pretty movable. It has to precede the entire sequence of dresses-for-the-Gala episodes, where they pop up in various stages of completion, but other than that it can move pretty far.
3870211 Ah, thanks for that. And now that I think of it, the more Sweet and Elite is moved forward, the more sense it makes that practically no one in Canterlot recognizes Rarity as an Element of Harmony.
3869384
Remind me when that was?S1E8, "Look Before you Sleep", yes?Though, I do fanonize the idea that Spike is "the
ponyperson everypony should know" and could probably do Pinkie duty for Canterlot, or in less fantastic terms play herald at a big event.4305932
Yep, Spike is absent for the entire episode and Twilight refers to him being in Canterlot on “royal business.” This is never elaborated, and in general Spike is very rarely seen sans Twilight. One of the appearances when this does happen, Friends Forever #14, has been jossed so hard by primary canon that it’s completely out, (There can be no Dragontown in any of Equestria’s cities if nobody knows anything about dragon culture) and the other one, Friends Forever #3, has other problems. Neither allows us a canonical perspective on what his royal business could be.
I doubt he would be doing Pinkie duty, it does not exactly seem to be in character to me, and there’s one other person who might actually be a Canterlot party pony – namely, Minuette. Not sure about the herald either, though that is a possibility.
My best guess to the “royal business” so far is that the use of his dragonfire was required, but we know next to nothing about the limitations of dragonfire. Usually, when a letter to Celestia would solve everything immediately, or when sending someone a message via Spike would do it, the writers excise Spike entirely instead.
4305954
Herald as in announcing everyone who arrives, but not needing to take their card necessarily to be able to state their name […and relevant titles, whether they be noble titles or not].
Likewise, I didn't mean Pinkie Duty as parties, but as she says in S1E1, "I know everypony in Ponyville".
Though it might be more accurate to say she has dossiers on everypony in Ponyville ("Party Poopers"). One would expect Spike to have acquired good note-taking habits, and thus also be more Chalmers-Expanded-Mind-in-Dossiers from being raised by Twilight&co. but this is clearly speculation.