Nimbus had left Pegasopolis behind him.
According to some sources, Pansy and Hurricane married but this contradicts various points in later history.
Regardless, the two were freed from control of the lethal web of blackmail and deceit Nimbus, Eura and Cirrostratus had trapped them in. Pansy then met with Cadaverous Rictus and convinced him to leave the Triumvirate with a very generous offer of the position as Tribune Aerarius (The equivalent of Royal Treasurer), a position suited for his skills in finance and one he needed no argument to take. With him out of the picture, Pansy and Hurricane disbanded the Triumvirate and reaffirmed their Consul status.
Pansy would serve as Consula Civilia.
And Hurricane would serve as Consul Militarius.
At long last, Pegasopolis seemed ready to return to stability.
But, as the fires of war died down, the cold winds had picked up in the north.
The Windigoes were coming and their fell winter was upon the ponies of Equestria.

The icy folds kicked up hard and fast and within the season, the Pegasi were cut off from their territories in North and Central Stirrope, the thick ice sheet and raging blizzards encircling the continent.
This led to widespread famine. The fields froze, the merchant ships crumbled at their harbours and the clouds themselves chilled the hoof. Pegasi are naturally resilient to the regular winter but this one was harsher and wilder than ever before, worse than they could cope with.
Pansy sent word to the Eastern territories informing them that the workload would have to be doubled for the duration of the season, promising their work would not go unrewarded once the economy was stabilised.
But the answer came in the form of a brusque refusal from the new ruler of Enigma, Cataclyzma the Sphinxqueen, who ordered her armies to forcibly seize control of the grain farms and harbours the pegasi depended on in these times.
Hurricane was all set to take his legions forth but Pansy reminded him that they had barely enough food for peace-time, let alone war.
Pansy then received a letter from Enigma and was enraged to discover that the Sphinxqueen had taken a new lover.
Nimbus.

Cataclyzma and Nimbus had formed a union, intent on taking advantage of Pegasopolis’s plight at this time. Enigma was stocked to the gills with grain but after years of receiving Boreas Caesar’s favour, they’d become strong, strong enough to rise up and take control of the East.
Cataclyzma wrote to inform Pansy that the Sphinx would no longer be a vassal to the pegasus but, if they needed grain, Enigma would be happy to open trade...for a price.
Her terms were for the Triumvirate to be reinstated and Nimbus to have free reign as ruler of the Eastern Provinces once more.
Hurricane was sent to Enigma to renegotiate terms, informing Cataclyzma that she was under no position to dictate to the Pegasi without the right of rulership.
It was here that Cataclyzma produced a child, a hipposphinx with the back hooves of a pony.
The colt’s name was Thoth. Cataclyzma claimed him to be the son she’d birthed with Boreas Caesar, making him the rightful ruler of Enigma and, she believed, of Pegasopolis, having been born from a union of two rulers rather than Pansy who’s mother had been a slave.
Hurricane returned to Pansy with the news. Knowing that to kowtow to such brazen insult to her authority would render it moot, she decided to hold out and secure the food sources they still possessed.

But this too was to prove a disaster as their settlements in the South were attacked and plundered by a new threat.
Promptus Volantius Audacious, the son of the late Magnanimous, Caesar’s old nemesis, who’d assembled a sky pirate fleet and was seizing control of what few colonies remained to Pansy and Hurricane.
Left with no other option, Pansy agreed to renew the Triumvirate and begin fair and even trade with Enigma if Nimbus spared his own fleet to retake the South.
Nimbus did so, retaking several of the most crucial Southern points but, when battle came, he negotiated with Promptus in Pansy’s stead and offered him the position of Triumvir Austis, principal governor of the Southern territories, Cadaverous Rictus’s former territories. When Rictus objected, Nimbus claimed he was only doing what Pansy had ordered him to do, end the conflict quickly.
The haste in which Nimbus had acted and Promptus had settled definitely suggested the two figures had planned this from the start. With two new Triumvirs she couldn’t trust and an old Triumvir who no longer trusted her, Pansy’s power was slipping by the day.
So, in a very controversial move, she invited Promptus to Pegasopolis to discuss terms, leaving his crew unarmed in the city. Here, it is said, when Promptus sat down, Hurricane suddenly leapt to his hooves with his sword drawn, yelled out that Promptus had been hiding a knife to slay the Consula, rushed forward and killed him before anypony could react.
Once dead, the sky pirates were surrounded and offered the chance to be pardoned of all crimes and join Hurricane’s legions or be eradicated on the spot.
Wisely, they chose the former.
It is widely accepted that Promptus’s so-called assassination attempt was a fabrication that Pansy and Hurricane used to prevent Promptus holding the South for ransom as Nimbus was doing for the East. A devious and dishonest tactic for certain but, given the circumstances, it certainly seemed the quickest and cleanest way to preserve what little order remained in Pegasopolis.

Hurricane was named temporary Triumvir Austis until a new one was chosen. Pansy and Rictus mended ties and the city had a few more years of food to last them.
But the Consula knew this would not last.
Nimbus and Cataclyzma had responded to their thwarted acquisition of the South by paying homage to several client kings in the East and South, declaring Thoth the rightful ruler of Pegasopolis, fleeing the city for fear of Pansy and Hurricane’s machinations and using Promptus’s death to demonstrate what Caesar’s ‘bastard daughter and pet whelp’ were capable of doing to those who threatened their power. Each one assembling their own forces and marching on the border, Pegasopolis was set in a stranglehold.

When Hurricane was sent to Enigma to negotiate terms for the first grain shipment, his memoirs state that the court was a den of drunken revelry and debauchery. Nimbus was painted like a harlot, dressed in ludicrous garb of gems and furs and couldn’t seem to separate himself from Cataclyzma’s embrace as the two paid prostitutes to beat each other to death in the grand chamber for the court’s amusement. When he begun talk for the shipments, Cataclyzma ordered triple the original price for the grain along with three of the Southern territories, all of which would rob Pegasopolis of whatever food remained to them. Also included was for the execution of Siamesia, Cataclysma’s estranged sister who remained a hostage in Pegasopolis and for various members of the Enigmatic inner circle to assume positions in the Pegasus senate.
It is recorded that Hurricane nearly flew into a rage at hearing of the demand for Siamesia’s death. While his relationship with Pansy had certainly grown more fruitful, the gentle sphinx princess was still very dear to him and he had no intention of breaking the vow he’d made to Boreas Caesar to protect her.
Siamesia, meanwhile, is believed to have attempted suicide multiple times during this crisis, not wishing for Hurricane, nor his pegasi, to suffer in order to keep her alive. She was kept under guard at all times and Hurricane had to assure her, daily, that she would not be held responsible for the chaos that followed.
Hurricane returned to Pansy with the sad news, believing that, if the food crisis grew any worse, Nimbus would assert full control over Pegasopolis and eventually simply overthrow Pansy and Hurricane once his influence was completely secured.
Pansy then stood and declared she had an idea.
As it was before his departure, Nimbus’s greatest weapon was his charisma. Once a noble general now a generous king, the pegasi looked up to him.
Since he’d honoured his terms, Pansy could not reveal his treachery, it would simply be denied by his supporters.
Nimbus had to be shown acting like the traitor he was.
Here it was that the most notorious of the era’s scandals took place.

Pansy journeyed to Enigma, not as a Consula, but as a wife.
Appearing in expensive but frayed gowns and jewels, she rushed, weeping to the palace, pleading to be heard.
When Nimbus looked over on the balcony, Pansy fell to her knees and begged his forgiveness for her adultery, claiming that without him, she and Pegasopolis were nothing, promising him all that her father would have given him had he still been alive.
Seeing the mare who nearly brought him down so desperate, Nimbus roared with laughter and enacted his vengeance. By his and Cataclyzma’s orders, Pansy was stripped, beaten, tied up and paraded through the streets to the jeering populace. She was ‘crowned’ with a bucket of excrement and her hinds were lashed by courtesans with dry reeds. The sphinxes prepared every humiliation they knew.
[Note: Nimbus is rumoured to have insisted Pansy suffer the ‘traditional’ punishment for adulterers in Pegasopolis.
It involves yams.
This was followed by Cataclyzma insisting Pansy also suffer the traditional punishment for adulterers in Enigma.
It involves dead dogs.]
A near-broken Pansy was sent back to Pegasopolis in a small, leaking boat. Shaken, injured, plucked, covered in filth and incessantly weeping, the pegasi of the city were shocked as Hurricane rushed to pick up her trembling body and wracked with sobs at the sight of her.
The city was informed of the torments Pansy had endured and turned to rage.
This was, however, Pansy’s master-stroke. By allowing her husband to do what he pleased to her and playing the victim so spectacularly, she’d shown Nimbus for the monster she saw him as. Hurricane’s loud show of dismay at her torture may too have been a show for the public but this is less certain.
Few knew of the ruthless, cunning, iron core beneath Pansy’s dainty shell and this was something she used to her advantage. When the crowd saw her, they saw the great Boreas Caesar’s treasured daughter, a radiant princess who brought joy to all who knew her, possessed of a wise but ever-gentle heart.
To see her treated this way destroyed the pillar of respect Nimbus had built as his villainy became the talk of the capital. No longer was he seen as a dedicated warrior and commander. Now when Pegasi spoke of Nimbus they spoke of a wicked, depraved usurper who’d spurned his loving wife, dear friends, noble city and the legacy of Caesar for a power-hungry foreign sorceress, wallowing in a pit of luxury as the pegasi he’d claimed to lead were starving.

Realising his mistake only too late, Nimbus ordered a scribe to write a treatise to the Senate to remind them of his services to peace and preservation and Pansy and Hurricane’s contempt for the Republic. This scribe was none other than Cirrostratus.
Instead, Cirrostratus’s letter was one of absolute slander to Nimbus, revealing each and every treachery he’d committed against his fellows and declaring that Pansy and Hurricane, though no friends of his, were most certainly the lesser of two evils and if civil war came, they would be the ones standing by the end. Lamenting the loss of the Republic, even if he admitted it had grown past its prime, and asking that Pansy and Hurricane never forget the good it did before the present chaos, Cirrostratus sent the letter and laughed in Nimbus’s face before he was cut down by the enraged stallion.
Pansy admitted it to be the single bravest thing Cirrostratus had ever done, promised to fulfil his wishes to remember the old republic with praise (Venerating several key figures across history in books she wrote herself in later years), and declared Nimbus an enemy of Pegasopolis to which the senate, the legions and the public unanimously concurred.
War had begun.

Pansy spoke to the senate and declared war on Enigma. She named Cataclyzma the enemy of Pegasopolis, naming Nimbus as a duped ally of hers, possibly in order to avoid it being called a pegasus civil war.
Nimbus and Cataclyzma began accumulating and concentrating troops from every corner of their domain, hiring mercenaries and auxiliaries from their allies and clients. Among these were goats and boars from Tambelon and rhinos and pachyderms under the Ivorium Empire. Around a hundred-thousand land troops and five-hundred great Enigmatic airships under their command, their intention to crush the invasion force and then march on Pegasopolis itself.
Hurricane and Pansy had a force of around twenty-thousand fliers and a fleet of fifteen-hundred small airships. Aiding them were a force of around fifty-thousand auxiliaries from their time in Caesar’s legion such as Queen Mercia of the Pelts, Prince Gwyndric and Princess Pendragon of Stalbion, Prince Tirhakah of the Mountain Zebra, Gerenuka of Antelopia and many others. Years of showing loyalty to their fellows, kindness to their foes and friendship to any who would repay it certainly paid off in their hour of greatest need. It is auxiliaries like these that bolstered the land defences, many well-versed in strategies against the hordes of Tambelon and the crashes of Ivoria.
The two armies met in the Gulf of Orphea, before the ruins of Hippomorphia which Nimbus utilized as an outpost.

Nimbus was not set on open battle while the pegasi still resented Cataclyzma. Instead, he planned on waiting for the crisis of food and finance to cripple Hurricane’s armies and leave them weak and disloyal when battle came.
Pansy did not relish battle either as her legions were precious in these troubled times and she feared Nimbus would prove the more able commander, or at the least the more brutal.
But Hurricane chose instead to focus on skirmishes, leading multiple, simultaneous sorties on land and air to weaken Enigma’s defensive line. In battle, the sphinx were ferocious, renowned for it, and Hurricane pressed this to his advantage, luring the enemy into the thickest storms where their bulk weighed them down and left them open for the nimble pegasus battle-flocks.
Airships had the same practice. Learning from Promptus’s old sky-pirates, Hurricane had many small, fast, leather-armoured airships swarm the massive but slow metal-plated airships of Enigma, attacking from every angle, using weather-craft to disable the artillery and them dismantling the thrusters, breaking the wings and opening the ballast tanks, sending the first hundred airships sent into these skirmishes careening to earth and sea. With these tactics, Hurricane captured the southern-most command points of Nimbus’s armies, cutting him off from his allies and, most crucially, seizing granaries and stockhouses to feed both his troops and the pegasi back home.
By Hurricane’s good fortune, the auxiliary forces mustering on the deserts had been stricken by plague and fell in droves in a disorganised charge against his own auxiliaries.
The main advantage Nimbus and Cataclyzma still possessed were the Purgoi Chatoya, two great defensive towers that guarded either side of the Gulf, making enemy advancement into Enigma impossible from land, sea and sky.
The standoff continued for weeks.

Nimbus continuously pressed to regain his lands to no avail and was eventually forced to abandon the northern pass. While Hurricane continued to receive reinforcements, Nimbus lost more and more troops to disease or defection.
In the next week, Princess Siamesia left Pegasopolis to lead Hurricane’s auxiliaries in the southern desert, pushing them forward to take Fracta, surrounding Enigma. Her show of courage and resourcefulness prompted numerous figures in Enigma to leave Cataclyzma, fleeing the city and surrendering, recognising Siamesia as queen. Siamesia herself wrote to her own allies in the foreign states such as Jumbos of Loxodon, Prince of the Bushland Elephants who cut off the Ivorium reserve with fresh armies and sent a congregation of Aerophants to reinforce Hurricane’s aerial troops.
Over time it became impossible for Nimbus to retain his position at the Gulf and he needed to either abandon his fleet and retreat with his army by land or attempt to break through the naval blockade.
The exact details are shaky but it seems under the pressure of Cataclyzma, Nimbus was forced to choose the second option, to save the fleet and sphinxes and safely retreat to Enigma.

At that point, Nimbus had four hundred airships against around twelve-to-fourteen-hundred of Hurricane’s.
He split the advance fleet into four and took three hundred to break the blockade, with Cataclyzma leading the strongest remaining ships in reserve. Hurricane’s fleet waited out of firing range, waiting for the attack.
At last, Nimbus pushed forward and the two fleets clashed. Fliers fell in their dozens and airship after airship plummeted into the sea. Nimbus commanded the southern flank, hoping to break open a path to retreat were the lines were weaker but Pansy had written to Hurricane notifying him of this likelihood and Hurricane had strengthened the southern flank with their most potent weather-craft, trapping Nimbus in storm and smog, halting his advance and forcing him to do battle. The fight continued for many hours and Hurricane gained the upper hoof. At noon, Cataclyzma’s reserve that had stood idle before now surged forward, crashing through both Nimbus’s and Hurricane’s ships and fleeing to Enigma.

Debates vary on what her endgame was. Perhaps this had been her plan all along, perhaps she’d lost heart, perhaps she’d expected her fleet to follow, failed to send the signal or simply lost her senses in the chaos but her fleet fled without a fight and, upon seeing this, Nimbus jumped to a smaller ship and followed her.
Without their leaders, Nimbus’s fleet was surrounded, having failed to disengage, and the majority surrendered. His remaining legions in the east, abandoned by their commander, defected on the spot.
The war seemed over as quickly as it begun. Pansy had acquired Nimbus’s legions, his fleet, his lands, his allies and even his right to rule Enigma.
But while Nimbus may have been beaten, Cataclyzma was not.

When Nimbus returned to Enigma, he was enraged at his lover’s shameful retreat and loudly declared his wish to punish her.
Upon hearing of this, Cataclyzma faked her own death and had the word spread across the city. Nimbus, filled with remorse and with no-where else to go and no-one else to turn to, committed suicide in the palace. Thoth, Cataclyzma’s hipposphinx son, also died, likely through suicide but there are some records that suppose he was murdered either by Nimbus or Cataclyzma’s attendants.
[Note: There’s never been any suggestion that Pansy covered up Thoth’s supposed parentage. The colt was seen by the Pegasi public and his corpse publically mummified and buried in the traditional Sphinx manner so it’s likely Pansy never believed Cataclyzma’s insistence that Thoth was Boreas Caesar’s son. And if Pansy’s keen powers of deduction are anything to go by, that would suggest Thoth had no relation to her father. It’s more than likely his body was investigated to determine this but the methods by which pegasi did this have never been reliable]
But this, indirectly, was a blood sacrifice, a practice that would bring the Sphinxqueen to her most powerful form.

Sphinxes are descended from gatekeepers of the underworld and the weavers of fate. With the blood of two beasts that loved them more than life, the ritual would awaken such powers and the sphinx would become nigh unstoppable, destroying any army with but a whisk of its paw.
When Hurricane’s legions approached, they saw Cataclyzma a towering behemoth, ready to sweep them aside effortlessly.
Hurricane volunteered to fight her alone.
Thousands urged him not to go, volunteering in his place.
But before blood could be shed, Pansy appeared, ready to do battle with the Sphinx, claiming to know how to destroy Cataclyzma once and for all.
Flying up to face her, Pansy commanded...
‘Ask me a riddle’

Sphinxes are bound by eternal blood-oath to compete in a game of riddles whenever asked. But the stakes are absolute. The loser is thrown into the pits of Tartarus, their power consumed, their line extinguished. Upon revealing one did not know, at any time or in any situation, their fate would be sealed.
And there are few who know of more riddles than a ruler of their kind.
In all honesty, they would have had a greater chance of victory in open combat.
Yet Pansy declared the challenge.
Cackling, Cataclyzma accepted.
On and on Pansy and Cataclyzma competed, asking each other riddles one could scarcely comprehend.
Until the sixtieth riddle, Cataclyzma asked a piercing question.

“How does it come to pass-
That the swallow’s wings blot out the sun?
That its heartbeat shakes the earth?
That its beak and talons scar the underworld?
When does it drive the eagle to fear?”

A metaphor perhaps, for how Enigma had risen to challenge Pegasopolis and perhaps consume it.
However, Pansy replied not with an answer but with a question. A piercing question that none know to this day nor are they likely ever to do so for all time.

“Zebrican or Stirropean Swallow?”

Perplexed, Cataclyzma instinctively replied she didn’t know and with a blood-curdling cry that shook the desert, the monstrous fiend was cast into the void.
With its Queen brought down, Enigma lowered its banners, opened its gates and formally surrendered to Pegasopolis. Siamesia was instilled as the new Queen of the Sphinxes who immediately agreed to turn over however much grain her sister and Nimbus had denied the pegasi as a form of war reparation.
For the next few months, Hurricane, Pansy, Siamesia and all their friends worked together to rebuild the damage caused by war and upheaval.
Until the first few years of what is known as the Long Winter forced the pegasi to pull back home or never be able to return to it again as the Windigoes drove the pegasi from the prosperous east and into the bleak and unfamiliar west and south of inner Equestria, through mountains and wastelands, where they would one day found their kingdom beside the unicorns and earth ponies.

When the cold winds grew harsher and harsher, the clouds Pegasopolis was built upon became unsafe. The city began shaking and sinking, walls and columns crumbling and toppling to the ground below.
With little choice, Pansy ordered a mass evacuation of the pegasi.
This presented many problems, first and foremost being the upset of order. Without a city, revenue, government house or even anything in the way of shelter, there would be no order in what was the Republic. The civilians would descend upon themselves as many starved and a few would hoard.
So Pansy made her greatest sacrifice, placing the position of high command under Hurricane as Commando Imperator, essentially a Military Dictator, and grant his legions full authority over the populace so as to keep some form of order, ensuring food and other necessities were divided equally.
Hurricane knew this position would not last him unless he possessed a will of iron and a mind of sharpened steel.
He allowed no crime to go unpunished and no slight to go overlooked, drilling and driving his legions to breaking point and instilling total obedience in those under him.
In a city at peace, he would be reviled as a slave-driving tyrant. But these were the harshest times Equestria ever faced and his harshness and coldness was all that kept his subjects from extinction. All others who stayed in Pegasopolis or fled elsewhere died in weeks.

It was also Pansy’s wish to ensure Hurricane made her pull her weight and learned what it was to serve in an army as well as lead it. She insisted she not be shown any privilege and Hurricane followed this insistence to the letter.
She was allotted a position of Legionaria Privata, the official term for non-conscripted legion recruit, serving in his private guard. He was a hard and uncompromising master who made her life exceptionally arduous throughout the crisis.
She ended up hating him for a time...A long time.
But Commander Hurricane and Private Pansy endured and it was through his loyalty to those under his wing and her kindness towards those that suffered as they did that made the pegasus strong enough to endure the Long Winter, drive away the Windigoes and work with their neighbours in the new and glorious Equestria.
Thus was the Saga of the Pegasi concluded.

And the sega of the elements of Harmony, wth Fluttershy and Rainbow being worthy actors of Pansy and Hurricane

Poor Pansy. She was so brave, and put herself through so much.

6294523
6295485
Indeed. And it all paid off.
For her pegasi, Pansy was willing to do anything.

6295555
Indeed.

6294520 So... what of Smart Cookie and Puddinghead (on that note, I would love to know how he came to be called Puddinghead because it just implies so many stupid things it's not even funny)?

6295799
Yeah, that's causing me a bit of difficulty.
I based Pansy off Emperor Augustus and Platinum off Elizabeth I.
I don't know who the hell to base Puddinghead off!
Any ideas?

6296765 I'd base old Earth pony culture off either the Ottomans, or Emperor Nero (who was supposedly insane.)

6297080
It was Caligula that was insane. Nero was really more incompetent.

Julio-Claudian Dynasty
Augustus: Brilliant and charismatic.
Tiberius: Competent but hateful (And quite possibly a pedophile)
Caligula: Completely motherf**king insane!
Claudius: Highly skilled but completely secluded.
Nero: Lazy, cruel and narcissistic. The reason his dynasty came to an end.

If there's any lesson here, it's that while cruel rulers and idiot rulers can come and go, it's when they're combined that causes empires to topple.
In any case, I've already got the Romans.

The problem is that the Earth Pony society appears to be a democracy or at least a federation/republic.
To put that in perspective...Puddinghead could well have been elected!
This makes it kind of hard to think of a similar situation such as this.
And I'm planning on there being a theory that Puddinghead's insanity was a façade to get her enemies to let their guard down, judging by how strange it is that she made it that far at all!

6297101 True...

how about the Earth pony equivalent to Hungary, then?

6297112
Really?
Why Hungary specifically?

6297200 You already have Greco-Roman influences for Pegasopolis, and English influences for Unicornia.

I thought Hungary would be the best choice for the Earth ponies. Alternatively, you could have Polish influences.

6297206
I'll consider it. Though I don't quite see how Magyar/Slavic history would be best for earth pony culture.
Admittedly, my knowledge on that subject isn't extensive.

At first, I was thinking the equivalent of post-Revolution America but only because that's about the only point in history when a democracy was both established before the modern era while being well-documented.
Ancient Athens was really more of an aristocracy than a democracy and all modern democracies kind of follow the same pattern so it's hard to differentiate.
The problem isn't the equivalent culture in itself, its the equivalent point in history.

6297222 Understandable.