Celestia and Luna in the Markist Setting · 2:04am Mar 23rd, 2022
I was going to put this in an author's note to Chapter 12 when it comes out, but it's just too big, so I'll do it here and now.
Note: This is a major part of Equestrian Business, so if you’re planning on reading that don’t read this.
The first Celestia was born to the noble de Ros family of England in 1379 and died in 1403. The second Celestia was born in 1410 to the lowborn Chambers family. This second Celestia had the same appearance as the first growing up and the same basic personality but had no memory or knowledge of her predecessor. This pattern has continued to the present day. Meanwhile the first Luna was born in 1381, to the Beaufort family. At any one time there are usually one Celestia and one Luna, with occasional gaps when one or both of them are dead. Until the current generation no Celestia ever knew of the existence of any Luna.
Each human Celestia has gained a unique power on attaining the age of 13 years and 5 days and getting her mark. For example, the first one could heal, the third had mind-control powers and the seventh could control the weather. Each Celestia has the one-time ability to transfer their power to another Markist. What this actually means is that the Celestia would lose their power, while the recipient would get a whole new power connected to their own mark.
In the current generation, the future Principal Celestia transferred her power of high charisma to her sister, the future Vice-Principal Luna, which awakened her dream-walking ability.
For centuries, Princess Celestia has had to deal with Markists invading her ponys’ minds. This was much more prevalent before 1865, when no secrets were kept from the Markist public, and so everybody knew that the Perfect World was real instead of allegorical, and that by abusing the marking ceremony they would be able to live the rest of their lives in that world.
In addition, a number of Markist mystics have found ways to invade the Princess’ dreams and have attempted to use this access to steal power or manipulate their Goddess for their own selfish ends.
For these reasons, the Princess frequently has the need to communicate with the human world. To avoid seeming hypocritical, she avoids outright kidnapping the body of a Celestia, even though she has the power to do so. Instead, she communicates her wishes through dreams—mostly to politely but firmly ask that Markists stop stealing her ponies’ bodies. Over and over and over again.
As most of the Celestias have been pretty decent humans, she has allowed each of them the courtesy of being able to contact her in her dreams, once in the lifetime of each human Celestia, in order to ask a favor. The Princess is not obligated to carry out these wishes, but she usually does.
P.S. The significance of the year 1865? That’s the year when nearly half of her ponies were possessed by Markists, and the Princess finally lost her temper. Now you remember that scene at the beginning of “The Call of Cthulhu” when Cthulhu woke up and half of the world’s psychics went permanently insane? Yeah, that was a good scene. Anyway, I’m not saying what the Princess did. Other than to say that Markism died overnight in every part of the British Empire other than America, and the majority of its secrets became secrets in that same year, such as the fact that Celestia was the counterpart of the Goddess. America happened to be the one place where Markists weren’t trying to escape the miseries of the Nineteenth Century by taking over pony brains.
Ah, that clarifies exactly what the "light" was that Celestia gave to Luna,
and of course, because human Celestia already contacted Princess Celestia near the end of Equestrian Business, that path option is off the table.
Moral of the story: Thou shalt not mindjack thy pastel pony parallel.
You'd think there wouldn't need to be a commandment for that sort of thing. You would be wrong.