“It always bugged me a little bit that you outrank me,” Celestia admitted, dipping her chin, as a blush crept across her cheeks.
Chrysalis, still sitting opposite on the bed, narrowed her eyes and gave Celestia a withering look.
“Bugged you? Really?” she sneered. Celestia blushed further and bit her lip to keep her smile from breaking into laughter. Chrysalis’ eyes widened in exasperation before she turned away, despairing about how put upon she was.
“Anyway,” she continued, drawing herself up straighter and facing Celestia again, chin up and shoulders back, “of course I do. I’m higher up the chain of command.”
Celestia gave a quizzical look, having never heard of a royal hierarchy that linked ponies and changelings in any order, changelings on top or not. When she offered no further reply, Chrysalis grinned wickedly, pulling her black lips back to expose all the teeth she could.
“The only one that matters – the food chain,” she whispered, the last three words dripping with malice. Her eyes lit up, too, but it was so deliberate that Celestia didn’t take the taunting seriously.
“You can’t survive without the love ponies provide,” Celestia scoffed. “Are you really the superior species?”
“Sheep might say the same to wolves,” Chrysalis purred, leaning in towards Celestia, separating their muzzles by only a few hoofwidths. Had they been standing, she thought Chrysalis might be circling her by now. “Predator or parasite, we exist to devour you.”
Did you have to bring that up? We were doing so well. The conversation up to now, both the sombre bits and the light-hearted ones, had been unquestioningly the most pleasant interaction she had ever had with the changeling queen. Despite being worlds apart in nature, their commonalities meant they could relate to sides of each other that nopony else could, and their talk had been groundbreaking not only in the geopolitical sense. But so much of Chrysalis was alien, and separated from Celestia by shockingly different ways of thinking. And now the subject of changeling natural behaviour had arisen, Celestia would have to try reaching out to Chrysalis.
Not that she didn’t want to reach out and help guide Chrysalis to a better path, but Celestia could picture how it would be received, and the abrupt end it was likely to bring to their conversation.
“You don’t have to, you know,” she said, trying to balance the soothing tone of offering to help somepony with the sternness of cutting down their excuses for hurting others. “You may not want to hear it, but Thorax found another way.”
Chrysalis’ face tightened as she snorted derisively, after which she pursed her lips waiting for Celestia to finish.
“By sharing love, he offered the changelings a different life,” Celestia pressed on, “one you never gave them the chance to try.”
“Goodness, I wonder why that could have been,” Chrysalis smiled, with cart loads of insincerity. She then became more accusative, “How long would wolves survive as a species if they only ate other wolves?” After a moment, she calmed herself, and explained, “The physics of it don’t work. We feed on the love of others; love is consumed when it is given to us, used as a fuel source to give us energy. That love can’t then be passed on, because it’s been used up.”
“But each changeling can create love, within their heart,” Celestia replied at once, “just like ponies can.” She was careful the swift answer couldn’t be seen as a snap, as Chrysalis had made the effort to rein in her own temper in its early stages of flaring, and keeping her calm was more likely to lead to a positive outcome.
“For you it’s a feeling,” Chrysalis said, “for us it’s a resource.” She took on a lecturing tone that reminded Celestia of Twilight, “We can generate love, yes, but resources can’t be created out of nothing; the process requires something to fuel it. And no resource generation process in the world gets out more energy than you put in.
“With love as our only food source, changelings cannot create enough love to be self-sustaining. It’s just not possible. If it were, we’d have done it millennia ago.”
Could that be true? Would the magical land of Equestria truly be so horrible to a species? She might brush up on her education from time to time to remind herself of things she had learned and since forgotten, as well as to cover any new ground in pony world knowledge, but Twilight was far more the physics expert than she. It sounded believable, though, Chrysalis’ argument, although Celestia could only wish that it weren’t.
In that context, changeling feeding habits of infiltrating pony settlements and preying on their love, unseen, were more justified. Even Chrysalis trying to take over Equestria on two occasions made more sense. Dirty hooves, she remembered: that was what the Canterlot scholars had called the political theory behind whether or not a leader could take extreme actions, those normally considered immoral, in order to save their civilisations.
“What will happen to them?” she asked gravely, her voice thick with concern. She couldn’t meet Chrysalis’ eyes for long, and so her gaze wandered while her thoughts shuddered.
“The same thing that always happens,” Chrysalis said wearily. “They’ll feed each other until all their love is used up, and then they will all die.” Her eyes were dull, drained of all the fire they’d held when discussing the food chain, and her dejected sigh suggested she was already resigned to the loss. “After which, I, undisputed Queen of the Changelings by virtue of inarguably being the only one left in existence, will lay my eggs again, and start a new hive.”
How many times has all this happened before, to warrant the label of it always happening? Celestia had thought of her own life as an endless funeral, but her experiences paled next to those of Chrysalis. It was true that, barring other alicorns, everypony in Celestia’s life alive at the start of one century would be gone by the start of the next, replaced by their descendants. But to lose them all at once, and in such traumatic fashion...?
“Inevitably,” Chrysalis carried on in the same tired tone, “sooner or later one of them will think of sharing their love, and how much happier that would make everyone. No more needing to feed on ponies, no more hiding from them, or living in the dark and cold, no more constant hunger.” She smiled ruefully, as Celestia had seen mothers with grown children do when discussing how those children had misbehaved when young. “I’ve never managed to stop the others from joining in once one of them has tried it. All I can do is try to keep a tight enough hold on them that they never consider sharing love in the first place.
“That’s why individuals like Thorax are so dangerous to the hive as a whole,” she said wistfully, “and have to be dealt with so severely.”
That did stand to reason, if one member could so easily threaten all of them like that. And no explanation could be offered, for fear of other changelings getting the same idea. All that Chrysalis would be able to do would be to condemn them for some vague charge, like ‘treason against the hive,’ and exile them. And yet, while the facts might be accurate, something about that didn’t ring true to Celestia...
“I don’t buy it,” she said, making her voice hard for the first time since they’d sat down on the bed. “I was half asleep, upside down in a cocoon at the time, but I saw your face, Chrysalis.” Celestia felt the muscles in her forelegs clenching at the thought, squaring her shoulders. “You weren’t reluctantly punishing a child for the greater good, you were enjoying tormenting a traitor.”
Much to Celestia’s further chagrin, Chrysalis did not appear perturbed by this, instead flashing a humourless smile.
“Turns out I’m rather cruel,” she shrugged. “Who knew?”
Celestia gave a flat look, with only centuries of patience keeping her temper in check. There was a pounding in her ears, synchronised with the pulsing in her jugular. But she made sure there was no outward sign of her rage beyond the taut muscles, otherwise not moving.
“Yes, I enjoyed it,” Chrysalis said, making her confession with the same casual scorn with which she might have admitted eating the last slice of cake. “Yes, I am cruel, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have my reasons.”
Celestia raised an eyebrow, her eyes not leaving Chrysalis,’ straining not to glower at her while waiting for her attempt to justify her spite. This had better be good...
“Ponies, by their nature, thrive when empathetic and altruistic,” she began, a lot more serenely than Celestia had expected, “and so you, champion of those virtues, have become their ruler. I, with a different set of values, have become ruler of the changelings, because cruelty serves us best.”
Pleasant surprise at the calm delivery had quickly turned into seething. How could Chrysalis so coolly discuss being so vicious? How could she condone it? She didn’t even have Sombra’s decency to be indifferent to the suffering he caused, Chrysalis actively enjoyed it.
“What kind of twisted...?” Celestia spluttered, still pulling hard on her own internal reins to keep herself from boiling over. “Why would you possibly think that?” She swallowed, not noticing before how dry her throat had become from how heavily she had been breathing.
“Because preying on sapient creatures is hard,” Chrysalis snapped, “when you’re sapient yourself.”
Then she deflated, folding in on herself. Her chin dropped to her chest, and she did nothing to alter the way it made her mane fall across her eyes more than usual. If anything, Celestia was reminded of the way Fluttershy sometimes hid behind her hair. A lot of Celestia’s anger drained away quicker than she’d thought possible.
“We may not have evolved the sense of empathy that ponies have,” Chrysalis said in a voice so full of emotion it sounded like her throat might close up around the words, “but if you’re self-aware, then it’s easy enough to put yourself in another’s hooves. It’s all too easy to wonder what ponies are feeling, or how you’d feel to be treated the way you treat them. At which point,” she said helplessly, “you end up starving to death.” She dropped her voice, and added in a way that was both rational and bleak, “Cruelty, for us, is the most essential tool we have.”
They rely on malice to overcome an empathy they don’t naturally feel, but sometimes end up thinking about anyway? That sounded awfully like an insight into changelings being good natured deep down, and having to fight against that instinct to survive, Chrysalis included. And if that were truly the case, then there was hope.
“You don’t know that, not for sure,” Celestia breathed, leaning forward. She smiled encouragingly, raising hoof to her chest. “Ponies and changelings could coexist peacefully.”
“Do you think I haven’t tried that?” Chrysalis asked regretfully, rubbing a hoof down her face. “Every time I rebuild and repopulate the hive, I do something differently, convinced I’ll get it right eventually. At first, I tried every angle of having them share love.” She squeezed her eyes shut, looking pained. “They never lasted long.”
Celestia felt her hooves growing limp as the optimism leaked out of her, her posture sagging. There was a sour taste in her mouth, and her chin trembled as she looked down at her hooves.
“Whereas the crueller I go,” Chrysalis continued, her voice regaining confidence and clarity, but also some of her usual malevolence, “the better we do. I never intended to be a tyrant, but I can’t argue with the results. Or deny that it suits me,” she finished, with a wide-eyed, whispered dramatic flourish, sounding both self-praising and self-loathing at the same time.
“Is that why you rejected Starlight’s offer of friendship?” Celestia asked, remembering the vulnerability and uncertainty on Chrysalis’ face when Starlight stretched out her hoof. There’d been a split-second just before slapping the hoof away when Chrysalis’ eyes had narrowed, and the familiar proud and vengeful changeling queen had reasserted herself. Had she been considering making another attempt at running her hive on shared love, as she had in days of old?
Chrysalis’ expression hardened, her brows drawing down as she clenched her teeth, fixing Celestia with an intense stare. She said in a low voice, “How would you respond if someone handed your children a death sentence, and then offered to be your friend?”
Oh.
Starlight hadn’t known of course. That was Celestia’s first thought. Followed by how little difference that would have made in that situation. The rage and grief of a mother made childless a thousand times over. How fortunate none had tried to stop her fleeing. She would have gone through them all.
“That doesn’t mean everything she said was wrong, though,” Celestia said, trying to salvage anything positive, “about you being able to be the leader your subjects deserve.” She felt a tightness in her chest, and her efforts to come across as open and embracing, rather than desperate, weren’t working. “You don’t have to rule through fear. They would obey you much more willingly if they loved you.”
“They can’t love me,” Chrysalis scoffed, “they’re changelings, and they eat love for breakfast. Having them love me would be taking food from the mouths of the starving.”
Celestia, who had been on the verge of wringing her hooves, stopped, frozen in place as she was hit by the full realisation of what it must mean to be a changeling.
It was the same thing. The bond that existed between her and her subjects, or her sister; the glue of happy feelings that held her entire society together, that was what changelings ate to survive. They couldn’t spare any of it to build similar bonds themselves. What wretched lives they must have to lead. Love was such an ingrained part of her kingdom that she could hardly fathom life without it, and as such all her preconceptions took it for granted. So her every thought on changelings had been inaccurate from the start, built around principles that simply didn’t exist for them.
“So I keep them in line the hard way,” Chrysalis said. There was a sadness to her, but her jaw was set. “Most are loyal, and dedicated, but it’s not love.”
She crossed her forelegs in front of her chest and sneered, sounding like iron made flesh. “That is not a luxury I can afford.”
Chrysalis took a single deep breath, held it for a moment, and then slowly let it out through her nose. She returned her front hooves to their former spot in between her rear ones as she sat, and gave a thin-lipped smile that could almost have been apologetic.
“And you saw how quickly they turned against me, after all the sacrifices I have made for them,” she concluded wryly, “so what they deserve is relative.”
Huh this seems interesting, you have my attention.
there would've been one major flaw to any of chrysalis previous attempts, the absence of the crystal heart. This fanfiction made me realize something, the transformation of changelings in the finale of season six was very similar to that of a Caterpillar. You see when a Caterpillar is about to become a butterfly it requires an massive amount of food in order to make the transformation. But for the changelings there was always a shortage of food. Thorax however after living in the crystal kingdom said that he was no longer hungry and he already exhibited signs of transformation. It's pretty possible that this is the stage of a changelings lifecycle that Christmas was unaware of due to the lack of the crystal heart which has been shown to amplify love energy.
Even with Chrysalis baring herself and such you're writing her as the one more in control of this situation, and Celestia - who should be relatively unflappable, easily flustered and getting smacked back and forth in the discussion. In the seat of her power, while she is the strong one here.
7896610 I think you've probably understood the show a lot better than I have. But this is one of those areas where I have a bit of a problem with it violating the laws of physics, even when it's said to be down to magic. The changelings are using love as a power source; they're converting it to energy just as we would with food or plants would with sunlight. That, to my mind, can't be an infinite resource, so I don't think changelings can sustain other changelings on love without any external input.
I would suggest that Chrysalis' line about changelings always being hungry means that they're always driven to feed, never receiving the biochemical message telling them that they're full, rather than being unfulfilled by not realising the true power of love. But that's me
7896615 I see your point, but I think Chrysalis has a lot of other factors on her side beyond the location.
A man once broke into Buckingham Palace and sat with the Queen for a while (in her bedroom, if I remember rightly, while she was having breakfast, but perhaps I'm making that up), was eventually found and removed by security, and no harm was done in the end, but it potentially could have turned out very differently if the man had been malicious rather than simply a bit odd. The Queen did not have the power in that situation, despite being the most powerful monarch on Earth, in her own palace, which was being patrolled by her own guards.
Chrysalis chose to enter Celestia's chambers, rather than Celestia inviting her there, so Celestia has no idea what to expect. The one time she's faced Chrysalis in combat, she's lost. And at this point, Chrysalis doesn't have much to lose that might hold her back. All three of those are strategic weaknesses, rather than conversational, but they probably wouldn't help lend her an air of security, despite being in her seat of power.
But what really matters here is that Chrysalis has been intimately familiar with what she's saying for a thousand years, whereas Celestia is learning about it for the first time in that very instant, which puts Chrysalis on much firmer ground. Celestia is also realising that numerous assumptions she made about changelings and how best to protect Equestria from them were entirely wrong.
I can assure you, though, the scene wasn't written this way as a slight on Princess Celestia. I really like Celestia, she matters a great deal to me as one of the elements of the show that, like Twilight's voice and smile, happily announces 'pony!' and suddenly everything's fine. I'm honestly split between her and Luna. And I think she handles herself in this scene better than anyone else could; for all her flapping, most of it's internal and doesn't show. I would also point out that Chrysalis doesn't especially feel that she has something to gain here, and so she's less invested in the outcome. Celestia cares more, and so it gets to her more when her position is shaken.
7895869 Sorry, I accidentally posted this on the story as a whole, rather than this chapter, and I don't think my reply linked back to your comment correctly, so I'll repost it here:
Exactly, and some (perhaps all?) insects will remain in their larval form if they don't have enough food, and live for longer than they would have done as an adult. They will in many cases spend far more of their life as a caterpillar than as a butterfly. The beautiful and gigantic atlas moth, for example, has no mouth parts as an adult, and so can only survive for a few days. So one of my arguments in this story was that while the changelings may not exactly enjoy starving, they will live significantly longer for doing so.
Hard to know how much the show was going for larval/adult forms, versus just using the imagery of that to suggest that Thorax's new appearance was how the changelings were meant to have been all along, had they been fed properly. Child/adult is definitely the slant in this story, though, although it doesn't affect brain development in the same was as the child/adult divide does among humans or ponies.
I hadn't thought of the Crystal Heart as being the power source for Thorax's change of heart, though, and it would definitely be a good answer as to how he survived for so long in that cave on his own, that's a good thought. I should have rewatched The Times, They Are A Changeling before writing this, but I wasn't keen on the episode and so kind of forgot to.
D: Poor Chryssie and the changelings.
7901783 ...Yeah, actually. Yeah, that about sums it up.
I really like this explanation of it. Sure the writers of the show won't go here because it is a 'kids show' but it does explain why our dear Chrysalis hid the fact they could change from her subjects. She wanted to keep them alive.
Such true words. I'm sure if cows/sheep/pigs/etc could speak to us in a way we understand, we would have a harder time cooking them up to eat as well.
8061156 I completely agree; if Tanks For The Memories was the closest they could get to discussing death (I completely missed the metaphor the first time I watched it and didn't get the episode at all), then I think we can probably rule this out. Personally I really like this answer for it, as it keeps her in a reasonable light and resolves a few of the problems with the explanations given in the episode and events shown there, and while I hope the one they come up with instead will be just as good, I kind of doubt it given how the episode itself turned out. In a way I'd rather the changelings didn't reappear again for a while so that I can keep this headcanon intact for as long as possible, but I'm sure they will.
There were a couple of big plot holes with the changeling twist in the episode; I've gone on about the physics one often enough but the very fact that, in however long changelings have been around for, not a single one has thought to try Thorax's approach before? That, for me, stretches credibility way past breaking point. If Chrysalis could control their free wills that completely and that permanently, she wouldn't need to keep them starving to ensure obedience in the first place. The notion that not one single changeling could possibly be good until - suddenly, Thorax! - is kind of uncomfortable and hard to believe, and I don't think we're ever given an explanation of what made Thorax different in the first place, or why others like him didn't come about from time to time before.
Thanks, I think it's a really interesting situation, sapient creatures preying on other sapient creatures, and indeed, if the animals we routinely eat were sapient, I dearly hope we wouldn't continue to eat them. There's a wonderful moment in Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality when Harry realises that if he can talk to snakes, then snakes must be sapient, and if snakes are sapient then there's a reasonable chance that last night's roast dinner was too.
Carnivores are almost always characterised as being mean, in animated movies about talking animals. I don't doubt it's often just to set them up as villains for herbivorous heroes, but I think it also makes a fair bit of sense in a natural world where all creatures are capable of thinking about themselves objectively and communicating with others of different species, as it's the only way they'd be able to keep preying on others.
Well... it could be "taught" as in "teached" because of all her practice, but I've seen "taught" used many times when the writer actually means "taut" as in "tight."
Common homophone error. Correct spelling is "rein", like the reins of a horse. When you reign over a kingdom, you need to learn to rein in your baser instincts.
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You are both completely right, and I had not noticed those mistakes at all!
Thank you for bringing these to my attention, I'll go change them now
You might have improved this chapter by saying Changeling were even more empathetic than ponies due to the virtue of the fact that they are natural empaths and emotivores. It would have given more impact to the chapter as it would, in essence, say that changelings are more good-natured than ponies and must fight that inherant goodness in order to survive.
You might have also Chrysalis shed a few tears. Not to the point that she's overly emotional, but as something to give a more subtle view of Chrysalis' state of mind. She wouldn't even have to a aknowledge the tears, just continuing to talk as if nothing was the matter.
9247305 I absolutely believe in using criticism highlight problems, and doing better next time as a result. And an author getting defensive is the worst thing they can do regarding that. But, as objectively as I can (and after running it past a friend, too), I disagree with everything you've said here.
How would changelings have evolved into empaths or emotivores, if that meant them becoming more empathetic? The first mutations in that direction would have hampered those freak changelings' ability to feed, not helped it, and so would have reduced their chances of surviving and passing on their genes. According to Chrysalis here, changelings know what they are doing is wrong, because they can intellectually put themselves in others' (horse)shoes. But they're able to overcome it because it's not really tied to them on an emotional level. It's like a scientist or a general talking about unpleasant side-effects or collateral damage - a regrettable price, but a necessary one, and not nearly important enough compared to the reason for the experiment/mission to consider halting it.
Whereas if changelings could actually feel what ponies and other creatures did, rather than merely intellectually understanding it, then the only ones who'd be able to go through with feeding would be the very hardest and the psychopaths. If that were the case across the whole species, they'd go extinct pretty fast. But again, it would never get that far, because the individuals mutated towards the first steps in that direction would be much less likely to survive and reproduce, so the genes responsible would quickly die out and never spread to the rest of the species.
Regarding her crying: no, I think that's what you might expect a normal person or pony to do here, but not her. Chrysalis is immortal, and this has been her life for centuries if not millennia. She's had a very long time to come to terms with it. So the sadness is a deeply ingrained part of her, and it's more numbing than upsetting.
If she's telling the truth, that is! She could be making the whole thing up to trick Celestia for one reason or another. Keeping tears out of it maintains that possibility as a little more of a believable option than otherwise.
Chrysalis kinda based.
I'm doing a reread of this excellent story, and while I still kind of dislike the whole "changelings eventually die if they share love" thing (it's a great narrative idea, I just tend to be automatically biased against such changes), I do really love Chryssy's point about how changelings have evolved to be cruel in order to be able to feed. It recontextualizes a lot of her actions, and I'm definitely stealing it for my own work.