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Money is power

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Luna literally slept through the invasion. THERE WERE EXPLOSIONS.

FYI, I count that as a feat.

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And that is why you need strong powerful and smart monarchs who understand how the world works to make the nobles unnecessary. After all, those nobles could try to overthrow the monarch and really screw the country up.

I guess the nature of supreme command means delegation.

So, a lot of folks are talking about how Twilight clearly borked the country.

Might I point out that we have precisely nothing indicating that Twilight was still in charge, or even still alive, when the shit hit the fan?

My personal theory is that something happened - likely a confrontation with the windigos - that resulted in Twi and the other alicorns having to pull a Starswirl and being sealed outside Equestria's reality. And then you have Equestria running into the biggest problem it has never acknowledged:

Equestria's peace has always been at proverbial gunpoint.

"Get along, or we will all freeze to death."

"Without Celestia, there will be eternal darkness."

" The rest of the world is an utter shithole just waiting to invade and take us over. "

Well, Twilight spent most of her career trying to dismantle that third one.

The logistics presented regarding the sun and moon pretty much require that control was entirely artificial and something that could be turned off by removing the magical forces involved.

And if the windigos were gone, along wifh the princesses, you're out of bullets in that gun. FRiendship, always maintained by carrot and stick, loses the stick. Oh, and the carrot of the Princesses is gone, to say nothing of the fact that thoseother nations probably being a little resentful that Equestria is probably at the root of why they're kinda shitholes.

But that's not really on Twilight, and not even necessarily on Celestia, especially since we haven't the foggiest idea how long ago things collapsed, or how long it took.

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After all, those nobles could try to overthrow the monarch and really screw the country up.

Ye, kind of a point in many societies/hegemony systems. They were a type of counterbalance against a monarch's absolute power. Like how Democracy has political opposition and checks and balances, but way suckier and generally just being a bunch of rich guys trying to protect their interests against a single rich guy.

Example, if the King decided he wanted to be known as a conqueror and wanted to start up wars, and the nobles were like "fuck no, he sucks at war and we're doing super okay now, why risk?!?" they'd counter that.

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Wow. This is like when a pony say, "Human are evil because of Hitler"

Yeah. So what? Human are so evil because they used to have a tyrant ruler who cause pain and suffering all over their world. Don't try to be friend with human because they are evil. We don't know what will they do to us in the future

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Well put. I do admit I would have been interested in a Yes, Minister style farce about the internal wheels of Equestria's governance.

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Put that way, G4 certainly was quite a cynical show in many ways. Let's hope G5 doesn't end up falling into the same trap.

7689562 Whilst this isn't shown either, I do imagine that one of the priorities the changelings would have would be to not wake up Luna. Given that we know they had infiltrated the castle, it'd make sense for them to engineer keeping her asleep by preventing guards from waking her, among other things they might have been able to do with magic.

It certainly wouldn't be logical for the changelings to want her awake.

>implying the shitty later seasons should be considered canon
The Canterlot Wedding could be considered a one-time blunder, and the rest isn't relevant. The writers of the later seasons hated the Sisters just as much as they hated the Mane 6, or they just didn't care, so why should a self respecting fan should? If you take everything the show has portrayed during its run as strictly canon, then you really have no imagination.

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Maybe it would have worked better if the show stated they were not as powerful as their young selves but their real power was their mental faculties. Just like the Third Hokage was too old to fight Orochimaru at his full capacity.

I suppose I do get why they always lose. If they were too powerful, it might not leave the main protagonists with as much to do.

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It's honestly more a case of the show writers - ESPECIALLY in the earliest seasons - not thinking through all the implications of what they were building. Equestria has a lot of stuff going on that, if we take it as shown, makes it a LOT more cynical than ever intended. The treatment of "livestock" species, the xenophobia that never did really go away and its associated marginalization of non-ponies, Spike's entire existence in a lot of ways.... There's a definite argument to be made that Equestria could be seen as an allegory for a superpower convinced of its own utopian perfection that's just waiting for that eensy little nudge to topple over.

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Ah, yes, for those halcyon days when a major metropolis was within an easy walk from Ponyville but completely invisible unless you were there (Cutie Mark Chronicles), Granny Smith was centuries old (Winter Wrap Up and Family Appreciation Day), and casual racism was easily passed off with a simple 'no offense' (the entire joke about stereotyping mules).

Clearly, the true sign of a proper level of imagination and fandom is to simply ignore what you don't like and throw out huge chunks of very literal show canon, rather than to look at the entire canon and consider how it builds a more nuanced world when you put a modicum of effort into reconciling surface level contradictions.

The early seasons weren't that much better than the later ones, said as somebody who has rewatched earlier seasons fairly recently for research purposes.

Personally I think it's actually a pretty fun nuance that as Twilight becomes more emotionally intelligent and wise, she starts to see the ways in which Equestria (and by extension, Celestia herself) aren't as flawless and perfect as she thinks, and as a result the perspective we get also shifts and allows Celestia to appear more human, playful, and flawed.

Reminds me a bit how Dumbeldore changes and becomes less invincible and more manipulative, or how Obi Wan is initially presented as a wise and all-good teacher, but as time goes on he becomes increasingly more portrayed as a flawed, devious, and cheeky guy. In a sense, Celestia doesn't really evolve throughout the show, but Twilight (and by extension, our) perspective of her does as Twilight goes from being a naive and starry-eyed student to, later on, Celestia's equal and peer. I think it's neat.

Not going to notify-answer anyone because surely there was a lot of talk about this.

Oh look at how Celestia wasn't the best and teached Twilight in order to take her place. But if she wasn't good at ruling, how she would know how to rule which is needed to teach that? My answer is: she didn't know what she was doing.

Look at how she seemingly reclessly throws Twilight at yet another ancient evil with as much preparation as "I believe in you", and once even sabotages the quest deliberately to then declare that the real goal was to check wheher Twilight could overcome her sabotage, and not save Equestria from Sombra.

Celestia doesn't know what she is doing, she is not the designer here. She just enacts Equestrian strategic reserve of prophecies plays her part in divine magical scheme of (Tree of) Harmony. After all, it is the Element which blasted Twilight into alicornhood, and it did not even make sence without them actively responding to random cutie-mark spell. And then, we know that Celestia had a magical dream of Tirek being free. And Harmony has great deal of foresight with her cutie-map and pictures on the tree.

So you can be incompenent, but as long as your dumb decisions suit the grand design, all would end up well. Why? Because magic. Friendship magic, to be precise, and believing in friendship magically solves your problems because Harmony secretly arranges it so.

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That sounds like a great idea for a fanfic.

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It's honestly more a case of the show writers - ESPECIALLY in the earliest seasons - not thinking through all the implications of what they were building.

Indeed. Another great example is the use of "somepony" over "someone." it was probably just meant to be a cute harmless pun, but it has sometimes been taken to look far more racist in nature than it was really meant to be. They did seem to try to fix it by having the characters say "somecreature" instead starting in season 8.

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Early on, they were trying to horsify things a fair amount more than later, and it might be part of that. You had horse snorts, pawing at the ground, and that sort of stuff. It's kinda a shame that went more into the background...

--Sweetie Belle

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Oh, I know it wasn't meant to be that way - but geeze, if it doesn't fit perfectly!

Cows and sheep both speak, and in the same language ponies do. And yet both, especially the sheep, are treated as animals.

And animals in Equestria, for that matter, are pretty clearly sapient, they just don't speak ponish for various reasons.

Hell, Gilda even uses the exact phrase: "pony savior complex " By that point, the writers had started to notice the undercurrents.

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Well, a bit of unintentional subtle racism makes their world fit ours better, at least... though it's probably best to actually examine it.

(Some people think it was dumb to use "everycreature" rather than "everyone" or "everybody", but I think that using a term we humans are used to would obscure that it's a deliberate and somewhat forced thing for the ponies - like neo-pronouns are for even most accepting people nowadays. It's supposed to stick out like a sore thumb... until eventually you stop noticing it. And it's also a term Fluttershy has used before with her animals, I think, so we can see how it got picked.)

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If they noticed, it didn't make them rein it in at all... more escalate, really. The biggest "deconstruction" of the idea was wholly accidental and in Season 1.

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Some people think it was dumb to use "everycreature" rather than "everyone" or "everybody", but I think that using a term we humans are used to would obscure that it's a deliberate and somewhat forced thing for the ponies - like neo-pronouns are for even most accepting people nowadays. It's supposed to stick out like a sore thumb... until eventually you stop noticing it. And it's also a term Fluttershy has used before with her animals, I think, so we can see how it got picked.

That's...huh. Never really thought of it that way. Still think the term is clumsy, but at the very least it's an interesting interpretation.

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Even a fault can sometimes become a virtue through the right lens.