Unicorns are a silly race. Sure, they like to think of themselves as dignified, sophisticated, and perhaps willingly up their own asses, but once you see past the snooty pretentiousness most Unicorns, specifically the ruling elite, are just a bunch of goofballs.
I’ve always wondered, even as a filly, why having a horn on your head made you a more sophisticated pony than those with wings, or those with neither horns nor wings, but Pegasi and Earth Ponies have their own semi-useless ideals and traditions as well. Still, being a Unicorn growing up, our customs were always the ones that stood out to me the most.
Unicorns seem to have a great reverence for great influential figures in Equestria’s past, which isn’t a problem in unto itself, but only, it seems, if they’re Unicorns. And often, being just an influential Unicorn isn’t enough; they have to be either royalty or a mage.
Names like Clover the Clever, Starswirl the Bearded, Sage the Wise, Mourning Dew the Mysterious and Kevin the Zebra-Killer get schools, libraries, research centers and even spells named after them (don’t bother asking how that last guy got his name, although you could probably hazard an educated guess). Hell, Clover the Clever, the first unicorn to ever travel time (which admittedly is pretty fucking cool,) gets time itself named after her. Well, sort of; the term Anno Cloverus, which is used to describe any year that follows the founding of Modern Equestria, has been adopted into our modern calendars. And it probably won’t take a philologist to figure out where that word came from.
As for royalty? All you had to do was take a quick venture into Midnight March Castle and you would find the line of kings, queens, and princesses who once ruled Equestria under their hoof, from Princess Platinum all the way up to Midnight March. Okay, a few of the severe nutjobs were left out (like that King Re fellow I keep referring to,) but what was notable about the rulers is that they were all Unicorns. Every. Single. One.
And there was no totalitarian regime at work here. It’s not like we were being instructed in school every day about how Unicorns are the Master Race and other ponies are dirt. That was just the way it was, the Unicorns were the rulers, and they were the ones who were in a position of power. They made the best rulers, or at least everyone within our little bubble in the castle believed that.
Needless to say, Unicorns had very little reverence for members of the other races. This is true to a certain extent to this day, but it was absolutely the case at the time, perhaps more so than any other time Anno Cloverus. Nowhere in any predominantly Unicorn kingdom, city, or village will you find shrines to the great Pegasi and Earth Ponies of the yesteryears. Whether you’re searching for one of the four other founders of Equestria, or simply an all-time great Wonderbolt, you will not find it.
Hell, when Intelligus Perseus Knightley released his book ‘100 Most Influential Figures in Equestrian History,’ 77 of them were Unicorns, compared to 17 Pegasi and just 6 Earth Ponies. Admittedly, Unicorns do tend to be the most recognizable faces of major movements within this nation’s past, so I can understand there being a bit of a disparity but the numbers should not be this extreme. Then again, expecting intelligent, thorough, non-biased historical analysis is probably something that shouldn’t be expected from a stallion with a name like that.
And whenever Pegasi became high ranking members of a kingdom or a community, which was a rare occurrence in unto itself, it was generally either a smaller city or an all-Pegasus one; no one could ever see a Pegasus ruling Manehattan or the Crystal Empire. And Earth Ponies? If they became anything more than simple farmers in their lives, then that's considered to be an accomplishment for them, as far as us rich, spoiled Unicorns were concerned. Nopony ever put an Earth Pony in a position of power, unless they had absolutely no other options.
Was this racism? Absolutely. Was it mean-spirited? Most Unicorns didn’t think of it as such. But I did say that racial divisions were never higher in the post-Windigo era of Equestrian history than during March’s reign, so for him, there most likely was a little bit of malice involved.
I did have Pegasus and Earth Pony friends growing up. Bluville was, at the time, both the capital city of Equestria and its largest city apart from Crystaya (which purist ponies don’t like to count because of the Crystal Empire’s tenuous position as a part of Equestria,) and cities that large, even during the March years, couldn’t be effectively segregated.
I was two years old the first time I ever actually met a non-Unicorn. I had seen and heard of Pegasi and Earth Ponies before (I wasn’t that sheltered growing up!) but it was at that age that I was introduced one of my mother’s friends, an Earth mare named Heather. I remember this story because my mother never passed on an opportunity to remind me of the time when I boldly walked up to Heather, cleared my throat, and asked her “excuse me madam, what happened to your horn?”
I suppose you can consider that your ‘kids say that darndest things’ moment for this compilation of captivating tales.
Now, it’s at this point that I have to bring up the fact that, while I said I had Earth Pony and Pegasus friends, I probably wasn’t as close to them as I could have been. That wasn’t my fault, really, as a small filly I wasn’t really supposed to be outside the castle grounds without adult supervision, and since Tau Sunflare was often preoccupied with business and all the caregivers she hired either left or got fired within a short period of time, so often months went by without me ever being outside the castle grounds. Yeah, when I said I wasn’t that sheltered, that didn’t mean I wasn’t sheltered at all; quite the opposite, actually.
Luna and I did sneak out a few times though. Sneaking out has always been a weird experience for me, no matter how many times I discreetly snuck away when Sunflare or a nanny turned a blind eye, I would always get that rush of adrenaline that came with doing anything exciting shortly followed by a sense of dread over what would happen if I got caught. Of course, whenever Luna was around I made sure to look like sneaking out was no big deal to me either way, because it didn’t affect her in the slightest (either that or she had a phenomenal poker face,) and I’ll be damned if my little sister is going to have more balls then me.
But, interestingly enough, the pony outside the castle walls we were most interested in seeing wasn’t another filly or colt, although there were plenty of those. It was actually Rivers, a venerable old Earth Pony and before that sounds creepy, allow me to explain.
Rivers was a storyteller. He told absolutely fascinating stories of times long before the reign of Midnight March, of a time even before Clover and Starswirl, when Equestria didn’t exist and the three races only communicated with each other when absolutely necessary (so, in that sense, like March’s reign except without the PC bullshit.) He told us of the Windigos, ancient evil spirits who had the power to utterly destroy an ecosystem if there was an overabundance of war or death. They could be defeated by the spirits of harmony and friendship, which I believed was the corniest thing ever at the time but the longer I lived, the more it made sense.
He told us of Princess Platinum’s mysterious disappearance, of the terrible ripple effects that it caused throughout the country. He provided a detailed, perhaps too detailed, account of King Re and his psychotic desire to burn Equestria and recreate it in his own image. He weaved memories of the Crystal Empire and their ongoing separatist struggle, which was on-and-off for the better part of 600 years before they finally came to an uneasy truce within the last century. He brought to life a time when dragons ruled Equestria and ponies of all races lived in terror of their overlords (this story was regrettably anti-climactic, as it turned out there was no great hero or heroes who came and saved the world, rather it was the dragons getting tired of all the little rebellions and their subjects despising them in addition to their desire to conquer a new land, so they just up and left).
Admittedly, his stories may have been more colourful and exotic than how history actually played out but they were never completely fabricated. You’d think getting a history lesson from an aging Earth Pony would be dull and boring, but Rivers found a way to keep us entertained. Particularly Luna, who listened intently to every single one of his tale’s with her eyes the size of craters and a smile on her face big enough to cause irreparable muscle damage. Compare this to Sunflare, who tried to tell stories but ultimately ended up looking like a twelve year old filly from Hoofston attempting to recreate one of Sage’s masterpieces. Oh well, at least she was trying.
Perhaps what I appreciated the most about him was that he didn’t pull his punches. He didn’t try to neuter his stories because his audience was two royal fillies. He understood that we were mature enough to learn about some of the harder, crueler, more morose aspects of Equestrian life, and I cannot thank him enough for that. He always said it was fantastic that two young fillies, particularly two fillies that could end up being in positions of power one day, should be the audience, as these were tales that needed to be passed on. Granted, history was nothing new and they did teach you about most of the stuff that Rivers elaborated about, but very dryly and rarely with an unbiased perspective. And certainly not with the passion and eloquence that Rivers embodied every time he began dumping exposition.
What was also interesting about Rivers is he was a hardcore Starswirl purist. That was really his one major bias. He believed wholeheartedly that Equestria would be the utopia no one thought was possible if we followed Starswirl’s Manifesto to a T. That opinion was something that I didn’t think about much as a little one, but as I grew older I began to vehemently disagree with. Some of the stuff in Starswirl’s Manifesto was pretty weird, like forced breeding between the different races, elimination of all kinds of currency, elimination of ‘beauty’ as any kind of standard and a belief that all things should be measured purely on how utilitarian they were, elimination of any kind of tobacco, alcohol and drugs, and other well-intentioned but somewhat loopy ideals like that. However, Starswirl’s Manifesto was still an improvement over Midnight March’s life goals, which essentially consisted of “get money, power and bitches.”
And speaking of that last one…
Yes, I suppose I have to address the elephant in the room at this point. It’s frantically waving it’s trunk around while shouting “I’m here, notice me,” so ignoring it any longer would basically be akin to leaving you in the dark about a rather important subject.
I said that Tau Sunflare was March’s second wife. That didn’t mean that Sunflare was the second mare that March married, although she was. What that meant is that March ranked his wives in a hierarchal system and Sunflare was second on that list.
In case you missed the implication: March had a harem. Not a banging the bridesmaids, not mares on the side, not even a herd, a full-fledged harem. With numbers.
Now, herding and polyamorous relationships do exist in Equestria so this wasn’t as weird as it might have been in a predominantly monogamous culture but the way it was set up, what with the arbitrary hierarchy and March’s casual disregard for the health and safety of said mares, especially those lower on the totem pole, that pushed March’s relationships purely into ‘creepy’ territory. And that’s not even including all the females he slept with on the side, some of which weren’t ponies, or even ungulates.
March’s first wife was the previously mentioned Princess Uranium, who was allegedly a direct descendant from Princess Platinum. She wasn’t as intelligent, dignified or magically adept as my mother but she was incredibly sexy, so on the one level I can see why March liked her so much (and, during my teenage years, I may or may not have frequently thought about her while getting off).
So, apart from power and perversion, what else was March interested in? Well, there was one piece of Equestrian lore that utterly fascinated the then-king, fascinating him to a point where he would abandon his royal duties and sometimes even his sex life (I know, right?) just to look into this myth, and that was the Alicorn. Midnight March, having already been established as the most powerful Unicorn to ever walk the face of Equestria (in his mind, at the very least,) had made it his life goal to achieve Alicorn-status. It wasn’t, of course, going to be easy, as no Alicorn had ever actually been confirmed to exist up until that point. Even Rivers, the masterful storyteller who would often expose a truth behind what was thought to be merely an old wives’ tale, said that no Alicorn had ever existed, and no Alicorn likely ever will exist, regardless of March’s desire. A part of me, the part that had listened to my father waxing poetic about the Alicorn and order three large statues to be built of a winged Clover, Starswirl, and himself, wanted to prove him wrong, but ultimately I just wasn’t sure how. I tried to ask Luna if she had any ideas, but the Alicorn conversation had completely lost her hours ago.
I thought about taping fake wings to my back or something along those lines, but even as a five-year-old filly I realized how incredibly stupid that sounded (although Luna liked the idea, mostly because she just thought it looked cool). Still though, Alicorns had to be real. There was no way March, who I held in incredibly high reverence at the time, could be delusional, or even worse, outright lying, about his dream concept. Surely he would one day truly discover the history of the Alicorns, discover what it meant to be an Alicorn, and maybe, just maybe, even become one himself.
It never really transpired that way. And knowing what I know now, I couldn’t be more grateful it didn’t.