I just noticed this discussion over on Equestria Daily, and it asks if Celestia was a good ruler, which would be interesting to know what others here think about that.

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In my opinion it's impossible to know because that went way above the scope of the cartoon.
But the general intention from the cartoon seemed to be that she was ok, unless the plot needed her to be absent or completely irrelevant.

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Looking at what what we see in the show. Equestria seems to be a stable and prosperous nation. We don't see any mention of civil unrest, poverty or Instability. So on the surface she seems like a capable ruler, but if we look at her actions during the show, it paints a different story.

During Luna's return, she took an absolutely massive gamble on twilight finding compatible friends, figuring out how to wield the elements and surviving NMM long enough to use the elements. NMM could have simply killed twilight at any point that night. There was no guarantee that twilight would find out about the elements or where they where. There was no guarantee that twilight would even pursue the elements, its equally likely that twilight could have fled back to Canterlot as quickly as possible to warn her brother and to rally the Guard to fight NMM. It was a stupid gamble to take and she wagered the lives of all of her citizens.

Her actions during the Wedding also seem questionable. She allowed a state wedding to take place even though there was a security threat so severe that they thought it necessary to lock down the entire city. They also had the groom of the wedding, who was no doubt juggling countless tasks in preparation for the wedding, oversee all security for the city and be the one to personally maintain the shield. She was utter oblivious to Chrysalis's deception, even though she was Cadence's aunt and should be EXTREMELY familiar with her mannerisms. An entire changling army managed to somehow travel across the entirety of Equestria completely unnoticed and take the Royal Guard by surprise, even though the Guard was anticipating an imminent threat, had days to prepare and should have been at MAXIMUM possible readiness.

The season 6 finally shows that Celestia learned no lessons from the previous Changling invasion as she knew that changlings were now real (if she somehow didn't know of their existence before the wedding), she now knew that they were a major threat, she knew now knew that they can impersonate Alicorns to undermine Equestria's security, she had a changling defector in the form of Thorax, but made NO EFFORT to study his biology, magic or capabilities to try to make anti-changling countermeasures. Thorax was apparently just sitting on the information of the hives location the whole time, but Celestia didn't even bother to ask.

During the return of the the Crystal Empire, Celestia sends Cadance and Shining Armor to defeat Sombra, secure the city and liberate the Crystal Ponies all by themselves, with absolutely no support and against an enemy that took the combined might of both Celestia and Luna at their peak to subdue, and even then could not secure complete victory with the vanishing of the city. When that doesn't work, she then sends twilight and her friends (who are complete civilians and should not be asked to perform such tasks) to go and kill Sombra with no support what to ever and not even giving them the Elements of Harmony. Celestia not only didn't tell twilight critical information like the Crystal Heart (Celestia must have known about the Heart's existence), but she actively gave twilight detrimental advice, saying that only twilight must complete the task and that if she relies on her friends, she will fail the test. If Twilight had not found mention of the Heart in the library, they all would have died and Sombra would retaken the empire. Celestia gambled the lives of all the ponies in the Empire on an INSANE test for twilight to learn the importance of learning to work with others.

Then let's talk about the absolute cluster fuck tat was Tirek's return. Tirek escaped when Cerberus left his post (why the FUCK was the warden and Guard of Tartarus able to leave his post without anyone noticing or going to do a prisoner head count afterwards). Tirek must have been missing for multiple years before season 4 ending, so she completely failed perform any sort of check on her MAXIMUM security prison where some of her most dangerous enemies are kept. Instead of performing a nation wide manhunt to find tirek, she gives COMPLETE Carte Blanche to Discord to apprehend Tirek, even though he has proven his untrustworthyness before (Plundervine Incident). When Discord turns traitor (what a fucking surprise), she comes up with the UTTERLY retarded plan of giving all of their magic to Twilight in the hope that Tirek won't know about Twilight being a new Alicorn (even though he has been free for multiple years at this point and would have surely heard of Equestria's newest Alicorn, or Discord would have told him, or he could have gotten that information from a casual interrogation of literally any pony in the whole country, or HE WOULD HAVE FUCKING SEEN HER IN THE THE STAINED GLASS!!!), she then allows her self and the other princesses to be captured by Tirek as a potential hostage....

I could go on, but this is turning into a really long post.

We see a content, stable, prosperous, socially-free nation with a vibrant culture. She *looks* bad when the plot demands it, in part because we don't know the full extent of her contingencies and thought process (and yes in part because Twilight Must Save The Day). But in terms of actual rulership, I don't see where anyone can say things are going bad. The low number of human empires that have lasted over a thousand years is evidence itself that she has her head on right.

Was Celestia a Good Ruler?

No. I was told she was the best.

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If she managed to rule for over a thousand years, then she must have done something right, otherwise she would no longer be there. Then again, it could have been other things that have kept her there. There are certain things that I didn't like about her. First of all, she tried to act as if Luna never existed, but then at the end of the second episode, Friendship is Magic Part 2, she introduces the ponies to her despite that, though Twilight did know about her, but not who she was until after beating her when as Nightmare Moon. For some reason the way Chrysalis acted when she was described as Cadance in A Canterlot Wedding reminded me of how Ursala acted when trying to marry Prince Eric in The Little Mermaid. BTW, it wasn't just Celestia who was gullible to this, pretty much all the other ponies fell for it as well, while Twilight was the only one who got suspicious, but that was because she didn't want the wedding to occur originally. However, that changed when she found the real Cadance in the mine and after understanding her, they both went back to stop Chrysalis and the changelings and allowed her to marry Shinning Armor afterwards while forgiving her after originally rushing her judgement about her. The other thing I never got was the endgame for the Crystal Empire. I can understand using both Cadance and Shinning Armor to help protect the place and help the Mane 6 stop Sombra's rule of it but having them in charge after that felt as if she was stepping boundaries here. I thought the whole point was too free that kingdom from the one who was oppressing it, not conquer it for yourself and make it a colony. I can't understand why she just didn't let a pony there just rule over the Crystal Empire rather than place your adopted niece to rule it. More importantly, what would happen if Cadance messed up or becomes corrupt? Does she take the heat, or will she try to make a claim that will make it go to Celestia herself? Overall, we can't say that her time as ruler was flawless, which is the case for many others, but there would probably be historians claiming that the positives of her rule would outweigh the negatives.

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Celestia IS a good ruler. Excellent even.

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Her record is basically, for all intents and purposes, spotless. The counters to that argue not that she could do better but that it could be better, which were either not possible without 20/20 foresight or just because personal preferences. The other half of the arguments call into question whether she made the right choices because they were possible to fail, as if there exist solutions that are 100% impossible to fail and work exactly as you want them to.

At the end we know she ruled a kingdom for over a 1000 years with peace at the extreme, policies that kept everyone almost worshiping her because of how well she did things, her choices did work out in the end, and even had the balls to leave her place when someone appeared that she believed could do even better.

11/10, would grovel under her hoof again.

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So.... she got Worf'd.

And having some context clues, some comic book stuff, "unwritten" lore, (interviews, and side books) her apparent prophetic dreams (the sun will always rise in the end), she was a good ruler...

In that she learned from her mistakes and strove to improve.

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Too many people forget this about her, or pretend like it didn't happen.

The only times we see Celestia as a bad ruler is when the plot needs her to be for the sake of whatever adventure of the week the opener or finale of the season is. Because the ponies never have an in-universe reaction to these happenings, I tend to ignore them when weighing Celestia's character overall. I think in episodes like A Bird In The Hoof and Celestial Advice we get a better sense of the kind of ruler Celestia is--wise, compassionate, sensitive and a little bit mischievous.

I would assume that even after no longer being the ruler of Equestria, she is still in charge of the sun. This is probably due to the fact that no other pony is destined to do that but her especially since it's Celestia herself that has the cutie mark for it. However, I can almost imagine how the ponies will panic about wanting to know when the sun will come up again should she sleep in on certain days.

https://youtu.be/btMbDTqGsT4[/youtube]

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Curious but did you watch the ending where she handed off control of the sun to Twilight, outright building a device alongside Luna so they spasifically don't have to raise and lower them as they give up control?

She created a Utopia or as close to one as possible. Nuff said

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I guess that I didn't catch that, but I always that they would always do that due to being their destiny since that is the purpose of a pony's cutie mark.

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The really weird part is that, in the past, Celestia was pretty much on top form when it came to defeating enemies. Discord, King Sombra, Nightmare Moon (allowing that she could have seen that one coming and prevented it, she definitely gets credit for shooting it down quickly when it did happen), even Tirek if you notice that she didn't have Discord to help lock him up the first time around.

You almost wonder if she got complacent after a thousand years of not much happening.

Despite being the ruler of Equestria for a long time, Celestia was still a recurring character who only appeared in a handful of episodes. Then again, knowing this franchise, it was highly unlikely we were ever going to get a backstory on how she became the said ruler, though The Journal of the Two Sisters covers that even though it may not be canon to the show. However, it would have been interesting if there was an episode where she really did sleep in and not raise the sun causing a lot of concerns throughout Equestria just like in that fan made video known as "Who Knows?", which would then make the song itself actually part of the show.

She was in the episodes that I watched.