The Best of All Possible Worlds: Social Mobility/Letter #4 from the Author · 9:35pm Sep 2nd, 2012
OC:
I suddenly realized that, like a typical American unused to dealing with a royal family, I had been using "Your Majesty" to address both King Friedrich and Princess Celestia. This simply won't do! As the invitation in "The Ticket Master" confirmed, the proper title for a reigning princess is some variation on "Your Grand Royal Highness", so I went back and changed all of the "Your Majesty"s to match. Too bad I didn't know this sooner, tho--it would have been fun to joke about the fact that "Your Highness" is in fact the tallest pony in Equestria.
Chapter 19 is out, and it's a doozy. Feel free to throw rotten vegetables at the word "Algarotti" on your monitor.
I found an article entitled "Social Mobility in Targaryen Westeros" that I found quite applicable to "The Best of All Possible Worlds". It's about the fact that social mobility in a pre-modern (or fairytale) society tends to be downwards. Interestingly, this is not entirely bad news--if noble families gradually decay over the centuries and become commoners, then that means that the education and modern values of the aristocracy also gradually seep into the minds of the peasantry.
Until they're bright enough to stage a revolution. Oops.
IC:
I'm going to try and catch you up on the responses the author has been sending me for the past few chapters, so this is more like "Letters # 4 - 8 from the Author".
Chapter 5
* "All humans are insane": She liked this one.
* She was quite interested in the part I added in about Earth myths on unicorns. I gave her a few scholarly books on the subject, but I don't think she's ready for "The Last Unicorn" yet. Or maybe I just wrote that because I know she's reading this, hmm?
* She quoted back to me Voltaire's first impression of Princess Celestia, which I humbly believe I substantially improved over the original. She had no comment to make, which leads me to believe that she was so awed that she forgot what she was going to write!
* She made a solemn vow that she would get to the bottom of the mystery of why ponies knew what "voltige" meant. I predict she will get precisely nowhere with this investigation, but at some point a random earth pony will be able to roast marshmallows over her rapidash-ignited mane.
Chapter 6
* I received a stern lecture upon chronology when it came to the conversation between the Princess and Eveningstar about the Four Stars. The fact of the matter is, that Voltaire witnessed some but not all parts of this developing plotline, and had to learn about the rest by asking the characters involved. I figured that, while true, it made for sloppy storytelling, and so have rearranged events when possible to make Voltaire a direct witness. I believe I am justified in this--the Princess is quite fond of speaking openly of subjects that those around her couldn't possibly comprehend. I think she likes to give her subjects the feeling of being involved in events of momentous significance, even when these are events that only she or her sister are capable of interacting with (that, or she's a troll--but how can that be true? 
). What I'm saying is, Princess Celestia totally would have had a conversation hinting at the liberation of Nightmare Moon in front of this weird human she had only just met.
* "Idiot savant". We will never speak of this...ever again!
* I can tell from our correspondence, and from the original text, that the author treated the numerous teasing conversations between Celestia and Voltaire with considerable trepidation. She did not deny that they occurred, but I get the feeling that she wished they hadn't, and may perhaps be putting words in Blue Belle's head to represent her own hesitation at treating her sovereign Princess as an intellectual equal to some silly human. I would like to hope that the present-day version of the Princess herself was the one who convinced the author to include these conversations. She almost-certainly was the source of them, since I've examined the two Sparkle sister memoirs, and neither one includes them.
* The mocking take-down of the word "everypony": that was me. AA let it slide.
* The author liked Metamorphoses a lot better than she liked Gulliver's Travels.
* There's nothing really to say about Genevieve's sections, as those are nearly 100% unaltered translations of the author's words (except for little things like providing the name of the correct Russian czar).
Chapter 7
* The accusation of unconscious "breedism" thrown at Eveningstar--that was all me.
* Curiously, all of the anti-Sparkle propaganda came straight from the author. Well, not so strange, I guess. She is a studied genealogist, after all.
* The section about horses and ponies in human society came from a very interesting conversation the author and I had about a year ago. Salt and alcohol was involved, as tends to be the case.
Chapter 8
* The author really, really, really, really, really wished I hadn't included this chapter, about the effect of unpleasant thoughts upon the digestive system. It was not in the original manuscript the author gave me, but it most-certainly happened, as I learned as part of that same intoxicant-fueled conversation from above. The author also tells me that some clever pony (I have an alibi, I swear!) has already back-translated it into Equine and circulated it through the academic community at Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns. I am now required to ask which of you reading this are responsible, and for you to present yourself for a verbal dressing down at room 617 of the Canterlot campus next Saturday afternoon. I tried to warn her that several disturbed humans with access to portal technology would show up at that location guilty of nothing other than the pathological desire to get a dressing down from her, but the poor pony just would not listen.
Chapter 9
* She didn't have a problem with this chapter. I must be slipping.
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