How much do I love Starlight? Well she was my pupil and I LIVED with her in my old castle, so I imagine I would really care about her.
Though… our history together goes a little… okay, MUCH deeper than that.
When I first met Starlight, she was a villain. Me and my friends bared witness to her little village which she created out of taking away everypony’s cutie marks and making them into equal signs.
Once I realized the signs that Starlight’s intentions were more maligned than originally intended, I knew we had to stop her and get our cutie marks back. I also got Fluttershy to expose her lies about harboring her own cutie mark behind everyone’s back.
You can imagine she was enraged and ended up running off before we could catch her, but despite everything she did to us, I couldn’t hate her. I could tell she truly believed that she was giving her villagers true friendship, it may have been wrong but I could at least see her viewpoint. It wasn’t like the situation with Chrysalis where she just wanted power, Starlight wanted to give “true friendship”.
When she tried to stop the Sonic Rainboom from going back in time, she was probably my most toughest opponent in a long time. I had no allies by my side except Spike and we were evenly matched. In a last ditch effort, I took her to an altered timeline, a barren wasteland. I knew she was starting to feel remorse once she saw the effects of her actions, but I don’t think she wanted to admit it. Somehow, I knew I could get through to her, and would you look at it, I did.
You’d probably expect me to throw her to Tartarus for all her crimes, and heck, my friends actually advocated for it when they saw her again. I couldn’t let that happen though, she stopped her revenge scheme when she was ahead, I felt it was fair to at least give her a chance. So I decided to try and teach her about friendship, while subsequently becoming her friend myself.
Over time, before the Crystalling, she learned to trust me, and I began to start caring for her more as a friend than a business deal. We weren’t strictly a mentor and student, we became friends and honestly, I think I preferred that to merely just being a friendship teacher.
We bonded more and more as time went on, and I got to know more about her. Her hobbies, her interest in magic, and even her deepest insecurities, I don’t think anypony knows about those except for me and Spike. I’m not sharing what she told me though, it’d be an invasion of privacy.
I may have befriended a lot of reformed villains in my lifetime, but something was special about Starlight. We shared common interests and she has such a lively personality when you’re able to get it out of her. It wasn’t like Sunset or Tempest where we were just good buddies, or like Trixie or Discord where they were friends that could really annoy me, Starlight genuinely became one of my closest friends.
I honestly had this gut feeling that Starlight was ready to go off on her own when she saved us all from the Changelings and gained us new allies because of it, but honestly, I only didn’t go through with it sooner because I didn’t want to lose her. Having Starlight around just felt so right and while my friends were great, I couldn’t really connect with them in ways I could connect with Starlight. Long story short, I was overjoyed that despite the fact she no longer had to learn under my guidance, she decided to stick around.
I think me and Starlight were able to grow a lot closer after she no longer needed friendship lessons. We were able to delve more into bonding more as friends, and in a way, I just felt we could really connect with one another.
Sometimes I do worry about her, Starlight has a tendency to be… reckless so to speak and it often gets her in more trouble than it does help her. It’s one of my biggest fears that she’ll lose control of her magic trying to fix a problem of some sort and… and…
Well… I think you know what I’m implying.
She’s definitely improved on that front though, and has grown more responsible as time went on. She’s even helped me grow and taught me some lessons myself, such as when she helped me re-open the School Of Friendship. I’ve come to admire her unique way of solving problems and how bold she can be when it comes down to it.
I do have my regrets when it comes to Starlight though, my biggest one being how I handled the return of the Pillars and the Pony Of Shadows. I did not listen to her at all, not when she told me that bringing the Pillars back could have consequences and not when she thought about doing something other than banishment to stop Stygian.
I made her feel like dirt and I know it. No matter how much she reassured me, and with all the smiles she gave me, I knew it was just to make me feel better.
For a good while, she didn’t feel safe around me anymore. She didn’t have to tell me that, I can read her like a book. She felt that I would’ve thrown her aside to Limbo just like Starswirl did to Stygian if “my idol” was around when she was still a villain.
I…I couldn’t. I wouldn’t dream of doing that to Starlight, but I still made her feel like she couldn’t trust me because of it. It took a while for things to get back to normal for us, and while we’re in a good spot now, I sometimes can’t sleep at night knowing I did that to the pony I love…
Uh… love as in a platonic way of course. I totally don’t love her in that way.
You’re not buying this are you? It’s hard for me to even convince myself that I don’t love her.
By some ironic twist of fate, I fell for who I once called my pupil.
I tried telling myself that my feelings for Starlight were platonic. That friends sometimes feel flustered around each other, it was perfectly normal.
I couldn’t deny it forever. The more I spent time with Starlight, the more attached I got to her.
Pretty much all the positive qualities I mentioned about Starlight is why I fell in love with her, and it scared me.
Fun fact about us alicorns, we are pretty much immortal. That means our lifespans are longer than most earth ponies, pegasi, and unicorns. Eventually, Starlight would die, and I’ll be alone, and I’m not sure I will be able to handle that.
Besides, now that I’m ruler of Equestria, Starlight will most likely never return my feelings for her. Compared to a Princess, she’d probably feel too uncomfortable with the idea of dating me.
What I love about Starlight is how creative and bold she is, while also seeing how much she continues to grow throughout her life. I want her to be happy no matter what, even if I can’t be the one who gives that to her.