Why? (Amadeus Blueblood)
Aftermath of A Fallen Star
By Rated Ponystar
Formerly Edited by The Unnamed Pawn and Commander X5
Pre-Read/Edited by: Magic Man, Chaotic Note, and Grand_Moff_Pony
Why? (Amadeus’ POV)
***
My name is Amadeus Blueblood.
I am the Lord of the Blueblood House, descendants of Sir Blueblood, famous Knight Commander and Second Husband of Princess Celestia. Besides Princess Cadance, we are the sole remaining royal bloodline of Equestria and one of the largest, most powerful, noble houses in Equestria. The other royal bloodlines are, shall we say, no more due to some tragic events in the past.
Being the head of a powerful house such as mine is not a job that I take lightly. In fact this is my life. This is my duty. My duty to my family, my fellow ponies, and my country. It is the duty that every head of this household has carried on their backs for hundreds of years. We saw the direction the nation was heading in hundreds of years ago, and we knew it had to be changed.. But for that we needed to grow more powerful, stronger, richer, and have more influence than any other noble.
And to some extent, even the Crown.
Princess Celestia is all powerful. She is wise, talented, kind, and charismatic.
But she is also naive.
Despite being my only living ancestor, I held little respect for a mare who has the power of the sun and yet barely used it. A mare who preferred to befriend the very enemies who sought to eat or enslave us many times in history and trusted in the nature of friendship and harmony to lead us into a golden age.
Friendship is not strength. Unity is strength.
Unity in blood, in family, and in duty.
Was it easy to amass this much power right under her nose? No, but I’m surprised we managed to get this far. While she was busy spreading the message of Harmony and focusing on her sister, my family was slowly spreading its influence in everything: military, politics, business, agriculture, magic and more. Money goes a very long way, as does alliances, threats, blackmail, and, sometimes, taking a life. The shadows are an easier place to gain power then in the light, and it is there that we Bluebloods have kept our true power.
But we do this not for ourselves like so many believe. We do this for Equestria.
Currently, I was in my lounge room reviewing the latest correspondence I'd received from my various contacts in the field, and some ponies in the government who were beholden to me alone. Many of them were expressing concerns over the continuing fallout from recent events. Others were asking if countermeasures and back up plans that I myself, or previous members of my house, had set up needed to be taken into action.
After all, it’s not often when your son murders a princess.
I calmly wrote instructions not to take action. I wasn’t worried. To be honest, I was thrilled. While on the surface it would seem we were losing our once great power, our true power was still well hidden in the dark. You don’t become as good at the game as we Bluebloods have in the past hundreds of years without a few secrets.
Turning my attention to the the day’s paper, I smirked upon seeing the headlines. “Weather Factory Employs Non-Pegasi! Traditionalists Outraged!”
Traditionalists are so easy to manipulate. Cowardly, narrow minded, ambitious, paranoid, selfish, and most of all stubborn. My ancestors knew this day would come eventually. Progression would come and traditionalists would rise to defend their way of life. All that was needed was a way to gas the fire and stoke the flames. My failure of a son and Princess Twilight Sparkle were the wood and match.
“Dear,” said a voice that woke me from my thoughts. It was my wife, Alura. Like all marriages in my family, it was arranged to those of the purest and most powerful of magic blood. And of course, it had to be unicorn blood. Any pony who mated with a pegasi or earth pony was to be kicked out and the foal, if any, aborted by any means necessary. Despite what the public thought, we weren't racists. Far from it, actually. Pegasi and earth ponies each had a equally important role to play in our nation. It was the other races, especially the predatory ones, that we had to be wary of. If we were to survive, we needed magic, and for that, we needed pure, untainted unicorn blood.
Alura was pledged to me when I was eighteen, and from the start, she did what any spouse of the Blueblood family did: obey.
I looked up at her and frowned. Her long blond mane still looked disheveled, as did her black dress, which she had refused to take off since our son died. Why she continued to shed tears for him, I have no idea. He was utterly useless as a boy and only was useful once in his adult life.
Oh, wait, I know why. She loved him.
But love is secondary.
My father never loved me, but he respected me enough to trust that I would do my duty.
And I have.
Did I love my son? No, but I had expectations for a son of my bloodline. Yet, he was foolish, weak, and pathetic. He never truly understood the teachings I gave him when he was younger. I let him do his own thing anyway, he was good for a distraction to our political rivals.
“A letter came for you,” said my wife and I took the letter without looking. I saw the seal that was on it. The symbol of Unicornia, the nation of only unicorns. I read it and smiled. “What does it say?”
“They accepted our proposal,” I said as I picked up a servant bell with my magic and rang it. I told my butler to get the special wine I had been saving. “Sit, we should have a drink.”
My wife stared at me a bit with no emotion on her face before she sat down on the chair across from mine. I watched the flames of the fireplace burn as our servant returned and poured us our drinks. My wife summoned her glass and drank it all before asking, “So we’re leaving?”
“Yes.”
“The whole clan?”
“Yes.”
“Won’t that make us look even more guilty than we already do?!” shouted Alura as she closed her eyes. “It hasn’t even been that long since our son died...”
“It’s been long enough,” I said, shaking my head. “Besides, we need to focus on the next stage of the plan.”
"Is ambition all your family cares about?" She growled the words at me, which gave me pause. Alura knew her place, and she never argued with me. "Our son, our boy is dead, Amadeus!"
“So?”
"SO?!" She shrieked. "Do you not care at all?!"
“All that I care about is that he played his part for once and did what was necessary. But, he’s not the priority here. There is another at stake. Everything I have done I have done for her.”
“... I wish my father never was in debt to your’s...” muttered Alura, biting her lip. “I wish I never married into this family.”
“Why be so saddened? You may have given this family, the key that we have been waiting hundreds of years for,” I said with a proud smile. “All the preparation. All the resources we gained. The connections. The planning. It was all for this moment. A new dawn will come to Equestria and she will lead it into the age she deserves to be after so long. And we couldn’t have done it without you. You helped us get here.”
Standing up I turned to the wall that held our nation’s flag. “We are the greatest nation in the world. We have flourished for over fifteen-hundred years, more than any other civilization in history, save for the Dragons. Yet we have not gotten stronger... just weaker... weaker, with foolish princesses and ideology that will come back to bite our flanks years later.” I snarled. “Equestria is dying but it’s not because of traditions. Such things need to be gone anyway. It’s because we lack real leadership and are afraid to use our power to its fullest. We control the sun and the moon, and yet our princesses lack the courage to use it to establish our rightful dominance.”
“So you aim to rule this new world order you seek to create?” asked my wife.
“No...” I said, shaking my head. “No, I will not rule. I have no desire to. But she will. All of this I do for her. But we must continue with the plan. The seeds of hatred have already been planted in Equestria. Now, we need only watch as they blossom into open war.”
I then turned my eyes to the letter. “And we will go to Unicornia to rebuild our strength.There she can grow, learn, and one day become more powerful than any of the alicorn princesses.”
Unicornia was the biggest gamble to this plan. It meant revealing a few secrets, but upon learning them, they were begging us to form an alliance. Hook. Line. And sinker. It would take a few years to establish our own power base there, but I would use that time to properly mold and train her.
My family’s power would be kept hidden in the shadows. We'd have to support the traditionalists when war inevitably broke out, but they were just means to an end. They believed I was one of them, when in truth they were pawns in the game my family has been playing for years.
And our goal was not to take the King, but the Queen.
I just needed to wait for the moderates and traditionalists to tear each other part first. Once they were weakened, we could come in and sweep them all away in one swift stroke.
But she would lead the charge, and in her wake, a new color would take the field; one neither black nor white.
I doubt I'll be alive to see any of it.
“And how do you plan on sneaking the entire family away with the princesses watching your every move?” asked my wife, bitterly.
“A funeral,” I answered. “I shall be in mourning over the loss of my wife who sadly died from grief tonight.”
Her eyes widened and she then turned to the glass she held. And then the glass that I had yet to touch. It didn’t take her long to figure it out, but she didn’t scream or cry. She just sighed and closed her eyes, as if accepting her fate. Truly, she was a brave mare.
Perhaps I never loved my wife like most husbands, but I respected her.
“How long?” she asked, hooves shaking.
“Two, maybe three hours,” I answered as I sat back in my seat and calmly looked over the letter’s contents to make sure everything was in order. “It will be painless. But look at it this way. Your death will provide the means and distraction for us to escape. I, of course, will play the grieving widower in need of privacy after losing his wife and child, and the press will be thoroughly taken by some extra 'distractions' I have planned. By the time they come around, we'll have sailed halfway to Unicornia. ”
We sat in silence for awhile. I planning what to do tomorrow, and she planning out her final moments. Finally, she asked, “Let me ask you one more thing. And be truthful...” I stopped and stared at her. “Did you really orchestrate our son’s death?”
“... yes,” I said with a sigh. “I admit a part of me regrets it, but it was for the greater good of the family and Equestria. Twilight Sparkle had to be stopped. She was a threat not just to us, but to her as well. Not to mention her policies were naive at best. Some of them, I did admire, but others just couldn’t be allowed. I couldn’t let her vision for our nation come true. Not after my family worked hundreds of years preparing for this very moment.”
Yes, Twilight Sparkle was a threat. Originally, I had hoped to make it so unbearable for her that she'd abdicate her position and retreat back to her quaint little library.. Unfortunately, I underestimated both her drive and the popularity of her 'reforms' with the citizenry.
But, five months ago, my family's dream was fully realized.
And that dream could never be truly safe as long as Twilight Sparkle was alive.
Recruiting my son to the task was beyond simple. I needed only to casually mention my desire to see Twilight eliminated, and his foolish drive to finally impress me took it from there. Keeping tabs on him was easy, as was figuring out Luna’s spy.
Luna may have played the game better then her sister, but she was playing under rules that were a thousand years out of date. That, and I had connections in the Lunar Guard long before her return. The only problem was Gallant Heart. But every stallion has a weakness, and Gallant’s was his brother.
A simple threat, my personal appearance (I do have a reputation you know), a little intimidation, and he sang.
“All he wanted was your love,” said my soon to be deceased wife.
I stood from the chair. "And yet he will be remembered..."
“You couldn’t have spared him?”
“No, I needed all connections erased. That servant who exposed them? He waited on my order to do so,” I said as I began to walk away.
"I hope she was worth it."
That was the last thing I ever heard my wife say.
I didn’t answer her because I knew she was worth it. She was worth the entire world. I would sacrifice all my family just to see her reach her full potential.
She would be the key to everything. Every resource, every power that our great bloodline has afforded us will be at her disposal. She will learn the greatest of magic, taught by the wisest of teachers, and amplified by the advancement of science. To be honest, my family could have taken Equestria long ago, but we needed the right mare or stallion to do it. We needed our royal blood to finally awaken its true potential.
And at last I have fathered it. Soon, one of our own will rule Equestria, and make it the strongest nation that will last for thousands of years. No longer will we be weak. We will be forever strong. Forever united.
I entered the nursery where my prized jewel lay. Twilight Sparkle was right. It was time for a change, but it would be a change unlike any ever seen.
I peered into the crib and my daughter gazed up at me with joy in her eyes... eyes the same color as her mother, and framed in a blond mane that was a copy of my own. She was only five months old and I could already see the raw power in her eyes.
I gazed upon the little horn... and the two wings she held on her back.
“Everything I have done, I have done for you, my little Majesty,” I whispered, as I stroked her cheek. “Majesty Blueblood.”
***
Five months ago A Black Star was born
In the family of Traitorous Blood
Those Who See All saw the future she would bring
And fear gripped their hearts
Stats
Page generated in 0.018 seconds
Total duration
676 users online
780,230 hits today, 2,205,040 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
i3.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/609/678/728.gif
Make him buuuuuurn!
I sense an eventual 'you have outlived your usefulness' death for Amadeus from his precious Majesty.
Also, the Bluebloods are raising a tyrannical alicorn. ...crap
Too bad for him that there's another Star ready to strike out and strike back. She might have gotten to know her sister but she will do her best to avenge her.
and when she has grown up she reads about twilight and wants to be like her
damn that would be a plot twist
Their is evil afoot
Evil!
Ah yes. Equestria is in an age of what is probably unprecedented peace and prosperity.
But! Turns out they don't actually control the other nations or anything. I mean, with the sun, they can be oppressive overlords! So that means they need to be that instead! For the good of Equestria!
Of course!
Okay, I KNOW I have a shotgun somewhere, anyone want to join me?
6645342 I can one up ya, Majesty becomes Celestia's student as well. Huh?
So worth the wait. Excellent chapter.
So....all this conspiracy...all this death...and an upcoming civil war...all because of an alicorn baby.....
....in the words of Lyle from the Machinima series Sanity Not Included, "F**K THAT BABY!"
I mean, this was a great chapter, I'm not denying that, you made Amadeus very cunning, devious, and ruthless. Heck, I could tell you must of been inspired by Voldemort for some of his actions and wording. But now that all of this madness was to keep an natural born alicorn baby a secret...yea, I wouldn't be surprised if someone is going to oust the Bluebloods and reveal that they ordered Twilight's death to keep an alicorn baby a secret.
But, to be honest, I think Majesty is going to be the key to ending all of this, either destroying everything, or revealing all of the secrets and mystery to Celestia and Luna. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if she is the one that kills Amadeus and not Celestia like many think will happen.
Any who, great and intense chapter, with an awesome but rage-filled plot twist. Keep up the good work.
P.S. What chapters are left before you write Ragnarok of Equestria?
6645337
Probably Amadeus would accept it with proudness , given his twisted mentality.
Anyway, I hate the concept of Antichrist aka "born to be evil " ; shouldn't evil be a choice?
6645390
What we would see as evil they could see as good. Remember, the Bluebloods think they are doing the right thing.
Seriously? We get this far into it and you're bait-and-switching with some Rita Repulsa levels of LOL NO IT'S ACTUALLY ALL ABOUT A DEUS EX MACHINA BABY?
Please tell me that you're going to execute that deluded freak beast of burden. That would make this story a lot more worthwhile to me.
6645408
Coming from my POV, I think this baby is going to more than a Deus Ex Machina or some sort of Macguffin. Let's just wait and see what Rated has in store for us.
Impressive twist. The prophesy wasn't about Twilight's little sister at all, it meant Amadeus's alicorn foal. I predict that in the years to come these two stars will clash with each other. This will be interesting to see.
Yay.
More Alicorns dead-set on death and the destruction of life as we know it.
6645419
Welp, time for Equestria to face the apocolypse alright. Twilight's yet to be born brother or sister VS Majesty. Place your bets people, I've a whole story to wait!
6645418 The baby FEELS like one. We get dragged backwards through two shrubs, a bog and a stile by the feels for this, and it turns out "Oh, it's all because someone had an alicorn baby! Everything that everyone did all boiled down to random impossible baby!"
That's what I'm annoyed about. It feels like he wrote himself into a corner, went 'shit, but why? and then just said 'fuck it, Alicorn power struggle'.
6645426
Actually, I had planned for that since the beginning. I didn't write myself into the corner with this. All the revelations from Gallant to Majesty were planned before I wrote Aftermath.
6645380 haha yeah that would be even better and she takes all of twilight's ideas to heart as well
6645429 Well, it certainly feels like you did. Seriously, dude? Random impossible magic baby Deus ex machina?
6645441
It's not completely random. I did build up that The Blueblood were planning something and the prophesy stated to beweare of the one whose name is associated with Royalty aka Majesty. I think I help slide it in better then you think.
So... bullshit 'raising another pawn' stuff. *sigh* "Yes, I throw away one pawn to raise another". Not gonna by a ruler, my ass.
Hey, Luna, dumbass, you had an agent. ACT ON IT.
In other words, I find this to be spiralling downward due to the further conspiracy crap. But hey, that's just my opinion.
I take it the Black Star would lose badly...
Ladies and gentlemen, the mind of a sociopath.
6645448 See, my biggest issue isn't that it's completely out of nowhere- and let's be real, hinting at 'a Royal name' really doesn't count, dude- it's that the entire reasoning for everything is just revealed as 'Welp, nigh-impossible baby alicorn time. I'd better start killing royalty'.
There wasn't any REASON behind it except for some magical quirk.
And then Discord takes her horn and wings and Amadeus plan fails
So Amadeus is pinning all his hopes for the future on raising an evil alicorn, to conquer the world, because "Friendship isn't strength."
That might seem less moronic if Equestria weren't constantly being saved from evil, alicorn-tier threats by friendship, literally.
Welp. I just got back from reading the TV Tropes page for Aftermath and read the Peewee chapter. The prophesy stated that 3 stars will defeat the black star, and Spike is one of them.
I also remembered that you made Maud pregnant and in The Assassination of Twilight Sparkle that you also made Twilight Velvet pregnant as well. So then I thought it through for a couple of seconds and them...WAM! It hit me like 30,000,000 tons of bricks.
3 Stars, with Spike being one of them + Maud and Twilight Velvet's pregnancies + Majesty being the Black Star in the prophecy =
POSSIBLY THE MOST BADASS FIGHT SCENE FOR THE FATE OF NOT JUST EQUESTRIA, BUT THE WHOLE WORLD!
Man, now I can't wait for the next story once your done with Aftermath! I'm so pumped now!
So Amadeus is clearing some of the board for his daughter. The daughter who will no doubt be brought up hating Celestia. How cliche really... Never mind that she is deus ex machinaed to the extremes... The very concept that Amadeus would plan for the long game as a complete sociopath is ludicrous. Plus there's still the ghost of Twilight hanging around somewhere... No doubt Shining is keeping the revelations that it was Amadeus who instigated the plot against his sister to himself for frankly stupid and reasons because the author needs them to be. I can't see Celestia allowing Amadeus to raise an alicorns after the current events and the idea that Majesty has some how been kept secret is just as stupid.
6645517 Maud wasn't the one who got pregnant
Okay, you lost me with this story line. I actually think adding all these conspiracies and having this baby loses a lot to the story. I actually like it better when it seemed like a random act and dealing with the consequences made after the act made a far more interesting story. And the fact you had this plan just doesn't help but make it even more contrive as it was never hinted in earlier chapters and I go so far as even disprove it as with some of the earlier cannon story line like Fancy Pants, Cadence, Cheerlie and so on.
Especially Fancy Pants as he stated the Bluebloods didn't find what they were expecting which suggest they lost everything and are no longer able to make a move anymore.
Why go this rout instead of a story that tells the consequences of a act through the eyes of those who lost a love one?
People have pointed out Twilights sister as another alicorn but what about Pinkies sister? Could she be an alicorn also? The son of slain, the sister of the slain, and the child of the slayer would be a team that would have plenty of poetic justice when Blueblood's plan fails. I hope he lives long enough to see it fail before he gets captured and drawn and quartered for his actions.
6645554
Twilight's sister and Marble's child are not alicorns
Heh...I just realized something. Despite the circumstances, Blueblood jr. gets the last laugh at his father. All that talk about unicorn purity...and daddy dearest doesn't know about his 1/2 earth pony grandkid. I wonder how Marble's baby will factor into things?
6645552
Aftermath was intended to be for two things. One, the reactions and emotions of Twilight's death and the outcomes for a nation and individuals of who will play an important role in Ragnarok of Equestria. Sort of a Chaos Theory thing. One event causes a domino effect. I added the political and Majesty stuff to tie in with the Ragnarock of Equestria story. Both of which I had decided to make after Assassination of Twilight Sparkle. I knew it would be different, some people wouldn't like the direction, etc etc. But I still wanted to make it and here I am doing it and I'm happy doing it.
Sorry if it doesn't work for you, but you can always ignore this and the third story and just keep the first one in your head. That's what I do with stories sometimes.
Edit: Plus, you are free to write your own aftermath if you want. I give permission to those who do.
6645481 It doesn't come out of nowhere dude.
Deliciously evil.
Things just keep getting worse and worse. First, Twilight's assassination, and now we finally see the machinations of Blueblood. This cannot end well.
welp we need to update the tvtropes page
Well, shit.
Things really aren't looking good for Equestria. Unless Majesty turns against everything her father want(ed) when/if she learns the truth.
6645569
I agree with Rated, if you don't like the way the story is going, you have every right to consider this and the third story as non-canon and the first to be the only canonical thing in this universe, or you can write your own events of what happened after Twilight's death.
6645571 Yeah it does, and even if it didn't, it doesn't stop 'deus ex machina baby' from being a really dumb plot point.
6645558
Well that is interesting to know. I still hope that they have important parts to play in this story.
6645622 No something I thought was stupid and I still say is stupid was when the Elements of Harmony were stone but then becoming real. That was bullshit. This makes sense. He's raising her and since she's a Alicorn she has the possibility of becoming something like Celestia, Luna, Cadence, or hell even Twilight but being raised by her dad? Shit's gonna hit the fan. Unless you were expecting Amadeus to be a total cruel uncaring pony who only hated Celestia for petty reasons.
Mm. I'm afriad you've lost me in this chapter a bit, too. Frankly, there is nothing you are likely to do to Blueblood in a sequel that would satisfy me, that would go far enough (I won't extemporise further, as I note that tends to upset people a bit) and thus it would make reading it an exercise in frustration for me. Blueblood here is the embodiment of the sort of villain I loathe worst on a personal (and professional) level: a self-righteous/self-deluded zealot. (It puts him on a level with Amoron[1] from Korra season 1, which you may take as a complement if you desire.)
So, I'll follow this story to the end, but I'm probably not going to be very interested in the sequel.
6645390 Speaking as someone who IS self-identified Evil; yes. Yes, it IS always a choice.
[1]He might THINK that's not how his name is spelled, but it doesn't matter what he thinks, that's how he gets referred to.
6645636
Who says Amadaus is going to be the main mad guy in the next story :)
6645634 Uh... Going 'NO THE SHOW IS STUPID' really doesn't lend much credence to your argument.
Nuke all of Unicornia
