Diamond Path had been a quiet, nervous colt—the sort of pony who preferred reading to partying and who didn’t like to speak until he knew what to say. But when he’d turned sixteen, her mother had asked him if he wanted to be the crown prince.
“You don’t have to say yes,” she’d said. “You're a fine young stallion, and your father and I will love you just the same no matter what. But if you want to be the heir to the Crystal Empire, you need to act like it.”
He did want to be his mother’s heir. And so he took elocution lessons, learned the finer points of social grace, and joined the army. At thirty, he was no longer a young colt, and when he walked into a room he walked like he owned it.
“Prince Diamond Path,” announced one of the guards at the door to the war room, and the general staff shot to their hooves. Crystal ponies in uniforms, ponies with medals, ponies who had won battles and watched their friends die stood at attention. They waited for him to dismiss them as he walked to the head to the table.
But he did not dismiss them. He let them stand there, stiff as boards, while he slowly examined the room. “Admiral Sapphire,” he said, “where is my mother?”
“Princess Flurry Heart was tired after the events of the day,” the Admiral began. “She was unavailable to—”
“Has she delegated the power to resolve this crisis, to myself or anypony else in this room?” His voice was like a whip, and nopony dared answer. “Then this meeting is not appropriate. She is your sovereign. You will sit and you will wait for her to arrive.”
He clapped a hoof on the table for attention, then pointed at a four-star general, chosen at random. “You! Fetch my mother, now. Everypony else, sit.”
They sat. They waited in silence for nearly a quarter-hour, as Diamond Patch watched them. With his eyes, he dared them to speak. Then Flurry Heart arrived, and everypony had to stand again.
“Diamond,” Flurry said. They exchanged a short hug, and a chair was produced for her. When she sat, one could imagine her bones rattling in her joints. A grey hair fell from her head. “What’s this about?”
“We’re discussing Cheval’s escape,” he said. “The government must declare an official position.”
“No. No.” Flurry waved a hoof. “It’s… it’s a trivial matter. She’s one mare. And Equestria already has changelings. No comment. That’s our… that’s our position.”
Silence hung over the room. Diamond didn’t dare to frown. But several of the general staff lacked his self control. One officer said, “Your Highness, Cheval was seen by many ponies in the city. Word of her escape is spreading. The secret police do not have the rumors under control. We must do something.”
“A rumor that Cheval escaped is hardly going to upset the apple cart, is it?” Flurry asked. “The people will never accept a changeling as their ruler. Her claim to the throne is a joke. And we kept her under control for… well. We can contain any threat she poses.”
“Respectfully, your highness,” said an old pegasus, her uniform decorated with flyer’s medals, “the general population does not see it that way. The changeling is an insidious and highly adaptable foe, and despite her being bound from horn to hoof, she escaped custody in less than a week. The threat to the Empire is real, and if we don’t do something, ponies will begin to panic.”
“She’s a teenager. Not a threat,” Flurry said. “She only escaped because Twilight helped her. It…” She waved the matter off. “You’re making a grand affair out of nothing. Say that Twilight took her. Nothing is wrong.”
“We should have her killed at once,” said a young general, with only one star, and no medals to speak of. “We have agents in Ponyville. We could activate them at any time.”
“Absolutely not!” Flurry snapped. “She…”
But Flurry struggled for words. Diamond Path lept in to fill the gap: “She is under Celestia’s protection. The actions you propose amount to a declaration of war—something the Empire is not prepared to support at this time.”
“Yes,” Flurry said. “Yes.”
“General Auger,” Diamond addressed the pony wearing dark sunglasses, who sat near the back. “Your department will draft statements for release to the general population. They must contain the following core points. First, Cheval only escaped due to Twilight’s help. Second, while we could have prevented her escape at any time, we held back out of a desire not to harm Princess Twilight. Third, Equestria’s actions in this regard are deplorable, and they hurt their own population by reintroducing this inferior breed. Bring out the pictures of the whorehouses again.”
Auger nodded, and one of his aides took detailed notes. The other officers lifted their heads. “Fourth,” Diamond said, “there have been changelings in Equestria for decades. They fear the Empire’s might, and have not dared set hoof in our borders. That fact has not changed. The power of the armed forces will protect the people, as it has since the great war.”
Once he was sure he was understood, Diamond went on: “General Zircon, I understand that several yak assisted Cheval’s escape as well. I want them found and publicly executed. Admiral Ferrous, produce a list of sanctions we can impose on Equestria to punish them for this violation of our sovereignty…”
And so it went. The ponies in uniforms nodded and took notes. And then Diamond turned to his mother. “With your permission.”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes.”
“Good. You’re all dismissed.”
The officers left. Diamond rested a hoof on his mother’s shoulder, to show that she wasn’t going anywhere. When the two of them were alone, he shut the door to the war room. Then he asked, “What the hell was that?”
“I’m tired, Diamond.” She lifted a hoof to her face. “I’m an old mare. I have bad days.”
“We all have bad days. It’s why we plan in advance, so when the survival of the Empire is at stake we won’t have to wing it.” He pulled out a chair and turned it around, sitting so he could face her head on. “Did you have a plan?”
Flurry Heart said nothing. Her wings tightened against her sides, and she turned her head to the floor.
“Oh,” Diamond said. He sat back, looked at the ceiling. “Fuck,” he said. Then he snarled. “Fuck!” His hoof knocked a glass from the table, and it shattered on the floor. Water splattered everywhere.
“I didn’t know Twilight would help her.”
“You didn’t…” Diamond was left breathless, and a strange sort of smile touched his face. “I trusted you. We all trusted you. You’re a political mastermind. You always have a plan. Me, them, the whole general staff, the whole Empire, we all trusted that you knew what you were doing. That if you unfroze the last changeling queen, there was some kind of plan behind it.”
“The plan was that I didn’t want you to kill her to secure your rule.”
He laughed, staring off into the corner of the room. “Why not?”
“Because she’s my sister.”
“Oh, is she? My dear auntie Cheval?” Diamond turned back to glare at her. “No, mother, she’s not your sister. She’s a monster. She is a shapeshifting parasite that exists to manipulate ponies so she can use them as food and slave labor. Remember that? Do you remember that?”
“You believe that because it’s what I told you when you were little,” Flurry let out a snort, her expression momentarily sharpening. “And what if I was wrong?”
“Then you’ll be remembered as history’s greatest monster. The pony who rounded up millions of innocents and shoved the corpses under the ice lakes, because the ground was too hard to dig mass graves.”
Flurry’s breath caught in her throat. She turned away, looking into the corner of the room.
“What?” Diamond snorted. “Did you think sparing Cheval’s life was going to change anything? That you’d somehow be remembered for your last act of mercy, instead of for the millions of acts of brutality that came before it?”
“What was I supposed to do?” She turned back to him. Her voice was tight, and she started to choke up. “Smash her to bits? Pretend I’d never thought to question myself? What we did was wrong, Diamond. It was so wrong.”
“She poisoned grandma and grandpa,” Diamond said. “You told me about that. She smiled at your father, and told him she loved him, gave him a hug, and used it to slip drugs into his coffee. She’d have enslaved us all if you gave her the chance.”
“I know.” Flurry started to tear up. “And I know she’s… that in some ways, she’s a monster. But in other ways, she’s one of us. And your grandmother was right to take her in. I forgave her, Diamond. I forgave her for betraying us.”
“And you think that changes a thing?” he shook his head. “You know that when a cargo train gets up to full speed, it can take it ten miles to stop? Ten miles, from when the driver slams on the brakes to when the train stops moving.”
“I don’t—”
“The Empire can’t stop on a bit either. You told millions of ponies that changelings are degenerate scum, who will impersonate their spouses and abuse their children. That any extreme measures were justified in the face of such a threat. And they believed you. They killed for you. And now that you say something different, do you think they’re just going to stop?”
“We’re ponies. We’re a kind breed. They’ll come around.”
Then, Diamond said, “The general staff thinks you’ve gone senile and wants you overthrown.”
Silence hung in the air. Flurry wrapped her wings around herself. “They’ve told you?”
“They’ve started inviting me to planning meetings without you. And the 101st has been removed from the city in favor of the 132nd. They’re loyal to General Auger personally, and he reassured me that if I had need of capable air troops, they wouldn’t make the sort of mistakes that allowed Cheval to escape.”
Flurry said nothing, so Diamond went on. “Am I wrong?”
“No. That’s an invitation to a coup.”
“So, do you want to be overthrown?”
“No.” She shook her head. “But tell me something, Diamond. What if I was wrong? I’m not asking about politics. I’m not asking about the Empire, or about the people, or about saving face. I’m asking you as a person. Did I really raise a son who is comfortable with mass murder? Does it really not…”
She frowned at him, furrowing her brow. “Does it not bother you?”
“Mother…” Diamond sighed. “I don’t think you were wrong. But I also don’t think children inherit the sins of their parents. If you really did kill millions of innocent creatures, it happened before I was born. And it happened while Cheval was in stasis. If you want to make things right with those who were wronged, you can’t do it by talking to me, and you can’t do it by talking to her.”
He let the silence hang between them. Flurry teared up, and stared at the floor.
When it was clear she had nothing to say, Diamond spoke one last time. “You’re going to abdicate the throne now. I’ll draft your public address.”
Well, looks like defining moment of Flurry Heart's rule has arrived; but will she have the courage to tell the public the ugly truth? Clearly she had been hoping to find some kind of middle ground solution to this out of control landslide of death and lies she created; but her son has summarized the impossibility of that outcome quite succinctly. To paraphrase Konrad from Spec Ops The Line:
"Someone has to pay for your crimes Flurry. Who's it gonna be?"
Also, those generals talking about imposing sanctions on Equestria... oh it is to laugh. I very much doubt they can do anything more than inconvenience parts of Equestria, unless they declared war and tried to invade; which as others have argued at great length about before now, is virtually guaranteed to end in a humiliating total defeat for the Crystal Empire.
I'm so very glad that the central question in this fic has been answered while in the middle of a conversation about something else entirely instead of, y'know, having chapter or even a scene dedicated to it. Wait, no, not glad. The other thing.
(Yes, yes, yes, Flurry brought up the idea of ponies being forgiving back during her talk with Cheval, but she did not actually say the words themselves to Cheval. It matters, dammit).
It's not the coup that was threatened, but it's still a coup, and anyone with two brain cells to rub together is going to see it as one. So depending on whether or not one counts Princess Amore (comics only), this would now be either five or six rulers (counting Amaryllis as a de facto ruler who simply had a particularly quarrelsome satrap) in a row who were deposed, rather than a natural transition of power.
I hope it's not a mystery to anyone why I keep harping on about the crystal ponies being kraterocrats.
9681799
I'd be all set to agree with this if not for the fact that crystal pony magic is very powerful. Jaxie told us so. Remember?
I didn't care for these past two chapters nearly as much as I did the previous three before them, in case you can't tell.
Sorry, need to touch on this line in particular and correct something from a previous post. Four. Four overarching problems with this series that plague it at a fundamental level. This particular one highlighted by this quote is in fact my original problem from all the way back when A Foreign Education took a turn for the worse for Cheval as a person, although we were still a couple of chapters from the narrative following suit.
Ah, simpler times. I can scarcely believe that it was only two months ago.
At least her awful son can also see the fact that 'being sorry' for the atrocities Flurry herself comitted/ordered doesn't magically make it better. Granted, he's using that reasoning to justify continuing said atrocities. Cheval has the right attitude about the wrong race, at this point. Changelings are not the threat to harmony she believes them to be anymore. But the Crystal Empire is. It doesn't seem like these people can be salvaged, after the bloodsoaked road Flurry guided them down. If there's a way to banish the entirety of that city the way it had been under Sombra, it needs to happen. Isolate this cancer while it's still in remission. Nice chapter.
"Mother, I have a touch of your condition, and cannot brook the accent of reproof."
While they are in many ways very different, the tone of this chapter puts me in mind of this scene from Richard III:
Yes, that's Professor McGonagall throwing down on Magneto.
This movie should have gotten at least a Hugo nomination, because the more you know about England between the wars the more this seems like alternate history, rather than a play from 400 years ago.
9681859
Personally my choice is time travel and just undo the entire mess from the start.
i can never understand this fantasy of a repentant hitler
9681885
It's not without historical precedent. I mean, obviously not with the man himself, but there are plenty of examples of repentant mass murderers. That being said Flurry's seeking forgiveness seems fairly self-centered. She's looking for forgiveness because she's an old mare and she's going to die soon one way or another, so of course she wants to think that she can earn forgiveness rather than die as a monster, and because her mistakes while the Alicorn of War are now directly impacting the ability of her son to inherit the Empire cleanly.
I don't know if becoming a normal mare again caused her to age and catch up to where she should be, and don't personally feel like doing the math right now. It's enough to know know that she couldn't have aged all that much from 18 if she was still young enough to be the dam to three foals, meaning that there still exists decades of time between Flurry deciding that "it's over" and this story. All that time and she's only freeing Cheval now, now that it's convenient for her to do so, now that she can get something out of it.
Best outcome right now is Flurry goes off-script from whatever Diamond writes for her, gives a speech about how everything she did was wrong but still abdicates, and her final speech throws the Crystal Empire and Diamond's ascension to the throne into internal chaos such that Diamond is forced to spend the first few years of his rule stabilizing things internally rather than focusing outwards on Cheval, and by the time he does look out, Cheval is far outside his reach.
After that I don't care what happens to Flurry, and rightly speaking nor should Cheval.
9681864
That was a superb clip.
"Think your babes sweeter than they were, and he who slew them fouler than he is."
Thank you for showing it to me.
9681875
This may be one of those scenarios where there isn't any real winning move. Because by undoing everything, Amaryllis would still be around. And the Internationalist Party. Or Cheval's half-formed plans of taking over the Empire might have actually occurred and may or may not have been almost as bad an outcome.
I guess the main question is, what would have been a preferred outcome other than rolling over and letting Amaryllis win?
Flurry basically has to choose between siding with her son or her sister.
She sides with her son and the current story stays. She was a righteous ruler who destroyed the changeling threat and ensured the future of the Crystal Empire. But she'll end up leaving Chevel under constant threat from rabid anti-changeling dogma, leave current horrific policies in place, and she'll have to live with her conscience for what's left of her days. Basically the Crystal Empire will stay as the pony equivalent of Nazi Germany or North Korea until the powder keg ignites.
She side with Chevel and the curtain is pulled down. Flurry will go down as one of the worst mass murderers and dictators in history. There will be a massive political and cultural backlash within the Crystal Empire as it's ideology is torn down by the one that created it in the first place. The Crystal Empire will descend into a very long period of anarchy with riots, protests, and possibly even civil war. But this will eliminate most of the remaining threat to Chevel and the changelings, start the process of destroying the twisted ideology Flurry created, and possibly appease her conscience.
What happens to the Crystal Empire in the second scenario is harder to say. The two most likely possibilities are either Diamond is able to hold onto power after a long struggle or Celestia directly intervenes and deposes Diamond using the crisis as proof that the Crystal Empire needs a princess to control it.
9682129
images5.fanpop.com/image/photos/28600000/NO-my-little-pony-friendship-is-magic-28633391-1100-1000.png
9682246
Well, yes.
I mean, that's kind of life!
Like mother, like son.
9682152
9682379
Cheval likes the changelings of Ponyville, but she hates herself. Gallant it's saying that because she likes them, she is finding a way to rationalize that they aren't like her.
9682084
It was extremely relevant. Up until this point I was under the genuine assumption that Cheval had no friends growing up other than Flurry. It informed a lot about her personality and tendency to treat most people she meets like subjects or otherwise keep them distant from her own thoughts and emotions (up to and including her own father), a trait she had even when she was in Griffonstone.
Also the overarching problems are separate from the list. The list is just around forty questions raised over the course of this series that remain unanswered. Some of them don’t really matter that much - “where’s Discord?”, for example. Jaxie has promised that most would be answered by the fic’s end, although so far the only ones answered are ones raised in this fic to begin with.
The overarching problems are four major flaws which permeate the entire series and which I don’t mind bringing up now since by now it’s too late to correct them anyway:
Flurry for our purposes counts as an OC, since everything about her beyond her appearance had to be invented by Jaxie since the canon one is still a baby. That’s not problematic in-and-of itself, but how she’s been used certainly is.
Chapter 14!
Oh, hm, guess it was an attack of hunger.
"sparrows, pegasai, griffons"
Deliberate "pegasai"?
"changeling air-power."
"changeling air power."?
"a structure built with the assumption that all the residents could walk on walls"
Oh, nice detail.
"Demure passed away"
...I wonder what of?
...Actually, I'd though Gallant looking old to Cheval at forty-five was just him having had a bit of a rough life and her being a teenager, but now I'm wondering if the ordinary natural lifespans of ponies in this universe are just relatively short.
"This is what ponies are like, in the most Equestrian town there ever was. They’re kind. They’re kind and loving all the way down to the bottom of their souls."
"Oh yes, this I can clearly see; just look at how they treated me."
"The writing inside was in equestrian, since vespid had no written form."
I wonder if it's just Equestrian script, or fully Equestrian language? Sounds like it's more likely the latter, which is an interesting detail.
"a pony name Aro who"
"a pony named Aro who"?
(Also, hah, at the name, though also a bit "...Was that destiny butting in again? Ow.")
"There, they meet a gatherer who is fascinated to meet a pony they can’t feed on."
Hm. But changelings don't just feed on romantic love; see the beginning of this chapter, for instance. Fictionalization somewhere in there, perhaps, maybe that the brain injury took more than romantic love, or the gatherer being partially unable to feed on Aro was sufficient, or something.
"Amaryllis finds a cure for Aro’s condition"
I do wonder how, though. And what experimentation was involved, and what price Amaryllis asked, if this actually happened.
Other thoughts that interesting story provoked:
Was the "they" original, direct (not counting any translation convention that may apply to the story we're reading this in) or in translation, and if so, does that indicate that gender is of low importance in this culture and only specified when it's relevant?
Does that fact that Aro had to suffer a traumatic brain injury mean that there are no natural (known) pony aromantics, or is it merely that someone born aromantic would have much less incentive to seek out a cure, too little incentive to journey to the changelings and advance the plot?
"in favor of individual clutches being free to determine their own destiny"
And another interesting detail, that the group focused on was the clutch.
"She never saw Amaryllis again."
Leaving a mystery behind her.
And a nice scene there. :)
Chapter 15!
"ponies who has won battles"
"ponies who had won battles"?
"Say that Twilight took her. Nothing is wrong."
Yep, just a foreign royal rescuing a contender for heir to the throne of the Empire, who's also the last viable member of the Always Lawful Evil changelings (and already pregnant!), which said foreign royal is known to sympathize with. Oh, and this foreign royal's co-rulers also happen to prefer the Always Lawful Evil heir to your loving ("Sing these words or you know what she'll do...") but elderly queen and her own designated heir.
I foresee that statement raising no anxiety among the populace at all.
...And I am also now wondering if Flurry is just not wanting to fight here or is literally actively trying to get herself overthrown, in the grand old Crystal Empire succession tradition.
...Or Flurry's age might be getting to her. Well, and/or.
"That fact that has not changed"
"That fact has not changed" or "This fact has not changed"?
Also interesting, though I suppose not surprising, that Flurry seems to have formed a sort of stratocratic monarchy here.
Also, yep, Diamond Path you sure are, ah, working with what your mother passed (is passing, officially, for now) down to you there...
Though of course there's the question of how much of the stated views he truly believes vs. things expressed in pursuit of other goals.
"tightened against her side, and she"
"tightened against her sides, and she"?
"You’re a political mastermind. You always have a plan."
Which is why I'm still suspecting that if this isn't just age getting to her (the lack of any sort of plan would suggest it's not just not wanting to hurt Cheval), it's her urging her son to replace her as the strongest.
After all, it wouldn't be the first time she presented herself as less capable than she is to favor a relative.
...The...strongest...
...Is she trying to pit Diamond Path and Cheval against each other, or at least thinking of it as a possibility? At the least producing and then using this crisis? Is part of the reason she released Cheval now rather than earlier her thinking that Diamond Path was ready?
...And I was looking back to find details on the previous notable case, and what should I spy?
Flurry commenting then on why she destroyed the treaty with Griffonstone: "I had an off day."
Flurry commenting now on why she had no plan for Twilight helping Cheval escape: "I have bad days."
Might be nothing, of course. But added to the pile, perhaps more than that.
And yet, here is Flurry making me up my estimated probability of her just caring that much about here sister again. And I'm pretty sure that's at least part of it. But I still can't rule out the above, either, particularly since a political mastermind is presumably good at not looking like a political mastermind in certain actions when she wants to. :D
...And being that this is just with Flurry Heart, I'm guessing that Diamond Path does believe the things he's saying about Cheval and changelings now.
...Or does he? :D
"We’re ponies. We’re a kind breed."
And alicorn princesses are Good, therefore any action an alicorn princess takes is Good...
Because certainly there are many kind ponies and many aspects of Equestrian culture and perhaps pony nature in this universe that foster kindness, but to jump from there to treating that kindness as innate and unsulliable is to ignore all the bits that don't fit, and that is to invite those bits to grow large and more fearsome out of view. And then one day you turn around and found that your Good alicorn princess and her Kind subjects have, as Diamond Path put it, "rounded up millions of innocents and shoved the corpses under the ice lakes".
"the 132ed."
"the 132nd."?
"“So, do you want to be overthrown?”"
...He was wondering the exact same thing, wasn't he?
"Did I really raise a son who is comfortable with mass murder?"
And then her as well, for the other same thing. :D
...And I still cannot tell whether Flurry planned that hold thing and is now secretly congratulating herself. I don't know whether she'll try to present the public address in a way that makes it clear he overpowered her and forced her into this while simultaneously not being incriminating, to support his succession and strength.
And I think that that's either a compliment to her skills, if this is mostly act, or a tragedy, if she has so established her reputation that people will look at her failings of age and her tears for the harm she's done to her family and think it might well just all be a complicated and conscious power play.
Excellent writing, though, I think. :D
9682379
As I interpreted, this is saying that Cheval is struggling with self-hatred; as a result, because she likes this people, she doesn't want to see aspects of herself in them. If she can think they're good people and changelings, that means she can think that changelings can be good people, and that gets tangled up with her hating herself for things that she thinks are tied up with being a changeling.
Does that help?
9682387
Ah, good; yes, that. Probably a clearer and more concise description, too.
9681864
Nice. :)
9682119
"She side with Chevel and the curtain is pulled down. Flurry will go down as one of the worst mass murderers and dictators in history. There will be a massive political and cultural backlash within the Crystal Empire as it's ideology is torn down by the one that created it in the first place. The Crystal Empire will descend into a very long period of anarchy with riots, protests, and possibly even civil war. But this will eliminate most of the remaining threat to Chevel and the changelings, start the process of destroying the twisted ideology Flurry created"
...Hm. I think you may be underestimating Diamond Path's ability to manage things. He has the loyalty of the military, and many in government already believe Flurry is going senile. And what would the people prefer to believe? That they were party to those atrocities? Or that poor Flurry Heart was going off in her old age, her son and loyal subjects tried to manage her retirement gracefully but it just didn't work out, but everything will be okay now, things are back under control, and also anyone who complains too loudly might, as usual, be dangerously misinformed and needing a chat with some nice ponies in the palace basement?
I think that if Flurry tries to break it, the hold of the current ruling structure and beliefs will be weakened, there will be people who start to wonder, maybe some starting to quietly talk... but that sort of chaos? No, I think that's unlikely, and I expect Flurry, unless she really is losing her abilities with age, would expect that. Though if she feels desperate enough, she might try anyway.
I still have mixed feelings about Celestia and Luna having any say over the Empire's succession. Honestly it feels like they're operating on past regrets just like Flurry seems to be. It was THEIR inaction that created this situation in the first place, but only NOW, after, as others have said, that the CE has become the equivalent of Nazi Germany or North Korea, and that Flurry is on her way out that they FINALLY want to make a stink about divine right (they want the CE ruled by an alicorn or equivalent, never mind that Flurry hasn't been one for over 30 years) and poke their noses into who gets to rule. Also never mind that, despite RDD's points about the Crystal Ponies being a culture of rule by conquest, Diamond Path IS the legit heir to the throne, and that Cheval did overthrow Cadance first, so she doesn't have any more legit a claim to the Empire than Flurry did when she overthrew her back.
It says something that the perpetually resetting Twilight did more to try and stop things back when Flurry was a full powered alicorn of war, but that the Sisters are only acting now that Flurry's an old mare almost on her death bed and there's now no chance she could kick their plots if they came up there to depose her.
9682528
In another story it would be worth remembering that Flurry might not be an alicorn anymore, but her apotheosis story and her cutie mark story are the same story. Flurry got her cutie mark in a moment of perfect clarity when she decided she was fine with being a monster if it meant that she wouldn’t be like Cadance, if she wouldn’t be hesitant or weak and that she’d be fine with harming or killing anyone to avoid being seen as such. That hasn’t changed just because she doesn’t have a horn anymore. Her special talent is still being a despot.
9682554
Flurry was the heir apparent from Cadance, too. She still ascended by coup, and Diamond is doing the same, so the conquest meme continues.
Cheval herself didn’t want the Empire, her plan was to kidnap Cadance and flee somewhere else and raise her grubs with Cadance and the Crystal Heart as a food and agriculture source, respectively. Tellingly the fact that her plan was to take the Crystal Heart suggests strongly that she didn’t intend to do any conquest and actually wanted to minimize contact between her new Hive and other species.
The plan for Flurry was always that Flurry would be Crystal Princess, all that changed was Flurry knowing about it and going along with that part. Also since Cheval was deliberately trying to both not harm Flurry and do a thing that she believed would save the Empire from Amaryllis (put Flurry on the throne, although for the life of me I have no idea why she thought this would be a good idea based on all known information about the Empire at the time, but then again I haven’t ever been to Hogwarts), this confirms beyond the shadow of doubt that the Crystal Heart has limited, if any, effect on the Empire’s climate in this setting, since otherwise Cheval’s plan would result in the Empire freezing.
Which I’m fine with (the change in the nature of the Crystal Heart), incidentally, that’s not a complaint.
9681875
Please go care somewhere else.
9681885
That's due to decades of propaganda trying to put the Nazi Germany as The Bad Guys and Hitler as The Devil, when in truth they just went a little further than everyone else. The US had Japanese concentration camps and a true wish to commit genocide on the nipponic race, not to mention things like bombarding Tokio with incendiary bombs killing one hundred thousand civilians in a single night. Or the bombarding of Dresden.
Wholesale slaughter of civilians was a common practice, one that both sides of the conflict indulged in.
Every major WW2 actor is guilty of what today would be considered war crimes. Flurry only lived long enough - while still ruling at that - in a changeable state to actually look at what she did not like a pissed off teenager with a murder chip on her shoulder but as a old mare that's responsible for the genocide of her sister's mother race. Regret is a quite understandable thing.
Not to mention she actually realized she became a monster not recently, but when she asked Twilight for the de-alicornification spell. This is not a recent development, but the culmination of decades of guilt and regret.
9682586
This one is rather simple. She's a sixteen years old pregnant teenager that despises her own blood and species, has severe self worth issues and just wanted a way to atone at least a little bit for the rape and two murders she's responsible for. Don't ask for perfect logic from people, that's denying they're alive.
9682062
These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree.
Hoo boy. Neither sister has it easy right now. Their decisions in these next few hours will shape the fate of millions for generations.
As for Diamond Path... Well, Flurry got what she wanted. The problem is who she was when she wanted that.
9682559
Ah, yes, good point. Though it still doesn't answer, of course, whether this is a plot or her less able at her current age to execute her talent, and what exactly the plot is if it is one.
9682554
It's pretty disgusting to use North Korea and Nazi Germany as comparable examples. We all know what the Nazis did and why they did it. On the other hand both Korean states and the entire Korean people deserve an apology for what was done to them by the outside actor.
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I'd also like to personally interject that while the Japanese interment camps are a black mark on the history of America and should not have happened, that America was 100% in the wrong, it is not only "a little further" from them to Buchenwald or Auschwitz. It's particularly insulting because America has about a dozen actual genocides under its belt that I can think of with regards to the way we treated Native Americans. Bringing up the Japanese interment camps and comparing them to the Holocaust always smacks less of trying to stop American exceptionalism and more of trying to soften the view of the Nazis.
Oh, also, that I'm getting really sick of the Dresden meme. Dresden was not targeted over and above any other German city of comparable size. It was a major rail transport and communication center with 110 factories and 50,000 workers supporting the Nazi's total war effort, making it a legitimate military target by the standards of World War II. Efforts to play it up as some American war crime comparable to what the Nazis did are pretty much solely the domain of far-right people who wish that there was a fair bit more goosestepping in modern Germany.
Again, it's not like there aren't actual Allied massacres that couldn't be cited: the Laconia incident, the Biscari massecer, the Lippach massecer to name a few, and that's just America, not the British, French, or other Allies. Using Dresden typically just means you've been spending too much time on /pol/, in my experience.
9683482
People only bring up Dresden because they couldn't be bothered to learn them some history and understand the Pacific Theater. Truth be told, if Dresden was a war crime, then I'm earnestly interested to know how Hiroshima and Nagasaki would be classified, considering those are the two biggest reasons even the most staunch "bomb the bastards" types think twice about deploying WMDs
I'm gonna try and formulate all my thoughts about this story once I'm done reading it, but I just wanted to point out an example of your writing which I feel is emblematic of your style.
There is so much implied story just in this one line. Blink, and you'll miss it. But it lends so much weight to every word knowing that there are lines like this stashed away, lines that imply entire memoirs' worth of storytelling about characters who don't even get named.
10340786
Thank you! That's what I try to do with all my stories. Even in the relatively short ones, I aim to imply that there is a bigger world of which this story is just a small part. It makes things feel more realistic, and less like they are set on a stage that only has a handful of actors.
And please, don't hesitate to post your full thoughts at the end. I always love comments.