And unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in her wings; and ye shall go forth and leap like fatted calves.

She is the princess of the sun, she holds all her little ponies in her heart. She has shielded Equestria for at least a thousand years. When the lord of chaos enslaved the ponies with his unrule of chaos, she stood with her sister and tricked the trickster. When the dark unicorn enslaved the crystal ponies she banished the dark lord but was unable to save the crystal ponies. And when her sister succumbed to nightmare and darkness, she turned her greatest weapon against her own flesh and blood, imprisoning Luna in the moon for a thousand years, all to protect her little ponies. She is the benevolent queen, the warrior princess, the omnibenevolent mother, the patient teacher. She is the power of the sun, she fights to protect her own with the fury of a solar storm.

Or does she?

When her sister returned from her exile, she was nowhere to be seen. When Discord was freed, she vanishes until he is imprisoned in stone. When Chrysalis reveals herself, she is defeated in moments. When Sombra returns, she sends her young student to face an ancient evil. When Discord's ancient trap comes to fruition, she is almost immediately captured.When Tirek rampages across Equestria, she hides her power and refuses to face him on his terms.

She controls the sun, she is the all benevolent God-Empress of Equestria. She has completely failed to protect her subjects every time she is challenged. Twilight purified Luna. Twilight imprisoned Discord and her friend Fluttershy latter reformed him. Cadence defeated Chrysalis. Spike and Cadence destroyed Sombra. Twilight removes Discord's vines. Twilight handily defeats Tirek.

So how powerful is Celestia again?

There is no doubt that once she was the most powerful being on the planet, but her power has been waning. She is at least a thousand years old, perhaps as old a 2 or 3 thousand years, and now this late in her life he is handed defeat after defeat, she fails to win, she declines to fight, she entrusts Twilight to defeat the threat. She is aging. In fact, it may be entirely fair to say she is dying.

We rarely see her fight or fly. She wears her hair over one eye. In the current timeline of the show, she has never won. Every victory is in the ancient past. Are these the accumulation of thousands of years of injuries?

So here is my question to all who read this. Is Celestia dying? Is she preparing Twilight to take up the mantle of the Sun? Was Luna paused during her thousand years in the moon, or is she doomed to Celestia's fate?

I love Celestia, Nicole Oliver is a hero of mine, and I want Celestia to be the god-like being she seems to be from the pilot, but she isn't. She is a mortal pony, a very long lived one, but ultimately mortal.