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// Prologue 
// Story: Equestria’s Changeling Queen and the Abyssal Empress 
// by vren55 
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	Once, I was known only as Celestia, Princess of Equestria, alicorn of the sun, and sister to Princess Luna, serene, kind, and mighty.

Many things have changed since that time. After all, I was not actually Celestia. I was her proxy, her substitute, her… alternate, so to speak.

My real name is Alternia, a changeling queen without a hive, and sister to the traitor Chrysalis, who had murdered my mother, and nearly killed me.

But before I could die, Celestia, the alicorn ruler of Equestria, passed her crown to me, and I ruled Equestria in her stead for a thousand years, with nopony knowing who I truly was.

For the longest time, I was Alternia, the changeling queen bearing the mask of Celestia.

At least until the Royal Wedding, when my disguise was laid bare for all of my closest companions to see.

But, while shocked, my friends and family did not abandon me. I instead became Alternia, Celestia’s proxy, true friend to Twilight Sparkle, aunt to Cadance and Blueblood, and adopted sister of Luna. 

In spite of my sister Chrysalis’s aggression, I pursued the path of peace. With painstaking effort, working against a terrorist organization that wanted to see Equestria at war with the changelings, I managed to broker negotiations between ponykind and the changeling race. Together with Chrysalis, we saved our younger sister Simulacris’s hive from a terrorist organization called Equestria First, that would do anything, including hurt my little ponies, to keep creatures like changelings from living peacefully with Equestrian ponies.

And when Belladonna, my youngest sister, came forth with incontrovertible evidence of Chrysalis’s crimes against me and our mother, I took my younger sisters aside and showed them I was alive, saving Chrysalis from certain death.

I was happy. No longer did I seek revenge, but to my relief, Chrysalis still did not know who I was. I still feared she sought to end me.

But when Chrysalis found out the truth about who I really was, to my shock, I found out my fear of her was for naught. She never had any intention of seeking my death, and her tearful confession only confirmed what I had known for years, that her killing of my mother was but an accident.

I despaired.

Only for her to apologize to me, publically, at the signing of the First Equestria-Changeling Non-Aggression Pact.

I was overjoyed.

And it was at that moment the Equestria First chose to attack, and in the process of saving Chrysalis, I was mortally wounded once more.

My sisters and my friends did not despair, though. They found Celestia, who healed me and kept Equestria together until I awoke.

It was then that Celestia and Luna made me an offer, one my heart couldn’t refuse. It was an invitation that just might prove disastrous to Equestria, but could just as equally usher my little ponies into a new age.

I accepted the offer.

I am now Alternia, unascended changeling queen, and the one who will soon become Equestria’s first changeling princess.