//------------------------------//
// Chapter 4: Starswirl the Bearded - A Place in History 
// Story: Equestria: A History Revealed 
// by Hoofry_Poneigher 
//------------------------------//

	Let’s dedicate this next chapter to Starswirl, and the ongoing paradox regarding his place in history.

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An issue that was not mentioned beforehand comes into play when discussing Starswirl and his place in time. The national Hearth’s Warming Eve play raises further questions when it comes to the issue of Starswirl the Bearded, stating that he was alive in the Pre-Equestrian Era and that he mentored Clover the Clever. A paradox is created when one considers that he is best known (the word “best” being used loosely, he was rather obscure after all) as a magical scholar who rose to academic and political infamy during this pre-Classical era, over a century later. With both these contradictions in mind, it would be difficult to simultaneously place him in two time periods at once.

Mainstream historians still argue to this day over Starswirl’s exact place in history. It is generally assumed in response to this he lived in both time periods; as a higher level unicorn who knew Princess Celestia and Luna on a personal basis, high feats of magic could have been used to artificially extend his life into the Pre-Classical Era, possibly using the age spells that I had previously mentioned. Of course, this hypothesis holds little evidence, and only the Princesses themselves know the truth, and have yet to fully divulge it. Of course, I’m not the type of scholar to flow with the mainstream. I’m like a salmon, swimming against the current and creating my own solutions before it was cool.

Some of you may postulate that Starswirl may have actually been born in the Pre-Classical Era, and that he can be connected to the Pre-Equestrian Era through time travel. After all, as the sole creator of some of the best-functioning time spells, he could have travelled back in time to teach Clover (probably some quick lecture about windigos, given that the time spell only lasted for a minute), and then returned to his own time. As a magical scholar, he may have had reason to do so in order to help him in his studies regarding the prediction of the future, which he was researching arduously towards the end of the Pre-Classical Era.[14] For as they say, 



“But to understand the future, we have to go back in time.”[15]



But this is impossible because according to the “Laws of the Governance of Time”, the principia that Starswirl himself wrote; you must be in the present to travel back to the past. However, Starswirl wasn’t in the present, or he’d be alive today, because we’re in the present! He was in the past, and you can’t travel back to the past when you’re in the past, duh! So this hypothesis is debunked.

Or perhaps it was all a lie propagated by Celestia to create the illusion that Starswirl was alive during the Pre-Equestrian Era, because by stating to personally know Starswirl, it would maintain the façade that both her and her sister were really there before the founding of Equestria. But what self-respecting mare would ever lie about their age to make them seem older? Even if it had to do with maintaining a lie of national importance, such a thing is absolutely ridiculous. Debunked.

The answer is both all of these things and none of these things. Starswirl had a biological son, who was also named Starswirl, and lived until the Pre-Classical Era, and also happened to have a beard. gg.

My evidence is that while his autobiography stated otherwise,



 “I am infertile.”[16]
–Starswirl the Bearded



My claim can still hold water. While he was researching his time spell, in the past I might remind you, he could have traveled back into the past (but he was in the past as I reminded you), therefore allowing two of him to exist at the same time. In order to avoid confusion, he adopted the time clone as his son and named him, “Starswirl the Bearded”. Of course, the time clone would age much slower because of de magicks, so this Starswirl the Bearded, (who we shall name Starswirl the Bearded, to avoid further confusion) was able to rise to obscurity in the Pre-Classical Era and live up to the early Classical era a century later. It makes perfect sense. Don’t bother looking for any inconsistencies or contradictions because they don’t exist. Seriously.

Of course, there are some Starswirl enthusiasts who state that Starswirl was really Discord the whole time, which would explain his immortality. Ignoring all of the paradoxical inconsistencies that would be birthed from that claim alone, such an assumption would throw my reasoning behind Discord’s origins out of whack. So for destroying my head-canon, I’m not even going to dignify this claim with a response.

Anyways, we’ll return to Starswirl once he becomes relevant again in later chapters. But I assure you, this detour was totally necessary to the point I was trying to make. Probably.