Selections From the Canterlot Royal Academic Archives

by Third Wave

Switching Horses Midstream, Chapter IV

The erosion of trust in Equestrian institutions was hastened by many factors in the final years of the reign of the Two Sisters. The shock to the nation’s security of the Sombric Insurrection, the collective trauma among the pony citizenry from the near loss of Equestrian magic, and the seemingly sudden announcement of a royal succession all accelerated the decline of ponies’ trust in the ruling Equestrian government, both parliament and royal sovereign. On its own though, these may not have been enough to drive the country completely to the brink. The collapse of Equestria and harmony between ponies was further caused by a trend of misleading or outright false reporting in newspapers intended to convince the reader of leaning one way or another on a topic. This tactic of using editorials and opinion pieces as more or less blatant propaganda, especially in cases where it is done by printing false claims and misinformation, has become known as “yellowjacket journalism” due to the one creature who during this brief period was the most prolific author of such pieces: Queen Chrysalis.

Following the Second Changeling Invasion, Queen Chrysalis and what was left of her renegade hive had slunk back into the depths of the wilder forests. While Canterlot was watchful for another infiltration for months after, there was little sign of any rogue changeling activity Chrysalis or otherwise. King Thorax reported no suspicious activity among the new changeling kingdom either. The Storm King’s invasion forced Equestria to reprioritize, so pegasi eyes were taken off of watching for Chrysalis or rogue changelings. Apparently, Chrysalis also changed her tack after another ultimate failure. Reports of her earliest known journalistic alias began a few years ago shortly after the Storm King invasion. A unicorn named Shutterbug showed up in Ponyville asking about opportunities for freelance photography. After a few weeks this Shutterbug had moved to Canterlot and acquired a job at the Canterlot Historical Society with an assignment to document the first class of the School of Friendship and Twilight Sparkle as its headmare for the society. Following a stint there, Shutterbug was hired as a photojournalist at the Canterlot Chronicle. Eventually Shutterbug was moved to the political docket, where she shifted from a news photographer to a reporter and editorialist, including reporting on the 1008 general election.

According to staff at the Canterlot Chronicle, Chrysalis in her alias as Shutterbug frequently used her positions as an political columnist and a photojournalist to run pieces that attacked the Fancy Pants government and the princesses, including Twilight Sparkle. While Shutterbug was the longest career record that could be found of an alias of Chrysalis, she also adopted several other pseudonyms to gain positions at other news publications across Equestria. Shutterbug even apparently had another pseudonym within Canterlot, as members of the public have reported seeing a unicorn matching the description of the Shutterbug alias but going by the name Crackle Cosette, and newspaper and magazine records show at least a few articles authored under that name. Along with the Canterlot positions, Chrysalis also wrote by at least four other known assumed identities: Bedbug for the Manehattan Times, Astroturf for the Manehattan Dawn Journal, Yellowjacket for the Appleloosa Hitching-Post, and Paper Wasp for the Cloudsdale Picayune. So far one other potential identity has been investigated to its conclusion. After the identities were discovered, it was suspected that Chrysalis might also be operating as another creature to pen inciting articles and encourage disharmony between ponies and other creatures. A griffon journalist, Grendel, was suspected after a number of particularly cutting articles were discovered under his name at the Trottingham Sun. However, Grendel was later confirmed to simply be a biting columnist in his own right and not a changeling in disguise after a thorough investigation and by virtue of not suddenly disappearing following Chrysalis’s petrification. That even innocent creatures were subjected to a paranoid speculation of being one of Chrysalis’s disguises is a testament to just how effective her tactics were even after they were discovered.

While Shutterbug may have been the longest used alias by Queen Chrysalis in her disinformation plot, the most well known and effective pieces were by some of the other identities she took on. The most direct and damning false accusation Chrysalis made was through her pegasus identity Paper Wasp in the Cloudsdale Picayune. The piece “Who’s Coup?” made a shocking allegation that Cheval Regent Fancy Pants was not in fact being mind controlled by Sombra during his assault on Canterlot, Paper Wasp claimed that Fancy Pants was working with Sombra in a plot to overthrow Princesses Celestia and Luna and take power over Equestria for himself. The hit piece alleged Cheval Regent privately had contempt for the princesses and for all non-unicorns and that his involvement with Sombra was intended to put unicorns in charge of Equestria and elevate them above pegasi and earth ponies.

“Who’s Coup?” presented a direct and ludicrous charge on the Cheval Regent, but it was still effective. In articles like “Who’s Coup?” Chrysalis would make a profound conspiratorial statement that aimed for the most gullible of ponies. If most ponies dismissed her claims out of hoof, that was no problem, as whoever bought into what she said was enough to start the spread of her misinformation. The fallout from Paper Wasp’s article did not spread beyond Cloudsdale at first, but it did play a direct role in the formation of the Golden Dawn Party there and ultimately its breakthrough into the pegasus party system and later into general pony politics. However, often Chrysalis was just as capable of aiming an essay at the more intellectually minded ponies, in particular those aimed at the Canterlot or Manehattan elite. With those publications she went with a more indirect approach with her insinuations and called into question the stability of Equestria, its government and institutions, and of the unified goals of ponies in general. This is particularly evident in one of the articles by her alias Bedbug for the Manehattan Times.

Bedbug’s essay “The Decline and Fall of the Equestrian Empire” in the Times claimed that by accepting non-ponies and coming out of its “splendid isolation” Equestria had entered a state of moral decline, that the Elements of Harmony was the only thing magically protecting Equestria from collapse, and that their loss assured the inevitable destruction of Equestria as a nation. The title and themes of the essay were a reference to the mid-Celestial Era book “The Decline and Fall of the Griffon Empire” by Waxing Gibbous, which for centuries was the seminal text on the history of Griffonstone. It should be noted that after the Bedbug editorial’s publication, several historians disputed the article and its reference to Gibbous. Interaction with and study of Griffonstone and its history in recent years has called into question many of the assumptions made in Gibbous’ work. For instance, historians have more or less debunked the assertion in “Decline and Fall” that the Idol of Boreas had any magical power at all, let alone that its magical power was comparable to the Crystal Heart or the Tree of Harmony and that its loss was the decisive factor that led to the Griffon Empire’s collapse. Similarly, the idea that griffon communities and lords began fighting one another have now been attributed to economic and environmental factors that arose decades before the Arimaspi attack and were not, as Gibbous claimed, due to any sort of moral decay of griffon culture. Despite the claims being rebutted by Equestrian historians and griffons alike, the reference to Gibbous’ “Decline and Fall” lent Bedbug’s essay a great air of credibility among the Manehattan literati and helped its ideas gain traction among the more cosmopolitan and trade centered city. It played up fears among Manehattan merchants and other Celestial Sea shippers that the mineral rights agreement with the Dragonlands and opening of Equestria to trade were only the beginning. According to scuttlebutt around trading and shipping circles, the Tricrowner government was planning on eventually lowering tariffs on trade with Griffonstone and the other griffon and kirin ports across the Celestial Sea. This became a popular concern even though the Tricrowner government had made export tariffs a part of the agreement with the Dragonlands in exchange for sale of the mining claims. Editorials like Bedbug’s only fanned those flames of fear.

One reason the editorials from Chrysalis were so effective was they recalled the strategy of an old changeling saying: the forked tongue of deception is most effective when it speaks with both prongs, lies as well as truth. While much of the articles written by Chrysalis contained lies and misinformation, they also had parts that were proven true to create a basis of evidence and credibility for their false claims. “Who’s Coup?”, for instance, used leaked statements from Fancy Pants following the preparations for the Royal Swanifying Ceremony to make the Cheval Regent seem even more critical of the Princesses. Princess Twilight Sparkle took over the duties of preparing for the Swanifying in 1009 on request of Celestia and Luna, and during the preparations she apparently clashed frequently with the planning committee chaired by Fancy Pants. Later in private conversation the Cheval Regent remarked how “unconventionally controlling” Twilight had been during the preparations, and allegedly questioned Celestia’s choice of Twilight as her successor and whether Twilight was really prepared for the role, calling into question Celestia’s mentorship qualities. Paper Wasp and other of Chrysalis’s pseudonyms managed to twist Fancy Pants’ words to not only imply that he was conniving to take the throne for himself, but a more general questioning of both Celestia’s leadership and the diarchy’s legitimacy as a whole.

The supposed rift between the royals and the Cheval Regent prompted uncertainty in the future of Equestrian government, and supporters of both sides tried to take advantage of a potential split and called for even more drastic changes in the governing power structure than most ponies had ever seen in their lifetimes. The Golden Dawn Party, first contesting local Cloudsdale and pegasus politics but later becoming the first pegasus party to branch out to contesting general parliamentary ridings, became a Celestial counterpart to the Nightmare Party, calling on Princess Celestia to dismiss the Cheval Regent and indeed all of parliament and take absolute rule for herself, as party leader Burning Bright falsely claimed Celestia had once ruled. Others, primarily in unicorn constituencies that were already conservative but also some of the more connected families in Canterlot, called on Fancy Pants to publicly rebuke the Princess and at worst do precisely what Paper Wasp had alleged and launch a republican coup against Celestia. This shift of previously sensible Canterlot ponies toward extremism and republicanism was a dramatic but important contributor to the rise of the Hippocrats in Canterlot.

Chrysalis’s spreading of misinformation did partly achieve its primary goal of undermining average Equestrian confidence in government, but it also achieved a more insidious secondary goal. Just as ponies more susceptible to believing the lies did so, the increase in amount and visibility of such lies in respected newspapers bred contempt and skepticism from other, often more educated and well-informed ponies who believed themselves less susceptible to such lies. Supporters of Fancy Pants circled around to the defence of the Cheval Regent and condemned not merely Paper Wasp’s editorial but the Cloudsdale Picayune as a whole for publishing it. With many of Fancy Pants’ more vocal defenders being upper class unicorns in Canterlot, the anger at the accusation of one of their own quickly morphed into a broader mistrust of viewpoints coming out of Cloudsdale and soon became a generalized disdain of the opinions of pegasi as a whole. The historians rightfully pointing out the flaws in Bedbug’s “Decline and Fall” essay called into question why the Manehattan Times did not practice more wariness regarding what was being printed on its pages, leading to a decline in readership and a shift to the competing Manehattan Dawn Journal, the party affiliated newspaper of the Municipal Development League. This shift in newspaper readership occurred just as the mercantile party’s shift toward distrust in trade policy coming out of Canterlot was escalating. Even where Chrysalis’s machinations in the media failed in its primary goal, she still managed to sow a rising distrust of the media where ponies saw through her lies being printed on the page. It was ultimately a win-win outcome for the villain attempting to destabilize Equestria. Either the pillar of trust in government was weakened, or the pillar of the journalistic institution was weakened, and often the opposite reactions from different ponies accomplished both.

Faith in many of Equestria’s institutions was certainly weakened by outside interference as was the case with the country’s media. However, some scholars have taken these instances and used them to place an unfair share of blame on rogue actors outside of Equestria such as Chrysalis. That is sadly not quite accurate and denies an important contributing factor in the country’s growing instability. For at that time, the Equestrian government and politicians were just as capable of eroding the public trust in the country’s institutions as any rogue changeling, and many pillars of Equestrian stability were already in a natural state of decline. One example of this is the scandals around Equestria’s educational institutions. Anchored by Celestia’s School of Magic, the Equestrian Education Association, and more recently the School of Friendship, education policy became a yoke around the neck of the Triple Crown Party during Neighsay’s EEA chancellorship as they flipped from attacking him to defending him following his about face on non-ponies attending EEA schools after the Cozy Glow Crisis. However, that soon became only one of the scandals surrounding the Equestrian Education Association and its chancellor when parliament authorized an independent investigation of the EEA accreditation process after the revelations surrounding the initial denial of Princess Twilight’s School of Friendship came to light.

Neighsay has received a lot of flak for his denial of accreditation to the School of Friendship and previous hostility to non-pony students. The independent investigation, however, found that Neighsay was merely operating under standard EEA guidelines at the time and was not personally overstepping his bounds in denying the School of Friendship EEA accreditation. This finding and the School of Friendship’s brief operation as an independent school led to questions over the EEA’s rules regarding admitting non-pony students and ultimately parliament did rescind the ban. However, the investigation also led to broader concerns over how the association approved schools following the discovery that the School of Friendship was eventually accredited after the Cozy Glow Crisis even though the letter of the requirements for EEA accreditation had not yet been officially changed by parliament. Thus, Neighsay did act outside the association rules and his authority as EEA Chancellor in granting Twilight’s school accreditation at that time. With the reputation the School of Friendship had gained in its first year of operation, it could have reasonably been overlooked by parliament as the Tricrowner government agreed legitimizing Twilight’s school was for the best and quickly passed a bill amending the EEA accreditation rules rescinding the ban on non-pony students at EEA schools.

If the investigation had stopped there, Neighsay’s actions could have been chalked up to a strict if accurate reading of the rulebook followed by a genuine change of heart and nothing more may have come from it except the usual grumbling from the Coronist and Hippocrat circles. Unfortunately for Neighsay, that was not the end of the investigation. While looking into the accreditation process for the School of Friendship, the independent investigation discovered that during this period Neighsay had also approved accreditation for a private, for-profit university in Las Pegasus going by the name Friendship University. Friendship University was shut down shortly after it opened, but during its operation a separate inquiry into the school’s finances found the school defrauded students, made false claims about its tuition fees, and plagiarised its curriculum from Twilight’s own School of Friendship. Even more damning, Friendship University appears to have been run as a funding and potential money laundering ring for a nearby Las Pegasus casino. Despite all this, it appears that during its brief existence Friendship University did receive accreditation from Neighsay and the Equestrian Education Association, and did so through an expedited review process. The approval of a school with Celestia and Twilight’s backing could be overlooked, but the approval of a clearly inadequate and outright criminally run school could not. It became apparent that the expedited review process missed several points against FU’s accreditation that should have been obvious. The ruling of this first parliamentary investigation into the School of Friendship and then the Friendship University accreditations therefore declared the entire EEA accreditation process faulty at best. Now, the Tricrowner parliament approved an expanded investigation with, for once, few murmurs of dissent even from the opposition. Even the Nightmare Party was supportive of a full audit. For them and other republican parties, the EEA had been one of the biggest successes for limiting Celestia’s power in recent memory, and they did not want to invite royal intervention in the matter. A full audit of the accreditation process of Equestria’s biggest educational oversight organization was ordered. In addition, the inquiry ordered a review of every school that was approved by the EEA since the Education Reform Act of 986. That meant a review of the EEA’s practices going back not just to Neighsay’s career but to before Fancy Pants’ regency, as the Education Reform Act passed under his predecessor, Cheval Regent Gallant Fox. With over twenty years of school approvals to review and a full audit of the EEA to conduct, the investigation led by MP Varsity Blues would take months to complete.

Meanwhile, Neighsay attempted to make amends for the accreditation of Friendship University. He testified at a parliamentary hearing where he admitted the use of the expedited review process and the approval of FU was a “grievous mistake in judgement” that he assured would not happen again while he was EEA Chancellor. The parliament agreed and began considerations to remove Neighsay from his position. The mood in the Horseshoe seemed to coalesce around most members agreeing that Neighsay had done too much to the reputation of the EEA during his time as its chancellor and that he should resign. However, many Triple Crowners expressed concern over what the aftermath of such a move would be. The Tricrowners had already conceded the point of a need for increased national security to the Coronists, even if it did come with an ultimate victory on how to fund the new security measures. Now they were in danger of the Coronists winning on yet another contentious issue as Parabellum and many others in the opposition party called for Neighsay’s ouster. Even though just years ago they had been the ones who helped put Neighsay in his current office, the Coronists and even many Equestrians saw no inconsistency with the Coronists after Neighsay’s about face on the issue of other creatures being taught in accredited Equestrian schools.This was not the only reason Fancy Pants opted to stall on whether to remove Neighsay. If he was removed from the EEA, then it would lead to the inevitable question of appointing a new EEA Chancellor. The Coronists had scored a major victory in exactly such an issue with the original appointment of Neighsay, and now after the 1008 election the Tricrowners held even less of a majority in the Horseshoe. The alternative to Neighsay might very well be somepony even more hard-line on educational issues than Neighsay was on his original appointment. And with Equestria still reeling from the effects of the brief loss of magic, not to mention an unprecedented royal succession, a political fight over the appointment of a new EEA Chancellor and the risk of the pony being an even bigger thorn in the government’s side was too great for the Cheval Regent and shaky Tricrowner majority to bear.

Unfortunately for the Tricornwers, Varsity Blues’ audit of past EEA accreditation reviews only turned up more of the association’s past mistakes. Early records from shortly after the 986 reform act showed conflicting stances on the approval of universities in Whinnypeg even after the legal status of batponies was formally classified as being a subcategory of pegasi. Whinnypeg Meteorological University, which had been founded when batponies’ status was still a grey area but accepted their enrollment, was rejected by the EEA even after batponies were declared pegasi for legal purposes. Additionally the University of Whinnypeg, accredited before the reform act, had its accreditation suspended at the same time as WMU’s rejection and would not receive reaccreditation until 991 at the next periodic review. Further questionable decisions from more recently during Neighsay’s term as EEA Chancellor were also discovered as a result of the audit. Appaloosa A&M’s accreditation review process in 1003 was cut short and given a rejection when Neighsay decided that “the environment would not be conducive to the type of education Equestria needs” after a visit to the burgeoning town. Whether this was a jab at the town beginning to integrate more with the nearby buffalo communities or at the earth pony-centric curricula Appleloosa A&M was planning to offer is anycreature’s guess. Accusations of a pattern of corruption, not just the one-off approval of Friendship University, also began to emerge. Neighsay signed off on the accreditation of at least a couple suspect schools, most notably the Vanhoover School of Crystal Medicine. VSCM had begun almost immediately after the reappearance of the Crystal Empire, reportedly teaching questionable methods that became known to be false after Crystal Imperial knowledge became widespread in Equestria. It was closed down by the founders in 1005 after just two years and with a single graduating class, with the owners citing a lack of funding to maintain operations despite a sizable tuition cost comparable to other private Equestrian universities. Again the expedited review process had been used to accredit VSCM, despite the dubious curriculum. These findings by the EEA audit added to the pile of reasons for Neighsay to either step down as chancellor or be removed from the EEA by parliament altogether and did nothing to alleviate the pressure on Fancy Pants’ government to step in and do something about the matter.

Yet the government still hemmed and hawed over holding a vote on dismissing Neighsay. For weeks, Fancy Pants focused sessions of parliament on matters he deemed more urgent, such as the continued lag in weather productivity. While this was a pressing concern, it started to look like Fancy Pants was going out of his way to protect Neighsay. Pressure even from his own party began building up to at least do something about Neighsay’s transgressions and hold the EEA accountable for the results of the audit. At last, Fancy Pants finally relented near the end of June 1009 after the year’s Summer Sun Celebration and scheduled a parliamentary vote on whether to retain Neighsay as EEA Chancellor for the week following. While Fancy Pants maintains even in current statements that he desired to wait until after the Summer Sun Celebration - Equestria’s last as it turned out - so as to not overshadow or affect the holiday preparations, there were and still are rumors that Fancy Pants was finally forced into holding the vote after a number of MPs threatened to defect from the Tricrowners if the Cheval Regent pushed the vote back further. That theory has some doubt cast on it by credit for it claimed by both pro-Neighsay MPs saying they would join the Everfree Party as momentum was swinging against Neighsay, and by anti-Neighsay MPs threatening to join the Coronists as Fancy Pants was protecting the now multicreaturist EEA Chancellor. Given what happened with the Platina Party and the unicorn ridings later on, it is safe to say that if there was danger of defections, it came primarily from the conservative end of the party.

Fancy Pants’ relenting finally led to a vote to hold the Equestrian Education Association accountable for the actions of the past thirty years and the final result of the audit of Equestria’s largest school accreditation organization. Already, public trust in Equestria’s education system was slipping according to the polls around the time. An Equinnipiac poll from shortly before Neighsay’s retention vote showed ponies trust in the public education system was down nearly 17% on two years prior, dipping from 71% to a slim majority trusting it. Support for Chancellor Neighsay was also down to its lowest point, but opinion was still divided with 36% of ponies thinking Neighsay should remain EEA Chancellor and 39% thinking Neighsay should resign or be removed. Like the equine public, parliament proved similarly divided in opinion when the vote finally arrived. And one again, Fancy Pants attempted to use a workaround to achieve a middle ground outcome that the government could point to as a relative success. To avoid the looming quagmire of parliament choosing another EEA head, the resolution to remove Neighay was amended so it would only remove him as Chancellor of the EEA while keeping him on the association’s commission. This way, under the procedures of the EEA, the commissioners themselves would then decide on a replacement chancellor instead of a parliamentary appointment. In the short term, it worked to the outcome Fancy Pants was hoping for. Neighsay was removed as Chancellor by a 101-96 vote, with three MPs absent. The vote was a critical and worrying sign for Fancy Pants and the Tricrowners. Despite attempting to rein in his party for the vote, two Tricrowners were absent and 33 of the party’s 111 members voted in favor of removing Neighsay. The most troubling signs came out of the reserved ridings. A large majority of the Tricrowners’ unicorn riding affiliate, the Platina Party, voted to remove Neighsay with only 2 of 12 members siding with Fancy Pants. Other reserved parties saw cracks forming in them as well because of the vote. The pegasus Estival Party and the earth pony Country Party, both the largest parties in their reserved ridings, saw split delegations in the Neighsay vote. The Country Party, with its rural earth pony base, had two of its eight members break with the leadership to vote to retain Neighsay as Chancellor. The Estival Party, the pegasus party that was typically most supportive of non-ponies and more interaction with Equestria’s neighbors, saw three of its ten members vote to remove Neighsay. The breakaway MPs all said their reasoning was for specific actions by Neighay or the EEA such as the Whinnypeg batpony debacle, but the splitting in the usually consistent reserved ridings spelled potentially greater shifts in Equestrian politics. As public faith in Equestria’s institutions continued to decline, so did the support for established parties and party leadership from the public and from elected party members. Those shifts would come to the fore soon enough as the future of Fancy Pants regency became ever more dire.