Sex and the Single Alicorn · 7:00am May 16th, 2015
Introduction: One question unanswered (and very likely to remain unanswered) in canon about Celestia and her sister is the issue of their sexual activity. Are they virginal, promiscuous, or somewhere in between? What is the definition of promiscuity, anyway, when one is nigh-immortal? They're semi-divine, yes, but concepts of the proper behavior of divinity vary wildly.
I. What Is Known:
The Sisters are single, in the sense that neither of them is or apparently ever has been married. They have no known offspring. However, Prince Blueblood is apparently in some way Celestia's nephew, which raises the question of whether the relationship is adoptive, biological or purely rhetorical. In show-canon, Discord apparently has a thing for Celestia; we don't know if she does return or has ever returned his sentiments, or to what degree. Princess Celestia in IDW comics canon has a True Love, the Mirror-Sombra, and her love with him has apparently lasted for many centuries -- they're both either immortal or very long-lived, and for all we know, Mirror-Sombra may regain his sanity and find his way back to her. Again in IDW comics canon, Princess Luna is capable of flirtatious conduct, and once flirted with Big Mac at a festival.
II. Possibilities:
A. Celibacy: The Sisters don't experience sexual desire, because they are sui generis entities who lack any reproductive urge; alternately, they have some incredibly strict morality which forbids them to ever have sex with anypony (or anyone, considering who canonically seems attracted to Celestia). Hence they are both virgins and probably will remain so for ever.
This seems improbable based on their behavior in the comics. I would consider it very likely that Celestia and Sombra have been lovers, as they've apparently been seeing each other for several centuries. She acts as if she desires him. Luna has no known actual lovers, but she was willing to flirt with Big Mac, whom she doesn't really know all that well; obviously, if Big Mac had responded better, they might have begun seeing one another and this might well have led to some sort of sexual relationship.
It would also, if true, make them far more alien to normal Ponies than they seem to be. Ordinary Ponies experience sexual attraction, fall in love, have sex and produce offspring. The Sisters are strange, yes, but they don't seem to be that strange. If they are goddesses, they are goddesses who are capable of love and friendship and have decided to incarnate themselves in the flesh in part in order to enjoy their incarnations.
B. Chastity: The Sisters experience sexual desire and would be okay with sex within marriage. However, it is very difficult for immortal, super-intelligent and super-powerful beings to find proper matches. Celestia might have made such a match with Mirror-Sombra, had not the nature of the dimensional barrier blighted their love. Luna, apparently, has never made such a match.
This is certainly possible. One might argue that it's improbable that immortal beings with ordinary carnal desires could or would avoid full sexual involvement for so long, but then, how long is too long on the timescale of immortals? We have no idea whether or not Celestia and Sombra ever got to consummate their love (my guess is very much "yes" given that each very clearly wanted the other). We also don't know if Luna's flirtation with Big Mac was exceptional or normal behavior on her part (my guess is "yes" to both: she found him unusually attractive to her for a variety of reasons and thus acted abnormally aggressive toward him; and this is fairly normal behavior for an aroused Luna).
It's certain that both Celestia and Luna are in their own ways extremely good and honorable Ponies, so I wouldn't rule it out, even though it's not the path I've chosen for them.
C. One True Love: The Sisters experience sexual desire and are okay with sex with their one true loves. The same point about the difficulty of immortal semi-goddesses to find proper matches applies. Celestia feels this way toward Mirror-Sombra; Luna either toward no one (or she has one hell of a tragic backstory).
This is certainly possible, and indeed seems probable to me as their self-imagined ideal states. Both Celestia and Luna clearly find love good, and almost certainly would rather find true loves and continue to enjoy the loves of such beings than be lonely or perpetually searching for love. Whether or not they actually live like this is another matter.
In the Shadow Wars Storyverse, Celestia first hoped to find this sort of love with Dissy; when he revealed himself as her foe, she never totally abandoned her hope of saving him from his own dark side and at least resuming a friendship with him. She at some later point fell in love with the Mirror-Sombra. She hasn't given up on saving him yet. Luna also had similar (though less well-founded hopes) regarding Dissy; on her romantic history after that, see the next possibility. She has recently realized that Twilight Sparkle is the reincarnation of Dusk Skyshine, the Pony she knew in an earlier incarnation over four millennia ago, and the one she regards as her greatest love; she is trying to decide what to do about this while carrying out a rather slow and courtly flirtation with her.
D. Morality: The Sisters experience sexual desire and take lovers -- but only when they feel serious love toward the beings involved. Unfortunately for them, since the courting pool of eligible immortals or at least semi-immortals is very small, for the most part they fall in love with mortals. Their lovers inevitably die on them within a century or so, leaving them bereaved and once again lonely. Though they are not at all promiscuous, simple mathematics means that both of them have had a very large number of lovers, by the standards of Ponies with normal lifespans. Only sexually-obsessed Ponies such as Cloud Kicker or Stormfront surpass them in such statistics.
This is, essentially, what I went with for the Shadow Wars Storyverse. Celestia or Luna finds deep and serious love with a stallion (both Sisters are mostly heterosexual) and this love normally endures for decades. Inevitably, the stallion dies. Each Sister generally averages 1-2 lovers per century. This makes them very moral by most standards; but in over two and a half millennia of life incarnate on the Earth, this means that they have had dozens of lovers. (Luna was lonely, and insane for other reasons, during her Lunar exile).
Celestia's love for Sombra exists in the Shadow Wars Storyverse. Unfortunately, she very rarely got to see him, because of the danger of a Convergence. During the decades and sometimes centuries between their meetings, she fell in love with other Ponies. Also, during Luna's exile, there were points at which Celestia nearly went insane. More on that later.
TV canon may incline toward this, but it's hard to tell.
E. Discretion: The Sisters take lots of lovers -- not only when seriously in love, but sometimes just because they rather like the stallions inovlved. If they only average a lover every 1-10 years, they would still have incredible sexual experience -- several hundred lovers in the course of their long lifetimes. They do, however, keep most of this sexual activity secret from their subjects, because they do not want to undermine the morality of the Realm they have built. Occasionally, they also fall seriously in love.
This is possible, though unless Celestia is very good at concealing this behavior, it's inconsistent with Twilight Sparkle's obvious attitudes toward sexuality. The comic book series, which plays Twilight's prudishness and the raunchiness of some other Ponies up for laughs, may incline toward this theory. One other problem with this is that such a strategy makes it very likely on Celestia's part that she would find herself manipulated by her romantic favorites.
In the Shadow Wars Storyverse, Celestia at the points of her maximum despair and loneliness slipped into this sort of behavior. She is embarrassed by the memory, and feels guilty because she knows that her overwhelming charisma meant that it was far too easy to take advantage of the love of others whom she did not love sufficiently. Luna almost never behaved like this: Luna considered doing this when she first returned; before she finished coming All the Way Back. Luna's normal reaction toward negative emotions is to go out looking for a proper foe to fight; she's more the agonist than the hedonist.
F. Promiscuity: The Sisters take lots and lots of lovers -- often several a year. In the course of their long lifetimes they've gone through several thousand lovers each. There is no way to keep this sort of behavior secret from their Ponies, and for the most part they don't even try to do so. They might possibly fall seriously in love as well, though it would be difficult to see them taking most stallions all that seriously.
This is highly improbable, because there is not even a hint in either canon of them behaving in this fashion or of the Ponies around them reacting as if they believe they behave in such a fashion. The assumptions of both Twilight Sparkle regarding love and life, and of Rarity regarding the Court at Canterlot, argue strongly against this.
In the Shadow Wars Storyverse, Celestia considered doing this when she was really lonely. She built a seraglio in the back of her Palace at Canterlot, and actually got to the point of staffing it. When she stepped in and saw all the madly-adoring, hopeful male eyes fixed on her, she realized that she could not possibly go through with it. She richly-rewarded all the stallions, tried her best to ensure that they all had good lives, and locked up the building, which was thus never put to its intended purpose. It still sits behind the Palace, locked and magically-preserved, a perpetual reminder to herself that she is imperfect. Celestia views this as the moment in her life when she nearly slipped ... but managed to avoid slipping into ... see below.
G. Molestia: One or both of the Sisters is an insanely-obsessed sexual athlete who often takes multiple lovers every night. The Court at Canterlot resembles what Caligula or Catherine the Great only wished to have, as these historical figures were limited by their constitutions and mortalities. The very concept of sexual morality is absurd to the Sisters -- though one of them may have responded to these absurd levels of debauchery by becoming a mostly-demisexual though still romantic gamer and slowly falling in love with Derpy.
This is extremely improbable, though possible enough that Celestia sees "Molestia" as one of her possible modes of insanity, something into which she must avoid slipping (she knows that she's a hedonist and that her absolute power means that she must be the main check on her own potential madness). In the Shadow Wars Storyverse, Celestia has seen Molestias in the Pool of Truth -- and she has also observed that in such Equestrias, she has become merely a figurehead ruler, whom everypony loves and to whom everypony is loyal but is treated as an especially dangerous and dirty-minded child, kept happy with a steady supply of satyromaniacs and nymphomaniacs, and kept far away from the actual business of government.
III. The Mores of Paradise Estate
The key formative influence in the Shadow Wars Storyverse on the morals of Celestia and Luna were the mores of Paradise Estate, which were a modified form of the customs of Dream Castle 6000 years before the present day, and almost 3500 years before the birth of Celestia and Luna in their current incarnations. It was from here that Celestia and Luna developed their fundamental concepts of sexual decency and indecency, which continue in many ways to govern their behavior 2500 years later, even though they both know that Paradise Estate was a very unusual culture by Pony standards -- and that it was far from identical to the mores of Equestria.
At the time of the Advent of the Megan, the high Iron Age civilization that the Ponies had once attained was at the point of collapsing before the onslaught of the Monsters, especially of the Viprallans led by Tirek the Annihilator. In the cultural group of which Dream Castle was one of the last surviving representatives, the formal institution of marriage and of the family had been abandoned, to be replaced by a separation into female and male herds, the sedentary Little Sister and nomadic Big Brother herds. The Ponies still knew friendship, courtship and love between the sexes; they did not mate merely at random like wild beasts; but the lovers saw each other (and their children of the opposite sex) only for about a month every year.
In the Reclamation, the system of the sex-segregated herds was ended and the institutions of marriage and the family restored, on the basis received from the books of the Megan and popularized by Heart Throb. However, the mares of Paradise Estate -- formerly the Little Sister Herd of Dream Castle -- had been rendered emmortal by the Rainbow of Harmony. As long as they remained at or kept returning to Paradise Estate, they were Undying, but their lovers could not benefit from this effect. Thus, the Undying Mares -- who had saved Ponykind and restored happiness to their species -- received the gift of immortality at the price of having to lose it if they instead chose marital happiness.
The most responsible of the Undying -- and those who felt the least confident -- chose to remain Undying. The most responsible ones did so, because they felt that it was their job to guide the growing new Pony civilizations through the centuries of futurity; the least confident ones, because they felt that on the outside they would have sacrificed emmortality and failed to obtain happiness. Their ultimate goal was to raise all Pony civilization to a level where all would be emmortal, and hence their Long Watch could end and they could finally seek happiness.
Over thirty-five centuries, Pony civilization fell and rose and fell and rose and fell and rose again as the Undying kept their faithful Watch. By the time that Celestia, Luna and Dissy were born at Paradise Estate, only the most dedicated of the Ponies of Dream Valley -- and a few very frightened ones, such as Shady -- still remained. The others had all wed and left the Estate.
The ones who remained neither married, nor mated promiscuously, but instead took long-term lovers and saw them regularly, often until these lovers died. This was the expected pattern of behavior on which Celestia and Luna modeled their own morality, both indirectly in terms of observing the behavior of others, and directly through conversations with their role models -- in particular, their mother, Mimic; and their beloved mentor Wind Whistler. This was also the pattern which Discord learned, though in his case he partly rebelled against it due to his chaotic and mercurial nature.
In the Shadow Wars Storyverse, this is why the Sisters behave as they do. This is why they have never married, and why they conduct their love affairs with a certain dignity and strong sexual morality. They are living up to the examples shown them by the Undying, whose memories and culture they still cherish, two and a half millennia after Discord's madness ended it all. Even Discord, ultimately, orients himself by that morality. He still rejects much of it, mind you, but he understands where they're coming from. And he's rejected less of it than he realizes; his very assumptions about life and love are either based upon it, or based on deliberate opposition to it, which means he's still referencing it.
IV. Offspring
This is of course the main biological purpose of sex. In the Shadow Wars Storyverse, it is one reason why Fusion and Gravity chose to incarnate this time as fertile, immortal Ponies. Fusion intended all along for the superior characteristics of the Alicorn genotype to become widely spread through Ponykind. Of course, this is not exactly the way that Celestia and Luna see it -- things always seem simpler on the Cosmic level, in ways which are far more complex for their Avatars.
Their usual technique has been to bear occasional children to their most favored lovers, usually having them be raised by their fathers' families. After 2500 years, most of Equestria, especially in the leading families of all three Kinds, bears some of their heritage. Of particular relevance to the main story, Princess Luna by Prince Pathfinder Metallic (descendant of Princess Platinum Metallic) is ancestral to the Bluebloods, Twilights and Lulamoons; and by Night Watcher to the Nights; she is thus Princess Twilight Sparkle's foremother by both paternal and maternal lines.
Alicorns can exert complete control over their biologies, something that Cadance is just learning to do and Twilight Sparkle has not yet learned how to do, but which both Celestia and Luna have long since mastered. This means that Celestia and Luna can control the timing and intensity of their estrus cycles and whether or not they are fertile; having the powers of all five Kinds, they also have all the powers of Changeling Royalty: they can store sperm for extended periods of time, or even change sex in the process of Shifting. Cadance has begun to suspect that this is possible, though she hasn't yet figured out how to Shift. Twilight doesn't even suspect this yet.
V. Sex and the Married Alicorn
There is one Alicorn whom we are certain even in canon is sexually-active. This is, of course, Princess Cadenza mi Amore; or to render her name in modern Equestrian rather than Crystal-Imperial, Princess Cadance Love. We know that she is sexually active because she is married, to Twilight Sparkle's elder brother Shining Armor. It seems very likely in canon that they will soon have a child, Skyla.
We also know something of Princess Cadance's romantic history from the comics canon. Before she knew Shining Armor, she was in some way involved with Buck Withers, but does not seem to have liked him very much, because she very actively arranged to dump him to become involved with Shining Armor. Given that Cadance is canonically very nice, it is very likely that as she got to know Buck, she was repelled by his increasing display of aggressive arrogance. Given their age and the way she turned against him, it's unlikely that they were lovers.
We know that after that point, she beame romantically involved with Shining Armor. What we do not know is what happened in between secondary school and their marriage. This is the fault of the clumsy way in which Shining and Cadance were introduced in A Canterlot Wedding, with Twilight Sparkle totally failing to realize that "Cadenza Mi Amore" was the same person as her childhood friend (and Shining's old girlfriend) Cadance.
This implies that at some point between their secondary school romance and their later marriage, they broke up. There is absolutely no canonical evidence regarding the reasons for such a rupture, and given the intensity of their mutual attraction before and afterward, it's difficult to see why they would do so, unless one or both of them believed that their careers would separate them and that it was unfair to ask the other to remain faithful over a long separation. Though, mind you, given said intensity, this would have to be a fairly long and complete separation for the decision to be plausible.
Either that, or Twilight Sparkle really is clueless when the emotions of others are involved, and she truly did fail to notice how intense and deep was the attraction between her brother and Cadance, and hence it never occurred to her that Shining might marry Cadance some day. There are other possible motives here for Twilght's lack of insight here, something I'll get into later.
We don't know much about Cadance's specific attitudes toward sex in canon. She was raised in modern Equestrian culture, so her fundamental assumptions are probably those of modern Equestrian mares. On the other hand, she's the Alicorn of Love, she's super-intelligent and has an elemental understanding of the emotion, which may also translate into having an unusually-strong sex drive, and possibly being promiscuous to a degree uncommon among modern Equestrians.
Some fanfic writers believe that to function as the Alicorn of Love, she must also experience every possible sort of sexuality, which would preclude sexual exclusivity with Shining, and at least must imply that she's had other lovers. Others point out that she's the Alicorn of Love rather than Sex, so this does not follow. I'd call the case poorly-proven in either direction, and haven't yet written any stories focused on her.
VI. Sex and the Virgin Alicorn
Finally, there's Twilight Sparkle. Show canon strongly implies that not only is she a virgin, but extremely lacking in any romantic experience. When we first meet her, she's young (probably in her late teens) and extremely focused on her studies to the point of having no friends. It's very obvious that she doesn't step out with anypony (she doesn't even attend the parties of the other young gentry of Canterlot). In the course of the series, she never becomes romantically involved with anypony, and in the one instance where she experiences a romantic attraction (to Flash Sentry, and oddly enough mostly to the Humanoid Flash Sentry, she becomes incredibly flustered by any physical contact with him. This makes it painfully-obvious that she may never even have been romantically kissed before.
In the Shadow Wars Storyverse canon, Twilight is by far the least sexually experienced of the Mane Six, even including the other two (Rainbow Dash and Pinkie PIe) who are also virgins at the point of Luna's Return. She's never been in love with or even all that strongly sexually attracted to anypony, and she's never even romantically kissed anypony. She exaggerates when she claims to have had no friends, but not by very much essentially, when she became Celestia's student she found that she couldn't trust anypony else's claim to friendly feelings for her, and hence cut everypony else off completely.
Twilight was in any case raised by an old and respectable family of the Canterlot gentry, and has absorbed from them a strong sexual morality and code of decorous conduct from them. Luna considers her upbringing to have been sheltered, and Luna's judgement is quite accurate in this regard. While my Equestria is in general sexually-conservative by modern American standards, Twilight Sparkle is sexually-conservative even by Equestrian standards. She is also, in some ways, a romantic idealist: she hopes one day to marry and do so as part of a love-match, even though she knows that this may not be possible, especially given her Ascent and Coronation. Just because she doesn't contract extreme crushes on Ponies whom she's never met doesn't mean that she is utterly-lacking in romantic sentiments.
She is not, however, all that naive. Many writers miss the point that Twilight was raised at Court in her nation's capital. While my Celestia keeps a reasonably moral Court, she is quite familiar with the behavior that can derive from the aphrodisiac effects of power and the convergence of sexual exploitation and power seeking. Familiar as a distant observer, to be sure, but that is not the same thing as being ignorant. Twilight knows things about the behavior of the Canterlot aristocracy that would shock Rarity, though for the most part Twilight chooses to keep a discreet silence regarding such matters. Twilight's morals are strong, but she knows precisely the sort of disgraceful conduct which she tries to avoid, and behaves accordingly.
VII. Ponies Whom Everypony Wants To Know
Some writers miss the point that any and all the Alicorns are tremendously desirable, and none would have any problem at all simply finding lovers, especially if sex were all that they were looking for. Even in canon, it's extremely obvious that all of them, even Twilight Sparkle, has immense social status.
In the Shadow Wars Storyverse, Fusion originally created the Alicorn Pony Incarnation to act as a social and sexual superstimulus to ordinary Ponies. Any Alicorn is perceived by other Ponies as being tremendously intelligent, charismatic, beautiful and sexually-desirable. When one adds to this the tremendous wealth, magical might and political power of all Alicorns, it should be obvious that absolutely none of them have any problem getting a date to the prom (Princess Cadance wound up with two).
Conclusion: I hope that this has been a useful framework for the discussion of the romantic and sexual histories and prospects of the Alicorns. Comments are extremely welcome.
Headcanon that Discord has a thing for Celestia always make me laugh. It is a pure fiction and next episode will be another where he ignore that she even exist.
The MLP wiki says that Blueblood is related to Celestia and Luna via their mother.
http://mlp.wikia.com/wiki/Prince_Blueblood
i thought Twilight was just Ace?
I like this. I very much agree with your interpretation of Twilight, not naive, just inexperienced, although my reasoning is slightly different, despite agreeing with yours; she obsessively studies everything, I'd find it very hard to believe she hasn't read up on it at some point.
An insightful breakdown of the possible sexual mores of the tetrarchy given the evidence available. And I wouldn't be at all surprised if Twilight's theoretical knowledge had considerable breadth. Curiosity and expert research capabilities are a formidable combination...
Also, you have an open bold tag in the first section header.
3072752
I never claimed that Discord's "thing for Celestia" was even slightly exclusive, on his part. At least not since he found his true nature and went mad, over 2500 years ago. Nor, for that matter, hers for his, after he destroyed Paradise Estate and killed her current Avatar's biological mother, Mimc. In the Shadow Wars Storyverse, Celestia and Discord were only seriously in love for a couple of weeks, 1000 years Before The Harmony and thus 2500 years Before Luna's Return.
3072756
That's certainly possible; nopony ever claimed that Mimic was a virgin.
3072779
Asexual? Why?
Simply because a character is virginal does not imply that she has absolutely no interest in ever having sex. Twilight is also, please note, gently reared and quite young. In the Shadow Wars Storyverse, she's 17 at the time of Luna's Return and 22 now; she would see herself as having plenty of time to find a husband, and she'd be right even if she wasn't also immortal.
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3072831
Twilight of course has studied Pony biology and (being equine, young and sexually-inactive) lingered on accounts of Pony sexuality with rather more interest than, say, descriptions of the digestive tract. Also, my version of Twilight has become interested in trashy romance novels since meeting Rarity, who is in some ways either a bad or a good influence on her, depending on one's opinion of trashy romance novels.
Twilight's mostly an idealist but also has a cynical side to her, which is a product of the ways in which reality fails to meet her romantic ideals. She's observed a royal Court, and she's seen plenty of examples of adultery, philliping, lewdness and general bad conduct among the rich and influential, Ponies who have no excuse for their failure to behave better. At least that's Twilight Sparkle's opinion of it.
3072779 She definitely isn't in Humanoid form, at least. I suppose that she might still be asexual in her normal Pony form, but I see no reason at all to assume that. All we know is that she isn't obvious about her sexuality, which is an extremely different thing.
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Twilight is sexually-restrained for reasons of both moral standards and fundamental shyness. This doesn't mean that she doesn't experience sexual attraction, or hope for a happy marriage in which good sex figures prominently.
3073539 Absolutely. 3072779 's interpretation hasn't been contradicted onscreen in Pony form, but I think yours is most likely. It lines up with her personality perfectly. And, for that matter, I'm much the same way myself - if someone made a cartoonified show of my life, I'd probably come off the same way as Twilight, but every point in your last comment is very true of me.
Moving on to Cadance... Especially in your fanon, being the Alicorn of Love (even if that's taken to mean Alicorn of Romantic Love) would not mean at all that she supports or practices free love. Celestia is the Alicorn of the Sun, but we don't see her raising the sun at midnight. Your Luna is Gravity, but we don't see her collapsing everything into a black hole. So, even if Cadance is Eros, why would that mean she practices orgies?
they also have all the powers of Changeling Royalty: they can store sperm for extended periods of time, or even change sex in the process of Shifting. Cadance has begun to suspect that this is possible, though she hasn't yet figured out how to Shift.
Oh dear, poor Shining Armor may get one heck of a surprise someday.
I like the points raised here. I mostly feel that Celly and Luna have had occasional lovers, maybe once or twice a century; but once in a very great while they've had short and torrid* affairs with stallions, or maybe even members of other species (dragons and so forth) who impressed them mightily.
I also just like the idea of both Princesses having some mortal descendants who they know of and check in on from time to time. Then again, I personally think that they've both sometimes turned themselves into fillies -- Earth pony, Unicorn, or Pegasus - just to play innocently with some foals.
* -- Well, torrid by Equestrian standards, anyway.