To Bellenast Characters If They Were IRL Horses

This contains significant spoilers for To Bellenast. Please don't read this if you haven't read through Chapter 13.

Caution!
This blog post is kind of dumb and contains Pictures of Pretty Honses!

Recently, while chatting with Etyco Filly (author of Foal of the Wastes, which you should read), the idea bounced into my brain to determine which actual horse breeds best resemble the main and supporting characters in To Bellenast.

Q: Why would I bother doing this?
A: Because I am completely nuts about horses and think they're the best animals ever. Also, I was willing to spend entirely too much time trawling through stock photos for the right ones and writing all this, so there is now a tangible record of the time spent and/or wasted.

Sue me.

Just look at the honses. So many honses. Pretty honses!

More seriously, the main point of this is to show each character's approximate physical build, though obviously not their actual colors in most of the images. Because Crystal is such a small filly, she's always paying attention to how much bigger than her other ponies are. Although I have always had a clear picture of the precise size differences between Smol Protagonist and the other characters, you readers obviously don't have the same mental image as I do, or even descriptions beyond the occasional relative comparison.

For crying out loud, the first specific measurement in the story comes in Chapter 13, that being Crystal's height of 81 centimeters (which is slightly off, but she doesn't know it), and Night Cloud's approximate and relative height of "at least fifty centimeters" taller than that.
I should note that I envision Ponies as looking mostly like actual horses/ponies, but with slightly different proportions and skeletal structure; i.e., they have generally stouter and stronger legs, broader shoulders and heads, slightly more forward-set and larger eyes, and eyebrows, which horses lack. In addition to the images, I'll give each character's height as measured at the withers (the point on the horse's back roughly between the scapulas), approximate mass, their colors, and cutie marks.
I guess that makes this blog a character roster.

Beginning with:
Crystal Dew - Crystal. Crystal is, as of Chapter 13, ~83cm tall, and less than 100kg. She is both significantly shorter than ponies her own age and physically underwhelming, and so she has relied on telekinesis for lifting work most of her life, rather trying to use her meager muscle power. That said, she has a few physical advantages: A stronger heart, as a result of consistent and strenuous exercise of her magic for most of her life (my interpretation of magic directly involves the heart with a pony's biomagical organ system), genetic acclimation to a lower atmospheric oxygen content, and a thicker coat of fur. Those last two are direct results of being born to pegasus parents. Crystal got the recessive unicorn genes.
Crystal's coat is midnight blue, and her mane and tail are both solid magenta, long and wavy. Her eyes are emerald. Her cutie mark, as depicted when it manifests in Chapter 9, is a blowtorch: "Its canister was striped black and yellow, and the nozzle pointed toward my tail, and from it came a wide, rising flame of emerald green."
Crystal resembles an exceptionally fluffy and very tiny Icelandic Horse... possibly a Hokkaido/Dosanko Horse.
Icelandic Horse here:

Look at these two. Aren't they fuzzy and adorable?
But more realistically, we all know she'd be a Smol and Cute Shetland Pony, but a less chonky one.

Also, her mane would be even more fabulous. She's very proud of her mane. Don't call it pink.

Nubiála Noĉa (Nu-bee-AH-la No-cha) - Night Cloud. The correct translation of her name is actually "Cloudy Night," but her mother didn't know that at the time. Night Cloud is 132cm tall, and about 370kg (fully grown, she would be closer to ~450; she has some way to go yet, and she won’t be quite so slim in the end). Her eyes are bright, electric blue. Her coat is a shade of indigo closer to blue than violet, and her mane and tail are solid, glossy black, straight, and are knee-length; she has a small amount of brown-red coloring on her muzzle, immediately behind her nose. Her cutie mark is a Leota water lily. From Chapter 2: A lily with a "green stem and eleven bright orange, starburst petals that faded to lavender and cerulean around a delicate, golden yellow stamen."

Night Cloud would be a brown-to-blood-bay Trakehner, with a black mane and tail (much longer than in the image) and black socks. In this specific case only, these are almost the exact colors, minus the white markings, that Night Cloud had prior to her transformation into an alicorn. In my depiction, the ponies of the Kekalo Empire and various extant tribes of the San Palomino Desert mostly have earthy tones, such as reds, browns, tans, and yellows.

I suppose this technically means that I made a red and black alicorn OC, except she wasn't an alicorn yet... moving on.

H.R.H. Princess Blizziera Firenza - Blitz. Blitz is 163cm tall and a hair under 700Kg, the size of a proper horse. Her coat and mane are both deep purple, and her eyes are rosy pink (the top of her left iris has a small streak of brown). Blitz's cutie mark has not been described in the story yet; she does have one, but Unity's influence conceals it in the same manner as it does the marks of normal Unity alicorns. Describing her mark here would spoil its symbolism. Her coat was originally sable, and her mane and tail were straw yellow.
Blitz has roughly the same stature and muscular build as a Friesian, though she would be on the lightweight end of the spectrum when compared directly to most examples.

Lady Ivaline - Ivy. Titles given to her include, but are not limited to: Ivaline the Wrathful, the Vengeful, the Falcon of Dunn, the Scourge, the Curse-Speaker, the Judge of Kings, and the Witch of the Amber Palace.
Ivy is 141cm and about 450kg, putting her on the upper end of the height and weight range for a pony, but on the lower end for a horse, and in the average range for alicorns. Ivy's coat is deep forest green, and her mane is pine-needle green with a few darker streaks. Here eyes are greyish-blue, and her cutie mark is an empty brass rifle cartridge of a caliber she used in a competition rifle as a young mare, shortly before the culmination of the war.
Ivy might resemble a Tennessee Walker.

Eagle Plume - Eagle. Eagle is 127cm tall and about 330kg; he's the first Pony in this list who is the size of a normal pony, though on the tall side. His coat is off-white to cream, his mane and tail are walnut, and his feathers are amber. His eyes are green. His cutie mark is a toroidal coil of copper wire, a component of electrical transformers. (It isn't described in the story because there hasn't been a scene in which Crystal would have a reason to pay particular attention to it; she has lived with Eagle and Zephyr for about a year and a half, so she wouldn't look specifically at their marks. The perspective rules I imposed on the narration are weird and kind of dumb. Please trust me, prospective writers: You shouldn't do what I've done. I have a good reason for it, but it makes writing the story harder in some ways.)
Eagle somewhat resembles an American Cream Draft, though perhaps a tall and somewhat lanky one. Shrink the belly/barrel a bit and make the legs a little longer.

Zephyr. Just Zephyr; not a terribly original name for a pegasus, but I made it long before we ever saw Zephyr Breeze. Zephyr is 115cm tall and about 220kg, which puts her on what I consider to be the rather petite side for Ponies. Her coat is pale violet, and her mane and tail are solid teal. Her eyes are smoky grey, and her cutie mark is a sculpted stone bust of a pegasus mare (also not described in the story, for the same reason as with Eagle's mark).
Zephyr resembles an Icelandic Horse. (Yes, this is the same breed as the first image above; they can vary significantly in appearance within the same breed, and also simply because of the difference in winter and summer coats.)

Doctor Orchid Wisp - Yes, she's an actual doctor. Orchid Wisp is 154cm tall and about 600kg, making her the second-tallest pony in the story, and the second heaviest. Her coat is a midnight blue almost exactly the same as Crystal Dew's, and she keeps her indigo mane in a running braid, which runs the full length of the neck, like this:

Her eyes are brown, and her cutie mark has not been described in the story yet because Crystal hasn't seen her without barding or hospital scrubs. While not busy with work at the Arcottio Memorial Hospital in Bellenast, she moonlights as a guest singer for several bands.
If you want to know what she sounds like, check the videos linked at the end of my previous blog.
Orchid Wisp resembles a Gypsy Vanner/Gypsy Cob. She's big, she's strong, she's pretty, she's sexy and she knows it, and although as a doctor she is reserved and proper, her stage presence can be described as Flaunt It.

Pinwheel Malaise - Pinny. Pinwheel the Kirin is 110cm tall and about 300kg. She has an ash-grey coat and snow-white, fluffy mane. Her scales and hooves are tourmaline green (image at right), and her horn is nearly the exact color of ferric oxide. Her eyes are turquoise. Kirin have no cutie marks.
For a decent resemblance for Pinwheel, look back at the first image up above, of the pair of Icelandic Horses. Pinwheel is delightfully fluffy and somewhat round, but don't make the mistake of thinking she's slow. Most of that roundness is pure muscle.

Nautical. (Full name will be revealed in Chapter 14, but should be pretty obvious) Nautical is 144cm tall and about 530kg (less as of Ch 13). Her coat is a dark jade, and her mane is sage green. Her eyes are orange.
Nautical resembles an Andalusian horse.

Beat Skipper - Skipper. Skipper started going by "Skipper" when she met Nautical, because she thought it would be funny to have two sailing-themed names on the team. She is 141cm tall (within a rounding error of Ivy), and about 400kg (less as of Ch 13). Her coat is the lighter shade of blue present in the lapis lazuli mineral, and her mane is a dull, muted blue similar to spruce. Her eyes are bright amber.
Skipper resembles a Thoroughbred: Slim and fast.

And last, but certainly not least...
Minty. (Whose full name will be revealed later) Minty is 124cm tall and about 430kg as of Ch 13. Yes, she's heavier than Skipper, and while substantially shorter and not yet fully grown at that; she has plenty more muscle to put on in the next few years. Minty's coat is deep grape purple, and her mane is royal purple (with a small streak of ultramarine violet behind her left ear). Her eyes are hazel. She usually keeps her mane done in a row of straight braids, like this:

Minty is, similar to Orchid Wisp, Quite Stronk. She won't ever be as big as Orchid, but for her size, she is already More Stronker. She resembles a Belgian Draft or perhaps a small Shire Horse or Ardenne, except she's much cuter, because she's purple, and she has ribbons in her mane.


Some might call her fat.
Should you do so, she might just demonstrate that her kickers are pure muscle, and that her comparatively short stature gives her tremendous mechanical advantage. She also will beat your entire Tug-of-War team solo out of spite.