In the immediate aftermath of the war, most responded the way one might expect. Ponies developed a distrust of gryphons that, especially for those with family in Trottingham, Detrot, and Windsoar, spilled into outright racism and xenophobia. Following the death of the gryphon king Ashnard, Equestrian and Zebrican troops moved quickly to secure and occupy the gryphon capital of Daein in an effort to preempt any possible retaliatory campaign of vengeance, although this proved to be largely unnecessary; when news of Ashnard’s death reached Gryphus, the war-weary citizens revolted, kidnapping and publicly beheading any gryphon with even a drop of royal blood to prevent any succession. With the royal family gone, the government dissolved, plunging the defeated nation into anarchy.
“Princess Twilight, a moment of your time?” an auburn mare asked as she trotted through the doors to the central office of the gryphon imperial palace, saluting Twilight Sparkle as she entered.
“What can I do for you, Lieutenant Morning Glory?” Twilight looked up from her veritable mountain of paperwork. Princess Celestia had assigned the newly crowned princess to oversee the occupation of Gryphus during the formation of the post-war provisional government.
“I’ve been receiving some disturbing reports to which you ought to be privy, your highness,” Morning Glory began. “I assume you are familiar with phrase ‘rough justice,’ your highness?”
Twilight gasped at the question’s implication. “Quite,” the purple alicorn said, her voice taking a steel edge, “and it was expressly forbidden by all three of Equestria’s princesses. That kind of barbarism has no place among civilized ponies.”
“Absolutely, your highness,” Morning Glory said, “but it would appear that some of those under my command disagree. As soon as the first report came in, I ordered a full investigation, but as nopony has been willing to come forward with names or confessions, progress has been slow.”
“The stories,” Twilight said, her voice low and acrid. “What were the stories? I need to know what my subjects have been doing while I’m trying to establish a lasting peace in the wake of the most devastating war since before Luna’s banishment.”
“Of course, Princess,” Morning Glory said, almost managing not to shudder at the ice in Twilight’s voice. Almost. “I’ve received four separate reports of soldiers who entered the homes of gryphons during the night, raped whomever they pleased, and when they were finished, killed all of the witnesses and robbed the house so that it would appear to have been a robbery. As there have been a series of robberies and karubucides lately, we have no way of knowing for certain how many times this as occurred. The only reason we know of those four instances is because the soldiers who perpetrated the crime did not notice a few gryphons down the street who witnessed it.”
Twilight remained silent for several seconds as she tried to process what she’d been told. “Is that all?”
“There was one story about the son of a late gryphon colonel who was covered in oil and burned alive by the first few Equestrian soldiers to arrive in Daein, but there’s been no evidence that the event actually occurred. It seems to have been a story fabricated to ensure distrust between gryphons and ponies.”
“I see” was all Twilight said in response. After a tense couple minutes, Twilight said, “Very well, Lieutenant. From here on out, no patrol is to consist of any fewer than five ponies. I’m also going to request that Shining Armor himself personally command the occupation force here. The Crystal Empire may be independent from Equestria politically, but my brother still carries a lot of weight with the Royal Guard.” With a quick bow and a salute, the auburn mare departed, leaving Twilight alone with her now significantly more morose thoughts.
The princess was, quite understandably, deeply distraught by what she had just heard. Although her official duties primarily revolved around keeping order in the defeated nation and minimizing the severity of the economic slump as much as possible, she took it upon herself to adopt a secondary objective. Twilight made it a point of going out into public as often as possible show simple kindness of the gryphons. “One good deed is only a pebble,” she told a reporter when asked why she did this, “but the ripple effect from that pebble will have an impact much farther away.”
It took only a week for Shining Armor to arrive in Gryphus once he heard how serious the situation with the occupying soldiers had become. Going straight to Twilight’s office, he did his best to keep as upbeat and positive a demeanor as he could. When she gets stressed, Twilight needs all of the smiles she can get. “Hey Twily! How’s it going?”
Twilight, forever with her muzzle buried in either a book or paperwork, looked up from her desk and gave her brother a weak smile. “Hey BBBFF. I’m glad you’re here. We’ve managed to make three arrests so far, but we think at least five other guards were involved, and we’re no closer to finding those names than we were a week ago.”
Shining Armor ruffled his sister’s mane. “Leave all that to me, little sis. You’ve got a government to help build. Gotta make sure this peace lasts, right?”
Twilight’s smile began to fade. The turned and moved to gaze out the window behind her desk. “What was the point, Shiny?” she asked quietly.
Her question caught Shining Armor off guard. “What do you mean?”
Twilight stomped a hoof. “What was the point of that entire war? Millions of gallons of blood spilt, and for what?”
Taken aback, Shining Armor grasped for how to respond. “Twilight, we freed a country from the claws of an insane king and removed a major threat to both Equestria and the Crystal Empire.”
Twilight’s head snapped back to look at her brother, eyes teeming with tears. “But at what cost? The death toll is already over three million, and we haven’t even finished counting the dead. It will be decades before the cities are rebuilt, and that’s assuming that there are even enough ponies who will want to live that close to the gryphons to populate those cities. Three nation’s economies are in ruins, and Gryphus is the most politically unstable that it’s been in over six hundred years. Was it really worth all that?”
Her brother could hardly believe his years. “Twilight, Ashnard started this war! It was his armies that tore across our borders and made the streets of the Crystal City run red with blood.”
“Shiny, you know it’s never that simple,” Twilight said quietly. “No ruler, no matter how power hungry, would declare war on that many nations at the same time without more motivation than greed. War is nothing to be glorified, big brother. It’s a failure. It’s a failure of diplomacy, and it’s a failure to communicate well enough. We can’t just sit on our haunches and pat ourselves on the back for a job well done taking an evil tyrant out of power. We have to find out where we went wrong and make sure never to make those mistakes again.”
Shining Armor opened and closed his mouth a couple times, but he couldn’t seem to find the words to respond. Twilight continued, “We demonize our enemies to build up public support for wars, even defensive wars, but all too often, we allow ourselves to lose sight of the fact that they’re still people just like us. Maybe they have claws and beaks instead of hooves and muzzles, but they’re still people with hopes, fears, and feelings. I know Ashnard was mad, but his country followed him, at least initially. For a whole nation to support that kind of an offensive war, there had to have been some kind of fear that he played off of, something that we might have been able to help remedy if we had just paid closer attention to our neighbors. Even if we hated the country’s leaders, its people still deserve to have someone stand up for them. How can we claim to be a nation built around Harmony if we neglect Kindness and Generosity?”
Shining was left completely speechless. After a moment, he said “Twilight, I don’t know what to say.”
“Then don’t say anything,” she said, her demeanor uncharacteristically dark. “Just think. Think about what I’ve said about how I see the war. Think about what we gained from it, and think about what we lost to it. Think about the tears and blood was shed for it. For each one that you can remember, think of the faces of every pony who died because of it. Think about the gryphons who died fighting us and how each one had someone back home who loved him or her, be it a spouse, a parent, or a child. Think about the Equestrian homes that are broken because of this war.” She paused for a moment. “Think about the hearts that were broken by it.”
Twilight turned to look her brother dead in the eyes. “Think about all of this as we go forward and you help Cadance rule the Crystal Empire. As rulers, we hold on our hooves the lives of every single subject in our kingdoms. If we screw up, they’re the ones who die because of it. We owe it, if not to the dead then to the living, to make sure that we do everything physically possible never to feed the flames of war again, no matter how justified it may seem at the time. It has to be a true last resort in more than name alone.”
She turned to look out the window once more. “They shouldn’t have died, but since they did, we have to make sure that their deaths weren’t in vain.”