Royal Treatment · 1:54pm Oct 21st, 2023
Striking while the iron is ice cold on this one, but Djinn, Jack, and Cider getting featured in Equestria Daily’s Applejack Day fic roundup yesterday gave me the impetus to finally finish this. Or at least get it to a point where I’m happy posting it. Time for a bit more from the magical land of Siderea…
Queen Celestia
The Celestia of this world is in many ways familiar to those who know her equine counterparts: Hair like an aurora, magic like sunlight, an almost motherly demeanor with those close to her… and angelic, swanlike wings that can and absolutely have broken men’s limbs like twigs.
The world cannot live without the sun, but getting too close to it is dangerous for the unwary. It doesn’t seem possible to forget that there’s a bronzed, eight-foot tall brick house of a woman wearing those flowing dresses and golden accessories, but some still manage to do so. Celestia has learned to suffer fools graciously in her long reign, but her patience still has limits. An invitation for a “rousing bit of exercise” could mean that she’s willing to let down her hair around you… or that you’re about to get dropped like a sack of meat when she “forgets her own strength.”
Of course, such crude displays are rare and reserved for the truly bothersome who have failed to learn their lesson otherwise. Celestia is equally capable of ruining those who oppose her politically, economically, socially, or any number of other ways besides physically pulverizing them. She is the rarely disputed ruler of Sideria, after all, and has been for a long time. Besides, a little dissent keeps the system healthy and reminds her that while she has had an excellent track record thus far, it isn’t spotless. Celestia may be nearly as ageless as the sun itself, but at the end of the day, she is still human.
Her connection to the sun has baffled arcane scholars for even longer than her reign. By all rights, such an intense link should have burnt out Celestia on a metaphysical level, leaving her a wasted husk like so many of the magi of old conscripted to keep the heavens turning. Yet some intrinsic quality of Celestia thrives in the face of such overwhelming power, with negative side effects apparently limited to a volatile temper she’s learned to moderate and a blast-furnace metabolism she can’t.
One other curious effect is that Celestia feels more real than other people, at least when first encountering her. The awe people feel when meeting their immortal sovereign is enhanced by an uncomfortable awareness of their own transience. This quickly fades, but it does make introductions more than a little awkward. Arcane scholars theorize she is the closest a human can come to a nature spirit without the body bursting from arcane overload.
Once she was moving the sun singlehandedly, Celestia found herself on the political stage whether she liked it or not. It took a number of missteps and blunders, not all of which have been preserved by history, but she has come out of it with hard-won wisdom and a prosperous kingdom. A small but dedicated church has built up around her despite her best efforts; it tends to be more popular the further one is from Halcyon.
Delegation across a carefully chosen collection of subordinates allows Celestia some personal time, or at least time to be a person. A good deal of that is spent teaching young minds at the Celestial Academy, Sideria’s premiere school for subjects both supernatural and mundane. Celestia’s personal students are hand-picked for both their potential to shape the world and how much they may need the queen’s personal guidance to make sure that shape is better than how they found it.
Princess Luna
Luna does not rule, and both she and many Halcyonites are glad for it. Ghostly pale, wide-eyed, a few inches shy of Celestia with wings of a raven and hair like a gate to the night sky, Luna is an uncanny presence for those unaccustomed to her. Just as powerful as her sister, with limbs like thin steel cables and a mind as sharp as her wit, Luna does what Celestia can not, will not, or should not. She is her sovereign’s most trusted advisor, best friend, and closest confidant; her staunchest defender in public and her harshest critic in private.
In short, she is Celestia’s little sister, with all commensurate duties and privileges.
Luna is her sister’s equal and opposite in many ways. She feels less real than her surroundings, an unsettling, alien intrusion from a dream or fantasy. Despite her size, her appetite is nearly nonexistent, happily subsisting on little more than tea and crackers. Her emotional affect is subdued; so few palace servants have heard her raise her voice that some doubt whether she even can. Arcanologists believe she represents the closest a human can come to the ethereal fae before the body implodes into its own internalized unreality.
Luna does not rule because she has tried before, and it nearly broke her. While her reactions are subdued, her actual ability to feel is not. The suffering of her subjects in Sideria’s formative years, carried by both dutiful couriers and the sympathetic bonds of direct responsibility, drove her close to madness. When Celestia confronted her, she lashed out, resulting in a battle of spells and fists that laid waste to Castle Everfree and left Luna a sobbing wreck in her sister’s arms. Even in these more settled times, Luna dares not accept more than acting as first in line for the throne.
The world of dreams is open to Luna, but it is not hers to rule either. The fae staked their claims in the vastness of the collective unconscious long before Luna bonded with the moon. They tolerate her visitations—some even welcome her, in their own ways and for their own reasons—but attempting to claim dominion over the dream realm would be tantamount to an invasion of imagination itself.
Instead, Luna exercises her power as a patroness of the arts and sciences, working to bring the dreams of humanity into the waking world in all their splendor and, when appropriate, horror. Without the burden of rule, Luna has had the time and energy to become a polymath like no other, and eagerly encourages others to delve deep where she has gone wide. Where Celestia cultivates a few personal students every generation, Luna’s favor falls on souls as countless as the stars in the sky, and most of her rare smiles are reserved for the newest experimental or creative breakthrough.
The Fair Lady Butterfly
The Lady walks within her wood
Scorning bad and praising good
But when her husband comes to play
Then foul is fair as night is day.
—Children’s rhyme
The Fair Lady Butterfly is an archfae who has taken up residence in the Everfree Forest in the centuries since the War of Heavens, cultivating it as a mortal might a backyard garden. As is to be expected from the inscrutable fae, what the Fair Lady considers a well-kept garden differs greatly from that mortal’s opinions on the matter. The Everfree still roils with ancient magic, celestial power and hostile intent that would have dissipated long ago kept at a simmer for the Fair Lady’s unknowable purposes, spawning horrors unseen anywhere else in Sideria in the process. Yet stretches of that same forest are idyllic wonderlands of sylvan beauty, rich in miraculous healing plants and creatures as gentle as any household pet.
The Fair Lady’s true name is known, kept in the records of both Pony Hills and Halcyon. But it is very rarely spoken aloud, because she will know. Getting her attention is risky at the best of times, and she is one of the most compassionate and empathetic fae on record. That is to say that she understands mortals are not bound to their word the same way she is, nor do they feel the web of life as she does. As such, she does not punish those who transgress against her until she feels certain that they meant to… for the minor transgressions, anyway.
The Fair Lady’s husband does not have his true name on any record, and that’s exactly how he likes it. Indeed, little if any written information about him stays written, and that which does has likely warped far past factual, useful, or recognizable as language. While the Fair Lady generally takes the form of a beautiful human woman with hair of cherry blossoms and a robe of sunbeams, her husband delights in never taking the same shape twice in living memory. Any records that do survive mentioning him generally do so by referring to a title of a title: “the Querulous,” “the Quarrelsome,” “the Questioner.” Alternatively, they can get by by referring to him as her husband, for one of the few constants with that one is his love, for her and anything else with the dubious fortune to gain his approval.
Conversely, while with her husband—who enjoys wandering far and wide, through this world and many others, but always returns home in time—the Fair Lady delights in her own capriciousness. Tales of fangs in the dark, leathern wings, and the wild hunt flourish while the two are together… though it’s unclear how much basis any of them have in reality. This reality, anyway.
The people of Pony Hills don’t mind the Fair Lady, treating her more like an eccentric neighbor than any kind of menace or existential threat. Observing a few simple rules—they’d be superstitions if they didn’t have empirical evidence of working—makes sure that she keeps her attention on her garden, even while her husband is around. Queen Celestia is sincerely thankful that the Fair Lady keeps her husband in check as much as she does, for he was a far greater menace in his bachelor days. And, as with the Everfree itself, much of the rest of Siderea tries not think about the Fair Lady’s existence if they can help it.
Any rumors that the Fair Lady was once mortal herself before being wooed by (or, impossible as it may sound, wooing) her husband are unsubstantiated. Based on past efforts, they’re best kept that way.
Mi Amore Cadenza
Cadence is, to use the technical term, weird. Academics insisted on “anomalous” at first, but after months of fruitless investigation, “weird” was the consensus.
It doesn’t help that the remote Cavallan fishing village where she was found as a toddler had no trained mages to record her arcane profile before her transformation. Nor that the only person to ever see the entity known as “Prismia” and live was Cadence herself, who at a tender and magically untrained fourteen, was hardly in a position to determine whether Prismia was a renegade human spellcaster, outcast fae, or something even stranger. Nor that, after the aformentioned fruitless months, Celestia herself put a moratorium on the research until a truly revolutionary breakthrough elsewhere in arcanology might provide a new avenue to analyze Cadence.
Suffice to say, no one’s quite sure what Cadence’s magic has done to her, including herself. Six feet tall and still growing, with pink skin, matching flamingo wings—“I ate too much shrimp as a girl,” she likes to say—and multicolored but otherwise mundane hair, she is clearly a glimpse of the royal sisters in their early years. But the particulars beyond the obvious are still shrouded in mystery, given her unprecedented magical specialty.
The power of love is a curious thing. While attempts at love potions have been around practically since the first days of magic, they have always yielded some blend of obsessive infatuation and alchemically induced lust. Sincere, heartfelt affection is beyond both the mightiest djinn wishcrafter and the most esoteric archfae… but not Cadence. Few know the true extent of her powers, and she’d rather not explore the full breadth given the horrifying ethical implications.
Of course, most people notice the halo first. Cadence has a circle of blue crystal chunks which slowly orbit a point a few inches above the top of her head, the shape and number of crystals gradually changing over time. Despite being minerals physically disconnected from her, Cadence’s sense of touch extends to the halo. After those months of study, she’d really prefer if people not touch it.
In short, Mi Amore Cadenza is a reminder that humanity’s understanding of magic and other realms remains incomplete, and may always remain so… though some researchers suspect Queen Celestia knows more than she lets on with her adopted niece. For now, Cadence is happy to act as mayor of Halcyon itself—a largely figurehead role, but good administrative practice—and court a certain captain of the guard.
My queen.
Fun lore dump for a very fun lil' story.~
Very nice to read some more worldbuilding, and it made me reread the fic :)
LOL
LOL again
A delightful lore dump for a delightful story! I'm so glad to hear more about it n_n
Fluttershy outranks Luna? Sure, that makes sense. Also note that this world's equivalent of Flutterage is just the Bayonetta character with a similar name. (For those who only know Bayo from Smash, Madama Butterfly is the owner of those giant limbs from her smash attacks. That hopefully suffices as an explanation, because I only know her from Smash and a Bogleech review myself).
It's always so much fun to play with the settings in a world, isn't it.
I am curious as to how you'll handle Fluttershy if you ever revisit this world. The big strength of FIM and EQG is the character interactions of the Mane 6/7. By choosing to make one of them so much more powerful and alien then the others it can't help but create a radically different dynamic. Perhaps even more relevant to that dynamic is that they all went through a lot of character development together. Fluttershy slowly gaining confidence and learning to manage her fears is of course the relevant example. But this Fluttershy presumably had that development centuries ago. Meanwhile the other six still have lessons to learn. So she won't get the chance to really learn lessons and grow from the others in the same way.
Ooh, huh. This not!Equestria didn't have a Nightmare Moon hanging over them for a millennium! Cool!
We know (relatively) how tall the other three women mentioned in this post are, but how about the Fair Lady? ... Heh, that she's both Fair and a Fairy is a great wordplay!
Yay! Lore Dives are so much fun
If you meant that the way I think, then I see what you did there
5751580
That's the actual etymology IIRC. At the very least, it's the sort of thing you call them because calling them by their actual name is a bad idea (the post itself gives just one reason why, directly from the myths).
Likewise, she's exactly the right size. Even and especially when that contradicts itself. If you were expecting something more sensible, you clearly forgot that we were talking about an archfae. There is much worse. Could I have your name?
> The power of love is a curious thing.
Makes one man weep, makes another man sing…
Cold iron blogging is very appropriate when dealing with the Fae.
5751540
Considering the proportions involved between the usual Celestia and her ponies, one must assume something similar for a human in the same capacity (as opposed to the principal, who's probably very grateful she doesn't have to deal with a sun or an entire nation.)
5751541 5751551
Glad you enjoyed both.
5751552
In this more peaceful age, after centuries of losing patronized artists, Luna might be able to bear the burden of rulership again. But memories of the abyss she nearly fell into leave her hesitant to take hard power again.
5751563
It is! The preliminary conditions of the story have created a fascinating world, and exploring the consequences could lead in a number of fun directions.
5751577
This is an example of what I mean by the consequences of the above preliminary conditions. In order for the story to work—i.e. for a summer drought to get bad enough that Applejack resorts to a magical solution—weather magic can't be readily available. Thus, most pegasi got translated as nonhumans. (At the very least, most Cloudsdalers.) Figuring out how to deal with the consequences will be a big part of the journey should I revisit the setting.
Mind you, the interesting thing about the fae is the tension between infinite mutability and unchanging identity. They are always themselves, but who that is can be subject to change. The Fair Lady Butterfly may have something to learn from Twilight. The trick will be setting up a meeting that doesn't destroy one or both of them in the process.
5751651
clicks stopwatch
Fifteen hours after the blog went up. I'm surprised it took that long.
5751675
Heh. Very true. Probably safer this way.
You really must write a novel, because this is fantastic in both senses of the word. Somehow, Djinn, Jack, and Cider passed me by on its release, but I've now read it and I adore the setting. I need moar