I thought I was done. I had marched through all six of our main ponies, and even covered that little lizard that hangs with them. But they kept crying out, "DO CELESTIA! DO LUNA! DO THE PRINCESSES!"

So fine, I'll do them. I'll do them good.

---

Equestria is ruled by two very powerful ponies: Princess Celestia and Princess Luna. The elder sister, Celestia, brings out the sun every morning, while the younger, Luna, controls the moon and the night. For generations, the two ruled together peacefully, until Luna figured out a significant downside to her position. You see, ponies sleep at night, which means they miss out on all her hard work and her beautiful night. After enduring this for so long, she finally broke completely, bonded with some sort of evil presence (according to Faust), and became Nightmare Moon. Celestia tried to reason with her, but Nightmare refused to listen, instead planning to plunge Equestria into eternal darkness under her tyrannical rule. With no other choice, Celestia utilized the Elements of Harmony to banish her sister into the moon, and was forced to take control of the night as well as the day. A thousand years later, Nightmare Moon escaped, but was finally defeated for good by the new Bearers of the Elements of Harmony. The Elements stripped Luna of her ill-gotten dark powers, returning her to a weaker, powerless state before the sister she had tried to destroy. The two reconciled, and have once again shared power equally since.

And then Season 2 happened.

As it turns out, another being, Discord, ruled Equestria before Celestia and Luna. Together, they utilized the Elements of Harmony to turn the villain to stone and took control of the country themselves. Shortly after Luna's return, however, Discord managed to break free, and without the Elements Celestia was powerless. She was also unable to stop Chrysalis during the wedding, as the Changeling Queen was hopped up on love juice and able to overpower her in a very pitched Kamehameha battle. Luna, meanwhile, regained her former powers and returned to Ponyville to make friends. Unfortunately, she picked Nightmare Night to do this, and even worse, ran into that foul abomination known as Season Two Pinkie Pie, so her plans ended in ruin. Still, with Twilight's cunning and a little lesson on the true meaning of Nightmare Night, her popularity among ponies grew three times that night. And then she slept through the wedding.

-

The true origins of the two sisters is still a mystery. For the longest time, it was an accepted fact that the two were the Creator-Gods of Equestria, and indeed the entire world. "Return of Harmony," however, snapped such theories in half with the introduction of Discord, and "Hearth's Warming Eve" took it a step further by saying that Unicorns used to move the sun and moon with either of them, albeit as a communal effort. The latter could be taken as being conjecture and mythology condensed through thousands of years of history, but the former is a hard, solid fact. Ponies were around before the Princesses.

Still, the fact remains that the two have been around for at least a thousand years. It's uncertain whether or not they are actually immortal or just really, really long lived, but the fact remains that they are very old ponies. There have been a lot of different theories on the subject, from them having immortality thanks to the Elements of Harmony (and thus, the Mane 6 having the same condition), to them being part of an entire subspecies of pony, to them even being Physical Gods, but so far there is no definite answer.

Celestia is the older of the two, and for most of the current generation of ponies' lives, the only ruler they ever had. As a result, she is given a great deal of reverence, to the point where ponies will substitute her name for "God." (Whether or not there's an actual religion involved is up in the air.) Celestia, for her part, feels rather uncomfortable about all this. Again, she's a very old pony, but she's still a pony. For a clear example of this, just check her reaction when Rarity started kissing her hooves in "Sweet and Elite." She was squicked out of her mind. That, and getting bombarded with a thousand thank yous for what is (to her) a minor favor can be a little off-putting.

Celestia has a very definite playful side. When in public, she tries her best to make all the ponies around her feel comfortable, whether through her smooth, angelic voice or through practical jokes. This tends to get magnified by the fandom into outright trolling, but for the most part, she just pulls a few jokes here and there to keep things interesting. This same love of practical jokes extends to her pet phoenix, Philomena, who is especially creative when it comes time to regenerate. Still, she knows when a joke has gone too far, and was quick to force her pet to apologize for antagonizing Fluttershy when the Pegasus tried to help her.

When a problem occurs, she rarely intercedes directly, instead sending Twilight and others out to investigate and complete the tasks themselves. In addition, she tends to be manipulative, and knows exactly how to work ponies to get the best results. In the first episode, she got Twilight to reform the Elements of Harmony and save her sister by seemingly dismissing her concerns and sending her off on what Twilight saw as a pointless task, while also telling her to make friends. As a result, her faithful student met five ponies, who followed her to the library when she was desperately looking for anything on the Elements of Harmony. Twilight was then forced to take the other five into the Everfree Forest with her, where they triumphed over Nightmare Moon's obstacles, and thus gave Twilight the clues she needed to connect each to their Element. And in the end, her student and her new friends managed to return her sister. Even better, the only reason Ponyville was there was because Celestia entrusted an otherwise empty patch of land to a family of traveling pilgrim ponies, who then built up Sweet Apple Acres and the rest of the town soon afterward. Needless to say, Celestia plays for the long game.

Still, don't mistake playfulness for laziness. Unlike Disney's bastardization of princesses, Celestia actually works for a living. The exact nature and extent changes from story to story, from a dictatorship to a parliamentary system, but the fact remains that Celestia actually runs her country. She's also not afraid to throw down to save her subjects, and would have defeated Chrysalis had other factors not been in play. And when Discord arrived, she immediately called up the Mane 6 to give them the Elements. She has absolutely no love for the God of Chaos, and was determined to not let Equestria fall back under his management.

On the other end of the coin is Luna, her younger sister and Princess of the Night. Once, the two had stood together as heroes, but after such a long time of being ignored by her subjects, Luna finally broke down and transformed into Nightmare Moon. During her banishment, however, Luna herself was seemingly forgotten, but Nightmare Moon lingered on as a generic evil spirit to scare foals with. Eventually, Nightmare Moon returned, was defeated for good, and Luna was returned to normal, albeit in a weakened state. (This also serves as an easy way to dismiss her absence from the first season, as she was still recovering from what had happened.) When she returned in the second season, she sported a new look; she was taller, darker in color, and had a new mane and tail resembling a mass of stars.

Like her sister, Luna enjoys a good prank, and has some playfulness to her demeanor. That, however, is where the similarity in personalities ends. Luna very much behaves like the younger of the two, as she can be obnoxious, short-tempered, and at times downright rude. Her reaction to the ponies of Ponyville being scared of her was to effectively tell them to screw themselves before marching away to sulk. When things went wrong again later on, she brought a bunch of fake spiders to life, doubled their size, and actually thought that would give her more points on the spider-tossing game. And when the ponies freaked out over being swarmed by giant spiders, she cancelled Nightmare Night FOR-E-VER in another temper tantrum. She's also rather pessimistic, if not outright depressed, throughout the entirety of "Luna Eclipsed;" as far as she's concerned, nopony has ever liked her, and they never will. Beneath her haughtiness, she is just a normal pony that wants to be loved and appreciated.

It doesn't help that she lacks her sister's self control. Luna is NOT afraid to show off her powers whenever the mood strikes her. Her very entrance to Ponyville was accompanied by thunderclouds, lightning bolts, and a windstorm. Granted, a lot of this is because of her youth; she is very fiery when she gets upset, and it doesn't take a lot to get her to that point. A lot of this seems to stem from constantly living in Celestia's shadow, as well as her guilt over that whole "Nightmare Moon" thing.

And then there's the other problem with being gone for a thousand years. Luna was not conscious during her banishment (or at least, did not get the same information Nightmare Moon had), and as a result missed a thousand years' worth of scientific, cultural, and linguistic developments. As a result, her return to Ponyville was a disaster from the word "go." For much of the episode, she spoke entirely in the Royal Canterlot Voice, an antiquated form of speech that involves speaking of yourself in plural and shouting every word you said. This was a bit of a problem, as Luna's voice is incredibly loud (magically enhanced, perhaps?) and is capable of sending ponies flying, dislodging scenery, and messing up costumes. She also spoke using "thee" and "thou," long-abandoned terms meant to imply superiority over those she spoke to; even the tone of her voice implied a sort of disdain for those beneath her. That's not because she's a bad pony, mind you. It's just that, back in the day, that was how royalty was supposed to behave. Things had to get done, so you had to make sure those you commanded listened.

Still, these points gradually disappeared over the course of "Luna Eclipsed," and by the time she returned in "A Canterlot Wedding," she spoke in a normal tone and dropped the Royal We. She still didn't use contractions, but otherwise, she seems to finally be adjusting to the modern era.

-

Normally, I would go right into character relationships here, but there is one other important thing to discuss about Luna: the fandom.

In a fandom where every pony, animal, inanimate objects, and background prop gets a biography and a few dozen fanfics minimum, Luna was the first one to explode onto the scene. She was a genuinely interesting character, with a tragic backstory and a lot of potential for great stories. Indeed, Faust had intended for her to become a second mentor to Twilight, albeit a far darker and more pragmatic one. Unfortunately, these plans were killed by Hasbro, who thought she was "too dark" for a show that only little girls would ever watch. So she was cast to sea, with only the Internet to give her a home. And boy, did we do just that.

For those who came into the fandom after "Luna Eclipsed," it's hard to overstate the impact Luna had on the burgeoning community. For the longest time, she was the most popular character in any fanfic. You couldn't go a day on Equestria Daily without five or six new Luna fics. Her character was picked clean by hundreds of writers, all with a different interpretation of the princess. When it was announced that she would be back for the second season, every brony on the net exploded with glee. But who was this fandom Luna?

Luna's definite fanon character was pretty much solidified by "Progress," a series of short stories all revolving around Luna trying to adjust to the modern day. In them, Luna was an incredibly intelligent pony (smarter than even Celestia) with poor social skills, who behaved like a cross between Twilight and Fluttershy. She was better than Celestia in almost everything, and yet couldn't read directions on how to make popcorn. She also had an abacus, which soon transformed from something she used because it was more familiar than a calculator, to a security blanket, and finally to some sort of perverse crush she had. Sadly, this stupid gag soon made its way to other fics, as almost every Luna fic had to make at least one joke about her abacus, Abacus.

After "Progress," most fics took this basic template and applied their own interpretation to it. In some, Luna was wacky and silly in ways Celestia could barely fathom, while in others, she was so frustrated with trying to adjust to her new life that she contemplated suicide. No matter what, though, one thing was important: Luna was always better than Celestia. Always. No exceptions. It wasn't Luna's fault she went evil. Celestia was responsible for everything that went wrong. Even in the ones where Luna was still evil and killed Celestia, or Nightmare Moon won, everything would be better off for all.

As for poor Celestia, she was quickly labeled any number of horrible things. Some called her at troll, out to make her subjects miserable for her own misery. Others said she was a molester, who used her position of power to sexually molest every stallion, mare and foal in Equestria. She was forced to take all the blame for Nightmare Moon, while Luna's past was whitewashed so that she was the proper ruler of Equestria. The boldest even said she Celestia had rewritten history to cover her hostile takeover of Equestria. Either way, she was the enemy, and Luna was everypony's salvation.

Another trademark of the period was "Sad Luna." Sad Luna was another subgenre of fanfiction where Luna would be sad about her past as Nightmare Moon, until one of the Mane 6 would come along and make her feel better. Shipping may or may not ensue, but the point is, these fics were everywhere. The problem is, these stories were ridiculously easy to write, and had a tendency to get slammed onto Equestria Daily on a continuous basis. As a result, a lot of these really weren't reading.

And then you have the New Luna Republic.

From what I understand, the NLR began as a roleplaying game where Luna tried to lead a rebellion to overthrow her tyrannical sister. Given Luna's popularity, however, it soon attracted a lot of art and fics of its own, and before long it broke into the fandom's mainstream. Luna became a symbol of change, of hope, of opposition to Celestia's cruel dictatorship. Because, you know, Celestia was so evil in the show. Even worse was how everypony on the show tended to side with Luna, even Twilight. This little bit of the fandom got so bad that even other fans began to shun them, wanting nothing to do with such a patently ridiculous interpretation of their beloved Night Princess.

So, what happened exactly? Well, everything changed when "Luna Eclipsed" happened. Nobody expected to see Luna return like she did, as everything about her was redesigned to actually make her a unique and interesting character. It is said that the moment Luna appeared, a thousands fanfics cried out in pain before being silenced forever. The material fans had spent almost a year building crumbled to dust. In their place, however, came a new, hardier generation of stories. Well, except for the NLR, which still continues to this day. This is despite the fact that Canon!Luna does not seem like the pony to orchestrate a democratic overthrow. She's a traditionalist pony with outdated ideals and values, not a young revolutionary.

Unfortunately, the number of Luna fics began to dry up soon after, and while she still gets lots of attention, none of it reaches the same levels from before "Luna Eclipsed." The problem with giving Luna a canon character to follow was that it made things harder for writers. Part of the reason people like writing about background ponies is because there's no canon to confine their behavior, you're pretty much free to do as you please. But the minute Luna got real screen time, you actually had to make her IC, base her dialogue around her speaking habits, and actually give her a personality not derived by copying the Mane 6. There was still plenty of room to innovate and expand, but now that there were rules you had to follow, writing her stopped being as much fun as before.

-

Celestia's closest relationship is with her student, Twilight. She serves as a mother figure to the mare, as well as serving as her teacher. Twilight, in turn, desires to make Celestia proud of her, and always throws herself into her studies to prove her worth. Unfortunately, Twilight is also terrified of offending Celestia, to the point where she'll go insane at the mere thought of failing to live up to her expectations. When Celestia gets upset with her, Twilight's entire world crumbles. In fact, the time Celestia refused to believe her accusations about Evil!Cadence, her rejection was so bad that it utterly destroyed Twilight entirely, which was something that not even getting uninvited from the wedding and disowned by her brother could do. Celestia's realtionship with the others, however, is more on a ruler/subject level, although she is still friendly towards them.

Luna also has a close relationship with Twilight, but for different reasons. Twilight was the first pony to offer to help Luna make friends, and all throughout Nightmare Night, she was there to try and help her along the way. Unfortunately, she has not had enough time to really make an impression with the others.

By far the most interesting relationship, however, is between each other. Sadly, though, this is left almost entirely to the domain of the fans, as the two are only occasionally on screen at the same time. They do love each other, and take their responsibilities seriously. Banishing Luna was the most terrible thing Celestia ever did, and her schemes seemed to be structured around ensuring that she got her sister back for good. Beyond that, though, things range from the two being perfect sisters, to Canterlot almost collapsing from their constant fighting. Perhaps the two engage in epic games of chess, or play jokes on the castle guards, or even turn the other into a filly. There's a lot of ways to look at it.

-

In the end, the Princesses are among the most popular characters in the show not because they have a strong canon presence, but because they are genuinely intriguing characters with histories worth exploring. Celestia and Luna are a pair of godlike siblings, who rule a prosperous and happy fantasy kingdom by doing actual work and keeping the peace. They have fallen, suffered tragedies, and faced more than a few apocalyptic threats, but still shoulder on regardless. At the same time, they have actual emotions and feelings, and just want the same thing anypony else wants. So yeah, an intriguing pair these two make.

Hopefully Season 3 will actually add to their history.

---

I know someone out there is wondering about the third Alicorn, Princess Mi Amore Cadenza. I didn't mention her here because, really, she isn't on the same level as the three. She is not a thousand years old (she appeared to be a tween or teenager when Twilight was a filly), she is specifically a niece to the two, and she doesn't even rule Equestria. Season 3 pegs her as coming from the Crystal Empire or something like that, but beyond that, we know nothing. And as for destroying everything we know about Celestia and Luna, all she did was re-destroy the fanon Discord's existence already wrecked. I'd love to discuss her more, but I think I'll wait for Season 3 before I do.

So yeah, that's that. I hope it was to your satisfaction.