Let's try this again, only better.
Tell me about Sunset Shimmer's family. Regardless of why she left Celestia, would she leave her family behind when she went through the mirror? Why?
Tell me about her sister. What's the deal with her brother? Did she get along with her cousins? Did she ever meet her perverted uncle who left her a fortune in his Will before his death? How did her parents meet?
Does she have a family in the first place?

4566956 I like to think she had her parents who died in a roller coaster accident(they were trying to save people) during her second year under Celestia's tutelage. Celestia did not comfort her as she should have, leading to a rift between the two ending in Sunset running away.

4566963 Who the hell replies to themselves?

4566964 Yeah!

4566965 Hells yeah!
It doesn't seem right to post my thoughts in the conversation starter, and I wanted my two cents in too.

4566956

Well there's the g1 sun shimmer who is a candidate for sunsets mother

As for everything else, it's up to the individual ideas and imagination

Hope that helps

>implying she wasn't an only-child
The thought that she was is where my speculation lies. Don't have much more to add off the top of my head at the moment, but will be keeping an eye here and might add more later.

Well, I had my own theories, but then I read Firebird Dahlia, and they all went to the trash and my headcanon is now Firebird Dahlia's canon.

There really is no background for her prior to becoming Celestia's student. So until Hasbro says something official, her past is up for grabs.

4566956 As for the actual show, who knows, but what I went with in my own fic...

Single Dad, had Sunset young and the mother dumped her on him, abandoning them both. Decent enough guy, tried his best, but wasn't the best parent, worked a lot, and couldn't really give Sunset the guidance in life she needed.

No other family that she knows of.

4566956 I honeslty assumed Sunset Shimmer was an orphan before Princess Celestia took her in. And that is why she was so driven to power, she wanted to feel important.

4566956
I don't have a specific headcanon for that, though I'd likely default to Sun Shimmer = mom due to the picture I'd seen before and Chelis helpfully linked.

But it is an open playground to fit into your story as you want. I have at least one story I'm writing in which her family will play a part.

4566956 I actually do have a rather odd headcanon that Spitfire is Sunset's sister.

4566956 Friendly reminder that this thread topic already exists. Twice.

4566956
Father died during the terrorist attack on Concord Station when she was in her early teens. Her mother still lives in Canterlot, working for the Equestria government along with her aunt. Sunset does have a younger sister that goes to school outside of Canterlot, down in Ponyville. Her father was an Unicorn, her mother and aunt were Earth Ponies, and her sister is a Pegasi though one that has stunted wings.

And if you can figure out who the sister, mother, and aunt are points to you

4566956 I've got a reasonably elaborate headcanon involving Sunset Shimmer's family and early life. She was born and raised in Canterlot to loving parents who worked as magic researchers. Her parents died in a tragic accident when she was young, and she went to live with the family of her maternal aunt, all pegasi. Between the aunt never really addressing her parents' passing and her overexcited cousin being way too quick to take her as a sister, she never really bonded with them, and left the first chance she got; her acceptance into Celestia's school and becoming the princess' personal student. Her desire to not be forgotten - as she felt her parents were - helped to spur her ambition and desire for success and power.

It's all in this story - "Six Nights (and a Day) With Sunset".

4567124
Friendly reminder that Articunos bitch is a shitposter

4567124 Hey, thanks for linking my thread. Saves me the need to post my own comment.

I presume until the canon confirms or denies that Celestia was Sunset's family either de facto or de jure, and that's why she ran away from the world not just her apprenticeship.

She didn't have any other life to go to.

4566956

I’d like to think Sunburst and Sunset are siblings, with Sunset being the oldest by a year or two. That would mean that Sunburst’s mom Steller Flare is also Sunset’s mother as well.

At least, that’s my headcanon

My current headcanon has her as the only child of a palace maid who I dubbed Sunbeam and her previous, now-married employer. Having been burned like that, Sunbeam tried to suppress her daughters ambition, which only led to years of awkwardness between them before she passed away from illness. Her father is technically still around and she may even know who he is, but she doesn't particularly care.

This is the short version of my Sunset backstory - the full one is in the "meeting Celestia" thread.

Sunset = orphan. Otherwise I don't see how Hasbro can comfortably allow her to never speak of her parents, or go back to tell them "Hey I'm alive you can stop worrying" after having run away as a criminal for so long. The studio makes a big deal of showing Sunset reconcile with her past via Twilight and Celestia, but apparently her parents are not worth mentioning? Only palatable excuse is she has no biological family to reconnect with. We've seen the rest of the Mane 6 families. Not happy with the design and dramatic choices for some of them, but they're there.

Maybe her mom really is Sunshimmer. Regardless, she's not around anymore.

6850201
It could've happened behind the scenes. She could've sent them a letter or relayed a messaage through Twilight/Celestia. She could even be doing it regularitly.
She's an adult, she lives by herself, adn she's from the civilisation where instant messages and skype calls aren't a thing, so there may not be much expectation for her to try to visit her parents often.

6850395
Yeah but those are just rationalizations. Her circumstances doesn't allow for such things to not be addressed. We already know the studio is terrible at addressing family relationships in the show; there's absolutely no need to make excuses for those writers. About the only family dynamic they did well on is the Apple family.

6850411
Would her being thoroughly estranged also be an acceptable option? Not everyone wants anything to do with their parents, and being in a whole other world is a great excuse.

(I technically have her in this state with her father, but I don't know if it counts since their only relationship is biological.)

6850411
I dunno. I write (well, have started making notes to write) Sunset Shimmer as having a loving mother and father. They just don't expect to be in contact, because even when she was in Equestira she'd be gone on adventures and missions for months and sometimes years at a time. So she sends them one letter and visits them only to introduce her fiancee couple of years later.
I see no problem with that. It's just a modern convention that you're expected to call your mom every week until you're fifty, it's not normal historically speaking.

6850431
Still, it's a bit different when you've been missing presumed dead. (And did Sunset really travel so much in Equestria?)

6850440
In my stories she did.
And yeah, that's why you send a letter with occassion, just like "hey, I'm alive, healthy, attending school in a dimension of furless monkeys. Love, toodles."
Anything else is extra.

6850443
Well it also depends on the kind of relationship they had - the current Sunset and the one form before are quite different ponies. Or was she only twisted after she left Equestria?

6850415
Being thoroughly estranged is an option, although in a show about friendship and harmony you would think familial harmony would be just as important a topic as making friends. As soon as Sunset Shimmer turned over a new leaf, her 1st thought should have been "Hey I'm a different and better person now... I want to make things right with my immediate family." Not "I want to make things right with my teacher who taught me for a few years." The only logical reason she thinks of mending things with Celestia first should be because she doesn't have parents. Otherwise it's just poor writing.

6850431
She's not old enough to have gone on adventures as Celestia's apprentice for months or years at a time. "Field work" does not have to mean "extended forays into Dark Africa and everyone assumes I died". And the human tradition regarding family is actually that you stay extremely close and live in the same town/ village. The way we lose touch with our relatives these days (Facebook doesn't count) is actually the modern convention.

There is no way she has loving parents in canon. I mean, she could, if the Studio DHX writers are terrible at writing about family. Which they are. So... yeah, she could.

6850965
It depends if she blames herself or them. Or to put it in your own words

There is no way she has loving parents in canon.

Not the same as the sentence you get by deleting that word.

6850965
Depends on how old you think she is. Shes implied to be the same age as Twilight, so I assume time shenanigans.

Also, yeah, living in the exact same house as your extended family was the norm for peasants who could not afford to travel, but if you did travel, like for apprenticeship to the city or due to marriage, you pretty much lost contact for very extended periods of time.

6851017
Being a better pony means trying to make up for bad parents as well. A good pony cannot expect the bad pony to come forward first. But as I said, I don't expect Studio DHX to deal with family relationships since the writers are historically so bad at it.

6851217
I assume when Sunset ran into the mirror, she is at most as old as Twilight in season 01 eps 01. At most.
That leaves no time for extended adventures on top of becoming Celestia's best student. At most she has MLP-style adventures, where you hop on a train and in 5 minutes you're on the other end of the continent.

6851924
No, but the good pony has no obligation to approach bad ones when just ignoring them is an option.

6851935
They're your parents; ignoring them is not an option. Sure, you can... but:
(1) It hurts (or at least limits) yourself. It's an invisible weight. Don't ask me. Ask any priest/ guru, philosopher, therapist, or psychiatrist.
(2) This is a show about harmony and relationships. I don't think it would espouse "Cut your family out of your life if you hate them." as a moral lesson. Oh wait, there's an episode about what happens when you do that, wasn't there?

6851963
Whether it's possible depends on the circumstances - moving to live in a whole new world is a pretty favourable one.

Still, I do think she might try eventually to rebuild such relationships, but not in a hurry - look how long it took her to face Celestia, and that out of necessity rather than choice.

And in some cases - like the father I've given her - there simply wasn't any kind of relationship in the first place. (Mine would try again with her mother if she was alive.)

6851924
Quite enough by my personal chronology.

She'd be in Celestias boarding school since she was 12, started adventuring (not on her own, obv.) since 15-16, for months at a time and disappeared when she was 18-19.
Then met Twilight when both were 22-24.

Not plenty, but quite enough time for both her and her parents to get used that their communications are both rare and irregular.

6852690
That's the problem. So much "time abroad" (far away enough for extended periods of radio dark) meant no sustained time for actual academic study under Celestia, which is exactly what she would need at that age range to establish all the root fundamentals.

6852700
She'd have finished her high school by 16 (two years early because she's gifted and also personally tutored by best teachers), and then did most of her Bachelor's/Masters equivalent in parallel with her travels in another two-three years.
If you're gifted and cram like crazy, that's quite enough for the fundamentals.

There are a bunch of child prodigies who finish universities at utterly ridiculous ages like getting PhD at 17, but finishing things a few years early when you're being homeschooled by the Princess does not require even that level of "gifted child" contrivance.

I have a theory I've been playing with, Sunburst's mother is from Sire's Hollow, and so is Sunburst. Taking a closer look at pony Sunset, I realized her eyes are a very similar shape to princess Cadence's. Seeing this, I thought about Stellar Flare. She could be a descendant of someone who lived in the Crystal Empire, but, her eyes aren't in the shape that Sunset and Cadence's are. So I thought about her father, not knowing who he was. I think that he might be the son of someone that might have lived in the Crystal Empire, but had not been there when Sombra took over, so when he discovered that the Crystal Empire had been taken and there queen had fallen, he started a new life and had a son who married Stellar Flare and moved to Sire's Hallow, and then having a son and daughter, Sunburst and Sunset Shimmer. Having a mother like Stellar Flare, Sunset was over stressed and ended up as Celestia's student because of her mother's 'life plan'. After Stellar found out Sunset was gone, she turned to her brother and set him on the same plan, which untimely led to him droping out of magic school to do research and try to find his sister, then ended up living in the Crystal empire which is were he traced there family history, hoping he could find Sunset there.
I know, it sounds unlikely, but I have thought about it a lot, having Stellar Flare as a mother not wanting her to make friends and stick to magic studies, would drive Sunset to try and prove herself, causing the Fall formal incident and reforming, learning she didn't have to prove herself. Again, it might sound unlikely, but this is one of my favorite theories I have come up with.

4566984
link?

Bit late but I think she was an orphan and was essentially raised by celestia, otherwise I think she's biologically celestias daughter