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// Chapter 9:  The Tyrant Discord and the Royal Wedding/Canterlot Invasion 
// Story: Bedtime Stories For The Mare In The Moon 
// by Needling Haystacks 
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	The two events in the title occurred within a year of the Longest Night.  The return of the Tyrant Discord was probably related, but the Canterlot Invasion seems to have been coincidental.  The wedding timing was likely also coincidental.

Section 1:  The Tyrant King Discord

A few months after the Longest Night, a state of emergency was declared in Canterlot.  Around the same time, Ponyville and the surrounding environs underwent a strange and dramatic change.  In addition, the day and night changed rapidly for what would have been a bit over a day, had the usual day/night cycle .  This has been reported to some extent, but for those who have only a cursory knowledge of the events, local gravity in Ponyville went haywire and chunks of land were uprooted and changed color.  Also, cotton candy clouds rained chocolate milk and the roads turned to soap.

These were all the result of the return of the legendary being Discord, also known as the Tyrant King.  His brief reign in the past is somewhat infamous in Equestrian history, and featured many similar effects according to reports.  It was Luna and Celestia's defeat of Discord that changed their roles from largely ceremonial to near-absolute rulers.  As covered in an earlier chapter, the Elements of Harmony were used to defeat Discord by turning him to stone.  There was a competing theory at the time that he may not have literally been “imprisoned” in the stone, but was killed outright.  Celestia confirmed that he had turned into a stone statue, but could not be certain he was still alive in it.  This alternate view was fully debunked by Discord's return.  Also confirmed was that the statue in the gardens was the original.  This quite frankly confounds me:  if there was any chance at all of him breaking free, why not keep the statue in a dungeon or something?  Given Discord's apparent power, this might not have done any good, but it would have been a reasonable precaution.

It is not clear what the proximate cause of Discord's release was, but it is likely that the overall cause was the Elements of Harmony.  When Nightmare Moon was defeated, the elements bonded to new wielders for the first time since Discord had been imprisoned.  If the spell holding him prisoner was dependent on the elements, they may have reinforced it until their realignment, at which point it gradually faded over several months.  Since no one was aware that they served this role, the new wielders never re-applied the spell.

Whatever the case, the released Discord wrecked havoc, as noted above.  He hid the elements of Harmony and in some manner neutralized the wielders.  It has been requested that the details of the wielders' encounters not be mentioned here, but the curious may find Twilight Sparkle's report on the matter in the Canterlot and Ponyville libraries.  Eventually, though, the  wielders reunited and used the elements to re-imprison Discord.  Of note at this point is, once again, Celestia and to some extent Luna (who was still apparently recovering) were unable to deal with the threat and had to delegate the task to others.  The element wielders have largely kept a low profile, despite their importance, but their names are generally known.


Section 2:  The Royal Wedding and the Changeling Invasion

The wedding of Mi Amore Cadenza and Shining Armor, captain of the royal guard, was a major event.  Ms. Cadenza is an alicorn and has been designated “princess”, though at present she does not actually rule over anything*.  She apparently saved a remote village before becoming an alicorn, but little information is available about this.  It is far from clear to me what qualifications she has for being named a princess, especially as unlike Celestia and Luna, no representatives of the ponies of Equestria ever appointed her.  But I digress.

At this wedding, it came to light that the bride had been replaced by Chrysalis, Queen of the Changelings.  	Ms. Cadenza had been replaced over a week before the actual ceremony.  Chysalis then made the threat against Canterlot herself in order to draw attention away from Ms. Cadenza, whose mannerisms she could only vaguely mimic.
Of not is that the public engagement period was only about three months long, leading to some salacious rumors as to the reason for the rush.  Of course it might have just been the public announcement, but it seems to have been privately short as well as according to reports, the sister of the groom, one Twilight Sparkle, suspected the switch but had been out of touch with the bride long enough that she could not be certain or provide proof.  This is the same Twilight Sparkle who is Celestia's protege and wielder of an Element of Harmony.  It is unclear how much this is actually related.

At any rate, Ms. Sparkle was not believed until it was almost too late.  She found the real bride imprisoned in the abandoned tunnels under Canterlot and returned her to the surface, revealing the deception.  But Chrysalis had been feeding on Shining Armor often enough for long enough that not only was he under her control, but her powers had increased.  In the resulting brawl, Luna was conspicuously absent, Celestia was defeated, and the Elements of Harmony were locked away and unavailable.  In the end, the couple themselves drove the changelings off with some force by synchronizing their magic in a rare tandem spell.  Both are experts in barrier magic, according to reports, so the result was quite dramatic.  Expeditions sent out subsequently could find neither changelings nor their bodies.  Since changelings can fly, it seems likely that they fled somewhere.

This leads us to the subject of changelings.  Their existence has been well-known for centuries, but outside of certain corners of the scientific and security communities, few ponies know much about them.  Changelings are shape-shifters who feed primarily on love, but in a pinch can consume other strong emotions such as fear and anger.  They typically operate on the fringes of Equestria, quietly replacing ponies to feed on others' love for them.  There are two typical ways that they do this:  one is to kidnap the pony to be replaced, the other is to replace somepony who is leaving town for some other reason anyway, such as business or a vacation.  In the latter case, they claim to have 'returned early' and the pony's friends and family only discover that something is up on the real pony's return.  The changeling will either have an accomplice or keep a close watch themselves and leave town just before the real pony returns.

Oddly enough, there are almost no cases of changelings killing ponies that they replace.  The legend about changelings replacing newborn ponies is just an old mare's tale that seems to have resulted from tragic misunderstandings of birth defects and/or mental disorders dating back to the pre-Equestrian era.  The ancientness of these legends indicates that changelings were known by are ancestors before coming to Equestria.  Since the land that would become Equestria was sparsely-inhabited before Earth Pony and Pegasus magic reshaped the climate, it seems probable that the changelings follows the pony settlers.

Lastly, there ARE a few documented instances where changelings seem to have created ponysonas wholesale:  pretending to be somepony new in town and garnering affection from there.  Typically, they are discovered by accident one day when their transformation wavers due to either extreme hunger or strong emotion, though sometimes they are uncovered by magic examination.  There are even rumors of rogue changelings who became so used to these roles that they underwent some sort of fundamental change, only being discovered as non-ponies at this point, but this is unconfirmed.  It is, of course, difficult to be sure that there are not changelings of this class that have gone undiscovered.  If they do exist, they do not seem to be in large enough numbers to significantly drain the citizens of any one town.

This chapter has been a bit sparser than I would like.  The value of history is best seen in retrospect, and these events occurred to closely to the time of writing.  Still, it has provided a window for the further discussion of Discord and the Elements of Harmony, as well as introducing the subject of changelings.  In the next chapter, we shall return to the format used in the first edition.  We will start with an original story and lead into an analysis of such informed by recent events.

*Since this chapter was written, Mi Amore Cadenza has become ruler of the returned Crystal Empire.  It was too late to incorporate this event into the chapter proper.