It started with, naturally, a case before the open court.
That font of all evil, that wellspring of mayhem, that bastion of discord (although not Discord, who had promised under penalty of compulsory lecture attendance to Not Interfere With Courtly Matters). The few hours a day in which the citizens of Equestria, having managed to succeed in convincing the legions of smaller courts and hordes of adjutants that their case could not be properly adjudicated by such meager authorities, and required the undivided attention of the Princess of Equestria herself.
Once, Twilight had sat by Celestia’s side, pen scratching ceaseless notes into parchment as she took notes on the issues of the day. In retrospect, Twilight thought, those memories should really have been a warning.
The exact nature of the case was irrelevant; when reconsidering later how it started, Twilight Sparkle could even bring herself to admit to being unsure exactly what the mare’s grievance was. It seemed to be that Proper Representation of Her People had not yet been granted by the Crown. What exactly Proper Representation was or who Her People might be was a topic of some debate - even, it seemed, by the mare herself.
She had explained to the court three times. Each, in Twilight’s opinion, contradicted each other.
What mattered was that - as Twilight bit back a third sigh, shuffled into a subtle different position on the cushions which never failed to perfectly support her yet also did not quite provide an adequate degree of comfort, and discovered that it was, in fact, possible to become bored of lecturing (attempting to lecture, anyhow)-
What mattered was the mare lifted her hoof to jab it at Twilight and said twelve terrible words.
“You know what? Don’t bother. You aren’t even Equestria’s real ruler anyway.”
There was a shift in the throne room.
A frown managed to achieve a beachhead on Twilight’s lips, overcoming the last lines of defense against frustration.
“Miss Wheatberry, please trust me that I am very much aware that I am neither Princess Celestia nor Princess Luna. I grew up learning from the former, and I began my journey saving the latter. They are far older than I am, and I know I am not them. But if you would please listen to what I am trying to explain-”
“You’re not-” This time, the frustration was accompanied by the whip crack of a hoof striking bare marble, for in the energy of her protests the mare had wandered from the carpeted approach to the throne. “-our ruler. Celestia and Luna weren’t our rightful rulers either, and certainly not Cadance. They weren’t one of us, and you aren’t either! You’re nothing but a usurper! A tyrant!”
The shift became a low murmur.
Even if Twilight had been deaf to the dozens of shallow intakes of breath rushing through nostrils and between teeth, even if she had been blind to the way scores of ears laid flat to the sides of heads, she would still have felt the weight of those words: They had been important, and now they hung heavy and pregnant over the room.
I wish, Twilight thought, I knew why.
No one else seemed like they were going to explain it to her. The room had gone utterly silent; even Wheatberry appearing disinclined to further explanation.
Twilight scanned the mare again: Eyes narrow, ears pinned back, tail lashing as one hoof scraped on the carpet - all the signs of an angry pony, certainly. But also all signs Twilight had seen before, and they had not ever produced any reaction quite like this…
“Princess Twilight,” said one of the guards at the foot of the throne, without even taking his eyes off of Wheatberry, “with your order, may we remove this pony from the throne room?”
“I-”
Her jaw froze up, locked in place awaiting orders from a brain currently engaged in all-out pitched battle: Forces of ‘there is knowledge to be had about something I do not know’ waged fearsome battle against the lines of ‘something bad just happened and I am a princess now don’t you dare try and do something special to sate your curiosity, you have to look like you know this, that’s not what-’
“-why?”
“She’s a triumviratist. She doesn’t deserve to be in here.”
Triumviratist. Triumvirate. Rule of three. Three Princesses? But she rejected Cadance too, and Cadance ascended before I did. Not princesses, then. Triumvirate… rule of three. Three tribes of ponies? She wants the three tribes to rule?
“She’s a - tribalist?” Twilight ventured cautiously.
A low chortle ran through the room. Wheatberry puffed herself up, her naturally yellow-tan coat growing bright red around the muzzle. “I am not, and I resent the insinuation at all, tyrant! I have nothing but the deepest respect for my pegasus and unicorn brothers and sisters. It’s you - you usurpers that I can’t stand!”
At Twilight’s side, her assistant tapped her hoof twice gently to the dais. The signal was known - We need to talk. - and Twilight obligingly leaned her head down.
“She doesn’t think the other tribes are lesser,” her assistant said softly, “just that the rulership of Equestria by alicorns is invalid. That the tribes never actually ceded their authority to the Royal Sisters, and so the Sisters’ rule was illegal.”
Oh.
If only I hadn’t made a fool of myself first. If only I hadn’t made a fool of her first!
“Wheatberry, my little pony,” she began again, but once more the crack of a hoof striking stone echoed through the room.
“Don’t even bother,” Wheatberry sneered, “I’m not your little pony. I am my own little pony, and I won’t stand for being oppressed by usurper tyrants any further. Your pets don’t have to force me out; I don’t want to be here anymore! Your very presence oppresses me”
Her retreat from the room was accomplished in distinctly un-retreat-like fashion, with muzzle held high, tail likewise so, and a proud spring in her step.
It was, Twilight thought, nonetheless a retreat.
With yet another weary sigh, she again shifted her pose on the throne.
It still wasn’t comfortable.
“Next question, please?”
As the pony was announced, chatter in the room seemed to have beat a hasty retreat as well - falling to a low level that left the next supplicant's words unfalteringly clear. Yet, Twilight barely felt the words pass over her ears.
Instead, those few terrible words smashed into them time and time again, steadily slimming down as extraneous words were discarded. The message repeated faster and faster, purified as if in a centrifuge until all that was left was the most bitter, stinging point to jab into her brain again and again.
“You know what? Don’t bother. You aren’t even Equestria’s real ruler anyway.”
“You aren’t even Equestria’s real ruler anyway.”
“You aren’t Equestria’s real ruler.”
“You aren’t.”
When she had inherited the crown of all Equestria, Twilight Sparkle had sworn to herself not to do away with Celestia or Luna’s personal quarters or offices. Both were, in her mind, not really gone - and in any case, what if they ever wanted to come back? For a visit, of course. Naturally.
No other reason.
Not because it offered hope that one day she might not have to face this non-stop procession of crises and near-calamities without the comforting presence of her mentor and friend.
And certainly not possibly because a young, inexperienced, and possibly obsessive-compulsive Princess might fail and require a more experienced ruler to step in.
Not at all.
Regardless of the why, Twilight had instead set about building a space to call her own: A space better suited to her physique, to her taste, and to her style of work.
The result was, she had been told, more ‘homey’ than either Celestia’s space (within which the mask of office seemed to extend beyond just the mare who used it to the quarters themselves too - leaving them entirely businesslike) or Luna’s (which seemed to be driven by not so much a theatrical mask but an entire theatrical stage, and whose size and architecture forever seemed to be conspiring to put visitors in the mindset that they, in fact, were the one on center stage - and before a judge’s bench).
The Castle of Friendship might have been her first true Holding (with a proper H, a place governed by its lord or lady), but the Golden Oaks Library had been her first true home - even if just for a few years. Her office reflected that: Not merely in the stacks of books selected every genre from Equestrian tax law to foals’ fiction, but in the dark wood paneling and gentle, candle-like glow of the magelights (charmed, at great personal struggle, to flicker as a flame would). It was not just a home; it was a shelter. It was a place meant to feel comfortable to the one mare who inhabited it more than any other.
It was never quite enough.
Tonight, as the moon climbed higher in the sky, it was failing more than usual.
“You aren’t Equestria’s real ruler.”
Twilight pushed the scroll on her desk aside and rose. Wings extended - vast wings, huge wings, wings far greater than she’d learned to fly with - and stretched. Softly stepping hooves took her around the edge of the desk, past the well-padded chairs which faced it, and to the bookshelves already sagging under the weight of their contents.
Twilight breathed deeply, letting her eyes slip half shut as she drew the scent of paper, ink, and binding. It was a scent familiar all the way back to her foalhood years, and on many a trying night it had granted her access to a sort of mental fortress built upon those more carefree foundations: A respite from the travails of the world.
Tonight, her eyes opened and found no relief from the thoughts still galloping wildly through her mind. Twilight snorted, lashing her tail, and turned about. She headed instead to one of the great floor-to-ceiling windows which split the study’s walls at regular intervals.
They bulged out, not through any magecraft but merely the clever work of truly talented glassworkers - though, Twilight supposed, the Marks driving their talents could be seen as resulting in a sort of magic-at-a-distance.
Standing at the windows, all of Equestria seemed to stretch out before her. Standing at the window, she could look not merely left or right but up and down too: Viewing the dots of light from ponies moving about the palace gardens beneath her office’s heights, and the tiny dots of shadow moving in the skies above with equal ease. Canterlot lay beyond that: The traces of web-like streets illuminated by moonlight, but for the lamps of travelers traversing them. Nearer the horizon, Ponyville’s lights twinkled - barely visible amid the inky fields and forests surrounding it. Further still, a few faint twinklings of distant settlements shone against the night sky; most on land, a few in air.
One of the windows could even open, to permit a cool breeze or a messenger on the wing (once, accompanied by a gentle friendly hoot; now, more often by a courteous “Good evening, Princess.”).
Twilight stood there, thinking, her mane twisting gently at the frame of the window.
“You aren’t Equestria’s real ruler.”
I have to be.
“Princess?”
Twilight blinked.
The desk was before her again, the cushion of her seat beneath her belly.
When had she sat?
Looking up, Twilight found herself being watched by a mare whose troubled expression was an increasingly frequent companion. Raven Inkwell had been worn by decades of service; her one-time alabaster coat was now a more muted white, to say nothing of her once richly-brown mane. Some ponies, Twilight knew, held their age with grace; Applejack had seemingly inherited that from her maternal family. Raven Inkwell had not, and so perpetually cast the expression of one in a state of modest alarm - even when her voice spoke instead of a thoughtful, caring concern.
“What is it, Raven?”
“Are you okay, Princess? You’ve been signing that scroll for ten minutes.”
Blinking again, Twilight looked down. Half her signature had been scrawled across the bottom of the scroll; there the quill had run dry of ink, but the deep path carved into the paper spoke to her repeated attempts to continue nonetheless.
“...I’m sorry, Raven. Maybe I just need to take a few minutes break.”
You just took a break.
“I see.” Raven Inkwell’s expression refused to give any hint as to her thoughts, but her tone was not so sealed: Twilight could hear the doubt in it. “Well, Princess. If that is the case, I can come back a little bit… later. Tomorrow, perhaps.”
“That might be best, yes. Thank you, Raven,” Twilight murmured.
Just before the last few dark tail-hairs had vanished through the door, though, she abruptly called out, “Raven, wait! I - I have a question.”
The tail vanished through it, but after a terrifyingly eternal moment a bespectacled muzzle pushed its way back through the door.
“Yes, Princess Twilight?”
“The, um… the Triumviratists. Can you tell me anything about them?”
Behind the spectacles, graying eyebrows rose. “You’re still worrying about that, Princess? I heard about that - pony-” - the word being spat like an unexpected bite of rotten apple - “-this morning. You don’t have to worry about them.”
“Just - can you tell me about them? I’ve never heard of them before, and - well, you know me. I never met a history book I didn’t like. Or hoard.” A slight - though nervous - smile twitched the edges of Twilight’s lips. “I tried working my way through Lost Legacy’s Historia Equestria, did you know that? I was nine years old. Not even out of my fillyhood yet! But I’ve never heard of these ‘Triumviratists’. Why not?”
Raven slipped the rest of the way back into the room, letting the door fall quietly shut behind her. She seated herself at the far side of the immense desk, and though Twilight now towered over her it still felt to Twilight like she was looking up again instead, a small filly still waiting for one more lesson. As if to complete the image, Raven adjusted her glasses and sat with the unbowed spine of a dedicated assistant despite her age.
“The Triumviratists’… like you said, Princess, I’m sure you know your history. The Accords of Unification after Hearthswarming, the pre-Classical era of inter-tribal unity, the lost era under Discord… the Triumviratists’ argument is that when the Royal Sisters took the thrones after they cast him down, they overtrotted the authority given to them by the Triumvirate government of Equestria.”
“But they were crowned, weren’t they? ”
“Yes, of course they were. According to the Triumviratists, though, political rule over Equestria wasn’t ever properly handed over from the old Triumvirate to the Sisters. They claim the Sisters just - seized authority after they imprisoned Discord.”
“That sounds a lot like the tribalists to me. ‘You aren’t our rightful ruler’, ‘we should only be ruled by our own tribe’, all that sort of thing,” Twilight sourly noted, “and we know just where that kind of thinking goes. But somehow we haven’t all frozen to death beneath the Windigos’ breath.”
“The difference is that the tribalists barely get along with each other - and none with the Thestrals or Saddle Arabians; they only barely tolerate the Crystal Ponies. Triumviratists…” Raven raised a hoof, wiggling it back and forth. “I don’t want to say they’re more sane. They’re not. They’re not sane. But they at least get along with each other. They function.”
“I’ve never read about any being prosecuted, but it seems like there’s a case against a tribalist every several years or so.”
Tilting her head in a way that Twilight had come to associate with a Raven scouring the bookshelves of her memory, Raven eventually nodded. “Neither can I. Unlike the Tribalists, Triumviratists have always been - niche. Even among seditious movements.”
“Not enough grievance?”
“Not enough promised reward. A lot of tribalists promise that things would just be better if power was taken away from other ponies, and given back to one tribe. But the triumviratists - even if they succeeded, now what? Power would still be held by some distant power. They can’t offer anypony any prize for joining them. I honestly think the Crown ought to be watching them more closely, but they’re also absurd enough nopony really pays attention to them.”
“Why?”
“Why?” Raven blinked.
“Why are they so absurd?” Twilight added, her hoof tapping the desk.
“Because… because they are arguing that Celestia and Luna had no right to rule. Well over a millennium of our history, just tossed out!” Laughing, Raven settled back into her seat and shook her head. “Can you imagine how insane that would be? Sol Invictus and Luna Dubia, not having the right to rule? Besides, each and every part of the government, in its charter, makes it very clear who they were founded by. The Sisters were our rulers, there’s no question. Then Celestia for an age, then the Sisters again, and now… you.”
“Nevermind,” Twilight sighed. When Raven tilted her head questioningly, Twilight stood, circled around the desk, and lowered her muzzle to brush against the elder mare’s forehead. The Amulet of Sun and Moon shifted on its chain, briefly leaving its spot on Twilight’s chest. “Thank you for explaining, Raven. I think I needed to hear it from you.”
Rising as well, though somewhat less steadily, Raven returned the nuzzle. “Always, My Princess. Let me know if you need something.”
“Of course, Raven. Let me know, too.” Twilight managed a wan smile, pulling back to meet Raven’s eyes. “Maybe you should take some time off too. You know, a very wise mare once told me I should stop spending so much time with books…”
Breaking into laughter, Raven again turned to set off for the door. “I’ll consider it. Goodnight, Princess.”
“Goodnight, Raven.”
The salary of the Princess’ First Secretary was not small. Some would claim it was still too small for the cost of spending far too many sleep-deprived hours rushing about in desperate hope to forestall a war, secure a treaty, or arrange a lunch - those hours being under sun or moon, depending on the Princess. Still, it could thus reasonably be assumed that the home of such an esteemed officer would be an equally esteemed structure.
At her core, however, Raven Inkwell was not a mare prone to particular degrees of extravagance. Furthermore, Canterlot’s near-vertical foundations demonstrated some particular difficulties in accommodating its recent population growth (which, when considering other species, also had to somehow account for the growing space demanded to satisfy a draconic or bovine inhabitant). Land was scarce but housing costs high. Since her foals had long since moved out (though a rambunctious pack of grandfoals were a not-uncommon experience for both Raven and her husband, and any neighbors thoughtless enough to leave a door or window open), she found it largely unnecessary to keep a home of any significant size.
It was a modest, unassuming, and (if one ignored the one guard resting discreetly in a nearby alleyway and another perched hawklike atop a roof) unremarkable squared-off building tucked closely to a small pottery shop on one side and another series of small homes on the other. It was spare both in floor space and appearance - in a pony way: More than one griffon visitor had declared it still an extravagant monstrosity of over-decoration, garish with color and engraved hearts-and-flowers decoration.
The lack of floor space was of little problem for a mare as organized as Raven Inkwell. Litter could not last more than a few hours in her home before being promptly shooed out the door, perhaps along with the grandfoal responsible. Neatly arranged shelves stored their contents in neatly arranged and labeled stacks and rows, with nothing left to chance or potential tripping hazard.
Also, it was entirely possible to tell when somepony teleported into your bedroom in the dead hours of the morning.
Raven could not tell what jerked her awake faster: The wash of Ripple radiating from the teleport’s conflux through her horn like pins and needles, or the distinctive sucking pop as something emerged through it.
Whatever it was, she startled awake at the same moment as her husband; both rolled free of each other, found tangled blankets pulled taut and unrelenting, and rolled back only to lock horns unexpectedly.
“Aaiieeee!”
“Augh!”
“Raven?”
Soft violet light filled the room, and when the twinkling stars faded from Raven’s vision she blinked thrice to clear the tears from her eyes and looked up.
Even without her glasses, there was no mistaking that stature.
“Twil- Princess?!”
“Raven,” Twilight Sparkle said grimly, “we have a problem.”