Did celly thow the fight or did chrissy beat her best?
I think chrissy beat her best.

5103102 I think Celestia could have beaten her but instead made the mistake of underestimating Chrysalis and engaging her head on in a fashion that gave the Queen an unbridled advantage... once she figured out her own strength of course, I don't think she originally intended the invasion to be so clumsy and head on before Twilight blew her cover.

I have always followed the theory that Chryssy didn't expect to win, ava it was planned that she would lose... Having drained a huge amount of love from everyone.

That's why she gloats, and plays up being a villain I order to "escape" with the bounty. She didn't want to win, only to fill her larder.

5103108
I like to think this too. but they make it pretty clear at the least that Chrysalis did not expect to defeat celestia, at least the way she did. She attributes it to outside influence when it happens (shining armors love)

As for the fight. Celestia could easily defeat her, I assumed it was done the way it was becuase hasbro had to have the ruler of equestria step in to defend, but didn't think to hard about their relative power levels. The most cheritable head canon is to see celestia as worried for the welfare of her ponies in a crowded wedding.

uh what?

5103102 Yes and no. On the one hand, Celestia threw the fight badly because she had a clear shot at Chrysalis's back and could have nailed her from behind for a free win instead of announcing her presence and getting into a fair fight. On the other hand, the fight itself was a clean (if boosted) win for Chrysalis because anyone trying to advocate for an overpowered Celestia holding back is ignoring the fact that she had plenty of time to gradually increase her output to win in a controlled manner or add a shield if she actually had extra power to work with and Celestia was showing visible effort during the fight so she was clearly overpowered.

5103102 Lots of people say Celestia threw the fight for fear of 'vaporizing Canterlot' or some such, but that makes little sense. First of all, Celestia's reactions as the duel is going on clearly indicates surprise at losing - unless you want to arbitrarily assume she was faking those. Second, if Celestia is so powerful she can go atom-bomb on Canterlot, BUT has such self control that she can bring herself down to what we saw in the wedding, then there is no reason she couldn't hold back slightly less, enough to beat Chrysalis but not destroy everything.

Saying that Celestia has so much power but only enough self control to go to 'strong unicorn' and nowhere in between just makes her pathetic: With so many centuries to go and find some remote corner of the world and practice her control, Celestia either did nothing to reign in the suggested power, or she did but failed everything. Either way makes Celestia less impressive. In the end, it makes just as much sense to say Chrysalis was holding back for fear of destroying her people's food source.

It makes somewhat more sense to say Celestia threw the fight in order to keep it from escalating and bystanders getting hurt, but this makes little sense as well. Chrysalis was already there. The shield's generator was hypnotized and the shield was being broken as they stood. Throwing the fight when Celestia could win is saying that she would rather gamble the lives of not just everyone in the room, but the entire city and even potentially the entire country, gambling on the assumption that 'well, maybe the others can pull it off!'. Not to mention that, if you look at their orientation, nobody was close to being struck.

One might say she did similar gambling with NMM and Discord, but we also don't see a lot of what Celestia does off-screen so this is also an assumption.

In the end you can headcanon anything, but saying that Celestia 'had so much power but chose not to use it for reasons' requires incredible hoops to jump through. Personally, I have the idea that she has magical techniques and traps that could have won, but Celestia's thought process was along the lines of 'I don't need that, I can just overpower her... okay, I can't overpower her, I need the tricks but it's too late now!'.

5103102 Celestia was probably rusty from a thousand years of peace—that, obviously, she deserves credit for keeping.

But anyways, I would just like to point out that its Shining Armor's love for Cadance that bests her, accumulated over a period of, like, a week. Then, it's literally the exact same thing, but for a brief moment, that bests Chrysalis and an entire changeling army. The show establishes that love magic is an incredibly offensive thing (ironically, and it probably explains why Flurry Heart is so OP) and I don't have too many problems accepting that a great deal of it beat an out-of-practice Celestia.

5103102
Celestia looked just as surprised to lose as Chrysalis was to win. So yeah, I think it happened just like she claimed: consuming all that love empowered Chrysalis to the point where she was stronger than Celestia.

5103337
>>arbitrarily
Sorry what?
What you are doing is arbitrarily limiting the contexts to a false dichotomy that makes it easy to eschew your whole argument.

Celestia thought she could rofl stomp Chrysalis with all hooves tied behind her back and was extremely surprised to be countered even at her reduced fighting effectiveness since she was 'so much stronger' than her.

Tah fucking da, oh that took soooo many brain cells. look man, just because you are an adult and not using your full strength in a fight with a kid doesn't make you not surprised when that kid suplexes you.

Celestia has control over he sun, that means she can game over the world she's standing on. She isn't just implied to be stronger than Chrysalis. She IS stronger than chrysalis. Now, She would never do this, but she has the power. She can look chrysalis in the eye and tell her that she must leave, or she will not fight her, but simply use the sun to bake her by forcing it to ocuppy the space in the sky it does without moving. She then leaves to ensure she has an unassailable position to do this, since she has a huge advantage of knowing her country inside and out, and with teleportation and her full strength there's fucking nothing that can stop her but luna.

5103337 there is also the fact that if Chryssy managed to kill Celestia, she would have a death sentence on her head from... Well... Everyone. By losing, she still wins because she can still operate in secret.

Still, Celestia probably held back. She had to, imagine if she went full Sol Invictus! That would be bad.

5104399

What you are doing is arbitrarily limiting the contexts to a false dichotomy that makes it easy to eschew your whole argument.

Yet you don't provide any additional options when I was dismantling the arguments that are usually presented in Celestia's favor, all you do is reiterate the 'Celestia could have easily killed Chrysalis but didn't for stupid reasons that make no sense if you think about them longer than a minute'.

even at her reduced fighting effectiveness

Well there's assumption 1.

look man, just because you are an adult and not using your full strength in a fight with a kid doesn't make you not surprised when that kid suplexes you.

And saying your analogy doesn't make it relevant.

Celestia has control over he sun, that means she can game over the world she's standing on.

You mean like Luna could right? You seem to be making the error that control over the sun is known for a fact to be a feat of mostly magical strength. IF this were true, then either A) Moving the sun isn't that impressive a feat or B) Twilight would've had a lot more magic going into her fight with Tirek.

She isn't just implied to be stronger than Chrysalis. She IS stronger than chrysalis.

AAHAHAHAHA! This is your biggest assumption. Nowhere in canon is this ever stated. In fact, canon even leans AGAINST this argument!

but simply use the sun to bake her by forcing it to ocuppy the space in the sky it does without moving.

Okay look. I know this might be hard to wrap your head around, but try to understand. We have no evidence Celestia can use the sun for ANYTHING other than moving it.

She then leaves to ensure she has an unassailable position to do this,

And leave Chrysalis alone in Canterlot to do something she might not even be able to. Perfect plan!

and with teleportation and her full strength there's fucking nothing that can stop her but luna.

NMM (If you assume the parasite headcanon) Discord, Discord's vines, Tirek, possibly Sombra if she's on her own we don't know much about that, Chrysalis.

What you are doing is arbitrarily limiting the contexts to a false dichotomy that makes it easy to eschew your whole argument.

And what you are doing is saying 'Celestia is ridiculously overpowered. I know this because she moves the sun. I know moving the sun makes you ridiculously overpowered because Celestia is ridiculously overpowered.' And if you can't see the problem there, I don't know what to say.

For all your arguments of 'proving' that Celestia can do all these things, you've not taken into account that if that were true, she wouldn't have lost. Unless there was some incredibly complex magical fuckery going on off screen, if Celestia could do the things you described she could have beaten Chrysalis, soundly, and without even risk to her own subjects. You don't 'tie your hooves behind your back' when a foreign invader is right inside your country's capital and is ready to start seriously hurting your subjects.

But please, go on. Show me the canon clip that proves Celestia is as powerful as you claim. I'll be waiting. Patiently.

5104413 As great as Rites of Ascension is, it's not canon and neither is the Sol Invictus spell within.

5104452
Sol Invictus means unconquered sun... Basically if she went full power. It's a meta joke, relating to other media. All said, she is the avatar of the sun.

5104462

All said, she is the avatar of the sun.

Citation needed. All we know is that she is the current mover of the sun.

5104462 If celly held back that woud make her a bad ruler

5104443

We have no evidence Celestia can use the sun for ANYTHING other than moving it.

I'm replying just to second this. Lots of people make the assumption that being able to move the sun across the sky means she could move it closer or further away, or perform many other solar tricks. It might be a fairly reasonable assumption, but it's still an assumption. It may well be that her only control over the sun is moving it across the sky, and that's the only power over it that we've seen her perform.

5104443 Behold! The moron saw your comment and ignored it because his/her tiny brain could not formulate a meaningful response! Don't worry though, the idiot will be back crowing about how stupidly superior Celestia is in a few days like this discussion never happened!

Sigh, I hate idiots like this.

On another note, this kind of stupidity is part of the reason I was really hoping the writers would do something to canonically remove this power back in the season 2/3 time frame. They could have easily said that the "eternal night" was just an illusion to direct light away from the planet and done a great Big Reveal where Twilight (and possibly Celestia) learns that the whole "move the sun and moon" thing has just as much power as a rain dance (probably from Luna who figured it out when she tried to stop "raising the moon") because (ignoring Q Discord who breaks all the rules) nothing else had shown any possible support otherwise. On top of the fun of exploring Celestia in much greater depth and huge character development for Twilight as she struggles to reconcile this with her now-obsolete world view, they could have woven in a great moral about things not always being as they seem and how no one is perfect, not even the supposedly all-powerful princess, and also taught a bit of astrophysics while they were at it for even more educational value on top of the powerful storytelling potential.

5105578
5104485 I have to mention right here that herp, along with lordofmyth, and Keeper of Jericho are the trifecta of condescending cunts that get ticked especially in situations and conversations that regard Queen Chrysalis. Follow my lead and proceed to block them. Too bad there's no ostricisation like in Ancient Athens.

5110851 ...That awkward feeling when I realize I responded to someone who was already on my block list.

5111297 Yeap.