EThe Rose of Florentina

• MLP: FiM
• Drama
• Slice of Life

Nearly a thousand years after her sister's fall, Celestia finds she may not be so alone after all, when a little alicorn ascends in the distant village of Florentina.

• Celestia
• Cadance

Sledge115 · 4.3k words  ·  237  5 · 2.9k views

The Rose of Florentina

by Sledge115

Summary

Nearly a thousand years after her sister's fall, Celestia finds she may not be so alone after all, when a little alicorn ascends in the distant village of Florentina.

On a quiet Spring afternoon, young Mi Amore Cadenza makes a life-changing decision when the Princess of the Sun comes to visit.

Initial Thoughts

Oooh! Now here’s something I don’t see every day. Cadance is a wonderful character to see explored in fanfiction since we really didn’t get too much of her in the show itself. Sure, there were hints at a fun character with more than a little bit going on underneath the surface, but like with so many things in the show it’s been left to the audience to fully flesh her out. And here comes a story covering the time immediately after her ascension? Now that I’m interested in. Let’s see if it can wow me!

My General Reaction

Wow… that’s it?

I mean, don’t get me wrong, what’s there is pretty good stuff. This is definitely a more interesting outing with these characters than it could have been… I just wish there was more. A lot more. Like, more than one chapter of a much, much longer works worth.

It’s rather upsetting to finish so soon.

Apparently, moments after Celestia finds out about Cadance’s ascension to alicornhood, she immediately makes plans to go visit her and bring her home to Canterlot, to become a Princess. There’s some talk of politics, the Crystal Empire, and an implied family connection, but since this one story in a larger universe, I suspect more details are found in other stories.

I think this story captures the nervousness and energetic worry Celestia must be feeling at this moment, and it’s a great bit of character-writing that we see this play out.

If only the story didn’t shift to Cadance just at the halfway point. This is where the shortness of the piece really bites it in the behind. See, if this story was just the first chapter of a longer one, a story following Cadance’s early days in Canterlot, and her relationship with Sunset, Celestia, and maybe even a young Shining Armor, then this shifting of POV would be an interesting way to get a look at every angle of palace life and the narrative unfolding before us.

As it is, this is just a little bit jarring. There’s not enough time with Celestia to justify splitting off and following Cadance, and there’s not enough room for either narrative to breathe. Near the end, as Cadance enters Canterlot for the first time, we catch a glimpse of Sunset Shimmer… only for the story to abruptly end.

Had the story been more focused on one or the other, I think this would just work better. Instead, we get two good stories stitched together at the hip, and then it has its legs cut out from under it.

This is heartbreaking, to me, as what’s here is gorgeous characterization and dialogue. If only it were in a different story.

Grammar and Word Things

10/10 – Free Points
Nothing to see here. The grammar is clean and eye-friendly. The prose is perfectly presented.

Story/Plot/Pacing

7/10 – The POV switch and abrupt ending ruins the magic
This feels like the first chapter to a much longer work, and so it being only one chapter really hurts what the story is going for. If we got a more consistent point of view, then this would be more forgivable. But, as it stands, it just feels choppy and incomplete.

Characters

9/10 – Some great characterization
It’s so rare we get to see this particular time frame of the show’s history, and so getting a glimpse of Celestia and Cadance at this early stage of their relationship, so well-realized, is wonderful to behold. If the story were longer, and each given more room to grow, I can say this would have scored even higher.

Final Word and Rating

The Rose of Florentina is a wonderful bit of character-writing and exploration for the characters of Cadance and Celestia. While the plot and pacing can’t quite accommodate both characters taking center stage at once, what’s here is enticing enough on its own.

To the author: I think this story, in particular, would be stronger if it focused on either Celestia or Cadance’s perspective. But switching between them in such a short time frame muddies what was otherwise a wonderful story. I guess this is supposed to be in another series’ timeline, the Spectrumverse? I’m very not familiar with that sort of thing, so I don’t know if you can expand on this story, but it’s one that I think would be worth looking into if so. I’m a sucker for Cadance stories, especially ones that explore other aspects of her life and personality.

Feel free to comment below.

<For Archive Purposes: 8.6/10>

7479728

Hello, hello! Once again, thanks for taking the time to reading this

First off - yyyeah, I'm on the camp that can't/won't write anything shorter than 6-10k words without feeling like it's complete, and so is _The Rose of Florentina_. It's an experiment in short(er) story writing for me, using a simple prompt from the group. Me being me, I couldn't resist tying it to the bigger world, like almost all of my other stories including the ones set outside of the Spectrumverse. But yeah! Personally, I'll take it as a green light that this time period deserves far more of a longer story than The Rose of Florentina, hehe.

To clear things up - nope, there's no other story in the verse set in this time period. This really is the one snippet set during Cadance's first days. But admittedly I've contemplated resuming the Rose of Florentina as a longer work, but I still need to clear my backlog before I can even begin planning out a full blown story

Anyways, the POV switch was an artistic choice, to give both Celestia and Cadance a co-equal place in this story and also because Cadance needs more love, and to structure the story based on the two arrivals, but I understand that it is a bit jarring, and it would have benefited from, again, a longer story.

At any case, thanks for taking the time to read and review this silly little tale Honestly, the fact that your initial reaction was that it wasn't long enough tells me enough of what it lacked. It just needed to be longer, argh! One day, one day.

Glad you've enjoyed it as is Cheers