Backstory: Twilight Sparkle

Here we come to the conclusion of the original M6, back on top with number one for me (tied with Rainbow Dash), Twilight Sparkle.

I'd like to think that through this series so far, I've managed to keep my biases in check and write informative and interesting blogs for characters I like and dislike. By all means, if you feel I haven't done well in that regard, do point out in any of the blogs in the series where you feel my bias blinded me to some important fact, or that I over-emphasized something, or really anything.

Family

As the main character of the series, it feels like Twilight Sparkle is under the most intense scrutiny by the fandom, and her family is no different. In some ways, her family has been given some significant amounts of screen time, but there is also a distinctly poor-feeling execution to how they've been depicted.

Most prominent in Twilight's family is her adoptive son, Spike. Like the CMC, he is often allotted episodes each season dedicate to his stories. He frequently tags along for the big adventures the M6 go on, leading many fans to consider him part of the "M7." With how much of a footprint his character has in the series, Twilight's family rivals Applejack's in terms of presence. His part of the "story" of the series is less background and lore and more direct participation though.

Like Applejack, I don't particularly like Spike. I find him and his story arcs boring, and often entangled with things I simply don't want to watch, a heavy dose of cringe, and occasionally tolerably good material. That said, he does play an important role in informing us of Twilight's character. We meet him alongside Twilight in the first scenes of S1E1, Friendship is Magic Part I.

For most of the series, the relationship between the two has been left ambiguous by the writers, though in Father Knows Beast, it feels like they've heavily implied they consider each other mother/son, which (perhaps my bias) always seemed to fit the most. While he's not biologically her offspring, this does somewhat place Twilight in being the closest to a mother among the M6. She somewhat shares that status with Applejack (and to some degree, Rarity). I'd give the nod to Twilight over them, as she was present for his birth/hatching. While Applejack seems likely to fill the mother role in Apple Bloom's life, they explicitly call each other sister and focus on that. It probably was Granny Smith who raised Apple Bloom in Pear Butter's absence.

Even if their relationship leans another way, such as older sister/younger brother, and even if we speculate that a filly Twilight Sparkle didn't raise Spike for some amount of years between hatching him and the start of the show, it is pretty clear that by the time the show starts and throughout the series, she is an authority figure in his life, and he respects her and learned many of his values through her.

When Spike comes into contact with other dragons in Dragonquest, Gauntlet of Fire, and Father Knows Beast, as well as several interactions with Ember and/or Smolder in various episodes, we get a sense of the "pony" in Spike, and we can attribute a lot of that to Twilight Sparkle.

Like several other characters, we first see Twilight's parents, Twilight Velvet and Night Light, in The Cutie Chronicles. Their names were finally confirmed in Once Upon a Zeppelin, and we got to see their actual personalities. I adore Twilight Velvet. She's a thrill-seeking fun mare, and clearly is the source of curiosity and adventure we see in Twilight. Night Light is an organized, "nerdy" guy which makes Twilight take after her dad a great deal.

Twilight is also the youngest sibling in her family, a trait she shares only with Pinkie Pie (Pinkie and Marble are twins, Limestone and Maud are older than them). Twilight's older brother is a trait she shares with Applejack and Fluttershy, as all the other siblings across the M6 are sisters. We met Shining Armor for the first time in A Canterlot Wedding, much to the confusion and some amount of outrage among the fans. Their relationship is depicted as having been close, which is distinctly at odds to the rather stand-offish and introverted Twilight Sparkle we met at the start of the series. It is difficult to reconcile the notion that Twilight "I used to wonder what friendship could be" Sparkle was raised with an obvious friendship (Big Brother Best Friend Forever) with Shining Armor and was fillysat by the alicorn princess of love, Cadance.

Retcons aside, we get hints here and there that Shining Armor is both a brave knight for Equestria and a bit of a dork/nerd as fitting for a stallion raised by Night Light and Twilight Velvet. We can also imagine that Spike's interest in Ogres and Oubliettes probably came from being introduced to the game by Shining Armor. But that's just my headcanon.

As for Cadance, she's now family officially by way of marriage but was supposedly an influence on Twilight's life growing up as her foalsitter. The two are also obviously close. They even have a "secret handshake" of sorts, with their "Sunshine sunshine ladybugs awake, clap your hooves and do a little shake" routine.

While not technically family, Celestia has often been speculated to be like a second mother to Twilight Sparkle. It is obvious that she played a huge role in Twilight's development and upbringing as Twilight's mentor. How much Twilight looks up to her has been interpreted by many to be at the very least a strong case of hero worship, romantic in other cases, and unhealthy obsession in others. I've noted that Twilight's witnessing Celestia raise the sun during a Canterlot Summer Sun Celebration was depicted as the igniting incident that set Twilight on a path to study hard on magic, and ultimately try to join Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns. Even after becoming a princess herself, Twilight clearly still holds Celestia in high regard, as seen in Celestial Advice and Horse Play.

An honorable mention, I feel, belongs to Moondancer. While again not family, we meet her and learn of her lot in life in Amending Fences. Twilight had a big role in Moondancer's life before the start of the series, and when Twilight effectively abandoned her to live in Ponyville at the start of the series, that left behind some emotional wreckage. While we technically meet Moondancer in Amending Fences, she's one of the first things mentioned in S1E1, which puts this relationship at an oddly prominent point in the series. If A Canterlot Wedding made a mess of Twilight's past, it feels like Amending Fences did things right. Perhaps not enough to fix the contradiction/retcon, but certainly an enlightening aspect of Twilight's growing up environment.

Cutie Mark

Like Applejack, Twilight's cutie mark story is somewhat entangled with her family. In Twilight's case, she hatched Spike during a magic surge brought on by the Sonic Rainboom. She was attempting the task and straining to use her magic as hard as she could shortly before the shockwave happened.

We learned that Twilight was passionate about magic and its study from The Cutie Chronicles. She was inspired by Celestia raising the sun, and her magic surge prompted Celestia to take her under her wing and guide her on how to safely use the raw power she had. Like Rarity, it feels like her cutie mark is somewhat ambiguous between superpower (in magic in general) or lifestyle/duty (learning and practicing magic).

I speculate that unicorns' (and alicorns') magic is capable of some amount of common spells simply by learning, but cutie marks play a role in what kinds of magic are easier to learn and use. In some cases, as we learned in A Royal Problem, some magic is impossible for others to use without an appropriate cutie mark, as Luna couldn't operate in the dream realm while she had Celestia's cutie mark. We had assumed that Celestia could (and did) handle the moon while Luna was banished, but we learned that she raised the moon for the first time that same episode. Handling the moon and dealing with her subject's nightmares seem like things Celestia would have learned in her sister's absence if she could. Other forms of magic, even very powerful magic, can be learned by nearly any unicorn with enough power to cast it such as in It's About Time. In Twilight's case, having a cutie mark in learning magic makes her fairly broad in magical ability, evidence for which we saw in Boast Busters.

There also seems to be a bit of a pattern: Earth ponies pick up a duty/life's calling, pegasi gain ability/superpowers, while unicorns/alicorns find a specialty for their magic or some aspect of magic-use.

Element

Twilight is the Element of Magic, which of course has caused no end of confusion to the fans. The word "magic" has a lot of different meanings in the show.

On one level you have "magic" that seems to infuse all living things in Equestria. It is something that Tirek can drain, something which holds chimera together, and it also appears to maybe be connected to cutie marks as the symptoms for losing this magic or a cutie mark seem similar. It also feels like some tribal specialties might fall in this category as well, such as pegasi being able to cloudwalk and manipulate weather. Unicorn telekinesis and light-making probably fit here too.

Then you have unicorn magic which is used to cast spells, enchant artifacts, and so on. Using this kind of magic and how it can be used are related to study and learning, as well as individual prowess. I like to imagine that different unicorns have different sized magic "batteries" or "mana pools" to work with, and what they learn determines what they can do with the power in their batteries. Some creatures also have magic powers that might fall into this category. In School Raze, we saw that the cockatrice had lost its petrifying gaze power, but still had magic binding the snake and chicken parts of it together. Speculating further down that direction, it seems like some ponies have magic powers, like Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy. These might exist in this category as well.

Then you have "Friendship is magic" which is a concept which straddles the previous category when it is depicted as magical rainbow laserbeams of Friendship because of the Elements of Harmony, and a third category of a more philosophical/social aspect. Being friends with someone is enjoyable. It affects you and the decisions you make. It has a form of "power" to it, and the benefits of it are "magical" in how good they are. I have often objected to the early season for taking that latter concept and turning it abstract in the form of laser beams defeating/cleansing bad guys.

Twilight's Element refers to this third category. It was never the case that the show was suggesting that Loyalty, Laughter, Kindness, Generosity, and Honesty somehow make you better able to levitate rocks with your horn. It is that if you have all these Elements, they're necessary for genuine friendship, and Twilight's Element of Magic is representative of that effect of having them all and the Friendship that entails. We see this come into play often. Against Nightmare Moon, Twilight first felt the spark of Friendship when she realized how important her new friends were to her. Against Discord, it wasn't the physical pieces of jewelry that were needed to defeat him, it was that bond of Friendship. Against Tirek, "rainbow power" was something of an expression of that Friendship in once again abstract form, independent of magical artifacts and the like. In Shadow Play, the artifacts they wore or carried allowed them to tap into some magic to help combat the Pony of Shadows, but it was the bonds of friendship Stygian still valued with the Pillars that Starlight and Twilight were able to bring to light and rescue him. In the MLP Movie, Twilight lost sight of the magic of Friendship as she became concerned with trying to find some kind of magic from the second category to save Equestria with. It was the renewal of that Friendship that saw victory in the end.

It is the discovery of this new magic that caused Twilight to ascend and become an alicorn. Not because of the literal finishing of Starswirl's spell. Not because of some new kind of unicorn/alicorn "horn magic." It was because she used her bonds of friendship with the other five to remind each of them who they truly were, and overcome the haywire magic of Starswirl's incomplete spell. It was the importance each of them had to each other and their community that resonated. Filling in the last few lines in the book Twilight did was more poetry than spellwork, but the powers of Harmony stepped in and yanked her off to alicornspace to ascend.

Further evidence for this theory/speculation was introduced in Shadow Play. We learned that the six Pillars each represented a Virtue: Strength, Beauty, Healing, Bravery, Hope, and Sorcery. Before they left to take on the Pony of Shadows and banish him (and themselves) to Limbo, they performed a spell to create a seed. That seed combined the essence of their virtues, and eventually grew into the Tree of Harmony. The Elements of Harmony are akin to Fruit of that Tree. That was Starswirl's unfinished spell. The lines in the book might have been an incomplete ritual, perhaps related to the creation of the Seed. It was his incomplete attempt to use sorcery (second category of magic) to do something he didn't understand (third category of magic).

Attempting to cast it again in the presence of the Fruit of the Tree (in MMC) caused them, and the ponies linked to them, to get scrambled up. Not in a magical or temporal (time magic is something doable with the second category of magic) sense as others speculate on, but in a "harmonious" sense. Their "destinies" were scrambled. The "essence" of who they were, the first category of magic, was messed up by this "third category" magic that Starswirl had messed with, but didn't fully understand and had to abandon to go deal with Stygian.

Like with others, Twilight did not become the Element of Magic because she's good at magic (2nd). It is because the virtue of her element, Friendship, is important to her and her life. In her case, that importance was so integral to her destiny that she wound up becoming an alicorn. Her destiny is not to be the best at friendship (lowercase f), or someone so good at it that she never has conflict with others, or is even necessarily the best at making friends or keeping them (see her cold interactions with Discord and Trixie). It is because she embraces the importance of Friendship, and works to share that importance with others.

The early seasons depicted Twilight overcoming a substantial handicap in being social and getting along with others. She was somewhat bad at friendship (again, lowercase f). But underneath that was always that spark she felt. That feeling that Friendship (capital F) was important and drove her to get better. Middle seasons were often about her coming to grips with not being the best at friendship or Friendship and accepting that such a thing was impossible. Simply trying to be good friends and placing Friendship at high value was the lesson. Later seasons have involved her spreading that importance, Friendship, far and wide.

Events

Most of the major events of Twilight's life have already been covered. But to fill in a few gaps:

Despite not being very friendly, Twilight had several classmates in CSFGU: Lyra (who lives in Ponyville, and was first seen in S1E1 standing besides Amethyst Star waving at Twilight as she ran by), Minuette (who lives in Canterlot, but is occasionally seen in Ponyville and was called Colgate by the fandom for the longest time and assumed to be Ponyville's dentist), Lemon Hearts (lives and works in Canterlot in the palace), and Twinkleshine (lives in Canterlot). The latter three were first seen in Canterlot attempting to invite Twilight to Moondancer's party. Twinkleshine, Lyra, and Minuette were later seen as Cadance's bridesmaids in A Canterlot Wedding. It is possible that they have a close relationship with Cadance and presumably were invited to be her bridesmaids before Chrysalis replaced her (and fired them). It seems likely that foalsitter Cadance probably attempted to foster friendship between Twilight and these other fillies, though it seems she may have gotten along with them better than Twilight did.

Shining Armor joined the royal guard and rose to become captain of the guard, presumably the highest possible rank. A lot of speculation suggests that his relationship with Cadance could have posed conflicts, and it seems likely that others seeking that position/rank might have insinuated nepotism. His departure to permanently live in the Crystal Empire with his wife likely caused some political waves and someone filled his vacant post, but the show hasn't seen fit to give us any clues to any of that. Somewhat related to that, fans have often put into fanfics notions like separate captains for different branches of the guard dedicated to each princess. This would imply a peer for Shining Armor in Luna's guard, but then also some captain of Cadance's guard and/or Twilight's guard. We see no evidence of the existence of either of those, and the only evidence for Luna's guard was the costumes worn by her charioteers in Luna Eclipsed.

Twilight became a big fan of Starswirl the Bearded at some point in her life. For most of the early seasons, this often felt like lazy writing from the staff, as he seemed to be arbitrarily blamed for a great many things in Equestria's past having to do with magic, with a complete lack of reference to any other prominent mages through history. I feel like the show has managed to flesh out the lore and history of Equestria a tad more, and at this point has justified Starswirl's prominence. His name being on a wing of the Canterlot Library as well as likely being within several books Twilight studied as part of her magic curriculum easily would bring him to her attention. She does seem like the sort to study more about him as a hobby/interest.

Twilight also likes more than just non-fiction. She was a fan of Daring Do before learning that Daring Do is a real mare. I imagine this fondness for Daring Do came from her mother, who likely is also a fan. Due to IDW comic lore attempting to suggest that Twilight Velvet was the author of the fictional works, a lot of fans have intermingled Twilight Velvet and Daring Do in fanfics and the like, even after the reveal of Daring Do's status as real.

Newly crowned Princess Twilight Sparkle's first adventure wasn't in Equestria, but in an alternate dimension (Equestria Girls Movie). This has a somewhat ambiguous status in canon. The staff have asserted that EqG is real, and the events of the movies exist among pony Twilight's memories in later seasons. But they also stated they planned never to "cross over" the two series, such as bringing elements of events from EqG into FiM. As such, characters like Sunset Shimmer and the Sirens exist in Equestria's history, even if we won't get to see more than a glimpse of them on screen in FiM. This means that before Twilight became her prized pupil, Celestia had a previous student in Sunset Shimmer, and possibly others before her. There are a lot of time-flow questions not answered by either series, and it is unclear if pony Sunset and Twilight lived in Canterlot around the same time or not. It seems possibly odd that Princess Cadance foalsat for Twilight, Celestia had an older student, and the two somehow never met. I mostly lean on the idea that Sunset left Equestria through the portal before Twilight was born, or at least before she was old enough to retain memories. Certainly before Cadance began foalsitting her and before Twilight earned her cutie mark. Still, this gives us some insight into the kind of teacher/ruler Celestia and has been, what kind of situation Twilight was brought into as her student, and so on.

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That wraps up the original mane six backgrounds. I'd like to once again emphasize a point of this series. I've managed to churn out a pretty substantial wordcount on the project, both as a whole and for each individual character. Not emphasized in each blog though, is a sense of how little we still know about each character.

For families, We know the names of the parents and family members of each of the girls, but we've had to wait several seasons for most of them (The Perfect Pear was in Season 7, mind you), and Rarity's parents technically don't have canon names still (their names are derived from officially licensed products, not the show itself). We also don't technically know for sure if Pear Butter and Bright Mac died. We know the jobs of only a few of them, and mostly only have one episode each to get an idea of personality for them. Among the siblings, aside from the CMC, Big Mac, and Maud Pie we only have one-ish episode worth of character for most as well (Shining Armor, while in several episodes, still feels a bit blank-slatey to me). Some characters, like Applejack, have a lot of screentime for family members, but overall there is still a whole lot of speculation and inference needed to flesh out these supporting characters and suss out the influences they have on each main character.

We have one episode for all six cutie mark stories for the M6. We have to infer a lot of things from tangential topics presented in other episodes and try to interpret meaning from things like Magical Mystery Cure and Twilight's Kingdom.

The Elements of Harmony are conveniently assigned to each pony to give us a pretty big dose of "character trait" value. This section in each case is my efforts to reverse engineer back into each character's past from their Element, how they portray it through the series and work that into their backgrounds as they might lead up to becoming the bearer of that Element.

Moving forward in the series, we have even less. Hopefully, one of the takeaways you, my readers, get from this series is how I am picking apart these backstories, and showing how they inform us of the characters in the present. When I move on to the next characters (yes, plural), I'll be attempting to do the same as I've done here with the M6, and highlight what we're missing that is similar to the M6, and what we're missing beyond even that.

Another point of this is to hopefully better understand the importance and lack of importance for "backstory" for characters when writing. When populating your fanfic with pony OC's, how much is really needed varies. Here so far you have an idea of what we have and how spread out over the series that backstory is for our main characters. When you're writing about OC's background ponies, which are nearly entirely blank slates, again some degree of backstory is on you to create, and this series can hopefully lend some insight on where to focus and to what degree. In either case, imagine how satisfied or unsatisfied you are with whichever M6 you happen to like best. What more would you like to see explained about her past? Do your writing plans seek to fulfill that need, or do your OC's/backgrounds have similar needs?

Family, destiny, and values are a pretty solid base point to work with for any character. You may not need all of those. You may need more than those. You may need to get creative with what fits into those slots. But I think this is a useful foundation for a wide range of creative efforts.

Character Plugs

https://www.deviantart.com/muffinshire/art/Comic-Twilight-s-First-Day-1-333365520
One of the most adorable things the fandom has created, muffinshire's comic explores the period of Twilight's life right after earning her cutie mark as she's been accepted into CSFGU.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2F6OKQu4JI
Some fans were loudly upset about Twilight's ascension, others have shifted attention to the likes of Starlight Glimmer or the School of Friendship. For me, the big seasonal change that I didn't like was the destruction of the Golden Oaks library. I've never really ranted or gotten angry or anything over it, just incredibly sad. I don't like Twilight's new castle, and probably never will. I've gotten to where I tolerate it, quietly and without a fuss, but videos like this one really speak to me about just how important the tree was. It was home. They dealt with it somewhat in episodes like Castle Sweet Castle, but the idea of planting a new one that will one day grow to be a new Ponyville library is just the kind of sentimental thing I needed for closure. Shining Oaks is part of my headcanon for Ponyville.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9BAeyZhAdE
Where Art of the Dress and Smile tell us a lot about who Rarity and Pinkie are, Winter Wrap Up is possibly the best of the classic three songs for a backstory context. The depiction of the tradition tells us about Ponyville's past, and Twilight's introduction to it tells us about her background from Canterlot. They never really emphasized that difference of culture all that much, as Twilight pretty quickly acclimated to Ponyville and the attention was on other things.

https://derpibooru.org/815958?
Ponut Joe is one of the artists I like, but the fact that his name is a play on Doughnut Joe's is as good a reason as any to plug him. After the gala in Best Night Ever, Twilight brings her friends to one of her haunts in Canterlot to unwind and laugh off the night's disasters. It's a simple doughnut shop, probably serves mediocre coffee as well. It's the friendly, homey sort of place you could imagine Twilight being fond of and it's a nice bit of character that we often miss out on when we're watching all the adventure and other antics around the world. It speaks of the little purple mare that ignored her classmates' efforts to befriend her, nose buried in a book floating before her. Maybe Cadance insisted that she not come straight home after school to read/study (hoping she'd stay at school to interact with her classmates more), so Twilight would stop here to read (and snarf a doughnut or two) instead.

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