Welcome all to the magical pony kingdom; it turns out you can’t get away from the government wherever you go so please leave any wishful thinking about a benevolent theocracy at the door. This guide will serve as a brief introduction to the politics and government of Equestria, mostly so you can avoid running afoul of it.
Equestria is a crazy mishmash of government types never really tried together on Earth. It exists as a semi-theocracy, blended with a noble republic, blended with an autocratic state and the three core branches are constantly jostling with each other for overall control. Overall the similarities tend to be more confusing than helpful so we’ll be going through each step by step.
Most obvious is the executive, or Crown, branch of the government. This is the ruling body of Equestria and currently is a tetrarchy of the four alicorn Princesses, with Celestia as the senior partner. It controls the army, vast swathes of territory, dictates national policy and indirectly controls the bureaucratic apparatus of the state. In addition it also serves as the judicial branch, and every legal issue in Equestria not covered by common law or precedent is resolved with a direct ruling by Celestia.
Overall the ruling princesses have huge personal and legal power, much as a divine monarch might have, and they have none of the constitutional limitations that you might expect from a European king. Celestia typically rules with a light touch, but her power is nominally boundless and there’s nothing technically stopping her having random ponies executed if it took her fancy, though it would probably start a second civil war.
The Club, as a recent crisis mostly interacts with The Crown as opposed to any other branch of the government, so please watch your manners around royalty, even Princess Twilight.
The most pervasive branch is the Imperial Bureaucracy. This is very much as you’d imagine, a large body of career bureaucrats who manage Equestria on Celestia’s behalf. It is vast, complicated, more than a little self serving and extremely powerful; currently the Bureaucracy is dominated by a large coalition of unicorn ministers, but mostly it’s staffed by earth ponies. The Bureaucracy manages pretty much every major policy in Equestria, collects taxes, raises armies, deals with public works and enforces the rule of law.
The power of the Imperial Bureaucracy is matched by The Crown from above and The Municipalities below. Celestia and the tetrarchy hold enough vetoes and other forms of encouragement to ensure that only those favoured by The Crown rise to power, or at least in principle.
Finally The Municipalities make up the final layer of Equestrian government. These Municipalities are large land grants that exist within Equestria, governing all the major town and cities, and most minor towns and villages. Municipalities are the democratic part of the Equestrian government, a mayor is elected by the people and runs the district on their behalf. They raise taxes for local issues, lay down regional laws and otherwise try and improve their hometown above and beyond any other in the region. While having the least power of all three branches on paper, The Municipalities govern very directly the lives of eighty percent of all Equestrians and are not a force to be underestimated; large coalitions of municipalities have historically dictated policy even to Celestia, though they unite rarely.
The upshot for Club members is that Equestria’s government is complex, but more or less ordered around improving the lives of the citizens. It is however important to be aware whose sphere of influence you are working in though.
In Ponyville alone you can walk through five different districts in under fifteen minutes. Starting at Sweet Apple Acres you are on privately owned Crown land, administered by the Imperial Bureaucracy; walking into Ponyville you enter the Ponyville municipality ruled currently by Mayor Scrolls; taking a shortcut you can skirt Twilight’s demesne around her castle; before crossing back over into Crown land as you approach Fluttershy’s cottage, though this is technically fallow land owned directly by the state and not managed land like Applejack’s; finally as you set foot into the Everfree you enter Celestia’s personal fief, though I understand she hasn’t done much with the land for sometime.
As a final note, you’ll hear the use of various noble titles in Equestria. The feudal system is more or less defunct in Equestria, with only a few sporadic and fairly minor rights still observed. Nobles have no legal power over the common pony but the titles still carry a fair amount of status and tend to be owned by powerful magnates looking for a symbol of wealth. You don’t have to be polite to a noble therefore, but it’s generally best to keep a civil tongue, you never know what strings they can pull.
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Addendum: Viceroy of Human Affairs
Right, a lot of people have been asking what exactly a Viceroy is and how this is going to affect us. Short answer, a Viceroy is Crown representative that directly manages a region or territory, before it can elect an official Municipal government. In Equestria most Viceroys govern newly established settlements on the Gryphon frontier and a Viceroy of a whole people is unusual to say the least. It’s not however, unprecedented but the last use dates back to the Cloudsdale integration, some three hundred years ago.
The practical upshot is, I represent The Crown for the Club and the Club for The Crown. While in the interim I have legal authority over humans that end up in Equestria, I also am obliged to assist your integration into Equestrian life, much in the way I have been doing before. I understand a lot of people are worried about a loss of personal autonomy; that is happening and there is nothing I can do to stop it. I, and the rest of the Equestrian government, aim to keep our touch on the tiller as light as possible. With the Club now an official part of the government we can expect changes, but they’re going to be for the better. I promise.
Twilight's demesne
Also, losing personal autonomy in favor of better overarching protection? Likely a good idea when you're as new to the area as humans are. Not that that ever stopped anyone...
By the way, if I properly read between lines, Princess Twilight viewed as a homo novus by old families, and there is dozens hidden knives aimed to her pretty purple perfect plot. Declawing Club only benefits her enemies because of Twilight's friendship with Alexis. Twilight is not allmighty, she's bound by checks and balances.
Losing Thunderchild will be only first step. When they try to extract knowledge or extinguish its sources.
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It's not paranoia if they are really here to get you.
5464452 Ah ha, that I have been doing. I'm afraid my Roman history isn't that great though so I didn't get the refference.
Twilight has shown her true colors, not that anybody should be shocked. She comes to put a leash on Alexis to help preserve Celestia's power, and then has the nerve to act like it's about giving Alexis leadership.
I wouldn't give the silly little nag the time of day from this point forward. I would also call her "Your Majesty" at least once every time we met from here on. Be extremely correct, cordial, and above all, cold.
Twilight has basically stabbed Alexis in the back, even if she feels her reasons were good. She should pay for it in some way. Alexis doesn't have many options, but denial of friendship? She can do that.
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That or returning library books late.
5469856 I am in no doubt that Twilight had what were, to her, good intentions. Maintaining the status quo, including Celestia's absolute rule, doubtless strikes Twilight as a good and noble thing.
That does not change the fact that her primary goal in making the Club part of the Equestrian state, and thusly legally answerable to the Princesses, was to put a leash on Alexis and her friends. They see Alexis and the Club being a potential threat to their absolute power, and want to make the humans beholden to them.
Twilight's intentions were good, but her actions are a betrayal of her friendship with Alexis.
From here on Alexis should avoid any tantrums or outright displays of anger, but be very cold to Twilight when interacting with her for something. Be very correct, very cordial, and very cold.
Alexis needs to be cautious when dealing with the Princesses, but there is no reason to be a doormat.
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I would have said her primary goal is to calm the factions that are trying to revoke emergency citizenship with the idea that their weapons are now under the control of the Crown. Honestly, they're citizens of Equestria now, and are legally answerable to the Princesses (citizenship generally comes with both rights and responsibilities). It's the "heavy weaponry being held outside the control of the government" that's making folks nervous. Incorporating the humans and their weapons under the control of the Princesses, but still leaving them in direct control of the weapons themselves is about as light a touch as I can see having any chance of settling the fears of the factions that want them gone.
I know the "right to bear arms" is a big thing for Americans, but it's not like even here on Earth you could travel to any other country and expect the government there to be ok with you building your own militia outside of their control. Equestria doesn't have any more reason to allow them to do so than any country on Earth would.
Oh yeah, I completely forgot to mention it in my last post, but I love the new cover art. Really cool pic of Alexis!
Man I need to bring politics into my stories more often. My comments went up by a third after posting this.
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Ah, if only she could. Alex has never been one to hold a grudge, nor does she have this much self control. Her only real response is a flash of rage before knuckling down and getting on with the new reality with her head held a little lower.
5468203 Sadly dream walking isn't on the cards right now. Don't worry, next chapter should be fun enough to make up for it
5471372 Glad you like the cover art, it seems to be working as well because I got a lot more views this update . Cog is very much using the Ring of Fire series as his manefesto, a very good series of books about what happens when a small, technologically advanced comunity ends up surrounded by a large number of less advanced peoples.
5472037 Ultimately I can't see such a rebelion happening, if no more reasons than pragmatism. Due to the way the universes are merging the majority of humans crossing the barrier end up in Ponyville, so any move by the existing humans to leave Equestria would strand any further humans crossing at the center of a now reasonably hostile power. Worse, the number of new humans would quickly outnumber the departed, rendering many of their advantages moot if Equestria subsumed this new community.
5476889 That's very sad, to be honest. While they doubtless have good intentions as well, putting a leash on her was clearly one of the goals of this action. They deserve to pay for that.
5476889
I've read the first few, and I'll admit my guess at Cog's possible motives in the earlier post might have been heavily coloured by it.
5476911 Sad was the emotion I was going for . Don't worry, we're near the nadir of the book, so things can't get too much worse.
5477072 Oh that's good to hear. I was always saddened by the fact that series tapered off so fast, it was a great concept.
5476397 I've got the gryphons doing a group costume of FoE mercenaries already
5483009 It's bad enough as it is in this way. Scheming swine. Treachery like that should always have a price.
In any case, I look forward to seeing where this develops.
I just noticed the cover art... That's is freaking awesome
5526616 Thanks, I'm actually a little surprised no one's spotted the easter egg actually
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I almost didn't but I'm glad I did ^^
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I couldn't think how to describe it except as a descriptive example. You'll have to forgive me, I'm sick at the moment.
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They did. But Rose doesn't survive on just anything, she needs love. So I'm assuming there's a "love Aether" that she's actually feeding on. Without some grand loophole Chrysalis will just starve because nobody from Earth has "love Aether" for her to eat. Unless she can get to and survive on just two pegasi.
5567122 Well, there's reformed, and then there's helpful. He didn't make things worse this time at least.
oh no.......
vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/bioshock/images/0/0f/Would_You_Kindly.png/revision/latest?cb=20091127205040
BIOSHOCK PTSD!!!
*Spoiler Warning*
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So, there's going to be some more explanation in the next few chapters as to how the changelings have ramped up so fast, but I'm happy to start explaining now. In short, changelings for this story have always been stupidly powerful. Chrysalis' story about them ruling the world was hardly far fetched given their abilities. All forms of magic are possible for them, they are natural warriors and their queens have no limits as to the power they can channel (see Chrysalis taking on Celestia in the canon). They are hobbled in Equestria by their reliance on others to gather magic for them, as they don't generate magic in the same way as any other species.
Earth messes with this balance. Energy is so much more plentiful there that all the worries about efficiency vanish. Abilities that the changelings simply could not use in Equestria due to a lack of magic are freely available and Chrysalis can just spin an army out of pure magic.
I hope this helps alleviate any worries. There's going to be some in-story explanation covering how the Changelings have managed all this and I might add an appendix explaining how the changelings work for this setting.
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There was an explaintion for all this that got cut way back in chapter 3, so here we go. Discord's spell brought the two universes into contact a little over a thousand years ago... from the Equestrian point of view. Saying time is the same between two realities that don't interact is not posible. The universes are slowly unifying, so time is a second is now a second in both realities, but for a good long while ideas and concepts could flit back and forth between the two world without much attention to cause and effect. So, Manehattan predates Manhatten by centuries, but Rubycorn is far more recent a construction than the Rubicon.
This temporal weridness was originally going to be a plot hook for a sequel, but it seems unlikely that will occur now.
5601875 It was just baffling. I am one of those people who writes Celestia's loss to Chrysalis off as the bug queen being suped up by posing as Cadence. Hell she admits as much in the show. Do not get me wrong, I love your story and I some what suspect that your story is going to be the basis for several self inserts and OC's the same as "A new World, A New Way" and "Four Score divided by Four". I am tempted to write my own splinter story but I want to wait for things to play out a bit further.
Comparing the available energy between earth and Equestria sorta makes sense. I have no idea how much energy it takes for Celestia to move her sun, but I have a feeling that the ponies were not be able to wrap their head around the concept of a giga-watt, let alone the Multiple gigawatt power plants that run the country.It is hard enough for me to understand it outside the knowledge that the Hover Damn pumps out a little over 2 and that is apparently enough to power Vegas.
Well, here is hopping Chrysalis suffers a very painful death like she deserves. psychotic power mongering bint that she is.
5603499 A clash of head-canons I guess. For HiEC Chrysalis is defintely an alicorn level threat, even in Equestria and especially if she has the element of surprise. On Earth, where clashing realities is creating some seriously weird effects, she has access to potentially more power than has ever existed in Equestria.
If you do wind up writing anything in the HiEC setting, feel free to drop me a line if you have any setting/character questions. I'm more than happy to help
Aye...changeling problems...
5607111
You'd think this incident would show the Princesses the folly of leaving Chrysalis alive another day...
Drop some stars, turn her hive into a pool of lava, and let's be done with this for good.
Of course, with her retreating to lick her wounds you could just pursue and eradicate...