//------------------------------// // Chapter 5: PROLEGOMENON // Story: The Untold Story of the Equestrian Civil War // by mint20 //------------------------------// Chapter 5: PROLEGOMENON The Untold Story of the Equestrian Civil War “Take me to them,” said Twilight, moving to follow the guard. She followed him, blinking as she emerged into the harsh light. Dimly, she heard the rest of the Council following her. As the seven ponies walked in the streets of Canterlot, Twilight became aware that a few of the ponies they walked past wore bands on their front left foreleg. Some ponies wore one that was midnight blue, and others wore a pale gold. Call her crazy, but Twilight started to feel a growing sense of dread. “Quickly now,” she said, hastening her step. The other six matched her pace, and soon they had arrived at town square, where a vast crowd had assembled. Almost everypony had one of the different types of band on their foreleg. The gold and blue were fairly evenly distributed. Up on an elevated platform, the two Princesses were again facing each other, glaring into each other eyes. The crowd alternated between murmuring, and jeering as the Princesses spoke. At the arrival of Princess Twilight and her friends, a hushed and expectant silence quickly fell over the square. Twilight ignored the ponies watching her and instead ran straight for the two up on the platform. “What is going on here?” she asked, for what must have been the third or fourth time today. “Weren’t you two under arrest? What happened to Princess Cadance?” Both of the Princesses ignored her. At this, Twilight felt a hot band of anger start to heat up in her chest, and she exploded: “Whatever is going on here, both of you better stop acting like foals that are rebelling against their mother!” “You don’t understand, Twilight,” said Luna. “There is no joke, no game here.” “Luna, I am sick and tired of your attempts to sow dissent in Equestria,” said Celestia. “I have been more than accommodating, I have been more than polite. And this, this...New Lunar Republic? Is this how you repay me? Every single day, I put up with and deflect nobles that want to punish you for what they call treason. I have spent months smoothing things over with the press and reassuring them that I am not making a mistake by allowing you to re-take power. And you turn around and stab me in the back with this.” The ponies wearing gold cheered at this. “Stab you in the back?!?” replied Luna, indignant. “Perhaps, but only because of your grievous abuses in politics and disregard for carefully allocated powers within Equestrian government. Equestria was never meant to be a monarchal principality! At yet, the past thousand or so years, you controlled all the political power alone in Equestria.” “I had to! You’ve seen what the nobles are like. If I allowed ponies like Blueblood to have any political power, the entire nation would have unraveled at the seams!” “And I understand that. Really, I do. But after I was restored the throne, clearly you saw that your grasp on power was no longer necessary!” “No. I had to make sure that the Nightmare no longer possessed you.” “And it is clear. The Nightmare is gone, sister!” Here, Luna’s voice hardened, and Twilight thought she heard an edge of paranoia edge into her voice. “But no, what you said is not true. You know as well as I do that the Nightmare is gone. However, you seek to expand your own power with this fear mongering and political maneuvering.” “That’s absurd!” “All those years ago, I rebelled for traditional values,” said Luna, more to herself than anypony around her. “The Nightmare told me that the fabric of our moral society was under attack, and I believed it. Moralism, traditionalism, reactionary ideologies...these were what I raised my flag for.” “But the Nightmare was wrong. I needed not concern myself with reactionism, for it is foolish and unenlightened! Rather, we must always look out for the ponies overlooked by the system. We must give everypony a voice in politics, great and small, earth pony to pegasus to unicorn. We must adopt the ideology of liberalism, and bring power to the common pony through a republic! For this is the only way we can insure that a government truly maintains harmony: by holding the government accountable to the governed, and insuring that the governing body is of, by, and for the ponies of Equestria!” “Bah!” spat Celestia, her cool diplomatic mask now well and truly destroyed. “What an absurd idea! While this ‘republic’ idea sounds pretty enough when dressed up like that, let us not mistake this fool’s idea for what it really is: an attack on the moral ideas and traditions of Equestria! I have guided Equestria to victory over its rivals for over thirteen hundred years; does anypony forget the overthrow of Discord? Or the triumph in the War of the Bloodied Crystals? The solar victory in the Lunar Rebellion? What about the bloodless victory in the Griffonian Wars? Even when I was not fighting on the frontlines myself, I still organized the recent triumphs of harmony against the Nightmare, Discord for a second time, and in the Crystal Empire, again! I was the one who came up with the plan to defeat Tirek! All of these, triumphs I designed!” “Equestria owes its very existence to me and my plans. If it wasn’t for me, the entire nation would have been conquered a dozen times over by now! We must return to the time when the sovereign was able to decide what was best for Equestria. And I am the sovereign! I am the Sun! I bring life to all of the world!!! I AM THE MOST FIT TO RULE!!!” By the end, Celestia had reached the Royal Canterlot Voice, which echoed off walls and was heard throughout the city. She drew breath to continue, but before she could, she was cut off by Twilight: “Do you two hear yourselves? It’s insane! I’m listening to two rambling madponies! Both of you are unfit to rule Equestria!” She paused for a second, considering her options as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, she could only come to one conclusion. “Guards! Arrest Princess Celestia and Princess Luna!”