Future's Past: My thoughts on the Fall of Imperial Equestria Revised Edition - The Official Generation Five Site

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The Blue EM2 #1 · Jun 17th, 2023 · 8 · ·

WARNING: This essay contains spoilers for Make your Mark Chapter 4. If you have not watched Chapter 4 yes, I highly recommend you do before reading this essay.

A little over three years ago now, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic came to an end, with an episode depicting Equestria as a peaceful utopia united by friendship and love, and inhabited by lots of different races.

Or was it? In February 2021, not only did the big bombshell that G5 takes place in the same world as G4 drop, we also learned that the world had become a divided place largely inhabited by races fearful of one another, and living in isolation. Naturally, this intrigued and surprised many longtime bronies, some of whom regarded this as turning Twilight's story into a shaggy dog tale. Others, such as myself, regarded this as a hard truth aesop that nothing truly lasts forever.

The main question on everybody's minds was this-what caused an apparently harmonious society to fracture so dramatically? How could unity disintegrate in the way it did?

In this essay, I intend to examine some of the evidence that My Little Pony: a New Generation and My Little Pony: Make your Mark provide in order to provide my theory as to what happened. I will not be using evidence from the Generation 5 comic as I do not consider it canon (and it also has numerous continuity snarls with the other parts of Generation 5). This is a new version which has been updated with lore from the fourth chapter of Make your Mark.

Section 1: Pre-Imperial and Imperial Equestria

Once upon a time, thousands of years before the present day, there were three sisters who lived in the land of Skyros. One shone bright as the sun. One shone with the light of the moon. And the third wielded the fury of an inferno within her. The first two largely ignored their younger sibling, fearful of her unpredictable capabilities and fiery temper.

At some point in the ancient past but roughly around the same time, unicorns, earth ponies, and pegasi lived in isolation, before dwindling resources forced them to relocate to a new land. The hostility they held towards one another led to the Windigos, ice creatures that fed of disharmony and could destroy ponies. In response to this threat, the three tribes made peace with one another and founded a new nation-Equestria.

As demonstrated by the above example, the three tribes did not become friends for altruistic reasons. They became friends as the alternative was certain death. In other words, friendship was a survival strategy, nothing more, nothing less. This is the core of my thesis-what if the Three Tribes weren't as united as we had assumed?

This remained the same throughout much of Imperial Equestria. For the entirety of the country's existance Equestria had external threats and foes-not to mention the threat of Windigos looming over their heads. Furthermore, each had resources the other needed-earth ponies grew food, pegasi controlled the weather, unicorns regulated the sun and moon, etc. These factors explain why they stayed together. Groups of people (or ponies in this case) tend to cooperate when each group has something the others need. Even after the new nation was established, the challenges of forming a new country remained. The solution was to use rent-a-monarch-tow of the aforementioned sisters, Celestia and Luna, were recruited as Equestria's new rulers. The third sister, Opaline, was neglected and quietly forgotten. She resented being passed over, and as time went by she began to plot her revenge. Remember her. She will be important later.

Once the threats that all Equestrians had in common were defeated in the Battle of the Bell, the three groups no longer had a single enemy. And because they no longer had a threat that was common to all three of them, they no longer had any reason to cooperate with one another. (In case somebody reading this thinks this notion is silly, just take a quick look at human history for many examples of this phenomenon.)

Section 2: The Cracks start to Show

Despite Twilight Sparkle's best efforts to create a lasting peace, the three tribes gradually began to drift apart and move to their own parts of the continent. This process of drifting reduced the likelihood of members of each group coming into contact with one another.

This is significant, as when groups do not interact with one another it means that prejudice is more likely to develop. (Case in point; one of the factors in the development of European racism towards Africans was the retreat of the Islamic Empires from southern Europe in the 1400s. This considerably reduced the chances of European and African peoples encountering one another, which led to prejudice forming.)

Before long, prejudice began to develop (or simply re-emerged) in Equestria, with each group considering themselves superior to the others and regarding the other groups as inferior. However, they soon began to encounter other problems. The lopsided nature of Equestria's ecosystem meant that Earth Ponies held the cards when it came to food, and the pegasi and unicorns were running low on supplies. They couldn't simply ask the Earth Ponies for food, as it would have undermined their entire argument of being superior to them. Tensions had grown to the point that Equestria resembled a giant tinderbox. All it needed was a spark.

Section 3: Race War

The next clue we get comes from the Make your Mark episode The Traditional Unicorn Sleepover. Whilst telling stories to one another, Sunny mentions the following incident:

But then one day, a magical accident happened! An Earth pony got hurt by a unicorn! Everypony started fighting with each other!

The idea that a war might be triggered over something so tiny might seem ridiculous to us, but again history has many incidents like it. A good example is the Kalkhin-Gol incident, where a minor border dispute between Japan and the Soviet Union erupted into all-out war.

In summary, the groups had been looking for any excuse to trigger a conflict. The Earth Ponies immediately declared war on the unicorns and launched an assault on their territory, working on the principle that a strong offence is a good defence.

The unicorns retaliated in kind, attacking Earth Pony territory and starting to seize resources to take back to their own lands.

The pegasi, watching from on high, decided to capitalise on the chaos and attacked both groups, using their aerial advantage and clouds to strike from the skies and squirrel other resources away from the Earth Ponies.

Who won the war seems to depend on who you ask. In My Little Pony: a New Generation, we get the following bit of information from Sprout:

My mom says the Pegasi and unicorns tried to eat up all the Earth ponies by zapping 'em with lasers and frying 'em to a crisp... So the Earth ponies kicked their butts in an epic battle, and if they ever try to come back to Maretime Bay, we'll kick their butts again!

I am aware that the Cloverleafs are not particularly reliable sources, but later Hitch says this:

Well, uh, that is kinda what our teacher said in history class.

Whilst the other leaders don't mention the conflict directly, the confrontation between Queen Haven and Alphabittle implies the war ended in a pegasus victory:

Alphabittle: Surrender the crystal, or I'll use my powers against you!
Queen Haven: I'd like to see you try!

It was at this moment that Opaline, who had been building up resources, chose to strike. Opaline was not the root cause of the collapse- she merely capitalised on the carnage to further her own agenda. Seeing that Twilight and her friends had defeated magic wielders virtually every weekend before that point, Opaline's solution was to field an army of machines that, although powered by magic, were impervious to it. This was why the Mane 6 were unable to defeat her by the usual approach- their main strategy was useless against the threat they were facing.

Twilight Sparkle looked on in horror as all she had worked to build crumbled. In response, she put one last desparate plan into motion, one she hoped would end the chaos once and for all.

Section 4: Desparate Times, Desparate Measures

The situation was dire. War was raging between the Three Tribes. Opaline's army waltzed across southern Equestria, laying waste to all in its path. And Opaline herself was simply far too powerful to take out directly. If this seems unlikely, remember that in Chapter 4 Opaline, with only about 10% of her full power, almost defeated Sunny (the latter was only saved by the power of the Cutie Marks). Considering what Celestia and Luna were capable of at full strengh, Opaline at full power would be effectively unstoppable.

But unbeknownst to many, six ponies, two from each tribe, had remained friends with one another despite the bloodshed consuming Equestria. Twilight knew that, as long as what these six stood for remained remembered, there was hope for the future of ponykind. The main priority was to stop the war and prevent Opaline from completing her own plans.

In one last desparate effort, she summoned the entire planet's magic together. This magic was formed into three crystals, which she then broke apart. With the crystals disconnected, the three races lacked the capability to continue fighting-pegasi could no longer fly, unicorns could no longer cast spells, and earth ponies couldn't use magic to grow stuff. The disarray forced them into retreat in their own territories. The same was true of Opaline's army; without magic power, the machines ground to a halt.

Twilight Sparkle entrusted the six ponies with the three crystals, ordering them to keep them safe. When the time was right, they would reunite them and restore magic to the land. Of course, nobody imagined how long that time would last.

Section 5: Splendid Isolation

The three tribes were unaware of Twilight's desparate act, and assumed the others had stolen the magic from the others. However, the earth ponies got completely the wrong idea from the vanishing of magic. As they retreated towards the coastlines of their territory, they were convinced that, one day, the unicorns and pegasi would return to finish the job. This led to them gearing the economy towards war production, and manufacturers of defensive gear such as CanterLogic coming to dominate earth pony society. The constant fear of invasion was what allowed the military-industrial complex to endure for thousands of years. After all, as Phyllis Cloverleaf herself observed, 'to be scared is to be prepared'.

The pegasi had already finished moving most of their resources before the magic cut out, and established their capital on top of a mountain. This was an exceptionally good position; the only land approach was extremely long, which meant that any invading army would be under fire throughout the climb. Once they reached the top, they would find a city full of natural chokepoints. In short, the city was the perfect fortress.

The pegasi also took advantage of their resources to push technological development. Unlike the earth ponies, however, they focused their efforts on making the lives of their citizens more comfortable. The result was the development of a democratic capitalist state with a heavy focus on a tech and service based economy. As a result, pegasi enjoyed the highest standard of living of any of the tribes, thanks to technological innovations such as TV, smartphones, and unparalled shopping opportunities. Curiously, the main broadcasting firm, ZBS, appears to be state owned.

The unicorns firmly got the short end of the stick, however. They relied on magic the most to get anything done, and with no ability to cast spells they became depressed and lethargic. This is what caused words associated with their enemies or magic to be considered bad.

But what of mayonnaise? Don't worry, I have an explanation for that. In an attempt to diversify their economy, the unicorns attempted to make mayonnaise. But it went wrong, and a town was consumed by a flood of mayo.

Opaline, in the meantime, retreated to a Castle in the middle of nowhere to lick her wounds and plan for her eventual conquest of Equestria. Severely weakened by the loss of magic, she started recruiting agents across Equestria to observe the situation and prepare for the return of magic. The most notable of these assets was Misty, who was recruited an unknown amount of time before the events of A New Generation.

Chapter 6: Reunified at Last

What became of the crystals and their bearers, I hear you ask. The bearers of the crystals went on to have foals of their own, and the crystals were passed down through the generations. Eventually, the crystals came into the hooves of their descendants: Sunny Starscout, the Royal Sisters, and Alphabittle. The crystals being a family heirloom goes a long way towards explaining why Queen Haven never removed the original version of the crown; having been told to ensure the crystal remains safe, she took her duty extremely seriously. Unfortunately, it seems as though nopony thought to tell either Pipp or Zipp of its importance; Zipp figured it out through years of research, whereas Pipp was completely oblivious as to the crystal's true power. And with the crystals reunited, Opaline's dark plan could finally role into motion.

And you guys know the rest. Let me know what you think of this theory in the comments below!

MLPFollower

MLPFollower #2 · Jun 18th, 2023 · 2 · ·

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