The Civilized Barbarian Princess · 4:13am Jan 3rd, 2014
Princess Luna doesn't fit very well into modern Equestria. Here's the reason why.
Equestria is what I could call a "hyper-civilized" society. Although it's on the average about a century behind 21st-century America technologically, it's a much nicer place. It's been at internal peace for a long time, and being the dominant Power in its part of the world, very rarely has to go to war anymore. Serious crimes are rare, and individual evil seldom gets beyond ordinary bullying, greed, and snobbery. Its culture quite seriously, openly and non-ironically extolls virtuous and condemns vicious conduct.
Princess Luna did not come from as nice a place before she was banished.
Celestia and Luna overthrew Discord and then had to unite what were previously numerous petty kingdoms, principalities and other independent political units down to the level of minor warlords squatting in keeps with "armies" of a dozen or so ponies dominating a few isolated villages each (*). While the ponies are to some extent naturally less violent than humans, this was a violent age, and would be seen as a violent age by anyone from any society as peaceful and well-organized as, say, present-day America.
They could have tried to simply declare universal rule and fight everyone who opposed them, but not only would this have required killing a lot of innocent ponies and causing a lot of devastation, it might not have worked. And even had it worked, it would have put them in the role of Evil Tyrant Queens, just waiting to become the Final Bosses for the next heroines to happen along. Had they survived this, they would have accustomed the ponies to expectations of slavery, robbing them of their chance to build a great and free civilization.
Celestia and Luna fell into certain set roles in this centuries-long task of unification. One could call them "Soft Alicorn / Hard Alicorn." Celestia was the nice, kind and reasonable one who extolled the virtues of peace and civilization, while making sure that everyone knew she could unload a can of Sun on them if they angered her enough. Luna was Celestia's war-leader, the one who would actually lead any army into battle which was facing any threat not requiring the unloading of said can of Sun.
Which is to say, it was usually Luna who wound up having to fight other ponies, when that was necessary.
So it was Luna who got -- and in truth more deserved -- the role of Lady of War. It was she who had to see the horrors of war close up -- both on her own troops (for even when one is victorious, as she usually was, one takes losses) and on the enemy (and don't think that she forgot they were ponies too). This made her tough, even callous, in a way that is rarely the case for any ponies in modern, hyper-civilized Equestria.
She paid the price for this. It was Luna who led the army that defeated the rebellious warlord and left ponies in the district mourning their dead. It was Celestia who came in afterward, after the revolt was put down, and distributed aid to help the district recover. Which one of them do you suppose was liked the more for her labors? Long before she became the Nightmare, before she even contemplated rebellion herself, she was already more feared than loved by most normal ponies.
Of course she was loved by her own troops. And she loved them in return. But that just meant that she often had to see her loved ones die untimely -- she had friends and lovers literally die cradled in her forelegs -- and it also meant that her positive affect was very much focused on her officers and soldiers.
As Celestia's Long Game of co-opting the great houses and using them to help suppress the petty warlords bore fruit, and Equestria became a more peaceful and civilized land (think the transition from the Dark to the High Middle Ages in our world) there was less and less need for soldiers. Luna saw her labors bear fruit, which ironically meant that she was even less appreciated.
Oh, they cheered her when she won battles, and she rode on the reputation for decades to come. But she's immortal. The generation she'd led in the great crisis of the century would inevitably die out, and she would be a strange grim dark mare, sometimes snapping into awesome rages when something pushed a Berserk Button, whom the ponies enjoying the benefits of her victories would shun as powerful and dangerous.
This was at the same time, of course, that they were learning all about Courtly Love and the arts and graces of peace at her sister's hooves, and composing flattering songs and poems and works of art to the glory of the Sun Princess. Do you really wonder why, in the end, she grew resentful?
Now, here she is -- someone who remembers centuries of war, who has many of the values of an age when sudden death lurked at every encounter, and she has for the most part to deal with ponies who have absolutely no idea what any of this means. It's worse in this respect than it was a thousand years ago, because a thousand years ago things were still violent enough that ponies mostly realized why Equestria needed someone like Luna around. Now, they look upon her as if she were something between an alien and a maniac. She terrifies them.
And yet this is only part of it. For Luna originally began the great labor of unifying Equestria because she agreed with her sister that they should work to bring peace and prosperity to the land, so that ponies could once again climb up to the heights of the Age of Wonders. In the beginning, she -- who remembered the peace of Paradise Esate from her fillyhood, and the glory of the Age of Wonders from her previous life -- was the civilized pony cast among the barbarians, striving to raise them by her example.
Luna is a very intelligent mare, and she is quite aware of the ironies of her situation. And it hurts her.
A lot.
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(*) Discord was a lazy Universal Overlord who found it too much of a bother to really unify his claimed realm, and plus he liked chaotic political conditions. They were more entertaining to watch.
This gives me a sad.
Well, my Luna's a tragic character. So is the canon one, really. She's saved from being a depressing character by her high courage and puckish sense of humor.
I've always thought she suffered from ptsd. Also what we see as Nightmare Moon is in a fact a type of sentient/symbiotic armor. Mostly Luna and Celestia have control over it, but in instances of extreme emotional and physical distress...