Hearth Warming Eve and Equestrian History · 11:06pm Dec 18th, 2011
I wasn't sure if I'd ever post a blog here, but this last episode got me worked up over the subject of Equestrian History. I was worried that this episode would shoot down some of my own pet theories, and I'm rather pleased that it did not.
For those of you convinced that Celestia and Luna are eternal, all-powerful, all-knowing, all-sexy goddesses who existed from the beginning of time, and possibly even created life on Earth, you can go cry your little eyes out now. I'll wait.
Back already? Okay.
The show really gave no indication that Celestia or Luna were alive during the events depicted in the play. In fact, it strongly suggests that they were not. The play was pretty clear that the unicorns were already controlling the sun and moon at this time, which leaves no role for Celestia and Luna. What would their cutie marks even mean?
There's been a fair bit of debate about the flag shown at the end, with obvious representations of Celestia and Luna on it. From the comments I've read, there seems to be a pretty good consensus that they used a modern flag in the play, and it wasn't meant to look like a flag that actually would have been flown at the founding of Equestria. That's supported by the flag only appearing on stage, not during the flashback portion of the show. It's exactly the sort of symbolic gesture you'd expect such a patriotic pageant to end with.
Some clever individual over on EQD pointed out that Luna seemed to have personally known Starswirl the Bearded, since she remembered the bells on his costume. There are a couple of flaws in that line of reasoning. First, Twilight also knew about the bells (since she got them right on her costume), so presumably this was a matter of historical record. It may simply be that Twilight and Luna are both reading the same history books. That doesn't seem out of line with their personalities.
The other possibility is that Luna hadn't been born at the time of the events in the play, but that she knew Starswirl later when she was growing up. This really got me thinking about what Twilight called Starswirl: "Father of the Amniomorphic Spell". Amniomorphic is a funny word. The words amnion and amniotic come from ancient Greek and refer to the tissues and fluids surrounding an embryo in the womb. Morph is also from ancient Greek and refers to shape. Therefore, an amniomorphic spell is one you could use to reshape a developing embryo and create a new type of creature. Such as, for example... an alicorn.
Anyhow, that was my theory all along -- that Celestia and Luna were both created, very intentionally, via magic, to be the rulers of Equestria. We already know they have the combined powers of earth, unicorn and pegasus ponies, plus centuries of experience and wisdom. I suspect that's all they have, and that's enough. They don't need to be divine.
I actually rather like the implications this has for writing stories about them. It keeps them real. It's easier to write about alicorns that are amazing but still not entirely unlike the other ponies around them, as opposed to some sort of godlike alien figures.
Of course, I'm WELL aware of the irony that the only story I've published so far depicted them as eternal godlike figures who basically were in charge of their own little pocket universe. That's OK. That little story was entirely self-contained, I won't be revisiting it. I am working on a couple of other things, I have lots of ideas, but all of them will hew a lot closer to canon.
I think your theory ignores the fact that Celestia and Luna were not the original rulers of Equestria. Discord ruled Equestria before they did. They were able to defeat Discord using the Elements of Harmony and then became the rulers of Equestria.
The origin of Celestia and Luna are unknown, and if Lauren Faust has her way, their origin will always be unknown. She's been asked about it of course, and her answer answer is that she specifically wants them to remain mysterious and difficult to understand, even to herself. So she intentionally never came up with origin story for Celestia or Luna.