Story Notes: Stained Glass · 12:37am May 31st, 2022
First off, thanks to AShadowOfCygnus, MSPiper, and metallusionismagic. for pre-reading!
This is going to be a different type of blog than my usual story notes blogs. For one, there aren’t a whole lot of actual facts to cover.
I could go into an essay on stained glass through history, although that’s not really what the story’s about. And if you’ve watched the show at all, you know that stained glass features prominently in some parts of the Palace in G4, and you might also know that Zephyr Heights has a huge stained glass window at the [airship] station. You also probably know that they’re often an important storytelling element, highlighting important ponies or events in Equestrian history.
I could tell you how historically in Medieval Europe, stained glass was used to illustrate Biblical narratives to a largely illiterate population, and how that’s likely the reason it was used in Equestria as well.
Instead, I’m going to tell you about the story itself, and some of the writing process.
I don’t remember exactly when I first got the inspiration to write this, but I can tell you that the gDoc was created on July 31, 2013 and the original document is certainly older than that.
It was probably after one of the episodes where a new stained glass window was unveiled (perhaps the Crystal Heart one, as the first chapter of the story mentions) and I wondered why the palace hadn’t run out of places to put stained glass windows, or why the ones the palace seems to have are all contemporary.
I’d visited a stained glass museum in Chicago, which was on Navy Pier. I think it has since been closed and relocated, although I don’t know for certain.
I was also inspired by my memories of the Scottish National War Memorial in Edinburgh Castle. They had remembrance books listing all the Scottish soldiers who had been killed since WWI, well over 200,000 names, and I remember how quiet it was in there.
Later, I found CHriegerCH’s The Cost of the Crown—while that was not influential to the story overall, it does explore the same themes.
The Cost Of The Crown is based on an episode in Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar stories.
IMO, it's one of the best MLP fan videos.
Celestia version of Cost of the Crown was so very fitting.
I remeber a story which because alicorns see light at a much higher spectrum they have problems seeing normal plane glass so to keep from accidently breaking windows Celstia had all the windows tinted so she know when the windows were closed
5661041
I won’t argue with that. It’s one of my favorites.
5661111
It really is. It’s a fantastic video.
5661122
That’s an interesting bit of headcanon. While I have considered that different Equestrian species see differently (for example, griffons can see into UV like many birds). I hadn’t considered that alicorns might see differently as well, although it makes sense that they would.
I don’t know exactly how glass would figure into that, but of course different kinds of glass can block different kinds of light--or let it through uninterrupted.
That does beg the question of how often Princess Celestia decided to fly through a window rather than a door or off a balcony.
And thank you also for the blog post. :)
Glad this one finally made it to FiMFic.
I know it was a long time coming, and I'm glad you ultimately found your way to being happy with it.
5662660
You’re welcome!
5662679
Thanks! The story’s been in my mind for a long time, and it was good to finish publishing it.
My name in lights once more... The spell is broken, we live again!
5667704
Yes! Now onto other fics that have also been languishing