Selections From the Canterlot Royal Academic Archives

by Third Wave

Switching Horses Midstream, Chapter III

As Equestria returned to normal in the months after the Cozy Glow Crisis, the announcement that Princesses Celestia and Luna were due to retire gave the nation yet another shock. The two ponies had led Equestria for millennia since its founding The Triple Crown Party had long relied on the sisters for guidance on policy, and their steady hooves gave the Tricrowners their legitimacy. Suddenly, Equestria and the Triple Crown Party learned that Celestia and Luna now planned to step down and leave Equestria in the hooves of the neophyte Princess Twilight Sparkle.

The announcement shook not just the halls of politics in Canterlot, but quickly became the talk of all Equestria and even beyond. With the decree coming so soon after Equestria faced one of its deepest crises, speculation and rumor buzzed about why the Princesses decided then to retire. There was talk of imminent royal scandal, insolvency of the treasury, or other ominous rumos that if true would threaten to bring down the government. Some of the seedier tabloids even tried to connect the retirement to Twilight, claiming the Princess of Friendship had somehow forced Celestia and Luna to abdicate or even going so far as to claim the reason was that Princess Cadence and Twilight Sparkle were actually Celestia’s foals and the abdication was a way to avoid the scandal leaking. These were part of the many attempts by a public that frequently was indifferent to the doings of the royal sisters to explain such a rapid rise in the ranks by Princess Twilight and the timing of the transfer of power. Of course, such ridiculous rumors are far more exciting than the rather mundane truth, both to the timing of the Two Sisters’ abdication and to Twilight’s rise to power. The answers to these questions can now be found in detail in the documents from the late Celestial Era that have been opened to public access as a result of the Open Historical Records Act of 1026. Contrary to those who say the decision was abrupt, the Two Sisters’ decision to retire had actually been considered for years before the official announcement. After Princess Luna’s return, Celestia wanted to connect with her long lost sister, but the royal duties of both princesses kept getting in the way. The two realized they were only drifting apart as they had been a millennium before. Inferring from the royal correspondence between Celestia and Luna, the decision to retire was not one they took lightly. The Two Sisters decided that they would wait until the planned succession could be undertaken swiftly and with confidence. As for the rise of Princess Twilight Sparkle, Celestia’s personal records and the original plans for the Two Sisters’ retirement indicate that Twilight was not the original choice for their successor as ruler of Equestria. Per Celestia’s original succession plans, Twilight was only being groomed as a chief advisor to the originally intended successor, Princess Cadence. However, after the return of the Crystal Empire and the ascension of Cadence to that throne, the original planned succession was scrapped due to the complication of uniting the Equestrian and Crystalline realms and Twilight was elevated to the planned heir to the Two Sisters. Twilight’s education on foreign policy matters began following this change, and the succession plans were only made known when Celestia and Luna had confidence that Twilight could faithfully manage Equestria. According to Twilight’s own records, not even she was aware of the intention of her erstwhile mentor. This is often considered by historians as one of the causes of what would happen to Equestria over the next year.

While Celestia and Luna were preparing for the succession of the throne, parliament was still reeling from the Cozy Glow Crisis. The reality that a single pony, and a mere foal at that, was able to nearly destroy all magic in Equestria revealed a severe liability in the country’s defenses and national security. The Coronists began shouting up a storm about the need for more defense spending almost as soon as magic returned to Equestria. The gains the Corona Party made during the following snap election only emboldened them. It appeared that Parabellum had the population of Equestria behind her when she made a call for doubling the size of the military and “creating a dedicated special force to protect the integrity of Equestria at home and abroad'' separate from the royal guard. However, Fancy Pants and the Tricrowners hit back with their own aggression tactic. Fancy Pants as Cheval Regent was cognizant of the ongoing plans for the diarchs’ retirement and of the plight facing ponies across Equestria. For the moment according to the Tricrowners, what Equestria needed was economic stability and reassurance, not an untested new agency independent of the diarchy. The three day magic loss might not seem like much, but it had cascading effects on nearly every sector of the economy. Several days spent without even levitation spells led unicorn productivity to plummet and created a financial crash not seen in decades. Cloudsdale’s weather production facility faced logistical and workflow bottlenecks for months after the crisis as cloud production stalled and backlogged the storm schedule for weeks. Food reliant on earth pony magic to stay fresh went stale. The delay in cloud distribution and the lapse in steady supply of earth pony magic disrupted the regular crop season as both planting and harvesting times had to be shifted. Some crops withered entirely. One of the hardest hits was to Whinnysota’s winter wheat crop. The grain was in its prime growing season and nearly to harvesting time, and despite the efforts of both pegasi and earth ponies, the delay in vernalization led to nearly half the region’s seasonal crop being lost.

Fancy Pants made it clear the Tricrowner position was an increase in public spending on security was the last thing that Equestria needed at that moment. Not only were ponies still uneasy on their hooves months after the crisis, but putting a greater burden on the treasury would be a very dangerous move at a time when Equestria needed confidence in its government finances. The Triple Crown Party had often been a budget hawk, especially when it came to defense spending, and that attitude was in full force during the initial national security discussions. Security appropriations bills began debate not as a whole but as individual items as the Triple Crown Party sought to divide legislation and counter each proposal in turn to maintain current levels of defense spending. With the 1008 snap election reducing the Tricrowner majority to a mere 11 seats, they won some battles but lost on others. One particular point of contention that arose during these discussions was the possibility of using anti-magic mechanisms to bolster Equestria’s own defenses. It was a sore point for many in parliament, having been in Canterlot when magic failed across Equestria and seeing the effect it had on the unicorn-dominant city. However, the idea that it would at least level the playing field in certain circumstances was a compelling one. During these debates, one of the geomages noted a recently discovered source of a magic dispersion field. The shards from Queen Chrysalis’s throne were known to block all magic except changeling magic. The properties of what had been named chrysalid stone were being studied by a group of geomages under Star Swirl the Bearded. The stone could be a useful deterrent in the case of facing a magical opponent, especially now that most of the changelings were friendly to Equestria. In fact, by the time of the Cozy Glow Crisis, chrysalid stones were already in use in Equestria’s defense as part of the defense installations in Tartarus to depower Tirek.

The debate over what overall role the chrysalid stone should play in Equestira’s national security system began. How could Equestria acquire more of it, where else could it be used, and, in the most important question that the Tricrowners bitterly contested with the Coronists, should Equestria acquire more of it at all. To many on Parabellum’s side, the answer to the last question was an obvious yes. A foal had the ability to mass dispel magic across Equestria. Chrysalid stone now seemed vital to routinely incorporate into Equestrian defense placements to even the field if it happened again. The Tricrowners disagreed. The stone could just as well be a hindrance to Equestria’s unicorn forces, and mining more chrysalid stone meant more opportunity for it to fall into the wrong hooves. Iron Curtain, one of the geomages testifying at the appropriations hearings, warned that proliferation of the chrysalid stone increased the chance of the stone being acquired by other countries or by villains like Tirek for their own use not just against Equestria but against each other. She even proposed that Chrysalis herself might be able to get her hooves on some of the stone and rebuild her army if Equestria was not careful with it. More practically, Iron Curtain noted that research into where the stone came from and how to find more had made little headway. The most reliable method of finding anti-magic sources at the time was Leyline Field Emission Detection. By measuring the level of distortion in naturally occurring leyline fields, geomages can detect and map out local sources of anti-magic such as dispelling fields or dimensional rifts. However, when it came to chrysalid stone deposits, all known deposits were too small to present any detectable distortion. Even joint research expeditions between Equestrian artificers and geomages and changelings bore little fruit, as no changelings in Thorax’s kingdom knew how Chrysalis had gotten her throne and there appeared to be no trace of any veins or deposits anywhere close to the new Changeling Kingdom.

The hearings revisiting the Cozy Glow Crisis and possibly spreading the ability to dispel pony magic rattled more than a few members of parliament. The Coronists were left on the backtrot as they began facing opposition to the security measures from both sides of the horseshoe. However, one salient point struck true; protecting the princesses and Canterlot Castle. Fancy Pants agreed that some chrysalid stone would be useful for protecting against magical intrusions against the castle. With no way to acquire more, however, the stone had to come from somewhere else. Most of the existing chrysalid stone was currently being used in the anti-magic field at Tartarus, so parliament decided they could take some shards there and use it for the castle defenses. While this weakened Tartarus's field, analysts determined the remaining field would still be strong enough to render the depowered Tirek's magic inert. On the passage of this portion of the security appropriations bill through parliament and the authorization by Celestia and Luna, chrysalid shards began to be moved from Tartarus to Canterlot. As the shards were still exerting a small dispelling force, they had to be transported in small amounts by earth pony and pegasus. This delayed their transit time to that of several days instead of the few hours at most a unicorn team’s short-range teleportation could do. Given the circumstances it was decided for the best that no unicorn be left without their magic for the time being.

Three days into the shards’ transit, Sombra returned. Sombra’s short-lived regime in the Crystal Empire already left scars in the memories of the crystal ponies, and those stories were embellished over the years in the popular imagination in Equestria after his defeat. The events of his second return shook Equestria even more. The Crystal Empire’s reappearance and even Sombra’s brief second takeover of the Crystal Empire, while worrying, were still taken by many ponies in Equestria as an event in a far off foreign land. Sombra’s insurrection and attempted coup in Canterlot itself, however, was a precision strike at the core of Equestrian power. Unlike the Storm King’s invasion, Sombra’s action was perpetrated by a small force and was made up of Equestria’s own citizenry bent under Sombra’s control. Even worse, the ponies under Sombra’s spell during the coup included many prominent and well known citizens of Ponyville and Canterlot, right up to Cheval Regent Fancy Pants! That such a breach of Equestrian security was not just possible but could subsume the Cheval Regent instantly validated nearly everything the Coronists were arguing about the weakness of Equestria’s military and national defense apparatus. Piling on the humiliation for the Triple Crown Party was the revelation that the Tree of Harmony, a previously classified but apparently powerful magical artifact that protected Equestria for millennia, not only existed but had been destroyed by Sombra during the insurrection. The almost immediate course reversal of Celestia and Luna’s abdication following Sombra’s ultimate defeat, while done in the name of ensuring stability in the transition, also dealt a blow to the perception of steadfast power of the diarchy.

While the chrysalid shards ultimately made it to Canterlot without incident, Sombra’s assault on Canterlot Castle demonstrated clearly that it would not be enough to provide adequate defense of the capital. Coronist deputy leader Crystal Clear called the Tricrowners “coming to their senses” when the party conceded support to a number of Coronist proposed bills to boost defense. Among the provisions passed, the government doubled the military presence in Canterlot and increased the number of pegasi guard patrols along Equestria’s borders. Due to the attacks on both Equestria and the Crystal Empire, Equestria also coordinated its national security efforts with its northern neighbor. Prince Consort Shining Armor, being former Equestrian royal guard captain and thus familiar with the armed forces of both the Crystal Empire and Equestria, led joint military exercises between the two nations and was brought on by the princesses to supervise the renovation of security measures around Canterlot Castle including the installation of the chrysalid shards around the castle grounds.

It seemed the Coronists had won the day in the national security policy fight, but the Triple Crown Party and Fancy Pants’ government still sought a way to claim at least a small victory. As Cheval Regent, Fancy Pants still had one trick up his sleeve: the royal treasury and the national budget. All the new security measures, despite being deemed necessary, were very expensive, and budgetary matters were one aspect of government where the Tricrowners still held a lot of sway among the Equestrian voting public. The Triple Crown Party had been in power for so long that a vast majority of ponies trusted only them on treasury matters. So when Fancy Pants claimed that while he supported the national defense improvements proposed by the Coronists in principle but the solvency of the treasury made implementing them difficult, the populace listened. The need to keep the treasury stable during the transitionary period of the royal succession and not make any drastic shifts that could jeopardize the principality further during a time of instability only added to the Tricrowners’ argument for reining in any reckless spending the Coronists might propose, even if those proposals seemed sensible. This on the whole was not a big shift in policy for the Tricrowners. Being the long-term stewards of the national budget, the party was frequently reluctant to lavishly dole out money from the royal treasury, sometimes even clashing with the Princesses on spending matters despite broadly adopting the royal sisters’ policy otherwise.

The Tricrowners and Coronists clashed heavily in parliament during the drawing up of the defense appropriations bill. What began as a unified desire to react to the aftermath of a national crisis quickly devolved into bickering over where to take bits from to fund the new security efforts. The Tricrowners again put the Coronists on the backtrot days into the debate when one Tricrowner backbencher got the idea of raising a tax to pay for the new measures. The Coronists, thinking they had a bill that had the support of a number of Tricrowner defecters, pushed for it, only to be caught out by Fancy Pants when all but a few Tricrowners voted down the amendment and the news of the day became Fancy Pants lambasting Parabellum, the Corona Party, and the sacrificial Tricrowner backbencher for wanting to raise everycreature’s taxes during such a delicate financial time for Equestria when many hard-working ponies were still recovering economically from the Cozy Glow Crisis.

While Fancy Pants was opposed to raising taxes to pay for additional defense spending, he had come around to the idea that the new measures were a necessity. The ordeal of being controlled as part of Sombra’s army had shaken the Cheval Regent, and archival records indicate that while he publicly made a show of fighting some of the more extreme security proposals and funding measures made by the Coronists, privately in meetings with Celestia and Luna he worked with the Princesses to find a way to fund an overall bill without putting the burden on working ponies. After some time of going over different appropriations procedures, Princess Celestia and Fancy Pants came up with a feasible plan of action. Around the time of Sombra’s attack and especially in the weeks after, Celestia and Luna were attempting to solidify Equestria’s trading ties with her foreign neighbors, many of which had only just begun normal state relationships with Equestria. Of particular interest was Equestria’s relations with the Dragonlands.

Dragons had long refused to recognize Equestrian sovereignty with some elder dragons keeping individual hoards on Equestrian lands or migrations crossing over Equestrian territory that were only tolerated by equine authorities so as to not invite any reproach or conflict from a succession of aggressive Dragon Lords. Formalizing relations and recognition between the two nations was a veritable diplomatic coup for Equestria. Indeed, according to some creatures’ interpretations it was an actual coup given the circumstances surrounding the rise of Princess Ember to the role of Dragon Lord. One of the points of contention between the Dragonlands and Equestria in these early years was over the gemstone trade and control of Equestrian mining lands. As regular import and export between the two nations began to settle, it became clear to both nations that Equestria had one tremendous trading advantage when dealing with the Dragonlands. Equestria’s wealth of gem and mineral deposits meant that over 90 percent of the gemstones being imported into the Dragonlands were coming from Equestria. Dragons formally recognizing Equestrian sovereignty also meant the cessation of unlimited mining rights by force, which drastically raised the price of gemstones in the Dragonlands. As gems served not merely as currency but as a staple food crop to the dragons, the rise in prices and fall in imports made Ember’s initial reign tenuous. However, while Equestria’s gem monopoly posed a threat to Dragonland stability, it created an ideal opportunity for Equestria and for Fancy Pants.

The Royal Sisters were looking for a way to help stabilize the Dragonland economy and improve relations. Traditional foreign aid offers were rejected out of hoof due to the individualistic and competitive nature of many dragons. Given the circumstances Dragon Lord Ember could not afford much further questioning of her legitimacy in her role, and to accept aid from another nation, especially from Equestria, would have given the appearance of weakness. What Equestria needed was a way to give aid while creating the appearance of a concession to the dragons. This was where Fancy Pants stepped in. As part of recognizing Equestrian sovereignty, the Dragonlands had agreed to cease raids on Equestrian mines and mineral deposits and to only engage in regulated trade for Equestrian gems. The Cheval Regent and the Royal Sisters developed the idea with Princess Ember, offering to expand mineral rights for citizens of the Dragonlands in Equestria. They highlighted the migratory pattern of the dragons and the common deposit sites they would usually congregate around in their migration for potential areas of mining concessions. However, in order to fund the new security measures, the mineral rights would be sold to either individual dragons or to cooperative groups of Dragonland citizens or of combination dragon-pony owned endeavors, in exchange for recognizing a more favorable export tariff for gems extracted under the mining grants.

Princess Celestia and Triple Crown Party officials unveiled the proposal a week after the tax hike was neighsayed. The amended national security appropriations bill now had the support of not just Fancy Pants but the full backing of Celestia and Luna. Parabellum and the Coronists still made an attempt to oppose the new funding method, attacking Fancy Pants for selling Equestria out to the dragons who had until recently been terrorizing ponies for the gems. However, the Coronists’ “yes, but” responses to Tricrowners questioning on whether they supported the security changes poured cold water on their opposition, and the bill was soon passed with a strong majority, even getting some of the Coronists in favor of the bill so they would not look weak on a national security issue that they were the ones to raise. It was a great turnaround and victory for the government. Shining Armor and the royal guard began planning the joint exercises and implementing the new security measures in Canterlot Castle soon after the bill passed, starting with the installation of the chrysalid shards around the castle.

Things were looking up for the Triple Crown Party in the short term after the scare of the 1008 election. They had helped Celestia secure a strong trade relationship with the Dragonlands and at the same time delivered a political blow to the Corona Party and their major opposition. However, the short term wave of support belied a longer term shift in Equestrian political thinking. The shift was further obscured by being most prevalent at first in the Unicorn Range and the Macintosh Hills, two major gemstone mining areas and already areas with some conservative undercurrents. The Unicorn Range in particular was already an existing hotbed of nativist sentiment, as it sent two of the four Hippocratic MPs to the Horseshoe, one general riding and one unicorn riding. The opening of mining rights with dragons only accelerated the growing discontent in the region and in other mining-centered regions. While pegasi were primarily only affected by the occasional grounding during dragon migrations before Ember’s reign, mining towns with mostly unicorn and earth pony populations had been subject to dragon raids and harbored that resentment even as the opening of trade between the two nations normalized. To many earth ponies and unicorns in those parts of Equestria, the opening of mining rights to dragons was an affront not only to ponies’ work in gem extraction but to the suffering the towns and ponies underwent for years prior. Here, the Coronist attacks on the counterproposal found the most traction.

The clashes between dragons and ponies in the early stages of liberalized mining rights did not help matters either. Blacktip, a dragon historian who served as the first Dragonlands ambassador to Equestria, recorded that he spent most of his early diplomatic career mediating in contract disputes between dragons and ponies. “Many of both dragons and ponies did not see each other as equals,” Blacktip wrote in a report to Dragon Lord Ember. “Dragons have long stereotyped ponies as being weak pushovers and easy to exploit to get more gems than they had a legal right to, and ponies have long portrayed dragons as uncultured, aggressive and brutish. Sadly, the stereotypes the ponies have given us are proving to be the more correct.” Blacktip’s reports show a number of instances where a dragon tried to make off with more than their agreed share of a mining claim, or dug for gems outside of their staked land grant, that kept his claws full in court dealings. However, the blanket perceptions also bred overreactions, as was the case when a group of earth ponies and unicorns in Dapple Creek arranged a mining claim with a dragon named Atar. The ponies used their gem finding spells and experience with the region to locate sapphires and emeralds in the claim, but directed Atar to dig near but not at the location of the stones. When several weeks of work yielded nothing, Atar gave up and ceded her right to the claim, after which the unicorns used Atar’s previous labor to more easily get to the gems and claim all the finds for themselves. Atar found out and sued but the local court ruled in favor of the ponies, and she only received the gems she was owed after Blacktip was able to step in and appeal the case to a Canterlot court. There were more records of dragons being at fault in fraudulent or breach of contract cases, but Atar’s case demonstrates that the mistrust and attempts to exploit each other was present among both groups early on. The frequent intervention of Blacktip and of Canterlot courts settling cases also helped spread distrust in the Tricrowners and of Equestrian institutions in general.

While the loosening of mining grant laws sowed distrust at home in Equestria, in the Dragonlands it was more beneficial. The goal of the new policy was to present Dragon Lord Ember as achieving a concession from Equestria, and to that end it achieved the desired effect. Following the implementation of the policy, Ember saw boosts to both her public support and to the economy of the Dragonlands as currency and food supplies became more readily available. However, some dragons still questioned her legitimacy and disapproved of her formal dealings with other national leaders such as Celestia and King Thorax of the changelings. That all changed though when a new crisis struck the Dragonlands a few months into 1009. While older dragons are traditionally more solitary creatures, they use communal hatching grounds, and the latest brood became endangered when the eggs were late to hatch. After some investigation with the help of representatives sent from Equestria, it was discovered that the lava pool keeping the hatching grounds warm had been depleted. Luckily for Ember and all of dragonkind, dragon fire was able to supplant the lava as a short term fix and the brood hatched with only minimal losses. The quick thinking in the face of a severe crisis fully cemented Ember’s legitimacy as Dragon Lord. That alone would have made it a success, but it also did more. The aid of Equestrian representatives in discovering the issue with the hatching grounds helped to soften public attitudes to working with other nations and participating formally in the international community. Ember had already forged a close personal relationship with King Thorax, so now the Dragon Lands established closer ties to both Equestria and the Changeling Kingdom. This would accelerate the Dragonlands’ path to greater formal participation in the international community, which would soon show its strength. Ember would need to call on all the political capital she had gained to convince the Dragonlands to go along with a dragonfyrd meant not to plunder Equestria, but to save it.