Ichor

by Ice Star

Chapter 2: Marigold Blueblood

Marigold Blueblood was a name that nopony wanted to remember, especially the House of Blueblood themselves. On their neat and prim family tree, this little flower was nothing but a weed from the start that had cost the brother of the then-current head his place in the household. Even though Marigold herself was a name that was meant to be forgotten to these nobles for more than just the scandal of her birth, soon Equestria itself would want to curse her name half the time and just beg that she be forgotten the remaining portion.

Marigold, like all foals, wasn't born with any proof of what she would grow up to be. Maybe somewhere in her mind was the latent shallowness that had been known to affect some members of the Blueblood house, or it could have been something all her own, which the staunchly moral Bluebloods wished had been the more popular rumor.

Rumors were how all of Canterlot came to know of Marigold Blueblood before she even entered the world and the first rays of light that she would ever see touched her wicked eyelids.

The two Blueblood Brothers — as they had been popularly known in their time before the younger's disinheriting. They were two of the stuffiest stallions in the century before the return of Princess Luna at the end of Celestia's Millennium. Palladium was the elder and heir to an ornamental house, only in succession because of an archaic tradition that few bothered to follow. He was average and unremarkable except for the wealth he was surrounded by from the first day of his life. Unlike his younger brother and baby sister, Platinum VII, he was groomed to sit on a large sum of money and whatever gossip passed for politics in Princess Celestia's social court that only acted as a foil to the crown jewel, Celestia, no matter how much ponies could forget that.

Platinum had yet to grow up and realize that she had been given a gods-awful repeat of a name that only her house would ever praise, as empty as those words would be and about as original as her parent's naming 'sensibilities'.

The middle brother to both and the younger to the heir Duke Pallas was Rhodium — or Dee for short. If there was anything Dee hated more than anything it was stopping to think about the decisions he made. He was the epitome of recklessness and rash decisions.

How he got through life was a joke among the high ponies of Canterlot and a problem in his family, who only hoped that all their efforts would pay off and he'd be responsible and mature at some point with his siblings' help.

With Pallas' help, Rhodium was able to convince a sensible and wealthy businessmare to marry him. For Pallas, Platinum, and the rest of the Bluebloods this was all they could hope for.

And then Rhodium met Petunia Petals, a young and equally reckless earth pony mare. She was a tourist from the fledgling village of Ponyville.

It wasn't long before all of northeast Equestria spat at their names and Rhodium Blueblood was only Rhodium, disgraced unicorn and there was nopony at his side now as news of the first affair in Equestria in centuries.

One year later, Petunia Petal gave birth to a little filly she named Marigold, the false addition of Blueblood hanging after the little filly who was hidden away in the Manehatten streets so nopony would recognize her and her mother, despite the name of that followed Marigold.

The forest of Equestria was about to meet the blight of the Bluebloods.

But first she had to grow up...

Author's Note:

This was the original first chapter of the story that has been languishing for so long. I've had this deleted and brought back a few times while it was unpublished. Only recently have I been able to revive and bring this story back to life, with more content than I ever originally planned for it. The Missing Pages entry it got was so meager, and for years I kept Marigold Blueblood as an echo of lore in other stories.

Now I finally get to tell her story, and what I estimate (fairly better than how I estimated Enemy of Mine's official projected word length to be around 90k) somewhere under 50,000 words. I've decided to broaden the focus of this story a lot to more than just Marigold's life, but to add things from a whole cast of other characters to give the storyline better flow, more to follow, and more impact and angles. It's going to be a horrific, bloody mess, but hopefully it will be a fun one.

Since literal years have passed in the making of this story, I figured that it would be good to note some of the inspirations and other bits of interest. After all, it has been some time since I've worked on a longer story properly that wasn't just Enemy of Mine and I am pretty proud of this one, after much cleaning it up and getting to stand back and see what it's been.

In terms of stories on the site, there is one pony crime piece that comes to mind as a chief inspiration, favorite, and influence on lots of lore and headcanon. Though it's unfinished, and likely will be so, I can't not recommend it enough:

TUnder A Silver Moon

• MLP: FiM
• Dark
• Horror
• Mystery

Princess Luna, Discord, and Special Agent Word Smith travel into the dark side of Canterlot to find a killer.

• Celestia
• Luna
• OC
• Discord

Danger Beans · 33k words  ·  58  1 · 1.2k views

In terms of real-life crime concepts and situations, a few famous crimes come to mind. I've considered their influence on the story in bits and pieces, since crime stories of any kind generally start to resemble each other in one way or another without intention, but a few things were looked at intentionally in the making of this.

I'm going to note particular inspirations for crime and crime concepts in the author's notes of chapters that feature the more spoiler-y future ones, but the ones throughout the story are: the crimes and situation of the "Jack the Ripper" murders (heavy influence on urban setting; to the point where I referred to Marigold as "lesbian Jack the Ripper" in the making of this), female murders having a greater likelihood of using other weapons, Jane Toppan (general persona), Ed Gein (weird childhood; other elements), Victorian society and its relationship with crime (played straight and inverted, partly because, y'know, Equestria), and all-around freak (though, all these people were freaks; he's just lesser known) Richard Trenton Chase.

There's actual fucking research that went into this story. Like, a lot. Forgot the general knowledge of crime, law enforcement, forensics, and all that sorta stuff I will sometimes try and flex on you, I went overboard with this. I literally was researching murder-related things for horse puns.

It's entirely justifiable for me to be on a watch list for that by now, I think.

But that aside, due to some of the grisly inspirations and information, I'm not sure if every chapter will have an adaptation for the teen version here. I'll try my best!