//------------------------------// // Chapter 2: Tin Foil Horn // Story: The Trouble With Unicorns // by CartsBeforeHorses //------------------------------// Prince Blueblood read many old history tomes in the Canterlot Archives, looking for any trace of history about Celestia’s School founding. He found an old manuscript that was several hundred years old. It read, “So much of the history was lost in the great book burnings during the Nightmare Moon Rebellion that it is nearly impossible to get an accurate account, but from what we have pieced together the post-Discord, pre-Nightmare Moon Rebellion period was mostly peaceful, with one exception: King Sombra rose to power briefly in the North. His name has been all but forgotten, as has even the existence of the Crystal Empire over which he ruled. This is not surprising since by one account he ruled for a month, by another account he ruled for two weeks, but needless to say he ruled for not very long at all. By all accounts he used his great power to drag the kingdom down into the depths of the earth, where it lays largely forgotten. Thus, mainstream historians do not pay it much attention. However, the authors of this history book beg to differ; Sombra’s rule over the Crystal Empire was as important for the development of Equestria as the Nightmare Rebellion itself.” Prince Blueblood knew this information, having heard as everypony else in Equestria about the return of the long-forgotten Crystal Empire. But he read on and discovered more information which he did not know, “…So Celestia and the Princess of the Night defeated Sombra in the year 623 of Celestia’s rule. Now shortly upon their return they set a few proclamations into motion, which caused quite a stir at the time, but which the average citizen was happy to obey. “The Princesses decreed that they shall be the ones to raise the sun and moon rather than the unicorns. The reason given to the public at the time was that Celestia and Luna wanted to take up an act which would instill unity in the populace. However, the proclamation event was not open to the general public, only lawponies, and as one of the few hundred privileged attendants at the time would theorize, Celestia did not trust the unicorns with the power anymore since Sombra was a unicorn. “ ‘He who controls the sun and moon controls the power of life and death itself, and the princess has just seen a unicorn who wrought much death with his magic. No surprise, then, that she wishes to protect her own power,’ The unnamed attendee said.” Blueblood was intrigued. He had been to Hearths Warming Eve pageants as a colt and he knew that long ago the unicorns had moved the sun and moon, and that now it was the Princesses who did it. Like so many others, though, he had been told all of his life that Celestia did it because it was her royal duty, and that she did it to serve Equestria. He had never heard that Celestia simply didn’t trust unicorns to raise the sun. He kept reading, “This set into motion events which later became known as The Nightmare Moon Rebellion, directed by Luna, the Princess who now rose the moon. This particularly loathsome moon monarch also saw to it that many histories were burned during her ransack of the libraries, thus the difficulty in gathering information. “The laws about the heavenly bodies were not the only new laws. The second law was that Everfree was no longer to be the capital; it was to be moved to Canterlot… most of the unicorns of Canterlot did not mind that their city was now open to pegasi and earth ponies, but a few raised a stir about having to now associate with the non-magical races. Princess Celestia responded by suppressing demonstrations, and eventually the nay-sayers obliged begrudgingly. As the unicorns were never large in number they never did have a city all to themselves again, though they continued to make up the majority of Canterlot up until the time of this writing. “Also, Celestia was to run Starswirl’s School For Gifted Unicorns and limit access to the scrolls which taught the black magic that Sombra used. Only the most gifted and trusted unicorns could use it: graduates of Celestia’s unicorn school. Along with black magic, all sorts of other useful types of magic were restricted such as time travel and invisibility. There is no record of Sombra having used the latter two spells at all; nevertheless, his rule was seemingly used as justification for their banning.” Blueblood was shocked to learn this information. This history was not at all what he had been taught. Nopony ever told him that Canterlot had once been a unicorns-only city. But after he thought about it, he guessed that it DID make sense. It was roughly in the same area that the old unicorn kingdom of Unicornia had been before the union of the three tribes. The pegasi had Cloudsdale, the earth ponies had Appaloosa and Fillydelphia, and the unicorns… well, they used to have Canterlot but now they had nothing. He wondered why that was. Celestia granted land for new cities to be built; had no unicorn ever wanted to establish a city for exclusively unicorns? Or did they actually try, but Celestia turned them down? He did not know. One thing he noticed about this history that struck him was that all of the changes made, with no exception, had to do with unicorns in particular. No restrictions on earth ponies or pegasi had been passed. They still grew food and controlled the weather, but Celestia raised the sun. None of their natural abilities were illegal to use or teach, not even the potentially-lethal Sonic Rainboom. But that made no sense. Simply because Sombra was a unicorn, Celestia would treat unicorns differently? Did Celestia have some sort of problem with unicorns? He walked out of the library but then stopped in his tracks and said aloud to himself, “No, come on. What, will you put on a tin foil hat next, Blueblood? Stop indulging in conspiracy theories. Celestia doesn’t have a problem with unicorns. I’ve never even heard anypony else say that besides this book.” But was it a conspiracy theory, or an actual conspiracy? The book that he read was a history book, and all of the other information he had read in it seemed to be correct. The problem with Equestrian history is that, due to the great book burnings, there are many conflicting accounts. Maybe the author was speculating and attributing motivations to Celestia that she didn’t have? Okay, let’s go with what I know. Earth ponies and pegasi both have cities of their own, as do crystal ponies, but unicorns do not. FACT. Celestia only runs a school for unicorns, none of the other races. FACT. She runs the school as if she doesn’t particularly care for her students’ education. FACT. The pegasi control the weather, the earth ponies grow food, and Celestia raises the sun. She could just let the unicorns do it and save herself the trouble, but she doesn’t. FACT. Spells are restricted arbitrarily, while none of the natural abilities of the other two races are restricted. FACT. Five indisputable facts that he knew for sure about the way that Celestia governed. She sure seemed to dole out different treatment to unicorns than to the other two races. If just one or two of these facts were correct, it might be a strange coincidence. Three facts would be more than odd. But five? Perhaps it was a true conspiracy and she really DID mistrust unicorns. That actually made more sense to Blueblood than that all of Celestia’s policies just happened by pure chance to negatively affect unicorns. But why unicorns? What is the trouble with unicorns? The thoughts ran through his mind as he walked out of the library. Surely other races of ponies needed to be watched and restricted, not just unicorns. Pegasi could make large tornadoes. Earth ponies could tame dragons and other ferocious beasts. And unicorns… well, unicorns could do all sorts of things, come to think of it. He thought of some of the bright and gifted students he had in his school over the years. No earth pony or pegasus could ever match the feats performed by unicorns he had seen in his eighteen years at Celestia’s School. And this wasn’t even the best school anymore; he could hardly imagine what some of the brightest minds in other schools were capable of. Dragons are not much good if one can go back in time and prevent them from having been born. Tornadoes are not much good if the pegasi can’t see your opponent to strike him down with one. Dragonfire attacks are not much good against someone who can teleport out of the way. And none of it is good against foes who have the ability to entrance opponents or control their minds, which some particularly gifted unicorns like Twilight Sparkle could do. But not all unicorns have these powers; these are rare abilities. In fact most of the unicorns even at this school do not have these powers, Blueblood thought. But maybe that was the point. Maybe a lot more unicorns COULD have these powers, but Celestia was preventing challenges to her rule by ensuring the minimum number of unicorns would develop these abilities. That would be why she restricted access to this type of magic to only the highest-level graduates of her own school. And, at least from his own experience, she limited the number of graduates by arbitrary rules and restrictions such as friendship courses, or a hostile school environment, or high tuition. Those very few who succeeded in spite of all of this were allowed to use the spells. Blueblood’s eyes widened. Now it all made sense. This explained Celestia’s obstructionist conduct. This explained every action and inaction she had ever taken for this school. There was no other explanation; her actions were either deliberately malicious or woefully incompetent, and Blueblood refused to believe that a princess who had maintained her rule for eons and raised the sun every day was incompetent. And THAT was why Twilight Sparkle had been chosen to be on the throne. It was solely because of her incredible gift with magic. No other reason. It was not because she was a just ruler, a good leader, or because she was level-headed in a crisis, because in Blueblood’s estimation she wasn’t. It was because she was the best at magic and Celestia had no choice but to give her a leadership role, lest she challenge Luna after Celestia died. This way at least, she would be on equal footing with Luna and not feel slighted. This way, she would know the restricted magic and be able to use it to keep her subjects in line. But it didn’t have to be this way, Blueblood thought. The Crystal Empire was a unique situation. King Sombra was one incredibly powerful unicorn in a population of non-magic users. If there had been another magically-trained unicorn around to stop him, he wouldn’t have taken over the Kingdom. If the spells in the Canterlot Archives were open to the public as they were in Sombra’s time, Blueblood was confident that nopony would misuse them, and if they did they would be dealt with in short order. Then again, Prince Blueblood recognized that some of the spells were indeed dangerous. He disagreed with Celestia but certainly understood her rationale behind locking up some spells to only trusted individuals. He simply disagreed that her poorly-run school should be the test required to use them. But he wondered how deep Celestia’s plot went. If unicorns at his school were prevented from reaching their full potential in magic, and this was a school specifically for magic, how bad of an education in magic were the unicorns in regular public schools receiving? Blueblood thought of all of the unicorns he had ever met in his life. Almost all of them knew telekinetic magic, but this was a basic spell that comes naturally and is quite easy to learn, and many ponies do not even need to be taught how to use it. But moderate and even lower-difficulty spells? Most unicorns did not even know how to teleport. He hardly ever had seen unicorns on the street teleporting around. And yet, in theory, any pony with a working horn on his head should be able to. It did not require any special gift. From all of the magical science theory that he was aware of, teleportation should come as naturally to a unicorn as flight does to a pegasus. It takes training and learning, just as flight does, but in theory anypony should be able to do it. But then again, he remembered, there were public flight schools open to all pegasi in cities such as Cloudsdale, but no magic schools that were free of admission. Fact number six. Most unicorns simply attended schoolhouses with their earth pony peers in whatever towns they lived in and sat in the exact same classes, which obviously did not include instruction on magic. The classes were reading, writing, and arithmetic, which were very important, but were not magic-related. Blueblood stopped in his tracks as he walked back to his office, as he suddenly realized the gravity of this situation. Celestia, through her various actions and inactions, had hobbled the magical development of innumerable unicorn youths throughout the nation. He thought of how, in some far off foreign lands of which he had heard, literacy rates were below 30% due to inadequate access to schooling. Such was even the case in Equestria itself a few centuries ago. But Equestria nowadays had very good literacy rates, yet terrible rates of magical knowledge. But Equestria, unlike these other nations, had NO excuse for this magical illiteracy. Public schools existed nearly everywhere in the Kingdom, and he saw no reason why magical classes should not be available for unicorn students in much the same way that pegasi could go to flight school. Did Celestia do this on purpose for the same reasons that she locked up the advanced spells and took away the power to raise the sun from the unicorns? Because she simply did not trust the unicorns with even the most basic level of power? He realized the answer must be yes, as he could see no other justification for such an oversight. He had often lamented at the state of magical education in Equestria before, but he had never stopped to think that it was deliberate. Now, after reading what he had read, he highly suspected it. He had never realized that Princess Celestia had deliberately kept generations of unicorns from realizing their magical potential; not because there were no schools available, not because they couldn’t learn magic, but simply because the Princess was afraid of them. Forget the spells in the Canterlot Archives, he thought, we are talking basic magical competency here. He scowled at the sheer injustice of it, and at his powerlessness to do anything about it. But then, a smile spread across his face. Was he really powerless, or did he merely FEEL powerless? He was a successful dean and a successful educator. He had experience teaching for eighteen years, and still taught a few classes on the side in addition to his duties as dean. He may not have the power to affect change in Celestia’s school, but who said he had to stay here? He could put in his resignation tomorrow. Why stay at this failing school when he could actually make a difference? Yes, that was it! He finally realized what he wanted to do with the rest of his life. Celestia’s School was a joke. All of these students already would learn how to use their powers. If he really wanted to reach ponies with magic, he would have to go out to the common pony. He would have to teach them his knowledge. He would have to write a book.