Thoughts on armor · 6:18am Apr 8th, 2014
Canonically speaking, we don't know a lot about the Royal Guard. We know what they look like. We know their skills include pulling royal chariots and standing around stoically, but not battling insane alicorns or repulsing sudden attacks by large swarms. But in most cases, we just don't know what they can do. The real place to evaluate their performance is on threats that are dangerous, but do not require alicorn levels of power and/or ancient magical artifacts to deal with. And we don't generally see those in contexts where the Guard could conceivably make an appearance. The Everfree may be full of such threats, but nopony bothers calling the Guard for those. They just fight or run on their own.
Now, we can infer some from the fact that the Guard seem to only be found in Canterlot, the Crystal Empire, and the general vicinity of princesses. Except that guy who was presumably near the Everfree Forest before he brought the news that it was invading, I suppose. But quite possibly all we can get is "the Guard are not an Equestria-wide police force, they're mainly there to protect princesses." We can probably draw some conclusions from the way Spike drew failed attacks from Wonderbolts, and nothing else official, in "Secret of My Excess", but honestly I don't even know what to assume there. That response to dragon attacks doesn't even make sense. And while we now know that the Guard were probably the EUP Guard formed just after Luna's banishment, presumably to help pick up the slack and preserve safety and whatnot, it's not clear that we can assume they are still interchangeable with a single princess now. (And to think I almost made this blog post on Friday, when I did not yet have this information.)
So we end up with wildly varying opinions of how skilled and effective the Royal Guard is. Some depict them as a bunch of bumbling, useless idiots. Some depict them as a well-honed force that makes frighteningly effective use of the varying skills of individual guards. Well, I think they can't possibly be that great. And I base that opinion on their armor. More specifically, I base it on the lack of variability thereof.
See, if I were designing armor for pegasi, I'd go with something along the lines of the Guard armor we see. It should be light (as maneuverability is presumably key), should protect against attacks from above (as altitude is strength in dogfights, to my understanding), and should protect the front (as it seems reasonable for pegasi to do a fair amount of charging, being the fastest race). I'd add protection for the throat if I were in charge, but beyond that I can absolutely believe that the armor protects everywhere on a pegasus that is worth the weight (and it's probably impossible to effectively armor wings in any manner that does not prevent flight). We don't know how historically accurate the Hearth's warming pageant was, but it's not strange to imagine that it did correctly represent Commander Hurricane's armor, and that modern Guard armor is still strongly based upon pre-Equestrian pegasus designs.
But then they put that armor on everypony. Well, the unicorn and earth pony guards have a saddle, but it doesn't look like that serves any protective function. Then again, the armor looks kind of ceremonial in general, but apparently it isn't since they don't switch to anything more practical when Canterlot is under threat of attack. Or they don't have any non-ceremonial armor.
Anyway, point is, the armor that is ideal for pegasi is unlikely to be ideal for earth ponies and unicorns. Earth ponies should be much more heavily armored, as they have much less need for speed, are (we assume, and we have anecdotal evidence to back us up) stronger, and are likely to be fighting as infantry. Plus they need their limbs more; a pegasus with three legs will fight considerably better than an earth pony in the same condition. And while I'm not sure what is the optimal armor for a unicorn, I'll bet it at least protects the horn, considering how easy it seems to be to disrupt magic with so much as a tap to the horn.
And if they can't be bothered to do the armor right, why should we expect them to be competent in other ways?
You raise some good points. I do hope the animators do something about that one day.
Isn't Shining Armor one of the guard? He's pretty competent, yo. Helped out a lot during the Changeling invasion thing. (Or didn't help, if you want to interpret it that way).
Also, I don't think we can blame the guard for the incompetence of their armor. It wasn't them who designed it. It was some guy in DHX Media.
There was some full plate armor in the Sisters' Castle in Castle Maneia - perhaps ancient earth pony gear from when threats appeared more regularly?