I have flipped my coin, one with sparklers face on it thank Harmony, and it has come up heads. A respectable outcome if a predictable one, such works as this usually start in foalhood, for good reason I should hope. I admit I do not like to reminisce upon my early years, they were not pleasant. Sometimes I still have dreams, dreams about endless curving hallways, and dead suits of armor that rattle as I pass, empty rooms covered in dust, and decaying gardens that once were grand. I am a foal in these dreams, helpless and small. I wish Luna still lived, that she might free me from my dreams. I will not call them nightmares, for they are not. I do not fear these dreams, I merely despise them. I do not sleep often these days. Alicorns have little need for such mortal means of resuscitation, I can turn off one side of my brain like a dolphin, or simply rejuvenate myself forcefully via magic. My auntie and her sister despised such methods, they preferred to rest, I believe it had something to do with their control of the solar cycle.
I do not move the sun or moon, neither does any other alicorn, we have returned that duty to the unicorn colleges and noble families. It keeps them competitive, allows for the most magically gifted to come to the forefront, each and every unicorn dreams of one day having the privilege to move the heavens themselves, just as pegasi obsess over wonderbolt tryouts and earth ponies yearn for royal commission. A simple way to induct good blood into the chosen families, and to detect potentially disruptive individuals. It promotes magical excellence via self study and deliberate training funneled into non violent outlets. Celestia’s school for gifted unicorns had such a wastefully high dropout rate of extremely promising students, too much top down pressure. The new system is one of guilds and apprenticeships, individual teachers of renown who will take on promising young unicorns who prove themselves worthy of instruction. Those left unpicked have free reign of any and all magical texts available, with the exception of war magic, that is only taught by registered warcasters to students of great personal interest to the monarchy.
Most of the powerful unicorns are from the aristocracy, selective breeding tends to do that, and I myself pushed heavily for magical power over the centuries. That is not to say that the peasantry is itself free of great talent, mutations occur quite frequently in regards to magical prowess, sparkler herself came from a family of little note, politically or magically, but she proved to be a once in ten generations prodigy. So when a particularly powerful foal presents themselves it is only natural to induct them up the chain of social hierarchy, mostly via the gifting of titles for deeds, real or imagined. Give them a few years to ‘ripen’ and if the little tike proves worthy a political marriage is just around the corner.
I myself was once an aristocrat, one of the unsavory variety, the licentious and drunken sort, I snorted pearl dust and deflowered noble mares on false promises of eternal devotion. I watch as such behaviors repeat themselves now, in my own subjects, my own successor line, perhaps it is intrinsic to the blood. Or perhaps merely the fault of circumstance, I do not care to know which, the outcome is the same regardless. Such actions result from mishandled ambition, and intrinsic aggression. My aunt preferred to suppress such things, viewing that they were somehow at odds with Harmony, at odds with the Equestrian ideal. They are not. It's all in the interpretation. After all, can we not laugh in the face of death? Can we not use magic to destroy? Show kindness in war and generosity in victory? Be loyal to our comrades and honest with our hatred?
We can, we have, I have done many things that can be considered objectionable, monstrous even, yet I stand proud and bear forward Harmony’s flag. The elements did not destroy me, did not free me of any malign corruption, for none existed, none exists. Dark magic is evil due to its nature, not its results, its corrupting plague like rot upon the soul which is expressed through the body and consciousness. To raise a body from the dead is not in itself an immoral unharmonic action, but to do so via the median of dark magic is. The trick is that dark magic is very good at certain actions, like the previously mentioned necromantic business, just find a corpse and blast them with some revenant energies, whereas resurrection via normal magical means is far more complicated. Over time people conflate the true immorality with the actions themselves rather than just their means of completion, all necromancy is now evil, all subjugation magic is cruel, etc.
Harmony and its elements have dominion only over Equestria and her inhabitants, they follow boundaries set on maps by ponies, a clearly intelligent action and force. When we expand so too does their aura, when we contract so do they. The elements are not mindless things, they are very real actors who make their own decisions for what they believe is in Equestrias best interest. I was judged by them, just as all are judged by them, either harmonic or not. Discord was judged lacking twice, and found acceptable upon the third trial, he had not changed his nature or the nature of his magic, he had barely even altered his own personality, merely became in the least sympathetic. I feel the highest pity for the creature, it's been centuries and he still mourns her death, it was the death of his first true friend, the element bearer of kindness. I hope that he will return one day, another immortal to speak to would be nice, for all of us.
I tested my theory of Harmony once, I had an imprisoned dark mage raise seven corpses, I myself raised another seven using moral methods. When the elements were invoked upon the living dead, seven burned, and seven stood unaffected. I had my seven eat the mage alive before once more invoking the elements, once more they stood unaffected. Harmony is cruel to those it deems enemies, and kind to those it deems friends.
My line began one thousand four hundred and twenty seven years ago, via the copulation of the Princess Luna and a descendent of Queen Platinum, which produced the first ‘Blueblood’. Luna chose the name due to her own lack of a family name and the distinctive coloring of her coat, the name also served to distance her spawn from the Platinum line, which would later go extinct during the Nightmare war.
After Luna’s fall, the Nightmare war, and the demon’s subsequent banishment to the moon, my ancestors lay broken and dead. We had remained loyal to our progenitor, and served within her armies and administration, we had struck many blows at the sunspawn and their armies. On the final dusk, in the very last day of the war, we led legions of thestrals and traitor guard against the Castle of the Two Sisters itself in a great siege. Nightmare Moon had declared that she wished to take the city unharmed. That foolish wretch which dubbed itself Nightmare, who claimed to be our great mother challenged the sister solar in combat, and was found lacking.
The Harmonic energies unleashed by Celestia to defeat her corrupted sister formed the Everfree forest that day, formed great vines and beasts which broke our routing legions in their entirety. Of the 200,000 warriors of the night, five individuals made it out of that forest alive; it was the greatest slaughter in Equestrian military history, perhaps in all of history up until that point. Of those five individuals one carried the name Blueblood. He was found weak and delirious three days later, wandering about a farmers field six hundred and fifty three miles south of the Everfree, it is assumed that he tried to teleport-chain his way to Atachatlan, the seat of the Lunar military and government during the war. Any lesser unicorn would have torn themselves apart during the journey, the fact that he remained whole and in reasonable health was nothing short of a miracle.
Celestia took this as a sign from the elements, and with great relief pardoned my line for our sins. The last living descendant of the fallen sister stood before the throne room in Canterlot, still under construction, with marble dust settled in the cracks, with the empty sky hanging above and the sun beating down upon him, he stood and did not balk at his duty. Behind him were his four remaining soldiers, the only other survivors of the banishment, a thestral, a unicorn, a pegasus, and an earth pony. Celestia took the fact that each race was represented as another sign from the elements. These soldiers stood in lockstep, heads held high, though unarmed and chained, ready for death, ready to join their mistress, for they believed her dead at the time, being imprisoned and unable to witness the moon’s new formed face.
Noble stallions and mares entered and sat in judgment and witness, they watched in silence, eyes straying always towards the great towering figure that was their Princess, their autocrat in all but name. She could have these traitors killed in the most brutal of ways, she could have them exiled, she could have them imprisoned or shunned. Instead she forgave them. I do not know the exact speech, it was not recorded, but it must have been a damn good one, for no noble balked at the mercy nor even raised an exception to it.
I believe that she couldn’t go through with the destruction of the last remaining remnant of her sister. I don’t think she had the guts to kill my family. Maybe she should have. For the rest of our history in Equestria we maintained a noble bearing of course, but we had no vassals, we had no lands nor incomes, we were mere decoration. A diseased hound kept only for its sentimental value, of no real use anymore but too beloved by the family to put down.
She bred us like show dogs, it was a personal project for her. She never let us lose our coat, never let us degenerate. My line has more inbreeding than most, all carefully and tactfully done, with charts and averages and genes, with risk metrics and apothecaries potions. She squeezed that sliver of alicorn blood for all it was worth, constantly working on ensuring it remained dominant in our patriarchal line. She let our female lines split off, let them experiment and mutate unimpeded. Sometimes she would tie them back into the main blood, transfer some trait she deemed worthy back into the fold.
A thousand years is a long time to accumulate genetic quirks. On average a stallion of the Blueblood line stood a head and a half taller than the national average for unicorns, we were in the top 1 percentile for athletics and magic, lived more than fifteen years longer on average, had far less risk of health conditions, and scored extremely high on intelligence tests. Those were the positives, the negatives were just as pronounced. We were thirteen times more likely to magically overload as foals, sixteen times more likely to have depression, twenty-seven times as likely to have attention deficit disorder. A pony has a roughly 0.47% chance of being born with autism, my line has forty times that. Schizophrenia and all its variations affect roughly 0.84% of the modern equestrian population, an increase of 0.6% from when I was born. I had a 16% chance of contracting it at some point in my life.
We Bluebloods were known eccentrics, we produced artists and scholars and insane gibbering wizards who would drive their fields of study forwards by decades at a time. I am also ninety percent sure that Celestia got some of Starswirls descendents into the mosh pit that is my family tree. I don't know what that did but probably nothing good.
Not that most would know these things about my kin and myself, not when I was mortal, not for a long time. After the banishment of the Nightmare, when the war was just starting to fade from the collective consciousness, our patriarch bleached his foal’s coat, he bled out the brilliant silvery blue that gave us our name and left naught but white. Whether to mimic Celestia as a show of loyalty, or to distance his line from their progenitor, nopony knows. This practice was carried on by forty generations of Bluebloods, each forgoing their natural coloration in exchange for the purity of absence. Most did not even remember what their natural coloration was, having it stripped before memories could really be formed. Bleach is of course permanent, which would be grand if not for the small issue that ponies gain thicker winter coats and then shed them for spring, thus removing the previously mentioned bleached hairs in their entirety.
My first memory, the moment I gained true thought, was during one of these aforementioned coat bleachings, a horrid affair for the uninitiated. Chemicals burn your nose and you have to run it through your coat very thoroughly to ensure no stray hairs remain. I was three years old, well 3 years 15 days and 7 hours at the time. (Perfect alicorn memory extends back indefinitely, even to before I gained it.) I was crying, hard, the sort of body racking death sobs that make you think that a foal is in mortal peril. Of course they usually aren’t, but inbred caretaker instincts honed since the days of migratory herds will tell you otherwise.
Wailing and screaming and thrashing, I spilled the burning water all about me as maids desperately tried to restrain my outburst. Remember the whole thirteen times more likely to overload as a foal metric? Yeah, nearly everypony walked on eggshells when I was distressed. And by Harmony was I distressed. I even bit Fresh Growth, my nursemaid, rather savagely, or as savagely as one can with baby teeth and no bite force, so not very hard. Still it's the thought that counts. Well I was just losing my little head, and then I wasn’t. Just suddenly, I wasn’t screaming or crying or even struggling anymore. You see, some of that chemical water got into my eye, my left to precise, and the pain just shut me down. I couldn’t understand it, couldn’t comprehend the nerve endings firing, the blood that inflamed my veins, the great searing agony that was my whole reality. I just sat there and took it, till Fresh Growth figured it out and washed out my eye with a wet cloth. The whole incident was a major red flag, but nopony was thinking that far ahead at the time.
Most of my foalhood was trite aristocratic drivel, it did little to ingratiate itself upon the wider arc of my life. I learned to speak properly, walk properly, stand properly, and all those little ticks the nobility utilizes to differentiate themselves from the nouveau riche and petty bourgeoisie. A slight roll of the eyes, or tense of the jaw that displays more arrogance in mere moments than any grand speech could ever hope to achieve. Upturned muzzles might as well have rifling for their lethality in function and form.
When I was seven I broke two ribs, I fell from a height and landed poorly on my right side. I did not cry. The pain felt warm, like an embrace, a loving tender touch that quickly turned sour. I will not say I enjoy pain, I merely appreciate what it offers, wonderful stakes. If we did not have pain then we would be lost, burning and starving and killing ourselves with no cares. Pain ensures that life is enjoyed to its very fullest, that actions have meaning and weight. Life without pain is mere half life, might as well be a crystal doll then, a mere automaton.
I saw my father a total of thirty seven times from my birth until his death. Upon learning of my mothers passing, he did not return from the capital. I believe he eventually was forced to take a vacation by my aunt after she determined that three years was a sufficient amount of time before meeting one’s own foal. My father was a strong stallion, not so large as myself or some of our ancestors, but well built and dense with muscle and tendon, he made an intimidating figure in his dress uniform, his medals clinking softly as he walked.
He was one of our military sorts, the kind that went to West Cliff and topped their classes. The kind who did not flinch nor balk but rather marched off with nary a word of complaint thinking all the while that he would show those decadent snobs who mocked him what a real noble soldier looked like. He was wrong of course, our soldiers always were in that period, unblooded for a thousand years, untarnished, like gleaming bronze armor yet to be pitted and scratched by spearpoint and hammer. As such stallions are like to do, he mistook callous disconnect as a true soldierly trait, not the easy death it truly was.
My father avoided dealing with his grief, he merely carried on, believing that was the correct response for a strong stallion. He was weak but believed he was strong, he refused to acknowledge what troubled him and thought that meant it no longer did.
Seven days after my eighth birthday he broke his neck in Canterlot, fell down the stairs, an ignoble death for a man obsessed with the concept of honor, fitting. So often do ponies find the opposite of their ideals when they pursue them in the extreme. The exception of course being religion, a fanatic will not find some hidden dagger at the end of his faith, merely a lack of ponies willing to talk to them for very long. And sometimes enlightenment or a similar state of transitory excellence.
Equestria was not religious at that time, they did not worship Harmony as an entity as we do now, but rather treated it as a ephemeral concept, such as the changelings and their ‘greater good’ mentality, only the changelings also worship the Universal Choir so the comparison is not exact, but should suffice in illuminating the rather backwards folk ways we used to subscribe to.
It was due to this uneasy relationship with our own mortality and place in the universe that funerals were not attended by foals, not even foals who were close to the departed. Celestia believed that such morbid topics should be avoided if at all possible for developing minds, I believe that is a mindset that makes us weak and scared of death, but she was the ‘Nations Mother’ and so her preferences might well have been carved into the Canterhorn as de facto law. Thus I stayed in the estate whilst my father was entombed in stone and earth. Then all ponies were buried, not just heroes and martyrs, to cremate the dead was thought barbaric, not transitory as we know now.
I believe I was reading at the time, I had learned from a tutor and Fresh Growth earlier on in my life via picture books and foals stories, the classic sort we still tell today with some alterations, The Mare on the Moon and the First Hearth's Warming, that sort of thing. It was one of these story books that held my attention at the moment, a tale of a young filly off to see her grandmother in the forest, only to be accosted by a diamond dog of ill repute, it was an altered copy in which the filly got away safely and the grandmother was alright, rather than the original wherein both are enslaved and sent to the Bleakstone mines. A warning about diamond dogs and wandering into the forest alone. No longer applicable now that the aforementioned Bleakstone provides its vast mineral wealth to Equestria.
I was very interested in the tale and so didn’t notice the somber atmosphere about the estate. I of course knew of my fathers passing, but failed to grasp how this was more serious than him simply never returning from one of his long business trips. My life remained virtually unchanged in all the ways that matter to an eight year old. I had already firmly imprinted any parental affection onto Fresh Growth and my magic tutor Tail Wind, who spent significantly more time with me than any other ponies. I was a prodigy in magic, lived up to the Blueblood name and then some, of course I was the garden variety sort of prodigy, the type that would find great success in their endeavors, but only be given a singular sentence in the history books.
‘Prince Polaris Blueblood, present for Princess Luna’s return, author of ‘A treatise on Magnetic Polarity Reversal’ died age 103.
That sort of thing. Sparkler though, she’d get a whole section of the book in her honor, probably be on the cover next to some old painting of my aunt and Starswirl or something.
It was after my fathers funeral that my auntie entered my life in a real way. I assume she felt at least some semblance of guilt for my orphaning under her watch and decided to take pity on me. She began to visit me semi-regularly, to check up with my health and the like, the usual slightly distant but still caring relative things. I quite enjoyed the occasions, they made me feel special, wanted. She might not have been ‘real’ family, but I greatly enjoyed her company nonetheless.
When I was two months away from turning nine my aunt introduced me to my new sister, a mare by the name of Mi Amore Cadenza, she had ascended a short while before. Officially she was the first since Celestia and Luna’s own ascensions, in reality she was perhaps thirteenth, all other aspirants either perished during the magical backlash, or within the first month of ascension due to complications. When an alicorn successfully ascends, my aunt Celestia believes that gives them an automatic claim to royalty. Now the issue with that is my own progenitor's absence, and Celestia's unwillingness to replace her sister in any capacity, leaving a very out of place Cadence in need of aristocratic training, and a Celestia too busy to give it.
So the idea was simple, just dump her on the Blueblood family, they’re great show dogs right? Of course they can train her to heel and beg and twirl better than any purebred aristocratic hound could hope for. More fool her, no one left that arrangement happy, least of all my auntie.
Oh yes we trained her up nice, we strung along her legs so that her hooves never scuffed, made sure her neck was always straight and tall, kept her balance such that she could stand on but a single hoof for hours. We trained her in which utensil was for which purpose, on socially acceptable tribalism, on how to scoff and roll one's eyes, on how to lie and cheat and make excuses.
We tried to teach her how to kill, but my dear sister was abysmal and both blade and magic. So we scheduled her magic lessons as well, it would not do to have a weak heir. My magic tutor suddenly found himself twice as busy, and I was advanced for my age, so he left me to self study whilst he helped my new far more important sister with her issues around causality and temporal rifts. So I self studied, and whenever possible spent time with Fresh Growth or my new sister. It was a peaceful if rather lonely period. My sister was far too busy catching up on fourteen years of missed pavlovian conditioning, and Fresh Growth had been promoted to head maid upon her predecessor's retirement, leaving little time to humor a young colt. Less so when you consider that I was not exactly likable, I was too physical, I enjoyed hitting things, and ponies, I was too aggressive, confrontational over small perceived slights, prone to turn any conversation into an argument.
My aunt stopped visiting eventually, and my sister left me, deemed ‘good enough’ to be in Canterlot I assume. So I stayed, and read some books, lots of books actually. Read, and walked around the grounds, and practiced my magic, and sometimes when circumstances permitted screamed until I could no longer do so. I think I must’ve sniped more than a hundred birds with stones before somepony caught me and I was given a stern talking to about the sanctity of life and all that. They didn’t even have good arguments for it, just ‘killing is wrong’. Why? Because it just is that's why, hypocritical moralistic drivel. When I tell a foal why he should refrain from hurting and he asks why, I need only respond with ‘because Harmony does not like needless cruelty’ and the situation is settled. We are not cruel because Harmony does not like it when we are, so we refrain whenever possible, a simple reasoning, should Harmony ever change its own opinion then we too will follow.
Another few years and then I met Twilight Sparkle, though you know her by a different name. I think which one of the ruling diarchy is female should remain obvious to even the most casual of observers, well excepting those two centuries in which I was a mare but that's irrelevant and highly embarrassing. It really hurts to transform one's mass to a great extent, so I had to build up the mental fortitude to turn back into a stallion.
We met in winter, when the snow came down heavily, when the pegasi worked overtime to meet a winter storm deadline before Hearths Warming. She was at my family's estate, with Princess Celestia, and her family. Some event was being held, and there were many ponies about the place. Celestia used it as an excuse to introduce both myself and her little student to the public and one another. My sister was there, with her future husband Shining Armor as well. I believe that Armor is the modern Equestrian spelling, at the time it was still Armour.
I did not like little Twilight, I believed her to be a know it all and a coward. She was shy and not to my tastes, she did not want to leave the estate and venture outwards into the winter storm with me. I took this as a personal affront, rather than common sense, and so lashed out at the filly from there on. I made fun of her demeanor and appearance, and so she left my company in tears and did not return afterwards.
Later I would feel a modicum of regret, once my temper cooled and I was once more alone. The guests left in twos and threes, until there was but trash remaining to be taken care of by the servants. Trash, and a very lonely colt who could not stop his baser urges from rearing, even when faced with his only real chance at friendship.
In my early teenage years I was a bully. I had begun to attend my aunt’s school in canterlot by that point. My first true socialization with others my own age for an extended period of time. Celestia allowed for anypony of appropriate age to send an application, with the knowledge that some ponies mature quicker than others, Clover the Clever could not so much as lift a quill until she was nearly fifteen, a shockingly delayed onset for somepony of such magical significance, and so my own application was reviewed and accepted when I sent it in late. It was all done anonymously as was customary, so there can be no cries of nepotism for my enrollment.
I sometimes saw sparkler, she was in my chemistry class, head in a book, as always. I scoffed at the time, hated her with a light ephemeral breeze fit to disappear unless I made an effort to grasp it. So very difficult to hate such an unassuming thing as she was, but I did my utmost, it wasn’t enough. I could never bring myself to actually speak to her, for good or ill, but rather took out my suppressed emotions on my peers. I insulted and demeaned, hurt and overpowered, I led fillies on only to break their hearts.
The teachers turned a blind eye, I was a good student, a good athlete, and the princess’s own ‘nephew’ so to speak. Only sparkler had anywhere near my clout in that institution and I never so much as glanced at her or her posse. I excelled in my classes, many of my peers liked me, those who I did not torment, I was popular and handsome and smart. I had no real friends however, just lackeys and hangers on. Drawn to my station and poise or to my cruelty and domineering nature.
I do not remember my time at that institution fondly, it was a boring and sometimes excruciating affair, in which I wished for nothing more than complete and total isolation, and yet when alone begged silently for even a single pony’s company. It was a rather torturous state, the worst part was the scheduling. I hated the scheduling, the timetables, every moment mapped out, stifling, infuriating, it burned me like fire. I believe this is at least partly to blame for my own shoddy time tables and record keeping in the modern era. I simply despise schedules, I can get all that is needed done when it is necessary, a simple checklist is more than adequate, for any purpose less complicated than theoretical physics or some equally esoteric scientific pursuit.
I must admit I have let my grip on the physical sciences slip slightly over the centuries, they were never the most interesting of pieces, and I have ponies for that anyways, besides in all my testings I have yet to find a weapon that can harm an immortal that is not magical in nature. Bullets either shatter or deform depending on caliber, fire sputters out, explosives can throw the body but do little actual damage, vacuum proves itself to be entirely irrelevant to a creature that doesn’t require oxygen. Even radiation proves ineffective, cells reproduce and heal themselves faster than they die, and cancer is non-existent. Theoretically if sufficient damage to the brain occurs, perhaps a complete personality death is possible, but it is equally as likely that memories are double stored on the soul, so as to perfectly recreate the neural pathways upon regeneration. After all the transference of mass is possible, I have quite literally shrunk my skull, and by extension my brain by more than half, and was totally unaffected mentally, that lends credence to my double memory theory. You can hardly even trap an immortal, banish them, or imprison them, and all of those are done through magical means, e.g the elements or whatever the pillars did to banish the Siren Sisters, who I might add are not at all related to one another and so by definition are not sisters, just another example of Equestria’s egregious naming scheme.
Also they aren’t technically true immortals, as they can be killed rather easily, well easily by alicorn standards, just wipe out their followers then kill them like any other flesh and blood creature. Technically the Equestrian army could probably do a bang up job of it, probably, they’ve done little to engender respect if I’m quite honest, but that might be an extension of my deep seated resentment for the institution that extends back to the invention of gunpowder. Besides if the sirens died that would be three less of our number to talk to, and there is a startling lack of immortals in the world, not even a sufficient amount of ancient liches, the majority of them are less than three hundred years old at the most, and quite annoying to boot. Sometimes I debate whether my sister would really mind if I took Sombra out for a walk now and then, but she hasn’t been talking to me lately, and I don’t want to make that whole situation worse than it already is by reintroducing the stallion that tried to kill her family, even if he is pretty easy to deal with. I mean seriously just praying to Harmony hard enough in his presence causes him to smoke like a vampire during midday, I really don’t understand why he was such a supposedly big deal, Cadence could just buck him into a wall if he got rowdy. Stupid really, the guy is threatening for a unicorn granted, but he’s nowhere near sparkler and I, or even Flurry for that matter, also any half faithful church militant can quite literally chant him into defeat, hard to take a guy seriously when you can make him catch fire with words. That's not to say I’m not holding out hope to breed him into one of my successor lines,
I suppose that I have to speak on my experiences after education now, wonderful, truly it was not a good time to be a noble mare in Canterlot, or anywhere really, I was rather determined. Now I will say this once and you may assume that this behavior continues indefinitely until that terribly fateful night at the gala. There are however, certain incidents which I believe contain a level of importance, and thus must be individually cataloged and followed in order to more accurately inform the reader as to the thought process behind some of the more questionable decisions made later in my mortal life.
To begin I should start with an incident involving a certain associate of mine, one Fancy Pants, and his wife, a prench mare, Fleur de lis, very pretty. Now some of the more astute of you might be starting to guess where this is going, however you would be sorely mistaken on that front, if I had merely defiled, or attempted to defile said mare I would not bother with the trouble of writing it down, such things happened quite often, no rather a far more humiliating thing occurred. To be blunt I was utterly dominated in a duel, by a prench mare less than half my weight, it wasn’t even close. I still cringe at the memory, sometimes it creeps up on me, just ruins an otherwise perfectly acceptable day, terrible.
To begin I should explain traditional Equestrian dueling etiquette as it has changed quite a bit in the time since my humiliation. First the similarities, two creatures stand opposite each other, then they fight, that's really about all there is to it, sometimes there’s even a judge both parties agree upon as well who can determine the winner in case of close match. Now you may be puzzled by my use of the word match, and of the presence of a judge rather than the expected seconds, this is because modern Equestrian dueling is a mishmash of Griffonian and Zebrican honor duels with bits and pieces of Kirin and old Unicornian mixed in for good measure. It developed first amongst the Company of the Golden hoof to settle disputes about pay and loot, and was later adopted by the general population after the Company reformed into a ruling aristocracy via the conquest of Dracoska. Really the main differences you need to be aware of is the lack of lethality and the sectioning by race. Firstly, lethal and extremely damaging attacks were banned wholesale, this includes natural features, such as s unicorns horn, a griffon's claws, or thestrals' fangs.