The removed chapter and my thoughts on its removal.

I decided that I would move the chapter "5: Lonely at the Top" here so that it could be viewed by way of comparison by those interested in comparing. Personally, I kind of like my other chapter better, and think that I would like to continue from there, but as I mentioned in my first blog post(you don't actually have to read it), I have a story I want to tell, and I almost view the style as being incidental to my own enjoyment. I want to tell a story, and I want people to enjoy it, and so long as those two things are true, then I am happy. I like scenes where people/ponies are alone with their thoughts and can provide a deeper(possibly too deep)insight into their minds, but I understand that I might have overdone it a little. Thanks for reading, and I appreciate any comments or criticism(especially this).

Chapter 5: Lonely at the Top

        It had been nearly one in the morning when she, Luna, and Twilight had decided that it was time to get some sleep. Luna, despite her attempts to hide it, was still having difficulty adjusting from her nocturnal schedule to a diurnal one. Celestia had been surprised when Luna had come to her proposing that she adopt the same sleep patterns as their subjects. She was glad that Luna had realized that their maintaining different schedules was an antiquated practice, originating from the need to have somepony alert at any time, ready to react to Discord’s acts more than fifteen hundred years ago. She had been unwilling to propose it herself because she had worried that Luna might have taken it as an insult, or as her belittling the importance of the night.

        Both Luna and Twilight had wished her good night, and she had hugged each of them warmly before they departed for bed, but she had no desire to sleep. Too many things had happened that evening for her to sleep comfortably, so she decided to pay a visit to her private gardens. Walking from the parlor, she found two different guards from those who had been stationed there when Twilight had arrived, but they both, like their predecessors, took to following her at a respectful distance as she walked the halls. She set a brisk pace, and it wasn’t long before she arrived at the doors that led outside. She passed through them, leaving the guards to resume their silent vigil.

        Her private gardens were considered by many ponies to be a wonder of the world, for they housed specimens of rare plants and animals from all over, not just Equestria, but the known world. She had, over the past millenium, spent what probably amounted to more than a year in individual hours cultivating, shaping, designing, and procuring specimens for, her gardens, and yet they brought her little pleasure. Twilight had, being perspicacious even as a filly, long ago identified the reason why Celestia didn’t enjoy her gardens as much as one might think. Twilight had also said that she wasn’t very fond of the gardens for the same reason. Twilight had realized that Celestia’s private gardens were perhaps the single loneliest place in Canterlot, and Celestia found it hard to disagree.

        She sighed wearily, not feeling physically tired, but rather emotionally drained. She wandered through the meandering trails until she came to a small circular clearing, enclosed on three sides by a wall of shrubs that were even taller than she was. She walked inside the grassy enclosure, and lay down gently on the grass before a statue which was the only other occupant of the secluded area. The statue was a life-sized representation of an alicorn standing with careful poise and dignity, and an expression so lifeless and distant etched on its face, that even the stone seemed warm by comparison. She thought of the statue as a representation of what it meant for her to be the kind of ruler that the ponies of Equestria needed.

        For more than a thousand years, she had maintained the facade of being a ruler like the pony depicted in stone behind her. She was considered by many--maybe even most--ponies to be as close to perfect as it was possible for any ruler to be. She had brought Equestria more than a millenium of unbroken peace. She had nearly eradicated poverty, hunger, and internal strife. Corruption was virtually non-existent in the Equestrian civil service and legal system. All of which was possible because of her reputation.

        To ensure that there were no threats, either foreign or domestic, merely required that she remind ponies, and the rest of the world, that the Sun was hers to command, hence the Summer Sun Celebration. Poverty and hunger had been reduced by ensuring a relatively low rate of population growth, accompanied by unceasing investment in improving productivity. Corruption had been eliminated by ensuring strict standards for anypony seeking to work within the government, and by implementing a policy which made it so that any allegations of corrupt behavior were thoroughly investigated, and were managed by herself personally. Since she was herself known to be incorruptible, eventually, ponies in government realized that once they had committed corrupt behavior, they had no hope of escaping punishment. Corruption had rapidly died out.

        She was proud of her achievements, and loved that her little ponies were as happy, prosperous, and productive as they were, yet she couldn’t help but feel regret at the things that it had cost her. To ensure peace with Equestria’s neighbors, she was forced to issue yearly reminders, in the form of the Summer Sun Celebration, that any act of hostility against her or her people could be met by the reduction of their whole country into piles of ash. To ensure that population growth remained small, she had over a span of nearly a hundred years, repeatedly married other mares, while encouraging relationships between the stallions at her court. Eventually, such pairings were at least as common as foal bearing couples as the stigma was erased and marriages of love became accepted as the norm. In order to achieve this, however, she had been required to deliberately manipulate the fabric of Equestrian society, and at least in the beginning, to marry a number of mares in whom she had only a passing interest. To eliminate corruption in government, she had to ensure that nopony ever thought that they could manipulate or influence her to escape their punishment, which meant that while she could still make ‘friends,’ she couldn’t allow those ‘friends’ to influence her in any meaningful way. Anypony who she got too close to became an immediate target of politicians seeking her favor, and eventually, her ‘friends’ got tired of her ignoring everything they said because she suspected their reasons for saying it.

        All it had taken for her to build Equestria was for her to assume the role of an all-powerful, manipulative, solar deity, whose paranoia, and aloofness, made real friendship or love nearly impossible. The gardens were excellent representations of this isolation and distance, since when she had first started to tend to what would become her private gardens, they had been open to the public, yet only a fraction of those ponies who visited did so for the gardens themselves. The vast majority of visitors were only there to gain her favor, and it became impossible for her to enjoy any time she spent there. To counter this, she made the gardens private, accessible only by herself and a few close friends, but she found that while this new isolation was quieter, it was no easier to bear than before. It hadn’t taken long for her to start thinking of the gardens as merely another duty to tend to, rather than as any kind of comfort.

        She had reflected on these things countless times before, and yet, this time, she felt different. Her situation had changed, and now what she needed to do was adapt to the new situation. No longer was she the sole ruler of Equestria, bearing upon her back the full weight of that responsibility. Princess Luna had returned, and Celestia was growing increasingly hopeful that the Elements of Harmony had truly managed to eradicate all traces of Night Mare Moon, and that she and her sister could reign in harmony as equals. This possibility was one which, although she found it hard to believe that Luna either could, or would, be able to truly forgive her, she longed for with all her heart. There was also Princess Cadence, who although she was still young by alicorn standards, showed tremendous promise, if she could be kept far enough away from court. The fiction that there was such a thing as a pegacorn allowed her to feign disinterest in the development of the young Princess, so Cadence had gone virtually unnoticed by the court, whose attention remained fixed upon Celestia.

        Finally, and most promisingly, there was Twilight Sparkle, who was currently the brightest thing in Celestia’s life. Twilight was one of the incredibly rare ponies in whom she felt she could place absolute faith. Twilight was the most powerful unicorn of her generation, the personal student of the Solar Princess, Bearer of the Element of Magic, and de facto leader of the Elements of Harmony. If there was any pony in Equestria capable of posing a credible threat to her rule, besides Luna, then it was her faithful student, yet Celestia could hardly imagine Twilight Sparkle ever seeking to so much as inconvenience her. Celestia couldn’t recall the last mortal pony about whom she felt so strongly, and she began to wonder whether or not it might be possible for her to actually have her first real friend in centuries.

        The idea of having Twilight as a friend in the sense of somepony able to speak as an equal, to give honest advice, and able to be looked to for help and guidance, was a joyous one. She smiled at the thought of having somepony in whom she could freely confide her thoughts and feelings, without having to worry about those thoughts becoming public. Her words carried enough weight in Canterlot, and more generally around Equestria, that even a casual comment was capable of destroying a ponies life or career. If she were to indicate that she thought that some noble was rude and obnoxious, then it wouldn’t matter what other redeeming qualities he might have, say, being the best treasurer Equestria had ever had, because he would become a social outcast overnight. He might keep his job, since, in that case, she would be his employer, but his social standing would be irretrievably lost. The same was true in the opposite direction as well, for if she were to be too liberal in her praise of a particular pony, then that pony might find themselves, possibly undeservedly, achieving a degree of prominence that most only dreamed of.

        Since this was true of almost all aspects of life, she found herself incapable of expressing her opinions on almost anything, since ponies tended to take her opinion as some sort absolute judgement. If she found an author whose works she didn’t particularly like, she didn’t dare say anything because it might ruin his career, even if his only ‘mistake’ was writing a genre of story that she didn’t personally like. This also meant that she couldn’t say anything in praise of another author whose work she did like because it might artificially prejudice ponies in favor of his writing, and since she couldn’t read every piece of literature in the entire Kingdom, it might cause other deserving works of literature to be neglected. Clothing, food, and music were similarly off limits, since their highly subjective nature meant that she couldn’t possibly present anything more than her own opinion, which she didn’t think was necessarily more valid than anypony elses. This belief, coupled with her desire to avoid abusing, even accidentally, her inordinate influence over the citizens of Equestria, had led to her eschewing all these things in favor of her work, but now the prospect of having somepony with whom she could honestly discuss these things tantalized her.

        As hopeful as she was, there were several problems that stood between her and this happy wish. The first problem was that Twilight, who had such difficulty accepting attention and praise, would likely find being asked to treat Celestia as an equal, in most circumstances, daunting. Another problem was the way in which the court would react if the extent of their friendship were to become public. It wasn’t that she believed that Twilight Sparkle would ever be willing to make use of their friendship for material gain, but rather that she did not wish to subject Twilight to the often invasive scrutiny that any non-professional relationship would inevitably bring. These two problems represented the two most daunting obstacles, but she thought that she could find a way around them.

        To the first problem, the best thing that she could think to do was to simply ask her faithful student to treat her as she would anypony else. Twilight could be adorably irrational at times, and was prone to fits of misplaced anxiety, but when approached calmly and reasonably, she was usually capable of handling whatever situation was given her. So long as Celestia was careful not to overwhelm Twilight, and was patient with her, she felt confident that Twilight would eventually come to think of her as a friend like any other.

        The next problem was the more difficult of the two because of the myriad ways in which things could go wrong. If Twilight was too uncomfortable with her request, then the worst thing that happened was that they remained in their same state, but it had been so long since there had been anypony close enough to her to excite the courts’ attention that she didn’t know what to expect. The worst case here was one that she dreaded, which was that Twilight, or her friends, became targets of blackmail or pony-napping to get at Celestia, while on the other end of the spectrum was the possibility that the court simply wouldn’t care. She had her reputation for being incorruptible, so they might not feel it worth their time or effort, or the chance of invoking her wrath, to bother her student. Her main task then, to which she decided to devote what little remained of the night, was to determine what further precautions, if any, they could take to minimize the chances of alerting the public. It was with a hopeful smile that Celestia closed her eyes, and, deep in thought, awaited the coming of her dawn.

Comments

[link1021l]

I enjoy the other, this was more of an info dump, an interesting info dump, but an info dump nonetheless.

I much rather read about Twi and Tia talking through her thoughts than her contemplation upon said thoughts.

[Raitythunder]

As I said in the Comments for a Story like this I Prefer the new "Version" as I said it flows much better with the rest of your Story.

But I also like this art of Storytelling too, as deeper the Plot is as more you can get out of the Story, ( Food for own Thoughts and such, like Stargazing Together^^) and I would love to see something like this written from you as well, it reminds me a little bit of Composure/Eternal with a much deeper Plot like the most Stories have.

Well yea we will see, I Follow you now for a while, let’s see what you’re Capable of.