Argent Empress

"How was your meeting with the empress, Twilight?"

"It was... intense." Twilight gathered herself with a sip of tea. "She was intense."

"That sounds about right."

"She's interested in better relations between her empire and Equestria."

"Mm."

"Of course, that'd strain our relations with the federation."

"Mmhm."

"But, Celestia, why aren't we better friends with the Gryphon Empire?"

"Mm?"

"As intense as the empress was, I found her more personable and her policies leagues more progressive than that of representatives of the Griffon Federation.

"I- I realize we have a bumpy past with the empire after fighting over Griffonstone-"

"As you know."

"Right, I'm just repeating old history, aren't I?"

"That's quite alright. What do you know about the Battle Over Griffonstone?"

"Around 600 years ago, you accepted the defunct state of Griffonstone's application as a protectorate of Equestria in response to the Argent Empress's growing imperialistic ambitions over all the disparate griffon kingdoms. The kingdoms to the south organized themselves into a loose confederation and mutual defense pact against her but Griffonstone was too far north to benefit.

Celestia nodded. "Griffonstone would have been her crowning achievement. Having the old center of griffon civilization before its decline could have possibly legitimized her claim to rulership over all griffons in the eyes of some. At the time... well, a number of factors encouraged me to step in. I like to think that, namely, I needed to make a stand and put a stop to the bloodshed. Anything else?"

"I know you challenged the Argent Empress to single combat during the battle. While griffon norms encouraged her army to stop and witness your fight, your forces took the opportunity to take the flank. The battle was a resounding Equestrian victory and put a halt to the Empress's imperialistic expansion."

"Do the history book also mention how the Empress cleared the skies with me?"

"Huh?"

"Really, Rainbow Dash never explained that euphemism to you? Well, more earthbound races tend to say 'wipe the floor'. She wiped the floor with me."

"Um."

"I had my flank handed to me."

"Do you- do you still hold a grudge?"

"Goodness, Twilight, no. I've never been a very good fighter, that's always been Luna's forte.

"She read the after action reports and my own accounts of the fight, and gave me a severe dressing down for my tactical blunders. Oh, I did miss her."

"R-right."

"The only reason she ever lost to me a thousand years ago is because she abandoned reason and skill and had tried to overpower me. Thaum for thaum, pound for pound, I have more raw power than my sister and she had no idea how properly utilize the boost her transformation gave her."

"Your stronger?"

"Indeed. Before her departure, I was a reserve weapon whenever something needed to be 'smote from orbit'. Her words. But, as she is keen to remind me, I still have trouble going between a simple stunning blast and turning everything around me into glass.

"I'm getting off topic.

"The Argent Empress held a grudge for my dishonorable conduct for a long while after. One of her few epiphanies of maturity was acknowledging the futility of fair play that only you agreed to."

"Maturity?"

"Well, it seems I'm going to engage in what Rainbow Dash might refer to as 'tossing shade'. Or is it 'throwing shade'? Does it matter? You really should listen to you friend more often and catch up on modern slang."

"Actually, Celestia. One question first?"

"Oh yes?"

"What is the Argent Empres? Is she like you?"

"Immortal, you mean?"

"Yes."

"Well, technically, just 'ageless', because she can die and so can I, but it's not exactly easy. Nigh-immortal is just a mouthful.

"There are a few varieties of those who fit that category. There are those who always had the potential and had to give something up to realize it fully, or never had the potential and create terrible, horrid paths to imitate it. Scorpan and Tirek come to mind, for the former and the latter. Some are literally made for it. I don't believe- have you ever met Inari or Zambarau?

"No, princess."

"Ah. Well, further, there are those born to it and there are those who die their way into it and are reborn. Many of those of the last sort, the liches, go mad, because they can't accept they aren't the person they were before. Sombra comes to mind."

"Sombra? You mean he wasn't like that before?"

"Sombra was a sadistic, greedy and callous tyrant. Watching Luna stamping him out like the cruel devil he was was perhaps one of the few times I ever took any satisfaction from an act of violence. But no, Twilight, he wasn't that mad, old goat you saw before."

"Goat?"

"Ghost."

"Ah. So, what is the Argent Empress?"

"A lich as well, but she accepted that she isn't Duchess Grizelda. She is merely a continuation of her life force with a new soul, with new priorities. Similar but different priorities."

"How so?"

"Duchess Grizelda was a grand master of the griffon's Ways Of Winds. Griffons must use mental and physical alignment and mastery to access the higher forms of their magic, unlike pegasi that do it with force of personality."

Twilight scowled. "What?"

"A different topic for a different time."

Twilight whined mutedly, but assented to let this lesson continue.

"Grizelda sought further mastery and went to fast and meditate on top of a mountain for thirty days and nights.

"Wow. And what did she find out?"

"That not eating for a month kills you."

"Oh."

"But as her soul passed on to the Hereafter, something else to residence in her dwindling lifeforce and her body. Now, Grizelda was born in a time of strife for the griffons. Griffonstone's grip on the ties that held the other griffon kingdoms together finally went from tenuous to obviously non-existent. You know the history, feuds, rebellions, grudges, successions.

"Duchess Grizelda rather turned her beak from the chaos and sought order within herself. The one who would become the Argent Empres sought order without. She sought to quell the chaos around her and bring stability to her people."

"Well that certainly sounds admirable."

"No matter whom she had to claw her way through, underneath a red sky and atop a funerary pyre of her people."

Twilight quailed. "Oh."

"She succeeded, after a fashion. The griffon kingdoms to the north fell one by one to her, the surviving nobility lowered their beaks and spread their wings for her. The kingdoms to the south had to put aside their grudges to unite against her."

"As you know."

Celestia returned Twilight's impish grin. "Right you are."

"So, is that why you dislike her?"

"No. I couldn't possibly put myself in her paws, and I'm no stranger to making hard decisions. No..."

"Then why?"

"That's another story. Well, one of many." Celestia paused as her eyes flickered, going through a catalogue. "Griffons are fairly patriarchal, not unlike to the degrees ponies were matriarchal, especially before Political Franchise's campaign and reforms. This has been a constant obstacle for the Argent Empress. Her answer to this problem is 'I don't care what you think, do what I say or else.'

"Now the Empress is barren but she adopts many young noble griffs into her house. One of her daughters was being pressured to marry by the nobility, coupled with some rather crass remarks. Now, the Empress would never let one of hers be forced into anything but her daughter decided that wasn't enough. During a public event, she orchestrated a bit of a spectacle where she humiliated many nobles, throwing their words in their faces, making a statement about a hen's place in griffon society.

"Luna, when she read about the account, she adored this young hen and her spunk. I... I sympathized with her, but I thought her statement ill timed, ill executed and had all the hallmarks of an immature teenager not used to criticism. While many a hen took it as a rallying cry to start their own sexual revolution, the nobility of the Gryphon Empire pounced upon that performance as proof that hens are over emotional, hysterical creatures, unfit to make their own decision, let alone rule."

"Is- Celestia, is that what we thought about stallions?"

"Quite the opposite. We accused stallions of being emotionless, cold. Incapable of sharing emotions or empathizing with others. They could never understand the finer points of diplomacy, the cornerstone of politics. That stallions are witless brutes, fit only for breaking their backs in the farmfield or shedding their blood on the battlefield, and those that survive have the privilege of donating a bit of themselves to help make the next generation to do it all over again.

"A generation they will, of course, have no part in raising, because stallions simply cannot be trusted with foals." Celestia snorted. "I can't believe it took Political Franchise rubbing my nose in it to see the foalishness of it all. You know, Luna adjusted to the change in gender dynamics in a year quicker than I did over a century. She had always been on ground, in the dirt, with the colts. She had always been more in touch with her masculine side."

"I, uh... oh. And... the Argent Empress?"

"Right. So one house became quite insubordinate after her daughter's debacle. The cry for social reforms had begun to ripple further than just the hens, but to the lower class griffons and the ethnic minorities that lived among them. The lord demanded the Empress stamp out these rabble rousers, especially the hen. She not only refused, she imposed news law enforcing universal rights, very ahead of her time. He flouted the laws as the radical hot air of a nagging old hen and began to withhold taxes. She sent military police into his lands to see that her laws were obeyed and her taxes were paid. He hinted that he might allow his land to be annexed by the far more sympathetic Griffon Federation.

"She slaughtered every rooster of his household above the age of fifteen."

Twilight was silent.

Celestia continued. "Those too young to attract her ire were taken into her house, but they were stripped of their own names, declared legally dead and all the belonged to that house was redistributed to those the Argent Empress deemed be more progressive in their policies.

"Those that sympathized with that lord were not cowed into silence, however. These roosters instead saw him a martyr that was destroyed protecting the old ways. More than that, they were afraid they'd be stripped of their positions if they didn't give in to every single progressive reform the Empress put forth. Bolstered by survivors of the purged house, because you can never get everyone, they rose up in rebellion against the Empress. The Griffon Federation took advantage of the chaos, accepting many of the rebel lords into their ranks, annexing their land."

Twilight breathed. "The War Of The Robins."

"A bloody, violent and pointless conflict conflict. In the end, the wrath of an immortal as brutal and as cunning- and she had grown quite a bit of cunning since we fought -as the Argent Empress proved enough to send the Griffon Federation scurrying back to their lofts and recanting their claim on the rebel lands. She lost some of her land but annexed as much from the Federation in turn.

"In the end, she lost half of her nobility to rebellion or fighting said rebellion. Without them, much of her administration and revenue, leaving her Empire floundering for decades after. What's more, a third of her citizenry to much of the same. Many of them were roosters who's only sin was being loyal to their lords. The lower class griffons, the minority races and, of course, the hens, suffered the worst of it as rebel armies and even loyalist armies looted and rampaged uncontrollably.

"This is not to mention all the follow-up rebellions as survivors of the losing side decided to have another go. It's what turned that century into the one of conflict that griffon historians mark it as.

"And to think it all could have been avoided if Argent had stayed her temper. Had used diplomacy and guile, maybe taken a feather from her daughter's book and demonstrated the backwardness of her opponent's belief through farce. Instead, she took the heavy hoofed approach until it turned into bloodshed, that only begat more of the same.

"It took me generations of social engineering to make ponies do more than pay lip service to Franchise's reforms."

"G- generations?"

"Yes, despite what the history books would tell you, mares didn't suddenly wake up and stop treating stallions like overgrown infants. I had to spoon feed it to you all over years until you got a taste for it."

"I see." And Twilight would mean that, given time to mull it over.

"In the few instances where Luna fielded me to war, to have something 'smote from orbit', one of her greatest priorities was engineering the situation where, ideally, only the intended target was in the blast radius. Her first priority was minimization of innocent casualties. What Argent does is rather like what might happen if Luna had used me more liberally, and if I had let her, but in terrible, drawn-out slow motion.

"The invasion of the Sphygept for their participation in sapient trafficking, the naval war with Freeport for their alliance with pirates, the burning of the drug fields of Windia and the resultant series of conflicts there. Many of my carefully laid plans for alleviating those same problems, razed to the ground, burning merrily away with all the bodies of the innocents left behind."

Twilight held her teacup, half-full and going cold, staring dead ahead at her teacher.

Celestia brought her own cup up to her lip, draining away the last dregs oh so casually. "And that has been why I tend to keep the Empress of the Argent Dynasty at forelength."

Celestia paused, tilted her head and refocused on her former pupil, still staring wide-eyed at her. "I'm sorry, Twilight. I went on a bit of a tangent there, didn't I? A rant, even."

"A little bit, yeah."