Just as Hurricane’s story is worth telling, so is Platinum’s. The first undisputed matriarch of the Unicorn Kingdoms (At the time known as the Kingdom of Precia, founded by King Precious Metal in Eastern Equestria)

When Rememberly was toppled from power in Hycarion and fled with Star-Swirl to the Flutter Valley, the Archmage did not stay with her. His place was spreading the word of Harmony across the world of magic. His travels took him to Precia, far to the north of modern-day Equestria where he entered the court of King Calsim the Just. King Calsim took Star-Swirl as Royal Tutor for his eldest son, Galvan Great-Heart. Precia venerated the chivalrous knight as it did the learned mage and the Kings of Precia routinely trained themselves in the field of knighthood. But nonetheless, Galvan took a great interest in the magic arts. Star-Swirl writes of Prince Galvan amiably and while the prince was not the smartest colt he’d ever seen, he was certainly possessed of the great-heart of his namesake.

Star-Swirl’s best student in Precia, however, was a filly named Silvia, the daughter of the Chief Advisor, Lady Cutlery of Argyre. Bright, honest and a sharper wit than ponies twice her age, Silvia was a dedicated student and earnest friend of the sorcerer. Silvia’s alarming sense of perception and cunning were notorious around the court and rumours purported that she practiced dark magic. Her habit of keeping a black cat named Gyla that would often creep into others rooms and out in the blink of an eye added to this tale. But according to rumour, Silvia found this image somewhat exciting.

Beside, her slightly dotty but loyal hoofmaid, Catkin, she helped Star-Swirl uncover many magical mysteries.
In the kingdom of the unicorns, Star-Swirl had unlimited access to all wizardly practices and his greatest treatises and compilations on magical craft and theory were written during his time here.
Calsim was ailing by the time Star-Swirl came to the throne and in his last years, he bid Galvan wed the Princess of Precia’s neighbour Marchion, Galena. The wedding, it’s said, was a joyous occasion and Star-Swirl took the liberty of conducting magnificent fireworks with the help of young Silvia.

Two years later, Star-Swirl gathered the court and sadly informed them that King Calsim was dying.
After saying his farewells to all those he loved, Calsim spoke to Star-Swirl and promised him that Precia would aid the Flutter Valley in the years to come, asking him to fetch Galvan to take up his father’s crown.
Star-Swirl then headed to Galvan’s bedchamber and gazed in horror.
Princess Galena was weeping uncontrollably over the prince’s dead body.
The doctors investigated and claimed the prince had committed suicide.
With the king and crown-prince dead, the throne of Precia passed to Calsim’s second son, a colt whom Star-Swirl regarded with dubious suspicion. A negligent student and a reckless fighter, short-tempered and self-centred, a colt not yet ready to become a king.
His name was Ferric.

With a heavy heart and a troubled mind, Star-Swirl found Ferric waiting almost expectantly for him in his chambers. His coronation took place immediately, waltzing into the throne room to the shock of all who’d expected to see his brother appearing in his stead.
The corpses of his father and brother were not even cold before Ferric took both the heir’s throne and the heir’s wife.
Galena was hastily married to Ferric in order to preserve the alliance with Marchion, though Ferric never bothered to consult this with her or any other.

Star-Swirl confided in hidden notes in his memoirs that the likelihood of Ferric’s own hoof in his brother and perhaps even his father’s demise was more than likely but nothing could be proven. Ferric had aligned himself with a powerful crowd.
Precia’s alliance with Marchion was headed by two very prominent officials.
One was a ram missionary from the Agneian See all the way in Stirrope but fast planting its roots in Eastern Equestria among the noble families. His name was Woolsey. A powerful speaker with many connections, not afraid to bend the rules for the good of the Church, Woolsey had converted Galena’s father to the Agneian faith and promised Ferric would do the same, forging an alliance bound by both blood and belief.
The other was the Lord Ambassador, Duke Tinfoil of Stibbley. A highly ambitious young noble who’d grown up with Ferric since they were foals, with a charismatic image at court while possessed of very few scruples. Tinfoil’s sister, Lady Antimony, was a chambermaid of Galena and was secretly a mistress of Ferric’s throughout her time in court.

Ferric’s rise to power, however, was threatened by a lord whose name escapes Star-Swirl. The lord took issue with Ferric rising to power, the prince having killed the lord’s son in a training melee (Accidentally or not remains uncertain) Hired assassins crept into Ferric’s chambers and nearly succeeded in killing the unarmed king before being driven away by Star-Swirl and Silvia. Discovering who had hired them, Ferric ordered not just this lord executed but every member of his family, servants, knights and household, a total of three-hundred ponies executed in a single day.
Ferric had already become horribly paranoid, the perils of ruling a kingdom creeping up on him. Galena suffered as a result. Driven to produce an heir, Ferric was apparently a rough and savage husband behind closed doors.
Star-Swirl writes that, passing their bedchamber, hearing them in flagrance, Galena would cry out the late Crown Prince Galvan’s name. Not as an instinctive yell of pleasure but a sobbing cry for help. After five years, Galena produced a daughter.
Princess Arsenic.

Ferric’s patience was reached. While Antimony routinely practiced bizarre foreign practices to produce a son in Galena that often humiliated and degraded the queen publically, Ferric took Lady Silvia to wife. Lord Woosley protested vehemently but incurred Ferric’s wrath who responded with curses and threats in the throne room, swearing both he and the Agneian would pay for any defiance. Star-Swirl then met with Woosley in secret and advised him to leave Precia, urging him to try and keep the peace as best as he could.

Lady Cutlery was only too happy to have her daughter married to the king, though privately she confided in Star-Swirl to ensure she did not suffer as Galena did. However, there is no record of Silvia ever being mistreated in the same way. Behind closed doors, its believed she informed her new husband in no uncertain terms that she would never be broken into his service as Galena was and if he wanted her love, he would have to earn it through bettering himself. In his records, the Archmage proudly declares that Silvia was a brilliant influence, not on King Ferric who changed very little, but on the royal court.
She denounced or vetoed many dishonest or violent courtiers that her husband had indulged, behaved frugally and modestly, economised on herself whenever she could (No mean feat when King Ferric was developing his notorious propensity for gluttony, drunkenness and a wanton pursuit of base luxuries) and spent days among the less fortunate listening to their pleas and giving them food and lodging, selling a magnificent diamond necklace she’d received at her coronation to provide for the poor during a famine.
But her peerless stances against corruption endangered Duke Tinfoil who hatched a sordid scheme.

Alongside Lady Antimony, he spoke with King Ferric and fed him rumours of Silvia’s ill opinion towards him, claiming the Queen saw herself as the true power behind the throne, mocked her husband to her friends and foreign visitors, preferred the study of books and enchantments to the duties of marehood and may have been engaging in affairs.
Whether Ferric believed them or not is unclear but, seemingly, he preferred to simply ignore his wife, letting her run his trivialities while he spent his time with more obliging mares.
But a year later, Silvia gave birth to a daughter. A healthy and beautiful filly named Platinum.
A joy to her mother and adored by many members of the court who, even in her first days, showed some propensity towards focussed magic that Star-Swirl found marvellous to behold.
Little did they know Princess Platinum would be the instrument that would spell her mother’s doom.

Ferric was enraged when a daughter was once more produced from a wife who had wasted his time for years on end.
And it was this that Tinfoil and Antimony capitalised on. Claims of Silvia’s infidelity found themselves far better received on King Ferric’s ears. Naming every rival they had as lovers to the promiscuous queen, Tinfoil and Antimony filled Ferric with a poisonous mistrust for his wife.
The popularity she’d garnered fading before her, Silvia steadily became more vulnerable.
But the final blow was yet to come.

The former Queen Galena had grown sickly and frail in body and mind. Silvia paid her visits now and again to deliver medicine.
One fateful day, Galena took the medicine and died a moment later choking on her own blood.
Unable to save her, Silvia fled to Star-Swirl’s office and frantically informed him of the circumstances just as he was drinking tea with baby Platinum. Deducing that the poison must have been a plot to rid the court of Silvia, he reached for his staff...And collapsed to the ground, bleeding from the mouth, finding enough strength to knock the milk-bottle out of Platinum’s hooves.
Swiftly realising Star-Swirl had been poisoned by the same means Galena had been, Silvia saved her master’s life, negating the poison with a very powerful healing spell that depleted most of her magic. As soldiers approached, Duke Tinfoil leading them, an exhausted Silvia pleaded Star-Swirl to leave her and take care of her daughter, teleporting him out of the city, leaving her defenceless against the guard.
Silvia was arrested on the spot while Platinum was taken into custody.

When Ferric's court was gathered, Antimony and Tinfoil drew up a list of accusations for Queen Silvia.
She was declared guilty of the practice of black magic, the murder of Galena, the murder of Crown-Prince Galvan, the attempted murder of the King and Lady Antimony and numerous counts of adultery, every member of the court that Ferric had issue with named and arrested with her, declared guilty of the same crimes, including Silvia’s own mother, Lady Cutlery.
All publically protested their innocence though some were recorded to have pleaded guilty to seducing and lying to Lady Silvia, trying to clear her name.
Cutlery was among the most vehement of the Queen’s defenders, going so far as to claim she’d murdered King Calsim and bewitched her daughter into carrying out her commands in an attempt to claim the throne, supposedly because Calsim had spurned her. Records claim she wept throughout and every time Antimony accused her of foul crimes or motivations, Cutlery admitted to them but assured the King her daughter had been under her spell the entire time.

The next day, Cutlery and the accused courtiers were brought to the scaffold were they were met before a raging crowd and publically confessed the scandalous crimes they were accused of.
Ferric then nodded as the scaffold was cleared and Silvia brought forth.
As the prisoners cried out, frantically insisting she was innocent of their crimes, Ferric nonchalantly replied that he didn’t believe them, that a traitor’s word was worth nothing and that, as king, he decided who was innocent or guilty.
So it was that Silvia died there on the scaffold before the palace, her lasts professing her thanks and apologies to all who had spoken for her and her undying love for her daughter.

Platinum was not punished for her mother’s crimes but all in Precia knew Ferric had no time nor love for daughters. In little time, he was married to Lady Antimony whose brother, Tinfoil, was appointed Chief Advisor.
Only one of Silvia's friends had survived the purge, Lady Catkin, her old hoofmaid.
In one last ditch attempt to save her life, Silvia had convinced the king and his supporters that Catkin was too stupid to be counted on for her treacheries. Catkin endured open humiliation at court as a result, often called upon by Ferric and Antimony to perform public demonstrations of her supposed idiocy to convince them of her innocence, treated as something of a jester.
But Catkin was always grateful for her late friend for protecting her and those she loved.
Looked after by Catkin, Platinum continued her teachings under the new Royal Tutor, Lord Pinchley Salt, one of the King’s numerous lackeys who was openly chauvinistic and who had previously written on the uselessness of tutoring mares. Likely this act was meant by Ferric as an insult to Platinum and her dead mother but there is reason to believe that Pinchley had spoken out of turn to the now Queen Antimony who wished to humiliate him. Regardless, for Platinum, the lessons were trivial, the teaching was hostile and the beatings were frequent.

Catkin often let Platinum play in the courtyards where her mother had taken her, in the lush gardens west of the Precieuse Royal Palace. Faraway in the west of Precia was the town of Verdant, where Catkin lived with her husband, Harrow, and her numerous foals.
And unbeknownst to them, their second-eldest daughter was due to play a most crucial role in the rise of Princess Platinum.
Her name was Clover.

6284215
And so, Clover's story begins.

6284215 So... what became of Arsenic?

6284247
You'll see...You will see...

6284270 On that note, why Arsenic? That would imply she's stupid, given the name's relation to a certain chemical...

6284340
Well, that's it.
The unicorn royals are named after Metals or Metal Elements.
Ferric- Iron
Galvan- Steel
Calsim- Calcium
Galena- Lead
Silvia- Have a guess...
Theme-Naming can be quite a time-saver.
What's more, Ferric made no attempt to hide her hatred for the filly and Galena had, at that point, been cowed into submission.
Silvia, however, named Platinum herself and knew how to stand up to Ferric.

If you've realised who Ferric is a (Admittedly highly exaggerated) version of, you'll know what Arsenic is going to do.

6284395 ... chemical reaction...

Edit: when did Ferric grow teats? Or was Galena the one who harbored the hatred?

6284404
No, they weren't metal ponies, they just used the name.

Think about it, hedonistic king who goes through multiple wives, executes one, and is prone to gluttony and debauchery?
What historical monarch does that remind you of?
And don't say Donald Trump!

No, no, Ferric was her father and it often fell to the king to name them. Royal tradition.
Galena loved her daughter but at that point she was starting to lose her mind so she didn't argue.

6284434 Ah, alright.

Also, now I get the reference. x3

It's the Tudors all over again, with variation and more awesome. :D

6285064
It seemed appropriate to base Platinum off Elizabeth I.
As a Brit, I find her most inspiring.
She wasn't perfect but I doubt any of our monarchs ever were.