Pony Headcanons #19: Chrysalis · 10:11pm Dec 14th, 2018
First off, her eyes. No other Changeling has pony like eyes. She's a mutant in that regard. She was born with "deformed" eyes. The eyes of their prey. This got her mocked greatly as a grub, saying she'd never make it to basic Drone, much less Alpha as she had aspirations of.
This led to her having a DEEP resentment for just about every living being in existence.
She began to see them as idiots, fools who were beneath her, not even real beings, just stepping stones in her way.
She was "born" or hatched, a sociopath. She was always quick to anger to the point where it was commonly thought she'd become a Warrior drone. Female Warriors are rare, but they do exist.
Much as pony females outnumber the males, the reverse is true with Changelings.
Changelings dream, it's just about the only time they can get solitude from the Alpha and the rest of the Hive. She dreamt big. Of subjugating all ponies, seeing them all cocooned, to be used as little more than livestock, she saw a Changeling dominated world.
She became an Infiltrator, slowly climbing her way up the ranks, not just using others as stepping stones, but dragging them down as she did. She developed not raw strength, but sapping it from others until she eventually did something no other Changeling had done. She drained the current Alpha.
She soon assumed the position of Alpha, her body morphing and changing permanently to become the way it is now. She hoped becoming an Alpha would "fix" her eyes. But it didn't. In a fit of rage, she ordered all Changelings to strike the name of the Alpha before her from the records and have him branded a weak fool.
She personally took care of breeding the Changelings born just before the Canterlot Wedding. Many didn't have fully formed minds, not even true Drones but forcibly grown Grubs who were meant to give it their all and possibly give their lives to break the Canterlot Shield.
When that failed and her entire army was blown back to the Badlands, many Changelings dying in the process, the deaths of all of them reverberating like deafening snaps in her Link to the hive, she herself barely was able to crawl back up. She formed another Hive, this time, mostly Infiltrators and Hunters to properly replace their target.
When she found Thorax hadn't come back, she assumed he was either dead, or if he was still alive, he would be considered a Singular.
Unfortunately, Changelings aren't perfect. They require time to study the mannerisms and patterns of their targets for perfect impersonation. Chrysalis only got away with what she did for so long because one assumed the stress of it all was getting to Cadence.
When she failed AGAIN, despite having a throne made of a rock that could block out the magic of even DISCORD HIMSELF, and not only that, but her entire Hive turned against her, and those that didn't, just left her, severing her connection to them, she went mad.
Fear and Anger are sustaining her, alongside lust, very little actual love. She created the Mean Six to try and ruin the lives and reputations of the Mane 6, but that failed miserably.
Once a proud Changeling Queen who defeated Celestia herself, the one problem she could never overcome, her own hubris, was her ultimate undoing every time.
I imagine in the future, she'll be a cautionary tale for future Alphas to self reflect, be aware of their own flaws. The Alpha serves the Hive as the Hive serves the Alpha. Chrysalis ignored the first part rather thoroughly.
Wow...
VERY well done. I can totally see this as her story. Hell, I might borrow some of this for my own headcanon about Chrysalis and her story.(Credit will be shared, of course.)
4981311
As long as credit is given when it's due, go right ahead. But yeah, Chrysalis' mind was different from day 1. And it only grew worse from there. And all (mostly) because of a mutation when she was forming that gave her pony eyes.
4981313
Of course. *nods*
And it is an interesting concept, to see where evil could start with such a character.
4981314
She's not the first Alpha to lose it, nor will she probably be the last, but she's the first to have failed quite so spectacularly. Changelings don't usually do what they did at the Wedding or everyone would know about what they are and what they can DO. They're more subtle, again, they're Rogues, not Fighters.
Odds are, the end of her life (unless the show reforms her) will be the same way she imagined many of her enemies inside the Hive ending. Alone, cold, and out of love, body grinding to a halt, mind shutting down, and the spark of life within her, flickering like an ember, before going out.
Should she not change her ways, she's going to remain a parasite and die a parasite's death.
4981316
Indeed.
And, as awful and vicious as she is, that's a horrible and sad way to go. Reminds me of a quote from The Dresden Files, with one of the side characters expressing remorse for the death of Cassius (a horrific evil sorcerer who lived his life in thrall to the power of a fallen angel).
Rather describes Chrysalis herself in a way.
4981319
Effectively. Speaking of Dresden Files, I'm on the book with the Fallen Angels. It amuses me that Ivy's reaction, being what she is and who she is, upon seeing a giant cat, is to react as someone her age would. Because she Knows that is the correct reaction.
4981320
Oh cool, you're reading the Dresden books!
I stopped reading after like the twelfth book or so, but it was a great ride a lot of the way through. ^_^
4981322
So far, I agree. But yeah, Chrysalis is ultimately so full of rage and hate that she doesn't even realize that she's poisoning herself. Eventually, her death won't be in battle, or form being discovered by ponies, or even as a glorious overfed Queen, just a Singular. A lonely, cold, Singular who thought her hate would keep her warm. Thought the pain of the Rage would distract from the cold of The Great Hunger.
Death by her own hoof. Irony is arguably one of the cruelest forces in the universe in that regard. She wanted so many ponies to waste their live away, trapped in a hallucination, while she dies a similar death, only the only hallucination is the illusion that she can still win. She's a sole Alpha against a pony who can Conjure Woodland Creatures, one who has IMPRESSIVE multitasking capabilities, one who can go supersonic on a whim, one who can probably crack her shell with a kick, one who refuses the laws of physics, and one whose CLONE, equal in power and intellect overpowered her in a beam struggle and would have killed her if not for the Tree of Harmony. She never stood a Chance.
4981325
Indeed to all of that.
4981327
Ultimately, she's like Nightmare Moon. She will be consumed by rage and hate unless something changes. If she wanted, she could go to the other side of the globe, bit by bit, draining her way there, find another Hive or make another, but she's staying for revenge.
4981329
Self-destruction is an ugly, ugly thing...
4981334
Especially when it happens to the once leader of a race of LOVE eaters.
4981334
That said, for all her faults, Chrysalis is a very powerful Royal, when she was at the peak of her power in Canterlot Wedding, she had more raw power than any Alpha in recent memory and she had a talent for mind magic. She'd not bad at what she does, she just got unlucky. Sometimes, you can have the most well thought out plan in the world, you've conferred with your comrades, you've planned it, mapped it out, and then something you could not possibly have accounted for goes wrong. Sometimes you're unlucky.
Normally, a prey can't just break free of an Alpha's mental grip when they've been continually charmed and drained for so long, even the strongest of wills eventually break, but Chrysalis, in her arrogance forgot one crucial thing. She's not the only one who can harness the power of love. She got cocky, she didn't tie up all the loose ends, she didn't stay and make sure everything went as it should. And, she didn't immediately kill Twilight instead of just banishing her.
Granted, Changelings are reluctant to kill if a target isn't drained dry, but still. A little more pragmatism and she would have achieved her lifelong dream.
Pride goeth before the fall. And Chrysalis, being the egomaniac she is, refuses to learn her lesson, there's no way it was HER fault, it was Twilight's, or Cadence's, or Thorax's or Starlight's.
She's lucky Discord didn't imprison her in her own mind and force her to self reflect for eternity while her body rotted away from disuse. He could and probably would have. He's still capable of immense cruelty, he just usually doesn't indulge his more sadistic urges because he has an actual friend now.
4981503
Good points. Yeah, for all of her current fandom reputation, Chrysalis did have some pretty fearsome potential to her. A bit more pragmatism would have saved her - hell, she wouldn't even have had problems with Twilight if she'd thought enough to act something like the bride she was replacing!
4981624
Precisely. That said, as mentioned before, Chrysalis is very cocky, she is arrogant, she is sociopathic, she doesn't think things through as much as she should. She doesn't view ponies as living beings. She views them as CATTLE. Pawns at best, and the few ones she actually takes seriously, she has an insane hatred of to the point where she fixates on them entirely too much.
Chrysalis tends to either over fixate on the few ponies she actually takes seriously, or think of ponies as pawns at BEST.
4981626
From one extreme to the other. That's Chrissy for you.
4981627
It's quite telling when the Spirit of Chaos who has little to no conscience, who arguably was and even kinda still IS, a psychopath, took the ponies more seriously than she did, taking the time to break the Elements of Harmony one by one and presumably dealt with Celestia and Luna.
4981628
Indeed so.
4981629
I think I actually know why Discord hasn't taken his revenge on Chrysalis yet. Because he knows exactly how far she's fallen, and he's enjoying every second of her suffering. Her own self torment and slow descent into further madness, without him laying a finger on her is incredibly amusing to him. Discord is fundamentally NOT a good being. Nice yes, or, capable of being nice, but good? He is still a sadist. He just restrains himself for Fluttershy's sake.
4981630
Indeed, I can see that without a shadow of doubt.
4981651
Thing is, if he wanted Chrysalis dead, she WOULD be. Discord may not be able to (or unwilling to) directly kill, but he can do worse. But, that would get him into trouble with Fluttershy, so, he lets her rip her own mind apart on her own. Without him having to do anything about it.