FoME Thinks Too Much: Unicorn(s Who Thought They Were the) Master Race · 11:26am Apr 29th, 2023
(Note: This post uses footnotes. Reading on mobile not recommended. The management apologizes for the inconvenience.)
Unicorns have often had a shaky relationship with science.
Modern thaumology is as rigorous a field as any other, but an entire tribe who can alter reality with a thought has historically had a hard time with efforts to describe the behavior of that reality when left to its own devices. Even when they don’t discount it out of hoof, they have a tendency to map their own beliefs and biases onto it (this is, of course, an issue with every researcher, but unicorns have a track record of being among the worst offenders.) Nowhere is this more clear than the mangling of biology into eugenics over the course of the Celestial Era.
Unicorn supremacy is hardly a new development. The belief that unicorns were the greatest of the tribes and that the nobility was the greatest of all unicorns was the foundation on which pre-Exodus unicorn society was built. The nobles may not have been able to carry much of their wealth during the exodus from the old kingdom of Monoceros, but they managed to fit all of their pride. The scant years before Unicornia found itself clashing with its new neighbors were still enough to harvest the mineral bounty of the Canterhorn to refill their coffers, and the mining boomtown of Canterlot was well on its way to becoming the city of gilded marble we know today by the time the windigoes returned.
Most unicorns were humbled by the Second Fimbulwinter and the resulting unification of nations and cultures. The nobles in their Canterlot manors less so. Even when Celestia moved the capital there as the City Ever Free was swallowed by the woods that once protected it, they only accepted her grudgingly, to say nothing of the pegasi and earth ponies that followed her.
As with the rest of Equestria, actually getting to know individual ponies rather than looking down on the other tribes as their abstracted “inferiors” was enough to sway some Canterlotters. The social pressure of Celestia’s presence and expectations of her ponies getting along regardless of tribe got others to change their tune, and in some cases, the facade developed into sincere acceptance. But not for all of them.
When the Celestian monk1 Grateful Mender discovered the principles of inheritance through his experiments with pea plants,2 the flagging supremacist faction quickly snapped it up and used it to justify the concept of “noble blood.” Much was made of “dominant” and “recessive” qualities without understanding what the terms actually meant, or the implication that two ill-gotten bastards apparently had a one-in-four chance of siring a true noble. In the end, all they wanted was evidence to support what they would have done anyway, “keeping the blood of Platinum unalloyed.” This twisting of the actual science, accidental or deliberate, to support their position would set the tone for supremacist discourse for centuries to come.
Further developments in the field would only give them more ammunition, no matter how absurd. Darwhinny’s revelation at the Gallopinghost Islands3 would lead to an “evolutionary hierarchy of the races,” with unicorns at the top of a pyramid capstoned by Celestia and nobles presented as the “missing link” between the two. Gall Bladder’s phrenological theories might have never gotten off the ground without the eager funding of nobles seeking to prove their superiority through cranium width and horn length. Even Wild Rose’s advances in microvoyance leading to the first image of DNA sparked the hunt for a “noble gene,” though by that point, the movement was in its last gasps.
It might have petered out much sooner were it not for the other faction of unicorn eugenicists that had emerged in the intervening years as a direct reaction to the old school. The established supremcists declared themselves “blood purists,” to contrast against the new movement. That faction called themselves “hybridizers,” while the purists called them “mongrel-makers.” Where the purists spoke of the inherent superiority of unicorn traits or physiognomy or genes, the hybridizers were fervent believers in hybrid vigor, resonant animas, and not having a family tree that more closely resembled a creeping vine.
Where the purists looked to prove and preserve the superiority they felt they already had, the hybridizers sought to improve upon that perfection. They had relatively humble beginnings among those who advocated for marriage with pegasi, earth ponies and, the most radical proposition of the time, common-born unicorns. This expanded to other equinoids, then even more daring couples as biomancy marched on. Many of the “gentlepony adventurers” that inspired pulp heroes were hybridizers, looking for exotic new civilizations as much as any other treasure unexplored lands might offer.
That said, while the hybridizers were xenophiles in every sense, they were still tribal supremacists at their core. They explored the world not out of a sincere desire for international and interspecies friendship, but to gather as many resources as possible to create the ultimate unicorn. Many records of first contact with other civilizations have a condescending, paternalistic air to them, as though other societies with at least as much history as Equestria were simply waiting for the explorer to finally show up and give them something to do.
Thankfully, neither movement spread far beyond their own foundations, whether those were patrons of the biological sciences or leagues of explorers. This was a Canterlot phenomenon, after all, and one that sought to present itself as legitimate science. The gate to mainstream academia in the capital has long been Celestia’s School of Magic,4 which naturally meant dealing with Celestia herself. She looked very poorly on both movements for so grotesquely misunderstanding the founding principles of Equestria. Blueblood XXIX serves as a memorable representative of the consequences of not working around her. When Celestia heard him call a Manehattanite student at the Gifted School “evolutionarily inferior,” she performed a rare exercise of royal fiat to expel him on the spot and personally perform a full audit of the family’s finances.5
In case it wasn’t clear, both movements were doomed from the outset. Even in Equestria, DNA isn’t just a four-letter alphabet that says “This is how to make a pony” that can be rewritten willy-nilly. Some genes provide sequences that ribosomes can translate into amino acid sequences, other genes control the expression of those genes, others control those genes, and so forth in a massive biochemical feedback mechanism that researchers are only beginning to unravel. Complex emergent properties the eugenicists wanted like magical strength, lifespan, and intelligence couldn’t be forced into being through arranged marriages or exotic additions to the family tree. And that’s putting aside the horrific belief structures that led to these ideas in the first place.
Both movements died out in the last century of the Celestial Era. Most alleged purists paid lip service to the idea while spending their time and money on personal pursuits, while the last true believers had been so twisted by inbreeding that their claims of innate superiority were more sad than anything. The hybridizers, meanwhile, never recovered after causing6 a diplomatic dark age that would only end with Twilight Sparkle’s efforts to reconnect to the rest of the world more sincerely.7, 8
Therein lies the final irony of the movements. Night Light came from a family of dedicated purists, though his own ancestors had left the more extreme fringes once the cloven hooves and Clopsberg chins started showing up. Twilight Velvet came from a long line of explorers and experimenters in the limits of pony biology. By their time, a few generations of relative normalcy—this was still Canterlot—had seen this mellow to legacies of genuine academic rigor and a thirst for adventure tempered by curiosity and deep respect for other cultures. Qualities that, in varying degrees, they passed on to their foals.
It’s not clear how much having a kirin great-grandfather impacted Twilight Sparkle, or how the myriad novel sequences in Shining Armor’s genome might have led to the improbable birth of Flurry Heart. Their remarkable lives might have had far more to do with their upbringing, the machinations of fate, or even dumb luck. Or it might be that, pony genetics being the crapshoot it is, the only way either side could ever get what they wanted was by letting it happen on its own.
1. Monasteries devoted to worshiping the princess of the sun cropped up around Equestria while she was focused on keeping the country from falling apart in the wake of the Nightmare Rebellion. When she finally learned about them, they were entrenched enough that the only way to truly get rid of them would have been what she called “a monstrous crusade,” given how they weren’t hurting anypony and some were producing quite good wine. She instead let them be and waited for them to peter out, which took most of the Celestial Era. Many of Equestria’s best vintners, cheesemakers, and other culinary businesses can trace their origin to such institutions.
2. Of course, farmers and ranchers around the world had been selectively breeding their crops and livestock for millennia before that, but Mender formed hypotheses, tested them, and most importantly, wrote it all down. As such, he gets the credit.
3. Actual horse puns from secondary canon. See Applejack and the Honest-to-Goodness Switcheroo and Daring Do and the Marked Thief of Marapore, respectively.
4. While the School for Gifted Unicorns is most well known part of Celestia’s School, it is only part of it, much in the same way Manehattan is but one borough of New Yoke City. Facilities exist for pegasi, earth ponies, and others besides.
5. Celestia worried how the other noble families might react to this, but they remained silent or even quietly supported it. For those not involved in eugenics, Blueblood XXIX was an especially unlikeable scion of the House of Blood. For the hybridizers, he was a prominent member of the purists and might discredit the entire movement. For the other purists, it was a case of Celestia having to protect an immortal secret, the process of alicornization, and having to punish a dolt who couldn’t even keep a mortal one. Naturally, they told themselves, once they had fulfilled their great work, they would prove worthy of her sharing the next step of the process with them.
6. To his dying day, disgraced ex-ambassador Hot Pants insisted that there was no way he could have known that that yak was a bull. The rest of the diplomatic party insisted in turn that wearing the prince’s crown was something of a tipoff.
7. There were exceptions, of course. Griffonstone was already becoming economically dependent on Equestria, Saddle Arabia has always been happy to trade with anyone, and every nation still paid due respect to the mare who kept the sun and moon moving. But much of the world still quietly (or not so quietly) shunned Equestria for several generations.
8. Of course, the resulting years of isolation led to a different discriminatory movement, “Equestria First,” technically more inclusive since it included pegasi and earth ponies while vilifying the rest of the world that much more intensely. It also had far fewer barriers to spread without an academic veneer to maintain, and once established among the members of the EEA, would leave most ponies barely aware that the world outside of Equestria even existed. As the prelude to the Battle of the Bell demonstrated, this was easily twisted into the kind of petty tribalism that ended the Three Tribes Era.
(I honestly have no idea why I wrote this. I’m pretty sure I just worked backwards from Flurry winning the genetic lottery and by the time I was ponifying Gregor Mendel, it was too elaborate to throw away.)
Unicorns are also, strictly speaking, the unneeded race as of the advent of Alicorns that can move the celestial bodies by themselves.
Earthponies produce food. Pegasi control the weather that allows the food to be grown. Unicorns . . are parasites.
It may be harder for earth ponies to do some things the unicorns do, but aside from stuff like teleportation, i really see nothing that
the unicorns can do that the other two can't do either.
The Unicorn Kingdom actually pioneered the Madmare Doctrine. Earth Ponies could grow food only for themselves, and Pegasi could keep good weather for themselves, and the two of them could cooperate to feed each other. But since Unicorns couldn't strategically withhold the sun without causing problems for themselves, they actually had less leverage in the tense transactional power balance between the tribes before the long winter.
Their solution was to convince everypony that while of course only a complete lunatic would refuse to raise the sun, unfortunately Princess Platinum really was a complete lunatic who would do exactly that if she didn't feel properly appreciated. So the Pegasi and Earth Ponies really ought to keep their tables filled and the skies above the Unicorn Kingdom bright and clear.
The Earth Ponies, failing to grasp the finer points of how this worked, responding by electing Puddinghead as Chancellor, with mixed results.
Bruh...
Interesting and very amsuing worldbuilding stuff, FoME!
5725448
The "parasitical hornheads" thing is largely an overreaction from other tribes to the unicorn supremacists. Yes, alicorns can keep the celestial wheels turning steadily without the help of unicorns, but claiming that makes unicorns redundant or pointless is silly and massively undervalues the flexibility, subtlety and power of unicorn magic. Even if we ignore everything else, the telekinetic abilities of unicorns have made them pre-eminent craftsponies of complex and delicate objects throughout the history. Similarly, up until the invention of printing press and typewriters (both of which were Earth pony inventions at first, but were refined by unicorns) they made up most of the scribes, clerks, copyists, secretaries and other professions where it was important you could write fast, clearly, and lots.
They were, however, in better shape (materially speaking) than the refugees from the lost city of Amalthea, who had to flee with little more than their spell knowledge and the clothes on their backs.
See, this is especially funny because there's an actual character in Part 7 of Jojo's named Hot Pants who disguised herself as a man. Could have been a second layer of miscommunication there. 😅
5725448
Unicorns . . are parasites.Unicorns . . provide entertainment.
5725460
i guess they can do that thing with their horn . .
Woo! Another cool set of thoughts!
Oooh! Microvoyance! Because it's magic!
Gotta figure out who Wild Rose is, but that Darwhinny exists, even in secondary canon, implies some things about what knowledge the world has, if he learned the same things~!
This is why blogs should be able to be upvoted.
A world building in need of a story.
5725467 I actually had considered a story along that lines once. Then I considered the field of emotional mousetraps scattered about, mixed with land mines along my dance path and decided against it.
I love everything about this!
I love every word
Very fascinating read, my friend.
Even if much of it, made in part to try and make sense of irrevocable canon mistakes in the later seasons, is the sort of area I prefer just straight-up not thinking about.
In fact, this is the sort of material perfect for a blog, because as Georg notes, the difficulties in crafting an actual narrative we follow linearly from this would be a nightmare in terms of character and emotional resonance. While the other option of something akin to this being in a history book in a fanfic, though more plausible, runs the incredibly likely risk of being an ungainly exposition dump.
Urg, footnotes. ~Stops reading on phone and waits till he gets to his computer to open three copies of the blog; the first to make this comment with, another one to actually read the main contents, and the third to be able to read the damn footnotes.~
I wish if people just have to use footnotes they put one at the very start of things so readers know they are there and are not hit with the first one a couple of scrolls down.
I'd motion to Luna here but at this point in the timeline she'd still be on slash in the moon so I'll have to instead motion to the penultimate unicorn in Celestia.
I'd honestly think they'd have more than just ACGT, at least add in an M of some kind.
A fun little bit of world building to have in the background of a story, thanks for sharing. Other than using deities damned footnotes.
Well, given the subject matter and the fact that this is Equestria, I think I hate everything about this? But a valiant effort to make sense of seasons eight and nine nonetheless. It's probably the closest thing to a sensible explanation of that madness we'll ever see, so I'll take it, I guess.
While I don't personally have an issue with this due to reading on my computer, I think 5725550 might have a point here. So for future reference, FOME, there's actually a better way to do footnotes in Fimfiction blogs. Our mutual acquaintance Oliver wrote some code a while back which embeds the footnotes as side boxes nearby, eliminating the need to scroll down. It looks a lot neater, and is a bit better for phone users. Check out this blog of his for an example. If you plan to make use of footnotes in the future, it may be worth contacting him and asking how he does it.
And also the setting of IDW's My Little Pirate: Friendship Ahoy.
A truly fascinating study on the Unicorn psyche, and one I intend to incorporate in future tales. (Giving credit where credit is due, of course!)
I always felt that Unicorns considered themselves superior to the other tribes, and I've seen that both in canon and in fanfiction. One aspect which you did not touch on, that I feel is relevant, is Unicorns are also the most physically weakest of the Three. Earth ponies are of course the strongest, and even Pegasi are built to endure harsh wind conditions and climates, as well as being able to manipulate air currents for flight AND (possibly) have some level of resistance to electricity.
And as some commentators have mentioned, given that the Alicorns now control both Sun and Moon, the Unicorn's direct role in Pony society is now rather... superfluous. So, I would say they should be grateful the Tribes did eventually unite, before the other Two figured that out...or else Equestria would be down by one Race.
Might have to re-read this for when I get to my 'Fall of Stygian' fic, but... the whole Unicorn supremacy thing always felt a little off and one-sided to begin with. I've touched on it briefly in that Food Court story, but actually exploring it? That'd get downright dark really quickly, probably ruffle a few feathers or chip a few horns, depending on how you look at it.
I guess it doesn't help that Unicorns can do the things the other two races can. Trixie could manage a thundercloud conjuration on her first showing, and Rarity had her stint as Ponyville weather manager. Starlight nearly put Missus Cake out of business in 'No Second Prances.' There's more to cover, and it's a shame the show never did, but that's what stories are for, suppose.
5725467
Or put in a collection, just like stories.
Some blog posts are great.
From worldbuilding posts like these, to Admiral Biscuit’s comic blogs.
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In addition to 5725606's observation on unicorn weather magic being a thing, I'll echo 5725457 and note that unicorns' specialties tend to lie higher up the hierarchy of needs than the other tribes. Sure, equinity can survive without unicorn magic as long as there's an alicorn moving the heavens. They can also survive without weather control or agriculture; grazing is always an option. There's a difference between bare survival and a life worth living.
5725452
It worked out in the end, thankfully before the pegasi brought in their own madmare. (Hurricane was just angry. Important distinction there.)
5725458
Some historians believe the "Red Bull" mentioned in those few accounts of the fall of Amalthea that survived to the modern day was an ancestor of Tirek. Others think it was a metaphor for a bevy of natural disasters, external hostility, and internal mismanagement that led to the city's ruin.
5725459
I am 99% certain that this Hot Pants didn't have a spray can that could liquefy his own flesh. Given his reputation, I dare not imagine what he might have used it for.
5725462
Wild Rose is based off of Rosalind Franklin. ("Franklin" comes from the Old English word for "freeman.")
5725467
As both 5725471 and 5725501 noted, this kind of thing is best suited for a blog. I was nervous enough about broaching such topics in this format. Actually building a narrative around them and having characters sincerely supporting these viewpoints? Yeah, I'd rather not juggle those chainsaws.
5725550
Apologies. It has been a while since my last headcanon dump blog; should've thought about the mobile experience. I have put up a warning, but it's very much a case of closing the stable door after the horse has already left.
5725593
* As you can see if you look at this on a phone.
Unfortunately, Oliver's method uses tags that flat-out don't work on mobile.* That said, I could have done actual footnotes (i.e. directly under the relevant paragraph) instead of endnotes. Something to bear in mind for the future.
And yeah, I can't blame you for your reaction. One can only do so much given the source material and base concepts.
5725596
"Physically weakest" is relative. Don't forget feats like Twilight getting a piano dropped on her, Rarity and Twilight hauling Tom, Rarity and Sweetie Belle nearly winning the Sisterhooves Social while the former was posing as Applejack...
Equestria is a deathworld and ponies have adapted to it just as much as any other native species, unicorns included. See also my comments at the top of the previous reply regarding unicorn superfluity.
5725613
It does, however, still leave the footnotes nearby, which still eliminates the need for scrolling on mobile. The method you describe would also do that, but I just think Oliver's footnotes look better. Either works, I guess, so do whatever you like. It's just something to keep in mind in future.
So basically, we presently have a bunch of Unicorn snobs still believing they're superior to the other tribes, even though their direct role in the running of the nation has been diminished? Or even, dare I say, eliminated? I'm picturing a slew of Canterlot nobles sipping tea or whatever it is they drink and harumphing at the mere thought of any other kind of pony joining their ranks, while at the same time knowing full well their wealth and their status was built on a LIE.
As one who primarily writes spicy content, this gives me an idea for a story: In an alternate universe, the other Tribes soon realize how unnecessary the Unicorns are, which leaves the Unicorns only one option...to become the Nation's premiere escorts.
Thank you for this
5725707
And then they were responsible for the vast majority of anti-changeling rhetoric and propaganda after Thorax's reformation of the hive, because how is anypony supposed to compete with a shapeshifter in that market?
5725460
Perhaps too much so.
Dang yo, this is the kind of quality headcanon that still reaches me.