Random thoughts about canon #4: The Royal Guard · 2:26pm Jan 29th, 2016
When writing this chapter of Aporia, which drags Shining Armor into the narrative and primes a lot of what this esteemed stallion will be doing for the rest of the story, this question came up repeatedly: Just what is the Royal Guard and what does it actually do?
Because I have to decide just what exactly it is that Shining Armor is a captain of, if only to mention it. This is more complicated than it sounds.
Fanon on the subject spreads in all directions. There are three general approaches:
- The Royal Guard is the umbrella term for every type of military and paramilitary force Equestria has, including police. This is one way to pave the way for nice stories which get Shining Armor to play detective and/or direct traffic, but demi-canon clashes rather badly with it, by portraying uniformed police in multiple stories. This is, however, one of the more popular approaches.
1. One comic arc revolving around the pirates that don’t do anything and that’s it.
At least the Navy and Air Force are distinct from Royal Guard, but Royal Guard still handles the role of both military and paramilitary ground forces. This is less common, and agrees with canon slightly better, if only because of the Wonderbolts (more about those below) but since the Equestrian attitudes regarding seafaring are almost a complete blank spot1 it’s also rather unsupported. It’s kind of rare and I only saw it a couple of times.
- The one I like most is the Royal Guard guards royals and does nothing else – which is interesting in that it has the best agreement with the canon and still has demi-canon muddling it. It is also the one least commonly spelled out explicitly, so it may in fact be more common than it seems, or it may not. As long as Royal Guard does not play much of a role in the story, we’re unlikely to know anyway.
It’s reasonable to suppose that Equestria does not maintain a big standing army, since of all the threats seen so far, only Sombra and Chrysalis were ever interested in fielding one of their own, and the only foreign state which is shown to be actually in any way hostile is Yakyakistan, which had no contact with Equestria until Crystal Empire reappeared. Crysalis’ army is unlikely to engage in conventional military tactics, and Sombra’s does not initially exist. But it seems to me that at least some standing army would be prudent. Do we have any arguments for its existence? Well, sort of.
2. My money’s on the notion that once Luna was banished, Celestia decided to have an army reform and consolidate the extant tribal militaries, hence the name.
The primary canon only contains two mentions of what could be unquestionably called an “army of Equestria.” The earliest one is Testing Testing, 1, 2, 3, which introduces the term “EUP Guard or Protective Pony Platoons” in relation to the Wonderbolts. EUPG explicitly dates its formation to after the Nightmare Moon, which led some theorists to believe that Luna essentially was the armed force of Equestria prior to that, but other than this statement, there was nothing to substantiate this idea before or since. 2 Wonderbolts are the only group ever mentioned in relation to EUPG, but they are clearly defined as a subset of it. Notably, none of the uniforms sported by ponies in this episode appear to have any resemblance whatsoever to the armor of the Royal Guard, and neither do the Wonderbolt flight suits or other uniforms shown in other episodes, which mostly mimic USAF uniforms of different types and sports gear.
The other one is The Cutie Re-Mark, which never mentions EUPG explicitly. However, it features Celestia herself personally commanding numerous ponies in Royal Guard armor – notably, the only instance where ponies wearing that armor feature a wider color palette than two colors seen elsewhere – as well as squads of pegasi and earth ponies in differently colored, but still obviously similar uniforms that have never appeared before. If EUPG actually exists, that’s got to be them.
So is EUPG the same thing as RG or not? My guess it is not:
3. Or Twilight, who is acting on Celestia’s orders at the time.
There are about 29 individual cases of ponies in Royal Guard armor appearing in canon and demi-canon. In all cases, they are seen within shouting distance from royalty – guarding royalty, ferrying royalty3 around, awaiting the arrival of royalty, guarding large royalty-sponsored events, guarding strategically important crown property, etc, etc. In some cases, they are explicitly referred to as “castle guard,” particularly when seen within a castle. In Princess Twilight Sparkle, one guard actually says, “We’re officers of the Royal Guard. We take our orders from royalty.” This kind of cinches it for me, considering that demi-canon mentions congressponies.
Possible exceptions that need explaining include Sweet and Elite, where a Royal Guard acts as a doorpony to the VIP lounge at the Wonderbolts Derby, where no royalty actually appears, and there are a few similar cases in demi-canon, notably in Micro-Series #10, where for some reason, RG members refer to patrolling the Everfree forest, (?!) making public appearances in a school, and are shown next to a building with “12th precinct” written on it, which is clearly meant to imply they are some equivalent of police. No other demi-canon work does anything of the sort that I could find.
Which kind of paints a very odd picture, until you remember the United States Secret Service, which has a rather bizarre list of duties. Notably, it is charged with protecting government VIPs and families, like the President and others, for which it is probably most famous, and at the same time, also investigates numerous kinds of financial fraud – which, incidentally, includes just about every kind of computer hacker activity that involves money even tangentially. USSS ended up providing protection almost accidentally, by being informally requested to do so, and used to have its fingers in every kind of pie before these duties were shuffled off to more specialized organizations.
Looks kind of similar, doesn’t it?
4. Notice that they are never mentioned with respect to police work anywhere else.
5. And why not? In this scene, he certainly seems to be in charge.
Which is why my current theory is that the armored Royal Guard is the Princesses’ personal security detail, which might have started out as Canterlot’s city (and castle) guard, directly under Celestia’s command, and was never included into EUPG, because it was purely a police force and garrison at the time of EUPG’s formation. Now, it continues to perform those duties,4 with jurisdiction over Canterlot and immediate environs, like Ponyville – even though now, policing the place is more of a side job. The guard in Sweet and Elite is guarding someone obviously important, like the Mayor of Canterlot, which might turn out to be Fancy Pants himself,5 or one of the hypothetical “minor royalty” that I mentioned a couple posts back. Their presence on the field in The Cutie Re-Mark is to mop up after Celestia and/or shield her.
6. See Secret of my excess.
EUPG, on the other hand, is a different, distinct force, an actual military, deliberately kept small due to long peacetime. Wonderbolts are its only subset actually seen on screen in the primary timeline, but more presumably exist, and the Wonderbolts themselves double as a quick response special forces unit,6 even though airshows are their primary activity.
This, at least, fits all the available canonical statements, until they make another mess. :)
Acting under the assumption that you care—my word, I have been spamming your blog posts, haven't I?—I'd like to tell you my own take but before that: Damn but your research is thorough. And rather brilliant, really.
Anyway, I subscribe to the notion that the Equestrian military (which exists and is actually rather large for largely peaceful ponies) is based on the regiment system (because that interfaces well with local tribal militias) and that one regiment is known as the Canterlot Special Security Battalion. It's an elite unit which, and this is rather peculiar in my case, hasn't recruited a single member in over a thousand years. Instead, ranks within it is given to members of the personal staff of the royals who serve as bodyguards. That personal staff is, in fact, the Royal Guard. It's an entirely separate thing which just so happens to share all of its personnel with a military unit. This is a legal trick that is used to allow for bits of the government directly commanded by the Princesses. The civil service works the same way (Dotted's main title is actually 'valet-in-extraordinary').
It's powers are to act as bodyguards primarily, but they can be given extra duties by the princesses or their representatives. They also have some policing powers.
Anyway. Sorry for going on and on about it.
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If I didn't care at all, I would probably post it somewhere where it stands no chance of being read, like my real blog. :) Thank you. Much of "Aporia" is about poking a finger into the holes in canon and seeing what gets squeezed out of all the other holes, (Kind of hinted at by the title, I suppose) so if it weren't thorough, it would be pointless. ;)
And that is a brilliant legal trick, which I might have to apply one day, kudos!
My preferred answer is somewhere between your options two and three, I think -- they protect the Princess(es), the rest of the government of Equestria (since the various ministers and such are a lot squishier than Celestia), and by extension the city of Canterlot. They are obviously tightly integrated with the Canterlot Police Department, but don't generally do day-to-day policing. If the CPD needs heavy muscle (magical or mundane), though, they will provide it.
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It's quite a plausible variation. The only kink in it is that we have yet to see anything that looks like CPD, but have demi-canon evidence that mixes police duties into Royal Guard's purview. That can be readily discounted, and there's always the possibility the primary canon will joss the secondary one, we've had to wait for five seasons before we saw actual uniformed police on screen, but it did finally happen. :)
Once again I agree with the broad thrust of your theory (the Royal Guard is mainly there to guard royalty and the EUP is something larger) with slightly different theories on specifics.
My theory is that in very early Equestria, most Pegasi lived in Cloudsdale, most unicorns lived in Canterlot, and earth ponies lived in small towns and villages everywhere else. The EUP was broken up in simple ways:
The Earth Pony division guarded the vast perimeter of the country, doing long patrols and protecting civilians against monsters. As Equestria became more peaceful and monsters either retreated to the Everfree or died, the Earth pony division evolved into the modern police force/sheriffs and deputies we see in small towns. Over time members of other tribes were allowed to join.
The Unicorn division had the job of protecting Canterlot and the Princess, since they mostly lived in the capital anyway. This division became the Royal Guard over time, and let in members of the other tribes. Of all the divisions, the Royal Guard has probably drifted the least from its original form.
The Pegasi division, stationed in Cloudsdale, were responsible for quick-reaction strikes against threats anywhere in Equestria. Of course, they became the Wonderbolts, and as time went by they spent more and more time putting on stunt shows. They are the only division that still won't let in all three tribes, for pretty justifiable reasons.
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>like my real blog.
What do you blog about there? Given the reference to Russel's paradox in your Short Bio, and the technical streak the shines through some of your writings, I feel there's possibility it's be relevant to my interests.
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Just about everything, I've been blogging for 15 years. But I am afraid connecting it to ponies would completely defeat the point of keeping my identities segregated. Sorry. :(
Sounds pretty much spot-on to me.
Spellcasters and [usu. nonspellcaster, but, when you've got unicorns…] infantry, traditional case; infantry prevent infantry from getting to spellcaster to be able to disrupt their high-efficiency, battlefield-impacting effects without the
decadesmillennia of training. After all, Hasbro owns WotC owns D&D now…Though, I don't recall that episode doing well in utilizing the third dimension for combat. I'd have to watch those scenes again to see.