Backstory: Trixie Lulamoon · 11:14pm Sep 21st, 2018
Trixie has been one of my favorite characters outside of the usual roster of main characters. She's been with us since Season 1, was one of the most wanted "one-off" characters to return (and finally did in Season 3). Fans of Equestria Girls have been treated to a few additional sightings in the S3-S4 era in EqG1 and Rainbow Rocks. After her upgrade to a regularly featured supporting character (a status just below Spike, the CMC, Discord, and the Princesses who regularly get their own episodes every season) we've gotten to see a lot more of her in both FiM and EqG.
Yet for all her popularity, we know next to nothing about Trixie's backstory.
Family
While not explicitly stated in the episode, we met Trixie's father, Jackpot, briefly in Grannies Gone Wild in Season 8.
https://derpicdn.net/img/2018/4/16/1709119/large.png
It's confirmed that he's her father in the "Ultimate Guidebook" official publication.
The fandom being the fandom has, of course, speculated all kinds of theories about Trixie's parents, both before and after this reveal. There were also some (probably joke/trolling) comments from Jim Miller on Twitter suggesting he left Trixie's mom while she was pregnant (perhaps without knowing), and couldn't be found/reached after she was born.
The IDW comics have declared "Dandy Lion" to be Trixie's mom. You know we're scraping the bottom of the barrel when we're sourcing the comics for our lore. 
So there you have it. We have names for both parents (depending on which source materials you're willing to include in your headcanon). We have a job for the canon one, and a slight bit of personality for him as well. We have a cameo shot in a random comic for the mother and a flower-related name and cutie mark for her.
In some ways, this puts Trixie's family situation roughly on par with Rarity's. We don't have an episode about either of their parents, just some minor appearances. We have to source a significant amount of our material for them outside of the show itself. If some of the more popular speculations wind up true, it seems Trixie may have been raised by a single parent, much the way Starlight Glimmer may have been. She also appears to have no siblings, like Starlight and Rainbow Dash.
Unlike Starlight Glimmer and Rainbow Dash, we don't have a lot of insight into what Trixie's relationship with her parent(s) was like growing up. A fandom speculation suggests that Trixie's need for attention and validation of her greatness stems from an absent father whom she looks up to. She seeks fame in order to impress him once they reunite.
While I'm not opposed to this theory, I am open to anything else too.
Something a bit closer to Rainbow Dash's situation, where her father encouraged her (but perhaps had to travel and be absent often) could also explain Trixie's quirks. I'd like to think Trixie got to travel with her father on occasion, making a lot of great memories on the road. This might also have created something of a conflict of worlds for Trixie growing up. Her mother was happy in once place, but her father kept returning to the allure of the road. In the end, it seems Trixie chose the road. Is her mother understanding and accepting of the life her husband and daughter chose, or does she resent neither of them valuing a stable home the way she does?
Cutie Mark
Trixie's wand and spangle of stars seems, like Twilight Sparkle's and Starlight Glimmer's cutie marks, to be magic-related. This has led to some to speculate that Trixie is good with magic the way Twilight Sparkle is. Just not as good, much to her annoyance. Indeed, our introduction to Trixie in Boast Busters shows us rather explicitly that she falls well short of Twilight's raw ability. That said, Trixie does know at least three tricks and does seem fairly adept and using those in creative ways. Trixie does seem to be above average based on the level of magic presented to us in that episode, which implies most unicorns know maybe one spell beyond the mundane use of levitation and light that all unicorns can do. If Trixie is indeed a magical prodigy, it is no surprise that her stage performance would be pretty impressive and entertaining to most unicorns, despite magic being much more common in Equestria than on Earth.
I've read some fanfic and theories that try to suggest that Trixie is weak, perhaps below average with magic. She has to rely on non-magic slight of hand(hoof), smoke and mirrors, pyrotechnics, and so on to conduct her shows. Others attempt to suggest she specializes in illusion-type magic, and while reasonably good at that, she struggles with regular "real" magical spells and effects. This falls into something of a D&D style of arcane magic, separating it into schools like Illusion, invocations, transmutations, necromancy, divination, abjuration, and so on. None of these really fit with canon though.
We have seen that Trixie can learn and perform magic rather well in All Bottled Up. She has some attention/concentration hurdles that get in her way, but once she has gotten past those, she has some notable ability. Of course, her primary interest in learning any sort of magic is how she can use it in performances.
All in all, I feel that Trixie's cutie mark follows the typical unicorn-style. She's interested in stage performance, and her ability to learn and use magic is related to that. She'd probably struggle with some of the combat-oriented magics like shields and laser beams that Starlight and Twilight demonstrate now and then, but she's picked up something as difficult as teleporting objects significant distances as well as transmuting objects. Her talent supports her lifestyle/career.
If you want something vaguely official, some magazine in Europe, in French, has an 8-page comic showing how Trixie got her cutie mark:
https://www.equestriadaily.com/2016/02/trixies-cutie-mark-origin-story.html?m=1
Essentially, she went to several places to try to put on a performance but failed to wow the crowd each time. She was about to give up, didn't, and kept practicing. She earned her cutie mark while practicing, and her next show was a success. This is all told as a flashback from the CMC, who had this story told to them one random day by Trixi after she suddenly appeared. So, a dubious source, awkward framing, translation concerns, and it doesn't really tell us anything we didn't already know. It gives us no real insight into Trixie's character other than she is a stage performer and earned her cutie mark pursuing that.
Element
As with many unicorns in the show, it is pretty easy to say Trixie's Element is Magic. Her rivalry with Twilight Sparkle seems rooted in the notion that while she's pretty good at magic, someone else is better and upstaged her. Magic is clearly very important to her and features in her conflicts and struggles. However, magic as Friendship doesn't seem to really play too much into her life. It wasn't until No Second Prances that we had any real indication that she had any interest in making friends at all, and she hasn't shown much interest in making more beyond Starlight Glimmer.
Honesty is another candidate for Trixie. While written pretty badly, the underlying message for Boast Busters was about Honesty. Applejack, Rarity, and Rainbow Dash took exception to Trixie's performance mostly on the grounds that they didn't believe she was telling the truth about her exploits or ability to best others. Twilight's lesson learned was to be honest about who she is and what she does, rather than fear her friends would reject her for her talents and see them as empty boasting like Trixie. That said, Trixie may have been making up stories with the Ursa, but she was being honest with her magical abilities and demonstrated that when challenged by the three. None of the rest of Trixie's appearances have particularly emphasized Honesty as being particularly relevant or important.
Perhaps a better candidate would be Laughter. As a stage performer, Trixie always seeks to entertain her crowd. There is certainly a lot less altruistic tone to her performance than Pinkie Pie's or Cheese Sandwich's. It is certainly possible to argue that Trixie's fame-seeking is entirely selfish and self-centered, this feels perhaps like a case where something of a negative representation of the virtue shows how important the virtue is to the character. It is undeniable though that in order for Trixie to get what she wants (attention, adoration, fame, reputation), she has to give that entertainment/"laughter" to her crowds. The "be great so they want to see more of you" vs "magically compelling others to see her as great and do her bidding" conflict was on display in Magical Duel. In No Second Prances, we saw Trixie struggling to rebuild her reputation still.
Events
Between word of Lauren Faust and the cameo in IDW comic, it seems Trixie may have attended CSFGU alongside Twilight Sparkle. This is pretty feasible, as the place likely has several different classrooms. The fact that we saw neither hide nor hair of her in Amending Fences doesn't rule this possibility out. As a reasonably talented unicorn, it seems she could have made the cut. We certainly have more reason to believe she's good enough than we do for Minuette, Lemon Hearts, Twinkleshine, or Lyra.
We learned in Magical Duel (and I commented on in Pinkie's blog) that Trixie worked on the Pies' rock farm. This is, of course, the entire basis for the fan comic by Foudabulbe that ships Trixie with Maud Pie. However, it seems Maud doesn't live at the farm and hasn't for some time. It seems unlikely they'd spend a lot of time together there, as Maud would only ever be back for visits. She's been busy earning her Rocktorate. I personally like to think that Trixie had a lot more interaction with Limestone and Marble. Limestone in particular probably oversaw a lot of Trixie's work, though the flashback showed Igneous doing so. Interactions between the shy and possibly mute Marble and the talkative and outgoing Trixie likely resulted in some interesting scenes.
On the Road to Friendship gave us a lot of insight into what life is like on the road for Trixie. We get a good idea of how seasoned a traveler she is, with her familiarity with exotic places like Somnambula. As such, rather than a single particular event, I'd like to note that there are a ton of minor events of "been to this place for the first time" and "returned to this place some amount of times" through Trixie's backstory. Just where all she has been and how often she's been to those places is up to speculation, of course, but who knows what kinds of interactions and experiences she's had through those travels. Ponyville's reception of her show in Boast Busters seems to have been unexpected and highly atypical.
I'd originally wanted to try to include a lot more of EqG Trixie's character and events into this blog, but the two are really different characters. While we know little about pony Trixie's backstory as I've shown, we know nothing at all about human Trixie's. We can speculate that her parents probably match up to FiM's offerings to some degree, but "urbanizing" them could easily result in some rather different contexts. While EqG Trixie is rather interesting, especially her parts in Rainbow Rocks and Forgotten Friendship, this is a blog about her past and not an examination of the "here and now" of a particular episode or movie. So for EqG Trixie, all we really know is that in third grade she was classmates with Wallflower Blush.
For the most part, we don't know much about Trixie still. We don't know what really drove her to live a life on the road, traveling, and putting on shows. While it is true that this kind of life probably doesn't demand explanation the way Starlight's "formed a cult" life path does, one cannot make the argument that "lack of backstory" makes for a bad character or prevents her from being well-loved by the fandom. When I see the popularity of characters like Trixie, and the rather hand-wavey explanations for her antagonism in Magical Duel or poorly written "plot" of Boast Busters, I can't help but feel like the criticisms of "bad writing" for Starlight Glimmer are using an entirely different set of standards.
Character Plugs
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/189852/lulamoons-castle
Possibly the best Trixie fanfic on the site from that era prior to Trixie's glorious upgrade in S6. With how wonderful she has been these last few seasons, it is kind of hard to remember what it was like desperate for more Trixie, with only speculation on the rivalry/relationship between her and Twilight to work with. Bookish does a stellar job of exploring that in this.
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/106898/a-trixdash-love-story
Speaking of Trixie and Twilight's relationship, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Yukito, possibly the biggest fan of that ship in the entire fandom. And of course not linking a story of his showcasing that ship, and instead one where he ships Trixie with Rainbow Dash.
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/6893/hostile-takeover
Yet another fanfic. This one showcases Fluttershy and Trixie. They're away from Ponyville and in a different entertainment situation than usual for Trixie, but there are a lot of great interactions and characterization opportunities to enjoy in the story.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOEKu8L5UqQ
Not much to do with her backstory, but just a great Trixie song.
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-looks at the next up- EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! <3 <3 <3 <3