“Celestia,” said Twilight, very carefully, “Why don’t you date?”
Celestia peered over the top of her teacup, eyebrows arching. “I’m sorry?”
Twilight flushed, her smooth complexion turning an ugly shade of puce. With her ministers, with her supplicants, her courtiers, she was a princess in every way. Regal and composed. As tall as Celestia herself, not a hair in her magical mane out of place. Utterly unruffled. But with one look Celestia could send her back to the stammering filly she had once been.
“I just…” She paused, pulled in a deep breath, mastered herself. When she spoke again, it was calm and deliberate. “I wanted to know why you never had a partner. A consort.”
Celestia raised a delicate hoof to her mouth to hide a small smile. “What brings on this question?”
“I…just wanted to know, that’s all.”
That enigmatic smile widening, Celestia took a sip of her tea, so slowly it was almost performative. Levitated the teacup back into its saucer with care.
Twilight shifted in her seat. Celestia appeared to be deep in thought, and Twilight readied herself to receive whatever mystical royal secret her mentor was about to impart. We must think of the many, Twilight, not the few.
“Now, I wouldn’t tell this to just anypony,” Celestia said at length. “But I think I owe you the truth, my faithful student.”
Her spine straightening, Twilight readied herself. Celestia was going to share a secret. Something nopony but she and Twilight would know. It was a heady brew, that feeling — the exact same as when she was a scrawny six-year-old, invited to become personal student to the Princess.
“I,” and here Celestia paused dramatically, her eyes glinting wickedly beneath the floating rainbow haze of her mane, “Had loads.”
“What?” squeaked Twilight, the word slipping out before she could modulate it.
Celestia bit off a large corner of the toasted bread she held in her magic. It crunched loudly as she chewed.
“Dozens of them,” she said casually. “Every year. The guard used to escort them in through a tunnel to my bedroom, and take them away again in the morning. You wouldn’t believe how many small businesses in Canterlot got their seed funding from my hush money.”
“What?” repeated Twilight.
Celestia took another bite. Her pink tongue flicked out to lick the butter from her lips in a very un-Celestia-like way. “Really, Twilight, where did you think Blueblood came from?”
“I…I…” Twilight had never given the matter much thought. Blueblood had simply always been there, an annoying and unscientific boor to be avoided at all costs.
“He’s my great-grandson,” Celestia explained. “Give or take a generation or three. Having foals isn’t common for alicorns, but I had a daughter a couple of centuries ago.”
Twilight felt like her world was teetering on its foundations. She had thought she was the closest Celestia had come to motherhood. “But…”
It didn’t make sense. Centuries of Equestrian art and culture were built upon their untouchable, gloriously remote princess. As far removed from the common pony as the sun she commanded. Surely somepony would have noticed dozens of ponies trooping into the castle and emerging with bags of gold.
“But what? I prefer to avoid having my love affairs blandished about in the tabloids, but heavens, Twilight, I’m still a mare. I have urges like everypony else.”
“Urges?” What urges? The only urges Twilight had were to improve access to early childhood education and rebalance the national economy through reducing inflation. Proper, princess-like urges.
Celestia’s gaze softened, and she floated her half-eaten toast away to rest her hoof atop Twilight’s. “The sort that you don’t get, but most ponies do.”
“Oh.” Like Applejack and Rainbow Dash. Too many Council of Friendship meetings had been interrupted for Twilight to be entirely unaware of that sphere of things. She had simply assumed that alicorns were immune, but then a couple of days ago she had sent a first-edition spellbook by Merlinius the Wise to the Crystal Empire for Flurry’s birthday, and she had gotten to thinking. After all, Cadence couldn’t be immune, or Twilight would have no niece and no need to give away her prized Merlinius scrolls. Returning to the present, she focused in on the first part of Celestia’s sentence. “What do you mean, I don’t get them?”
“Twilight, my dear, the fact that you’re forty-seven years old and this is the first time you’ve thought to ask yourself the question of whether you’re interested in romance ought to suggest something, don’t you think?”
Twilight looked down at her shining gold horseshoes. Shuffled them like a sheepish twelve-year-old caught transforming the palace peacocks into mice just to practice, Princess, I swear! I turned them right back!
“Maybe,” she muttered.
“There’s nothing to worry about, Twilight,” Celestia promised her. “Really. Cadence will be the first to tell you that love comes in many forms. It’s different for every pony. You just happen to favour the friendship form of love more than the others.”
“But if even you had lovers…” Twilight tailed off. For decades she had rested secure in the knowledge that this was just one more way in which she was exactly like her idol. To find out that assumption had been false was an almost physical pain.
“Had?” said Celestia sharply. “Twilight Sparkle, I am retired, not dead.”
Twilight was still staring at her hooves. “Is it me? Am I…wrong?”
Celestia’s hoof tightened on hers. “No, Twilight! Faust, no. You’re like…” she cast about herself for inspiration, and then brandished the toast again. “You’re like toast. I mean, bread. Not every piece of bread becomes toast, though many do. Do you see?”
“No,” said Twilight, helplessly. “Why am I bread?”
“You’re bread because…” Celestia’s magic flashed and a fresh loaf of bread materialised from the ether. Celestia lit her horn again in a spell Twilight recognised as the sun-fire incantation. The first slice of the loaf began to crisp. “We’re going to need to start at the beginning.”