//------------------------------//
// Epilogue 
// Story: The Blueblood Papers: Royal Blood 
// by Raleigh 
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[It is on this abrupt note that this entry in the Blueblood Manuscript comes to a close.  While the immediate aftermath of the Battle of Virion Hive and the Medusita Massacre are well known to casual fans of history, I believe that my nephew’s narrative deserves to be sufficiently rounded-out by some much-needed context.  Once again, we return an appropriate passage to Paperweight’s ‘A Concise History of the Changeling Wars’.]

The Battle of Virion Hive is seen as the turning point of the war, which is not an entirely inaccurate assessment.  The battle was a decisive strategic victory for Equestria; the first hive city had been taken, and with it two thousand ponies liberated and the sustenance they provided was denied to the enemy.  The Equestrians held the initiative, the Changelings were in retreat, and the Twilight Sparkle Reforms were vindicated.

It would be more accurate, however, to call it an ‘escalation point’.  Prior to the battle, the small, elite, and well-trained but poorly-led Royal Guard fought hoof-to-hoof against vast, un-disciplined, and fanatical hordes of Changeling drones.  Following the completion of the Twilight Sparkle Reforms in Equestria and copycat reforms within the Changeling Hives, increasingly larger armies of Equestrian volunteers armed with muskets exchanged disciplined volleys with equally-armed Changeling conscripts, and increasingly deadly artillery and even poison gas were employed by both sides.  Virion Hive had ultimately marked an escalation in the scale, technology, intensity, and savagery of the war.

It was the Medusita Massacre where this escalation had finally culminated.  The unthinkable had happened - Equestrian soldiers had murdered civilians, and officers, up to and including Field Marshal Iron Hoof, had attempted to cover it up.  The resulting public outcry when Lord Commissar-Prince Blueblood exposed the atrocity was the final nail in the coffin of the old guard of officers.

Princess Celestia’s decision to appoint herself Warmistress of Equestria could not have been taken lightly, but that the resurrection of this ancient title, forever tainted by its association with Nightmare Moon, was accepted by Parliament with only minor dissent is a testament to the sheer outrage felt by her subjects.  In doing so, Princess Celestia was entrusted with total power over the entire apparatus of the Equestrian state and its military, after centuries of the gradual dispersion of royal alicorn authority to nobility and the slowly-developing democratic institutions.  

However, with millennia of political experience, she was prescient enough to know that this would not be without controversy.  Public reaction was positive at the time, for after two years of inconclusive fighting and the slaughter at Virion Hive, Princess Celestia was finally taking decisive action in leading her country.  A few malcontent journalists and politicians complained about a return to the tyranny of ancient Equestria, but our Princess soon proved them wrong.  She organised and consulted heavily with a cross-party cabinet from the democratically-elected House of Commons called the War Cabinet, consisting initially of Prime Minister White Hall, Foreign Secretary Fancy Pants, War Secretary Blowtorch, and Minister for Labour Clementine.  It would later expand as the requirements of the war continued to evolve.

It has become fashionable in recent years for so-called revisionist historians to attempt to paint Princess Celestia’s role as Warmistress in a more negative light.  It is claimed that her interference in the running of the war had led to costly mistakes with unnecessarily high casualties.  To counter this ridiculous charge one only needs to point to the previous two years of mismanagement and stalemate.  This flagrant character assassination of our Princess is nothing more than a misguided and malignant attack on the very foundation of Equestria itself.

[Paperweight goes on to complain about historical revisionism for seven more paragraphs, which I have cut because it is not relevant.  I will say, however, that his apparent need to defend my reputation from criticism is misguided.  While this book is excellent at providing an abridged narrative history of the Changeling War, his tendency to excuse or dismiss genuine mistakes and lapses of judgement that I had made as Warmistress, including the delay it took for me to reluctantly take the position, taints it.]

In becoming Warmistress again for the first time in more than a thousand years, Princess Celestia had adapted the role for the requirements of modern war.  She would not personally lead her ponies into battle as she had done in the ancient wars of conquest, but from Canterlot she would direct the operational conduct of the war at the highest level, marshalling the vast resources and institutions of the state to achieve total victory over the Changelings.  In practice, this often meant managing the clashing personalities of her generals and civil ministers.  In serving as a mediator in such disputes, Princess Celestia would ensure cooperation between all aspects of the war effort and a unity of vision in operational strategy.  Later, she was overheard to quip to her personal assistant, Raven Inkwell, that she ‘feels more like a herd resources manager than a warlord’.

Her first act as Warmistress was to remove Field Marshal Iron Hoof from command.  He had struck a deal with the war crimes investigation to provide further evidence against Second Fiddle in exchange for his freedom, and had believed this would also ensure that he kept his job.  Princess Celestia, however, declared that his poor conduct of the war thus far was sufficient grounds for his removal, citing his singular lack of initiative and stubborn rejection of modern innovations in war as making him thoroughly unsuitable for the job.  Iron Hoof would never receive another command and would go on to run an unsuccessful campaign for prime minister.  His promise to bring a quick end to the war by immediately opening peace negotiations with Queen Chrysalis gained some popularity with the electorate following the costly campaigns that followed Virion Hive, but although the charges against him were dropped, his association with Second Fiddle had damaged his reputation beyond repair.  He would become a writer, and spent the rest of his life defending his war record.

As for Commissar-General Second Fiddle, a lengthy and politicised court martial found him guilty of murder and he was sentenced to be transferred to a penal unit, an innovation he had brought to the Royal Commissariat.  His ultimate fate is not recorded by history, but it is believed that he was either killed in action or merely faded away in ignominy and failure.  Penal units were not known for their meticulous record-keeping, unlike the rest of the bureaucratised Equestrian Army, so it is unlikely that the truth will ever be found.  Either way, what had been a promising career in the Commissariat had been thrown away in the vain pursuit of glory.

With Iron Hoof out of the picture there came the problem of replacing him.  General Market Garden seemed like the obvious first choice, and she was so confident of being selected that she commissioned a new uniform from her Saddle Row tailors to go with the promotion she believed was inevitable.  Princess Celestia, however, appointed General Hardscrabble to the position instead, and mollified a despondent Market Garden with a peerage title -- Viscountess of Virion.  When questioned about this choice, the Princess explained to journalists that ‘Market Garden is a sledgehammer -- slow, ponderous, but unstoppable when it gets going.  I need a pony aggressive enough to wield that sledgehammer effectively, and that pony is Hardscrabble’.

Another one of Princess Twilight Sparkle’s new rising stars, Hardscrabble had commanded the 2nd Army’s drive south on the western flank of the 1st Army’s main thrust.  As the 1st Army’s offensive had bogged down in siege warfare and counter-insurgency operations in Virion Hive, it was outpaced by the 2nd Army’s spectacular advance.  His success there had been overshadowed by the capture of Virion Hive and subsequent events there, but it was of great strategic importance in cutting off the Changelings’ western supply routes through the Mysterious South.

An earth pony farmer from Ohayo, quiet and sensitive in his youth, Hardscrabble seemed an unlikely candidate to command all of Equestria’s armies.  However, he understood more than others the concept of modern war, and that the only way to end the Changeling threat to Equestria was the total military defeat of their war-swarms and the destruction of their economic base to force a favourable conclusion to the war.  Market Garden’s strategy of capturing hive cities to cut off the enemy’s source of food was one interpretation of this concept, but the Siege of Virion Hive had shown that besieging cities was a slow and costly method.

Instead, Hardscrabble devised a bold strategy that would strike at the Changeling Lands from multiple directions.  Instead of capturing hive cities, these would be isolated and cut off from the Queen’s Hive so that their harvested love would not sustain the bulk of the enemy’s population.  The 2nd Army was to sweep south and then east in a hook, while the 3rd Army would cut off the enemy’s access to the Celestial Sea.  The 1st Army would strike directly into the Changeling Heartlands with the aim to threaten the Queen’s Hive to force the war swarms into a decisive battle.  Princess Celestia summed up the strategy succinctly with perhaps uncharacteristic bluntness in a letter to Hardscrabble:

“You are to wrap your hooves around the enemy’s neck and squeeze, and to keep on squeezing until all life has been crushed out of her.  Never stop, never loosen your grip, never allow her a moment of respite to even think about her plots and schemes.”

Princess Luna too had not been idle.  Though Celestia had taken her coveted old title, Princess Luna would find a new role to play, her ‘war in the shadows’ as she referred to it.  Their vast slave populations presented the Changelings with a problem and Equestria with an opportunity: the enemy had to expend ponypower on maintaining order, but with Equestrian assistance the slaves could be turned into a secret army within to tie down even more drones away from the frontlines.  To this end, small, elite units were formed and dispatched behind enemy lines, with the aim to foment slave uprisings and to sabotage infrastructure and supply lines.  Market Garden had called this an ‘unladylike’ approach to war, and the name stuck - The Ministry of Unladylike Warfare.

The war was about to enter its deadliest phase as the Badlands Campaign started in July of that year.  However, nopony could have anticipated how ambitious Queen Chrysalis’ plans had become, and that perhaps one of the most decisive actions of the conflict would be decided hundreds of miles away across the sea.