"Is Celestia a Villain? Do you hate Celestia?" · 9:01am Jun 29th, 2021
A strange pair of questions I find asked of many authors, Including myself, when Celestia's image of the perfect ruler is challenged.
Of my two stories, I've made Celestia a central figure in both of them, for very different reasons, even if her presence isn't truly required.
In Book, Blade, and a Whole Lotta Magic, Celestia is a character who has made many mistakes in her lonely thousand years of ruling Equestria, but those mistakes are easily skipped, suppressed, and forgotten by the populace. Much of publicized history is very clean and cherry picked, akin to Real World History classes in the United States. But the kingdom is stable, safe, and happy under her reign, for the most part. The Elements of Harmony help protect the ponies from the likes of Tirek and Discord, and all is well, right?
Not so much for Illua though. Illua is a monument to Celestia's mistakes, a living reminder of who she slighted and how she allowed such a cruel living standard to be created. Illua is bitter about it, and bitter about her imprisonment, her separation from her found friends and family, and the time stolen from her.
Luna and Discord are her immortal companions, and know her far more intimately than she'd like to admit, and they know it. However, Discord can be an asshole about it, but Luna tries to be at least understanding, but it is hard when there's yet another kindred spirit that Celestia caused.
Is Celestia a villain in BBWLM? Most definitely not, she never was to begin with.
However in Innocent Monster she most certainly became one, but the story is dealing with the aftermath of that very problem, rather than her being an active character.
Celestia is a character who begs for exploration, not just from her personal perspective, but from many. Centuries worth of history, stories, rumors, lovers and enemies, complaints and praises are just never even touched upon, and there are entire fics dedicated to those very things.
I don't hate Celestia, I hate she was under-explored and isolated to the infallible ruler/mentor character. We know more about Luna and Discord than Celestia, and we won't get more.
Just something that's been on my brain for a bit.
It all depends on the author and how they write her
Because she is no saint because of All the sceaming that she does for the greater good of her kingdom,
But she is not evil ether because if she was evil, do you real think that she would not commit genocide
on the diamond dog for what they do to her people.
I believe that she is misguided at best and a dictator at worst
Is Celestia a villain? Do you hate her?
In your story, it's a grey area and your portrayal is actually not as bad as in canon.
But as a character in general? Yes, she is, and no I don't hate her. She makes a fantastic Villain.
Let's consider Celestia.
Celestia is creepily calm, and we all know from real world experience that people aren't that way, and when we see someone portraying a constant aura of calm, serene, piousness, it sets off alarm bells. She has an unhealthy amount of interest in her ponies, and has child proofed the country to an unhealthy level. This includes removing anything from history that would even disturb her ponies. Even her sister only appeared as a character in a fairy tail. Celestia also exhibits an unhealthy obsession with her little ponies and in my opinion is very yandere toward them, with all that the concept entails. Right down to murdering with a box cutter anyone who harms her little ponies. Even her little sister, who she essentially knocked out and kept chained in the basement for decades. To be honest, Celestia creeps me the fuck out.
Also
A very true saying is that a society is a reflection of its monarch or government. So lets look at Equestria and its surrounds. Equestria is a reflection of who Celestia really is. On the surface its calm, peaceful and perfect. But beneath the surface, things are not right.
The ponies are xenophobic. You can tell by the Ponyisms. Everypony, Somepony, etc. It's a very simple way to separate "us from them" A clear way of saying that there are ponies and there are everyone else. They treat anything that isn't a pony as a monster. Simply look at how Zecora is treated and how Chancellor Naysay openly behaves. Government board members are careful how they behave and go out of their way to publically avoid behaving in a way that would negatively affect the boards influence. Naysay is openly racist in a public forum surrounded by both ponies and minorities. Whats telling is that he sees nothing wrong with anything he said at all.
Let's talk about minorities in Equestria. If most of the rest of the world are 3rd world countries, why is immigration into Equestria almost non-existent.
Let's look at the rest of the world for a second.
Diamond dogs: Backward, Country less, Third world living conditions
Griffin Empire: 3rd world country
Buffalo: Tribal, Country less, Third world living conditions
Seaquestria: didn't see the movie. First world?
Saddle Arabia: First world
Kiren Lands: Backward Tribal, 3rd world living condions.
Crystal empire: Puppet Government installed by Celestia and lead by Equestrian Citizens. And if flash Sentry is in the crystal empire, that means the empire is occupied by the equestrian military, under Shining Armors command.
Yaks: 3rd world country
So, basically Equestria, an extremely prosperous and rich country, is surrounded by absolute poverty. Yet no one wants to move there.
Also consider that others living or visiting Equestria are rude and ill-tempered when dealing with ponies. Dragons, Yaks, Buffalo, Griffins. I can reasonably see one or two cultures that are rude to others, but almost all of them? Isn't it more likely that their attitude has something to do with how they are viewed by and treated by Ponies when in country?
After all, Spike who is a child is treated as a “them.” Used by friends and family, has no room or furniture of his own and sleeps in a basket on the floor.
Monk
“There are many ways to create a monster, and the one the girl knows best is rather basic: you tell someone they're a monster over and over again, then wait to see how long it takes before they agree with you.” -Estee
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Let's add some more things:
How she manages tho stay in charge for a thousand years is a miracle. Not to forget that she claims that the time since Twilights became an element is the longest periode of harmony since years. Given all the crap that went down over the serie I wonder what a shit show Equestria has been before then.
Personally, I'd rather put a comedic spin on things where possible. Sure, they can be turned into tragic spins, but let's just take the comedy where we can make it.
Discord made an offer, with full intention to follow through on it: If he lost, he'd take up her and Luna's doctrine of harmony and order. . . to an extent. And if he won, the chaos would continue! Celestia and Luna familiar with the game they were playing (Battlemace 40,000,000), but were a few rulebooks out of date, and thus, they lost. Then they went and got the Elements of Harmony to stop Discord forever. The only reason the seal wasn't 1000% perfect is because there was also some petty revenge mixed in there.
Luna's banishment was the result of a drunken brawl between the two of them, and after it was done, Celestia vowed never again to drink alcohol, thus her consumption of tea. She lapses sometimes, though. Usually once every decade during winter when it's dark and she has lots of time to sleep it off.
Celestia does indeed control the sun, and the world knows it. While she was busy helping govern Equestria, the ponies started coming up with fantastic tales of her power, and the rumors got out of hoof before she could do anything about it. She's not so precise as to be able to focus a solar laser on a single enemy, army, city, or country, but the rumors, once outside of Equestria, served to be really good at keeping most enemies from even considering war. In light of that, Celestia hasn't bothered to correct anyone.
She had intended to send Twilight to Ponyville a week or two earlier, but Blueblood and some other nobles distracted her with some kind of tedious thing, and she'd dozed off with her eyes open multiple times during the show and tell. During one such session, she thought she'd sent Twilight already, and it wasn't until the last minute that she'd realized that Twilight was still in Canterlot.
Truly, Celestia is ripe for all kinds of silly things. Why, there was even this one time she thought she beat the Equuish Inquisition at their own game. She personally infiltrated their ranks, gathered intel, prepared her guards to put an end to it, and then she struck! Nobody was expecting her! But then, it turned out that she had, unexpectedly, been infiltrating the Prench Inquisition instead, disguised as the Equuish Inquisition. The next week, worldwide, saw above average temperatures as she tried to sort out the headache that was figuring out just what she did wrong.
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Yeah those are things I dislike about her. She may mean well but sometimes there is a big difference between meaning well and doing well. And tricking twilight into being an alicorn and then knowing that she would never say no to Celestia got her to in charge of the kingdom with no training whatsoever.