The Royal Guard as a Military · 7:40pm Feb 8th, 2015
Obviously Memoirs is heavily "military" themed. Almost every character is a royal guard and the plot is heavily centered around royal guard activities. For this week's blog post I wanted to discuss my views on Equestrian military matters and explain my version of the guard a bit. Danger: Wall of military-themed text below!
Guard vs Soldier
When I started writing Memoirs I had to make a decision: is my Equestria as happy as the one in the show? I settled on yes because the story is, at its heart, a comedy with some serious moments but no where close to having a "dark" or "sad" tag. Additionally, one of the reasons I like MLP:FiM is because it offers us a view of a better world. It is a happy place where it is pretty rare for really awful things to happen to the average pony. I watch the show when I want to feel good and not worry about the ills of the world. If I wanted dark and gritty I'd just turn on cable news*.
With that decision it made sense that the Royal Guard would be just that: guards. In modern times we might refer to them as "security forces." The ponies I write about are defenders and police. They would never be mobilized as an attack force and sent off into battle. That is also why I took the time to introduce General Ironhoof in Opposing Forces. He is not a guard. He is part of the Equestrian Army: a very small standing army that exists solely so that knowledge of how to wage war can be passed down. Just in case.
Just in case is minimal though. The Princess Celestia we're presented with generally doesn't strike me as the type to start a war. Ponies also live in harmony with each other and all appear unified under one government. Thus, other than problems with other species, there isn't a lot of warfare going on in my version of the world. As such, most guards aren't soldiers. Stratus Knight was, however, and that is how he trained Silent Knight. Silent Knight has far more of a soldier mentality than the average guard.
Size
In terms of raw numbers I view the royal guard as an organization far smaller than the U.S. military. This is for two key reasons:
1. In my head there simply aren't as many ponies as humans. Looking at the map, seeing the population density in the show, and other items of that nature, I just get a sense that there aren't a ton of ponies. If the proper Equestria (the map we've seen) is analogous to America my head canon decided there are about 50 million ponies in that area. Who knows about Saddle Arabia and other hinted at lands.
2. Given that there are less ponies to protect, less ponies to recruit from, a lower likelihood that said ponies will be "bad," and no charter to go wage war, the royal guard probably isn't huge.
That led me to do some really lazy math. If we're sticking with the "Equestria is America" train it looks like this:
America has about 320 million humans with a combined military of 2.1 million souls I arrive at .65% of all Americans being military. That doesn't include all of our police officers though. I couldn't find good numbers on that but it was somewhere between 300,000 and 800,000. Splitting the difference puts it at 550,000, so roughly 2.65 million humans in a uniform. That is .82%✢.
As such ponies would have about 410,000 royal guards if we did the exact same percentages. As I mentioned though, ponies are inherently good and don't wage war. I can see that number being as low as 300,000. That is the number I went with!
Organization
Considering I view the royal guard as primarily a defense force it is logical to assume cities would be the center of the organizational structure. Each city command would also cover smaller towns nearby. A city command would be a battalion (more or less) led by a colonel. Equestria would then be broken up into regional commands which would be a brigade led by brigadiers.
Shining Armor holds the title "Captain of the Canterlot Guard" in Memoirs. He is the colonel in command of the Canterlot Battalion. His responsibilities further cover three special units: the palace guard (two companies), Princess Celestia's House Guard (a section), and Princess Luna's House Guard (an undersized section).
The Equestrian Army and Navy would be outside of this organizational structure but would ultimately fall under the same "high command" which would be led by the senior-most general.
Rank Structure
When I set out to formalize my ranks I looked at a lot of different sources✫. My background is heavily influenced by the U.S. Army and the U.S. Air Force. I'm very familiar with both. I didn't want to emulate them too closely but I also didn't want to just be all over the place. To break out of that a bit I also looked at the U.S. army from 1920-1945, the British Royal Marines, and the Japanese Self Defense Force.
One thing that I found extremely interesting was that prior to 1958 there were only 7 grades in the U.S. Army Enlisted ranks. These days we have 9. Considering there are less ponies in the royal guard I adopted the 7 grade system. For the ranks I did a little combination of the U.S. Army and Air Force. I always enjoyed calling a chief master sergeant "chief." And I want my ponies to call their chief's "chief."
Historically there have generally been more officer ranks than enlisted. This is to accommodate commanding larger and larger groups of soldiers. To make life easy though I just went with 7. The Princesses can always start tossing out more stars later if I need them to. I went with a very traditional officer rank system but intentionally eliminated "duplicates" for the average reader.
Non-military readers shouldn't have to wonder if a 1st lieutenant is superior to a 2nd lieutenant (especially since in daily use you rarely refer to them as more than just "lieutenant"), what the difference between a lieutenant colonel and colonel are, nor try to figure out why a major is superior to a lieutenant but a major general is inferior to a lieutenant general. As such, there are no lieutenant anythings. I went with "vice."
Finally I used the US system of warrant officers which differs greatly from other countries. In the US our warrants are a 3rd military rank track. Typically after you've been enlisted for a period of time you can apply for it. Warrants are specialists in my Equestria and one will be featured soon.
Enlisted Royal Guard Ranks
Officer Royal Guard Ranks
Warrant Officer Royal Guard Ranks (Soon)
Pony Type Composition
Logically speaking, pegasi HAVE to make up the majority of the royal guard for one specific reason: earth ponies and unicorns cannot patrol any of the floating cities (I assume there are more than just Cloudsdale). I'm also a big fan of the pegasi martial tradition as hinted at in the Hearth's Warming Eve episode. The royal guard in my head canon looks like this:
Pegasi make up 52% of all royal guards. They are the only ones able to serve in cloud cities, they can fly, and they have a tradition of being warriors.
Earth ponies make up 28% of the royal guard. They're typically depicted as larger, strong, and hard working. A guard life seems suited to those talents.
Unicorn ponies make up 15% of the royal guard. Yes, unicorns have magic and magic is powerful but Twilight is not an example of the average unicorn. Most do little more than levitate items. What percentage of all unicorns are more powerful than that AND would be willing to learn military spells? My thought was not a ton. Plus unicorns rely more on their magic and less on their physical bodies. That is something of a liability in this case.
Finally the remaining 5% is "other." Zebras, gryphons, etc. Equestria doesn't discriminate against them. There just aren't a ton that want to be in the royal guard.
Footnotes
* That was obviously a joke. I also want to make it clear I don't dislike dark/sad pony fan fiction. In fact some of my favorite ones are extremely dark, gritty, and rough. I just didn't want to write a story like that myself.
✢ These numbers are all rough and not meant to be scientific, exact, or completely factual.
✫ I'm still mucking about with them a little.
Neat.
Interesting. But eh, i can understand how having a military background shifts how you approach things.
Though if you don't mind me asking, which branch you had family that influenced you upon?
Yet, i'm curious. Do you view that unicorns that make the cut are generally more elect in their positions open to rarity with the utility they can offer? Or that earth ponies are much the same given they are more capable in other areas that pegasi are not?
Hmm, I can't think of much else to really question, though if I can think of more, to ask I will.
2779741 My father briefly served in the US army. The same for my godfather and maternal grandfather. It is all army all the time ;)
I view unicorns filling roles that their magic suits them for. Iridescence can create shields so a bodyguard makes sense. Others can heal and are medics. That sort of thing. Plenty of unicorns also just serve generally. Especially those not adept at magic.
2779794 The way you said it, had me wondering. My family was a long navy line, in various postings, from nuclear sub commanding, to merchant marines, or as those whom were trained back before amphibious assaults were a thing.
I am ineligible for service myself. Due to a complication of physical and neurological traits. And so, more so, my knowledge is often in the history of war, (its good and bad, and how rare the former is.) rather than current or modern organization.
The nature of the three tribes creates a military strategists dream nearly, in terms of both flexibility and versatility. But overall, the ranks, and politics, are something, well the latter, i despise with a purple passion. Still, its neat to see how this works into the application of the story.
I always had a simlar wiew on the topic but you put it into words quite skillfully. I could only argue a bit with the hierarchy as it's a bit more of a napoleonic era army in my mind but it's debatable.
I wonder when will we get the weapon details...
It's always interesting to me to see how others interpret the setup of the Royal Guard, and how they fit into the larger scheme of things.
Your Guard, for example, is substantially larger than mine — about 40 times larger — but also fills the roles of military, police, and bodyguards.