The first year after the foundation of the nation of Equestria had been tiresome. The three tribes that composed the nation; the Unicorns, the Pegasi, and the ponies Earthern had spread to all four points of the compass, and they settled in whatever place made them most comfortable and was best suited to their needs. The ponies would farm the land, mine the ground for gems, accumulate moisture, or have fun rolling in the grass, running, and simply enjoying life. Then the sun would go down, and all the ponies would go into their homes and sleep. The nights in those early days were not peaceful; creatures were always around, lurking, flying, slithering about; always ready to dine on a good sized pony as their dinner. Ponies who bedded down for the night never feared the night though, because they knew one very important thing which the average predator did not; they had a guardian in the shadows, a great protector of the night. These monsters, if they so much as came too close to a home or settlement found out something rather unsettling, and that was that the shadows were alive, and they would take form as an azure winged unicorn, who would force them back to wherever they came from. Luna had utter contempt for the creatures who sought her ponies harm, sparing them only so little mercy. To her ponies, however, she provided the glorious moon, constantly alight with its silvery splendor, and dreams both joyous and peaceful.
It was not long until the Equestrian government was officially created, and it was of course believed by all that the two alicorn sisters should rule. It was Celestia who decided that the both of them should take up the title of Princess. “Why would we only take up the title of ‘Princess’,” it was recorded that Luna said, “We are to be the rulers of the country, why shouldn’t we be ‘Queens’?” Princess Celestia looked to her sister, giggling as she snorted in laughter, “ ‘Queen Celestia’? ‘Queen Luna’? The two of us would sound like a pair of dusty old hags!” So by royal decree, the highest position to be held by an official in the government of Equestria was to be that of Prince or Princess. With this began the Golden Diarchy, an age of harmonious rule that would last another 399 years, until the rise of the waking Nightmare. Work was begun on constructing a castle almost immediately after the Diarchy was made realized, and in the course of twenty years, Everfree Castle, capital of Equestria, was finished.
It would be in later years that the alicorn sisters would become aware of their plight; they were immortal, but their friends and their lovers were not. The first of their husbands were laid to rest thirty years after their arrival in Everfree Castle, but the sisters, thinking themselves merely blessed with a longer but mortal life, took second and third husbands. No children were ever blessed to the sisters as heirs, though they came to realize the superfluousness of having heirs when one is immortal, and in due course the second and third husbands were laid to rest in the Everfree Castle crypt as well. After the loss of these husbands, the sisters came to the decision that they would no longer marry, so as to spare themselves and their lovers the pain that death imparts to those left behind.
Years passed without any physical effect on the sisters, but things changed quickly for mortal ponykind. In the span of three hundred years, ponies had grown, lived, learned, and loved so very much. Villages became towns, and towns in time became cities. Manehattan and Trottingham, which would rise up to become the two largest cities in Equestria, held between them less than five hundred ponies of all types. Cloudsdale was a tiny island in the skies, with less than thirty Pegasi for its population. Ponies were not scared of the things that lurked in the night, however they now no longer held gratitude for the one who had kept it so. They could now indeed defend themselves, a thing both sisters found pleasing, however, the Princess of the Night was feeling less and less needed and appreciated by those she cared about so deeply, and she found that to stave off the melancholy she would take walks throughout the countryside. It was on one of these walks that she stumbled into a portion of the Everfree even she was not aware of, and whose treetops were so thick one could not fly out of or even see the sky. Hours and hours were spent, simply trying to find a way out, either by hoof or wing, but to no avail. In time, she came across a cave which she felt compelled to take shelter in, and there she rested.