Discourse on Fillies Story Notes · 7:11pm May 21st, 2016
For once, let’s have Star Swirl the Bearded step back and allow another archetypal historical figure to take the stage. Let’s talk about Machiavelli.
Everyone knows who he is: the scheming manipulator, the treacherous adviser, the ally who stabs you in the back the moment it suits his interests to do so. A man whose name has gone down in history as a synonym for all the evils of human ambition, and who was widely thought to be the Antichrist.
Some say he was evil. Some say he was a genius. Some say he was only describing the world as it is, rather than as we’d like it to be. But he is famous for advising rulers that the best way to hold on to your power is to lie, cheat, and kill whenever it is necessary, without concern for the morality of your actions.
After “Crusaders of the Lost Mark”, it made perfect sense to imagine that Diamond Tiara had read him, under the guidance of her mother, and had learned all the wrong lessons about equine nature from him. And it made perfect sense to me to take a moral theory invented to analyze international politics and use it instead to write about private individuals trying to make sense of their lives. It makes for quite a different story, and a very different way of thinking about a historical figure.
Now I’m not a historian, and make no claim to academic rigor in this story. But these different interpretations that Diamond Tiara and Luna pit against each other are all things people have really proposed about Machiavelli. Yes, some really have called The Prince a satire. Others have called it a self-help book, and the “Mirrors for Princes” really was a thriving literary genre across Europe long before Machiavelli was born. But as far as I know the consensus is that The Prince was in fact Machiavelli’s attempt to get in the good graces of the Medici family, the rulers of Florence, who were indeed the same people who had imprisoned, tortured, and exiled him.
So, I don’t make any claim to historical truth in the story’s interpretation. But for both Princess Luna and Diamond Tiara, these questions are both personal and societal, and I wanted to arrive at a view of Macavallo that acknowledges the ugly truths, but still allows them to find peace and a good way forward.
Puns: “Macavallo,” because “cavallo” is Italian for “horse”. And the title, in addition to just being a good title for the story, is a pun on one of Machiavelli’s other books, Discourses on Livy.
Sources: There are a couple of works about Machiavelli I keep going back to, and from which I got a lot of background material for this story. One of them is this BBC-documentary about The Prince and the influence Machiavelli still has today. Now, to be honest I’m not convinced this is good history, but I do think it’s good television. It brings him down to a human level, and it has Peter Capaldi doing dramatic readings of excerpts from the book and really what more do you want.
The other is this series of fantastically entertaining blog posts by historian and author Ada Palmer, where she talks not just about Machiavelli but about the world around him and how it shaped his way of thinking, and about how he ended up inventing an entirely new way of thinking about history and ethics that we today all take for granted. It’s a wonderful read and I highly recommend reading the whole series. I can’t really stress this enough, just read the whole thing. It’s enlightening, and hilarious, and heart-rending all at the same time.
Finally… let’s put ancient history aside for a moment and acknowledge the personal aspect of it. This isn't a story about history or politics. It's a story about family, about being a kid, about not having your feelings taken seriously, and it's very personal for me. My parents divorced when I was eight, quite bitterly, and things were pretty awful for many years after. I learned all kinds of unhealthy coping mechanisms, and I've given some of them to Diamond Tiara. Her distrusting nature, which extends to everyone around her and to herself; her tendency to scrutinize everything she's told for loopholes and signs of dishonesty; her feeling responsible for holding her family together. While writing this story I dredged up those old memories again to capture them in words, and this was the result. It... it was heavy going. I got the first idea for this story in the days immediately after "Crusaders of the Lost Mark" aired, and it took me seven months to get it done. Even now I am struggling to find the words.
Thanks for reading. I hope you saw something in it.
-Daedalus Aegle.
I did.
Art sometimes... no, make that almost always... has a chunk of the artist in it: Their hopes, fears, pain and joy. So I suspect that at least a little part of the veracity of Discourse... probably comes from your own experiences. In the end, it is the most we can do that we shout defiance at the world and choose to be the better person no matter what the world tries to make of us.
...*Gives a hug* You need this. *Goes away*
It's weird, I can't recall learning at all about Machiavelli in school. Even though I probably would have learned a lot more from The Prince than literally any other book they forced down our throats, save perhaps The Lord of the Flies. I did see this video the other day, though, which serves as a thought-provoking summary:
What it did was make me think, really think, about what it would be like to go through a bitter divorce of your parents as a child. And the insecurities, questions and hopes leading up to that moment. I'm sure I still have no idea what that's like, but I think I may have gotten a glimpse of how deep those scars can be if nothing else.
In my SWSV, Diamond Tiara plays a rather important though popularly-understated role in the Shadow Wars. When the Great Changeling War erupts, one of the first moves High Queen Nightmare Hunger makes is to assassinate Filthy Rich, in the belief that by taking out one of the most important logistics experts in the Realm of Equestria she'll cripple Equestria's ability to supply her armies in the field. This results in the (then) 23-year-old Diamond Tiara cutting short her MBA program to take the helm of Barnyard Bargains.
Remember that Theoretical Infiltrator Compound saw logistics as an indirect sort of generalship, against actual opponents, though generally faceless ones? Well, one of her actual opponents was Diamond Tiara. And Diamond Tiara was one of the reasons why Equestria won the war. She was both smarter and more ruthless than her father had been. The enemies of Equestria come to regret they have to deal with the daughter, rather than the father.
This is appreciated very much by Queen Vespid, the ruler of the Friendly Hive under Canterlot, who rents out an Elite Warrior named Slab to Diamond Tiara as a personal bodyguard. Slab is with DT all through and after the Shadow Wars, and his protection is very much more than theoritical, as other foes also grasp the importance of DT as a strategic target. By the end of his career with her, it's not entirely certain whether his primary loyalty is to Vespid or to Diamond Tiara, though that sort of thing's very uncommon with Changeling Warriors. The adult Diamond Tiara is simply that charismatic. The issue is never resolved, as the alliance between Vespid and DT never breaks, and Slab dies protecting Diamond Tiara from yet another assassination attempt.
Diamond Tiara builds her father's business into a huge trading empire that goes international and eventually interplanetary.
And your story is so damned good that I'm going to adapt some elements of it into the biography of my Diamond Tiara. Happy?
I'm sorry you had to go through what you did and that you had to learn those lessons through the crucible of life. However, I would like to say that from what I read, you learned well, and are all the stronger and more intelligent for it. Keep those good lessons in mind, and remember that agency, as much as philosophy argues against it, is a real thing. You can choose and so you should, and so can others, which you must observe.
And thank you, for that interesting journey into your thoughts on human nature, human experience, and growing up. It was refreshing and moving.
I wish you luck in the future, and I hope you have fun.
Looking at the ratings of your fics, I should definitely be reading more of them.
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*Hugs*
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Yes. Yes I am.
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The response I've gotten from this story has been quite stunning. It's very heavy and uncomfortable material to grapple with, but it really seems to have connected with people. Thanks for your thoughts, everyone.
Thank you for sharing something this personal with us. I really enjoyed the read, it was very thought-provoking
*applause*
*looks both ways*
*hugs*
Thank you for a thought-provoking read, and for being vulnerable enough to reveal where it came from.
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Glad you liked it