Story Notes: Little Sparrow, The Vale and the Spire

This chapter is mostly self-explanatory. There's little in canon about Equestria's north-west, aside from some cities or towns on a map, and a few labels. The vast bulk of stories told in the TV show and even the books and comics are told in the rest of ponyland, the eastern coast, 'southern Equestria', the central region around Ponyville and Canterlot, even Las Pegasus, Applewood, and Salt Lick City in the southwest.

So I felt free to go wild in the northwest, and fill those tantalizing gaps in canon Equestria with a sort of equine Renaissance Italy. The mysterious 'Tall Tale' becomes a sort of Florence or Sienna to Van Hoover's scheming Venice, with the Cyclone Empress in distant Pegasopolis playing the role of the intermittently absent Holy Roman Emperors. And what's this? The Crystal Empire making itself known as a sort of glittery France, just waiting for a Charles VIII to pour into the disunified chaos with some new weapons system to crack it all open like an egg.

It takes a special kind of situation to provide the environment where private militaries like the medieval 'companies', the renaissance 'capitani di ventura' could thrive. The mercenary companies did well in the back-and-forth of Hundred-Years-War France, and saw action in both the Germanies and among the kingdoms of the Spanish reconquista, but their home was the stretch of disunified Italy from the two Sicilies to the feet of the Alps in the north.

And so, the Serene Republic of Van Hoover. The showrunners probably intended, vaguely, for Van Hoover to be a local joke for the home town of the show's animation company where most of the production occurs, but we're talking about an ancient pony city in lands settled for at least a thousand years! And it's the one major city along the North Lunar littoral. Of course independent Van Hoover would be a thalassocracy. But I added the fillip of the 'Serene Republic' extending its authority into the interior via a 'Trade League', a sort of Hanseatic League in miniature.

The one totally non-historical element in this stew (aside from all the crayola-colored equines playing their parts in the drama) is the Sirespire. You will not find it on any map of Equestria, but it's not exactly original in the realm of fanfiction. It is inspired in part by Cold in Gardez's Heartspire. Which, seriously, go read Lost Cities if you haven't, go right goddamn now. But in general? Evil wizards' towers has been a staple of sword-and-sorcery pulp fiction since the days of Robert Howard. I think my main original thought in the design of the Sirespire is the idea that a reclusive sect of monstrous warlocks could hide in plain sight in the midst of a crowded, disordered region like my 'Vale of Tail'. Not that it hasn't happened on a much smaller scale, historically. See Gilles de Rais and Elizabeth Báthory.

Oh, and yeah, it's totally supposed to be a reference to the eighth season's introduction of 'Sire's Hollow', Starlight Glimmer and Sunburst's home town. A long-distant echo of that destroyed den of secretive unicorn warlocks? Well, no, probably not. On the other hoof... That's a lot of skulls, Starlight.