Mirrored from The NP FanFiction Archive.
Another year, another celebration of the Annual Friendship Festival in Canterlot. It was supposed to be like any other year… until a catastrophic attack cripples the nation and wipes out the entire leadership.
The only survivor is the Minister of Agriculture and Waterways, 23rd in the line of succession; now known as Princess Apple Bloom of Ponyville, The Princess of Last Resort.
Inspired by Designated Survivor.
The setting, as well as most of the characters and original concepts, are the property of either ABC Studios, Lionsgate or Hasbro.
Gore tag due to extremely severe third-degree burns... I don't know if it qualifies as gore, but I'm calling it such.
[CC BY-NC-SA] Princess of Last Resort is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
interesting.
I will sit down and read later, but I am giving a thumbs up and track for the concept.
designated survivor
You definitely got me with that end, please, please go on with this story, I need more! Definitely on my following list!
oh my gosh, its that Netflix show :O
The suspension is Killin me
11827206
I'm already halfway through the next chapter.
What exactly are you suspended by?
11827214
How they gonna raise the sun and what not. Unless you mean it in the literal sense of being a princess? /
11827229
That was a thought. Because I wasn't sure about that. I'm thinking the royal guard would have a plan for that, which I'm calling Contingency Seven. But it's also worth noting that neither Luna nor Celestia were in Canterlot. Why don't they take over? They're retired. They're out of the line of succession. Twilight established a clear line of succession, replacing the old one, which was a clusterfuck, and Luna and Celestia are not in it.
11827243
That makes a fair point. I'm still hoping for alicorn bloom because I'm a sucker for thoes
11827523
If I turned her into an alicorn, that would be pretty cool, but it would make her a bit idealized, and half the point of this story is that Apple Bloom is not idealized, she's not the perfect leader. I chose her because out of the entirety of what I would consider the 'main' cast (Mane6+CMC+Spike), she's the least likely to get the job. The only thing to her credit on that front is that she did lead the CMCs, but... what is that, exactly. She's not perfect, she's the lowest rung on the ladder, she's flawed, 23rd in the line of succession. The whole point of the story is to get her to learn that she can do this, that she can step up and lead the country, and that she's the only one who can do it and do it well. But she doesn't believe in herself, no one does. She only gets the job because there's literally no one left.
So that's why she's not going to become an alicorn.
11827531
Makes some sense until you realize that luna an Celestia are still alive. Why would the nobles listen to an earth pony when they still got 3 godlike being to listen to
11827570
Because Twilight explicitly stated, in the Royal Succession Act (mentioned in the intro to chapter one), that those two are out of the line of succession, since they're both retired. It's a legal thing. I'll probably have Pip explain it in greater detail later, since he's the lawyer in the family. But I just didn't want to have him lecturing the audience on the intricacies of Equestrian law when he doesn't need to.
Anyway, there are other reasons, but those won't be explained until the two of them actually visit Ponyville to meet the new princess. Maybe they'll take over the sun and moon duties, but leave the day-to-day running of the country to Apple Bloom. I'm still working it out. The only thing I know for certain about Luna and Celestia is how the two of them react to the situation, and their reactions are very different.
It's also worth noting that nearly all the nobles are now dead.