The Challenge of Celestia as Protagonist · 9:17pm Jun 4th, 2016
Lakeguy sent me an email and got me thinking about the challenges of using Celestia as a protagonist in dramatic stories.
How To Write A Story on TVTropes defines story conflict as:
A character, usually The Protagonist...
...wants something badly...
...and is having trouble getting it.
One of the issues with having Celestia as a protagonist is that canon gives her so few things she wants in life. The only thing we know for certain in canon is that she wants her subjects to be safe and happy. In the past Celestia wanted to be reunited with her sister Luna, but she has that now.
It might be reasonable to assume that Celestia especially wants her 'family' (Luna, Cadence/Shining Armor/Flurry Heart, Twilight) to be safe and happy. And she likes cake. However, we have canon evidence that she is willing to risk her 'family' to save all her subjects (Banishing Luna, sending Cadence/Shining Armor to rule the Crystal Empire alone, every mission she has ever sent Twilight on, etc.).
So an author needs to give Celestia some deeper wants to make her an effective protagonist in a dramatic story.
- Perhaps Celestia wants her subjects to be safe and happy so much that she is wiling to do dark things to make that happen. Even dark things to herself (like hate herself in this recently featured story that Lakeguy asked me about).
- Perhaps Celestia believes that with so many other Princesses around, she doesn't have to sacrifice so much to help her subjects be safe and happy so she can indulge in wants she has been repressing. Then the author can create new wants, like a wish for companionship. A lot of Celestia romance stories assume this.
- Perhaps Celestia has fooled us all, and has some deeper wants that were never hinted at before.
Some common things Celestia might want:
- Companionship / Love
- A break from responsibility / a vacation or retirement
- A break from being treated like she is apart from other ponies.
Some less common things Celestia might want:
- A child (a new one or reconnect with an old one)
- World peace (what would she be willing to do to get it?)
- To create (art)
- To discover (knowledge, magic, science)
- To reconnect with other long lived beings she knew from before her current 1000+ year rule
- To discover / create more long lived beings like herself to share the future with
Each one of these can be used as the motivation for many stories. Some have been the motivation for some great stories on this site.
So many story ideas! What do you think Celestia really wants?
Wow, I'm honored that I inspired you to think about this!
I think that after 1000 years of being alone, with no friends or confidantes who would last longer than a pony lifetime, it can be strongly argued that one thing Celestia wants is more alicorns.
I would expect her to be a doting, loving aunt (great-aunt?) to Flurry Heart, with an eye toward Flurry being another immortal friend. She has Cadance, she has Luna back, and Twilight is now an alicorn. (And yes, I tend to assume that means she is immortal. Flurry, maybe not... as a natural born alicorn she still might have to undergo some sort of ascension to become immortal.) The fact that she had Fluttershy reform Discord suggests that maybe, among other things, she'd like to convert Discord to a friend. One doesn't have to speculate they were ever friends in the past to imagine that Celestia would want that, and it may be part of the driver behind Discord's reform and the fact that Celestia's been very lenient with him.
The two Gala episodes suggest that Celestia is bored as hell and desperately wants something outside of her courtly routine.
She probably wants a stronger relationship with her sister, and for Luna to better integrate with pony society, to prevent what happened before and to help Luna heal from her banishment.
She might want another student. Celestia's behavior toward Twilight was quite motherly in the beginning, though soon the need to use Twilight as a weapon made that less feasible. Celestia probably cannot afford to have any children -- the nightmares it would cause, to have an heir to the diarchy when the current holders of the position are immortal! -- but her students may play the role of children to her, and now that Twilight has a student of her own and is a full-fledged princess, Celestia might be empty-nesting and looking for another student.
Also, she probably wants everyone to stop assuming she always wants cake. Sometimes a mare gets sick of cake every single day. Sometimes she'd like a pie. Or a danish. Or ice cream.
4049321 Agreed that Celestia would probably enjoy more companionship, especially that of other immortals. Though as you mentioned, this group has expanded a lot in the past few years. From only including Celestia and a pre-adult Cadence before the show started, to Celestia, Luna, an adult Cadence, an adult Twilight, a child Flurry, and a reformed Discord. Throw in a mortal Shinning Armor, and Twilight's parents, and Celestia has a variety of family/other immortals that she could interact with.
In one expression of this, Royal Sketchbook did a nice comic on how Luna, Cadence, and Twilight could pitch in to give Celestia a few days off around her birthday. I think the idea would actually make a cool episode.