Part 2. Courtship and Unexpected Difficulties with a Princess
Mating Customs of Species Equus parvus
by Dr. D. G. D. Davidson, PhD.
Revised by Lyra Heartstrings
Courtship
If an infatuated pony is lucky enough to have his affections reciprocated, he and the object of his desire enter into courtship proper, which usually involves a series of discrete events euphemistically called “dates,” a term apparently deriving from the dates marked on a calendar. I have elsewhere discussed the ponies’ fixation with public social events (Davidson 1765), so the reader will be unsurprised to learn that these dates take the form of semi-formal outings. Typical dates involve picnics, restaurant meals, or trips to the theatre. Generally, two ponies date by themselves, but several couples may sometimes go on a date in a group.
Ponies on dates often rub their noses together (Fig. 4). This activity appears to be derived from the mutual nose-sniffing practiced by the more primitive species of Equus; that is to say, by means of nose-rubbing, the lovers memorize each other’s scent. There may also be some relationship between nose-rubbing and the practice of mutual grooming with the lips and incisors, which is still common amongst Arabians, but which most ponies, aside from a small coterie of primitivists, consider deviant (Davidson 1765:78).
Fig. 4: Nose-rubbing in courtship.
Since it is the appearance of the beloved that induces infatuation, as previously described, it is no surprise that looking is considered the most important courtship activity. Courting ponies may spend much of a date gazing steadily into each other’s eyes, and they may sometimes look at each other in this fashion for over an hour at a time. I was allowed to observe two ponies on a date, and my stopwatch indicated that, at one point, they stared at each other for a full seventy-four minutes without speaking or breaking eye contact (Fig. 5). Blinking still occurs during this activity, but its rate appears to be somewhat retarded.
Fig. 5: Courting ponies gazing into each other’s eyes.
I pondered this apparently profound relationship between sight and courtship while taking dinner with Miss Heartstrings in the small apartment we shared. Determined to understand this fascination with mutual gazing, I asked her if she would be willing to look into my eyes for several minutes. She pulled her head back in apparent surprise, and her mouth turned up in a grin, as if she were preparing to treat me with the same scorn to which so many ponies have subjected so many humans, but after I reassured her of my detached, scientific interest, she acquiesced. We spent the next half hour staring across the table at each other in the light of the fireflies dancing in the lamp overhead.
Although ponies have large and decidedly expressive eyes—Miss Heartstrings especially so—and though her pale yellow irises glistened like gold in the dimness, I learned nothing from this exercise.
The next morning, which was a Saturday, Miss Heartstrings surprised me by arranging an interview with Ponyville’s schoolteacher, a certain Miss Cheerilee. Though even by pony standards Cheerilee is an especially gracious hostess, I had not thought I had any reason to visit her. Nonetheless, trusting my assistant, I donned my hat and coat and set out for Cheerilee’s small flat, where she treated me to a sumptuous brunch of typical pony faire—tomatoes, cucumbers, apple cider, and a spinach quiche.
I should pause to mention the disparity in education between the large cities and the rural communities. Although urban centers such as Canterlot, Fillydelphia, Los Pegasus, or Manehatten have sizable and well-funded academies for the training of the young, hamlets like Ponyville cannot maintain such institutions, so they instead have small schoolhouses in which, generally, students of all ages learn under a single educator. The teacher is usually from a city, and she typically arrives in the rural community as a single mare in her late teens or early twenties, looking both to educate foals and perhaps to marry one of the local stallions. Such is Miss Cheerilee, who moved to Ponyville shortly after she completed her academy education in Canterlot (Fig. 6).
Fig. 6: Miss Cheerilee, schoolteacher.
Miss Cheerilee and I chatted about pleasant inanities, such as the scheduled weather and Ponyville’s gossip, before the conversation landed on my topic of interest.
“Have you spoken to Lovestruck yet?” she asked as she got up to pour my third cup of coffee.
“Not yet,” I replied. “I think Miss Heartstrings is trying to arrange it, but Miss Lovestruck seems to be quite busy.”
“Well, she would be, this time of year. Spring, you know.”
“Of course,” I said, though I was unsure what she meant.
She sat down across from me again, and her large smile seemed uncharacteristically strained. “I know you’re trying to write a paper, but . . . do you keep secrets?”
“My research is published in a distant land,” I answered, “and my assistant and I practice the utmost discretion.”
She appeared relieved. Turning to a window, with her gaze distant, she whispered, “I think I had a chance once, but I lost it. Perhaps I should see Lovestruck myself, but I just can’t. Not yet—”
Trying to make as little noise as possible while she gathered her thoughts, I opened my notebook and pulled out my fountain pen.
She laughed and shook her head. “Oh, it’s so silly. I’m so silly. It was too much like a storybook, the single schoolteacher arriving in a small town and meeting a strong, silent, ruggedly handsome farm stallion—I thought it was absurd, so I told myself I’d get over it.”
As I jotted notes, I asked, “Do you mean Big Macintosh?” I was referring to a stallion who worked one of the largest farms in the area. I didn’t say so to Miss Cheerilee, but I knew several mares who had an interest in him.
She sighed. “How did you guess?”
“Your description matches him.”
“I suppose it does.” She shifted in her seat, placed her front hooves on the table, and stared down at them. “He and I became close friends soon after I arrived. He’s very kind, and a good listener, but he doesn’t talk much . . . some of my students tried to convince us to be each other’s very special someponies. That’s terribly inappropriate, of course, and I wasn’t at all happy with it.”
“I can imagine.”
“It gets worse, though. They tried to give us a love potion, but it was actually love poison—”
I frowned and set down my pen on the tabletop.
“All at once,” she said, and her voice became low, almost breathy, “it was like he was the only stallion in all the world, and his eyes—I just couldn’t look away from his eyes. I wanted to lose myself in them, drown in them—”
“The potion they gave you,” I murmured, “it produced the usual effects of initial infatuation?”
“Of what?”
“Of falling in love. Falling in love for the first time.”
“I suppose so, but it wouldn’t end. It never lessened at all. We went on like that for, well, for hours.” Her shoulders slumped. “The same children found the cure, but I can’t help but wonder . . . in the midst of all that, I tried to set things straight. I told Big Mac that I considered him a good friend, just a friend. But sometimes I feel, well, maybe, perhaps if it hadn’t been for the potion—”
She hung her head and was silent for almost a minute. I made further notes and decided to learn more about this so-called love potion.
“I think I made a mistake,” she whispered. “What do you think?”
“I’m afraid I couldn’t tell you.”
She put a hoof to her face again. “He’s in a mane salon quartet, and at one of his performances, when he sang, I actually—this is really embarrassing—I actually faked a faint, hoping he’d notice. I don’t know if he did.”
She lowered her chin to the table. “I guess I could explain everything to him, tell him how I really feel, but after all that happened, perhaps it would just be easier to go to Lovestruck, get it dealt with . . .”
She closed her eyes, and a few tears squeezed out from between her eyelids.
She said nothing else of interest, so after a few further pleasantries, I took my leave.
That evening, I ate a dinner of green salad while Miss Heartstrings read over the day’s notes.
“I didn’t know,” she said.
I paused with my fork halfway to my mouth. “You didn’t? Then why—?”
“She told me she wanted to see you. It wasn’t my idea.”
I frowned and continued eating.
“Everypony knows what you’re up to,” Miss Heartstrings said. “And I guess it’s easier for a pony to tell you about her love than it is to tell the one she’s in love with. Maybe Rarity and Cheerilee wanted you to talk them out of seeing Lovestruck.”
“Then I guess I failed. Who is this Lovestruck?”
Heartstrings looked away from me. “She’s one of Princess Cadance’s. You’ll meet her tomorrow. I got you an interview.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet.” She spread my notes out on the table and passed her hooves over them. “I feel like I shouldn’t know this stuff. I feel like I’m prying into other ponies’ lives. I don’t want to know how Cheerilee feels about Big Mac.”
“Just keep it to yourself.”
“It’s not that easy. You know my friend Sweetie Drops? She likes him, too. Before, I thought it would be great if Sweetie Drops went on a date with him, but now I don’t know what to think.”
“This is merely the burden of an ethnologist. It’s a burden I’ll share it with you.” I slid a hand across the table and laid it over one of her hooves.
She looked into my eyes. I couldn’t read her expression, but she wasn’t smiling, so I quickly pulled my hand away.
Unexpected Difficulties with a Princess
The ponies have a peculiar form of government, whereby they allow only those who have undergone a radical and apparently spontaneous physical transformation to take the mantle of leadership at any level above the local (Davidson 1764a:12-37). Such transformations are known to happen only to females, who are afterwards dubbed “princesses.”
Ponyville, though a small community, currently has a princess in residence, Princess Twilight Sparkle, formerly a unicorn before her transformation. I have interviewed her on several occasions, as she has no significant administrative duties. In fact, she works as Ponyville’s librarian (Fig. 7).
Fig. 7: Princess Twilight Sparkle.
The day after my interview with Miss Cheerilee, knowing that I was scheduled to talk to the mysterious Lovestruck that afternoon, I spent the morning going over my notes and reading from some Equestrian history books I had from the library. I was surprised when Miss Heartstrings walked through the front door and announced, “Princess Twilight wants to see you.”
This sounded less like an offer of information than like an official summons, one that could disrupt my schedule.
“How badly does she want to see me?” I asked. In spite of her high title, there were times when it was safe to ignore Princess Twilight.
Miss Heartstrings stared at the ceiling and furrowed her brow. “Um, at your . . . at your earliest convenience, she said.”
That didn’t sound safe to ignore. I marked my place, closed my book, and took up my pen and notepad. “If I’m not to see Lovestruck until one, I suppose I can see the princess right now.”
I pulled my hat and coat from their pegs and, as I headed for the door, gave Miss Heartstrings a grin as I added, “Best to get it over with.”
The Golden Oak Library is one of Ponyville’s most distinctive landmarks, built as it is into the tissue of a living tree. It is exceptionally well stocked for a library in a rural community, and, I had been told, its catalogue has grown significantly since Princess Twilight took up the position of librarian there. I myself have frequently used this library to augment my research, and I have found the princess exceptionally helpful, if a trifle short-tempered.
I rapped on the front door, and the princess’s assistant, a wingless infant dragon, immediately opened.
“Doctor,” he said, and with a flourish he ushered me in.
“Good morning, Spike,” I replied as I ducked through the door. I doffed my hat and shrugged off my coat, which nearly enveloped the poor little dragon when he took it.
The library’s great room, carved from the tree’s innards, smelled strongly of cut oak, an odor that almost but not entirely masked the scent of musty paper. The princess often kept her draconic assistant busy shellacking the walls and shelves so that the living tree didn’t drip sap on the books.
I was surprised, upon entering, to find Miss Pinkie Pie leaping and skipping and rolling around the room. Miss Pie, as I’ve described elsewhere (Davidson 1766a:22-47), fills a liminal role in equine society. The ponies, able as they are to control the plant growth, animal behavior, and even the weather within their borders, value order above all else; they consider “harmony” the highest principle, of which “discord” is the diametric opposite. In spite of this, or perhaps because of it, ponies allow in their midst certain so-called “party planners” who cultivate outrageous and unpredictable behavior. These party planners, and the chaotic celebrations they organize, seem to serve the purpose of offering the ponies relief from their otherwise highly regimented lives. In my earlier monograph (ibid.), I described these party planners as bacchic functionaries (Fig. 8).
Fig. 8: Party planners in their role as bacchic functionaries.
Princess Twilight is a close friend of Miss Pie and has apparently learned to concentrate even in her presence. With a knit brow and with a pince-nez perched on her muzzle, she stood at a reading stand on the far end of the room, where she was using levitation magic to flip through a heavy tome. When I walked in, she turned her head and peered at me over her glasses.
“Doctor Davidson, have a seat, please,” she said.
Before I knew what was happening, Miss Pie snuck up behind me and, with one foreleg, swept my knees, knocking me backwards. I fell heavily onto an overstuffed velvet cushion that she placed to break my fall.
After laying her glasses on her reading stand, Princess Twilight sat down dog-like, facing me, on a cushion of her own. Her brow was still knit, and I could see now that this was due not to concentration, but to displeasure.
I was startled when Spike pressed a teacup and saucer into my hands, and I was even more surprised when Miss Pie handed me an entire cake covered in orange frosting.
“We had an agreement,” the princess said.
For some moments, I looked down in distress at the cake in my left hand and the tea in my right. At last, I put them both down on the floor and pulled my pen and notebook. “It seems to me, Your Highness, that I’ve honored—”
“I understand research,” said the princess. “I understand learning. I respect what you do.”
“Thank you. The feeling, I assure you, is mutual.” I tried the tea; it was white tea with a hint of almond.
“But I asked you before not to pry into ponies’ private lives.”
I took a long moment to drink, and I finished the tea before I answered her. Miss Pie cartwheeled to my side and snatched up my empty teacup, smashing the cake in the process, and wheeled away. Princess Twilight didn’t take her eyes from me, but her horn glowed, and the cake reassembled itself, like a film moving in reverse.
The room felt warm, so I tugged at my collar. “Everything I do, Your Highness, is in keeping with the code of ethics of the—”
“You don’t have any business asking ponies who they date.” She tapped a hoof on the floor.
Miss Pie curled into a ball, rolled up beside me, and unfolded. Putting a hoof beside her mouth, she hissed to me in a stage whisper, “I once knew a guy who dated a bookworm! It looked okay on paper.”
I blinked. “What?” Flipping open my notebook, I said, “Could you—?”
Miss Pie curled up again and rolled away.
Princess Twilight rolled her eyes. “Never mind her.”
“But this is serious news,” I said, “considering ponies’ typical reluctance to—”
The princess tapped her hoof on the floor again, more firmly. “Never mind her. She’s just being Pinkie Pie. Now, look—”
Miss Pie snapped to her feet, jumped with all hooves at once, and nearly reached the ceiling. “And I know a guy who married a mermare!”
A hint of color entered Princess Twilight’s cheeks.
Miss Pie stretched out on the floor and wiggled her legs in the air. “Aaand I know a girl who danced with a human!”
Now Princess Twilight’s face turned positively crimson. “Pinkie! Could you . . . um . . . let us talk in private?”
Miss Pie leapt to her hooves and gave us a wide grin. “Okee dokee lokee!” Humming to herself, she bounced to the front door, knocked it open with her head, and skipped away into the street.
Princess Twilight put a hoof to her breast, closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and said, “Now—”
“I want to know about these deviant cases,” I said.
Her eyes snapped open. “They are none of your business.”
“So they’re real, then?”
She looked away from me, and the pink returned to her cheeks. “Well, I’m not sure about the bookworm one—”
As if he were working hard to ignore the content of the conversation, Spike walked up, a small smile on his face and an exaggeratedly formal stiffness in his demeanor, and handed me another cup of tea. I took it automatically as I asked Princess Twilight, “But what about the mermare? I know next to nothing about mermares or sea ponies. I’ve had no success in gaining access to Aquastria—”
“You need a letter from the king.”
“I know that.”
“You can’t go anyway. The gill spell won’t work on you, and our submersibles can’t dive that deep.”
“Ah . . . that is a problem. Then I’ll table that for the time being. Who is this mare who danced with a man?”
She clenched her teeth, and her eyes narrowed. “As I just said, that is none of your—”
“You must know her personally.”
Her eyes narrowed further. “There were special circumstances—”
“Perhaps I should hear about those, too.”
She jumped out of her seat, lifted her head back, and shouted, “Perhaps you should mind your own business!”
A full-grown pony, small and gracefully built though she may be, is still a great deal larger than a man, and Princess Twilight, as an alicorn, is larger than a typical pony. My heart leapt into my throat when she jumped up, but, though I could feel a bead of sweat trickling from my left temple, I stayed on my cushion and took a pull on my tea.
Once I returned the cup to its saucer, I said, “So you are the mare in question, I take it.”
Her cushion released a heavy gasp when she fell back onto it. “It was another world,” she said. “I wasn’t myself, and the people there weren’t like you.”
“Ponies tell me they usually fall in love suddenly, upon seeing the beloved for the first time. Did you have this experience?”
She swallowed once. “No.” She frowned, knit her brow again, and, looking over my shoulder, rose slowly to her feet, as if realizing something she’d never considered before. “No, I didn’t. It was . . . it was gradual, like I slowly came to realize—”
I scratched a few more notes and discovered that my pen was running out of ink. “That sounds like a human experience, Your Highness, not like an equine one—that is, if I correctly understand equine experience.”
She mumbled, “That would make sense.” Then she walked to a shelf and began using her magic to pull down books, which she stacked beside her stand. I caught glimpses of a few of the titles: When Love Withers, Exotic Forms of Courtship, and How to Nuzzle a Mare.
It appeared the interview was over, and it also appeared I was off the hook so long as the princess’s attention was occupied with research of her own. I quietly arose, took my coat and hat from Spike, and prepared to leave.
As I stood in the doorway and buttoned my coat, however, I couldn’t resist turning back to the princess and risking one final question.
“Your Highness,” I called, “do you by any chance know anything about this Lovestruck?”
She once again had her pince-nez on her muzzle and her face in a book, but she looked up momentarily and, with a distracted air, said, “Lovestruck . . . ? Oh, Lovestruck. Yes, maybe I should see her myself. It might make it easier . . .”
She trailed off and went back to reading. I pulled the brim of my hat low, tucked my hands in my pockets, and made my way home.
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Looks like Twilight only called him in because his research was personal to her, not the fact that he was breaking any rules.
At first glance it seems pony love is shallow compared to human courtship, but there is more to it then that. The factor that our researcher has failed to take into account is magic. Magic runs everything in that world. So when they look at each other for long periods I theorize that they are in fact connecting on a magical bio-rhythmic level. Something is pulling the puppet strings in their mundane rudimentary life. So when these humans try to date a pony, it doesn't work because the magic is not there...or at least not in the human.
Some bad is going to happen to Mr Davidson. It's like Lovecraft. He/You are getting too close to.... something.
4019429
Though at the same time they seem quite very rude about it.
4017907 Well, that explains it.
I'm...well, not exactly an admirer, but impressed by her work as well. The grimness does get a bit much if not taken in small doses.
4019431
He certainly has done a better job at making something disconcerting than a lot of dark fics I've seen.
Also disconcerting is his apparently unintentional courting of Lyra. It's his job to pay attention to cultural reactions. Is he just oblivious to his own actions? Or is it something more sinister at work, subtly manipulating events to some horrifying conclusion?
4019683
I think that is the joke. The guy is oblivious despite how smart he likes to think he is.
4019594
Ponies are rude. Haven't you seen the show? They can be absolute pricks to their friends.
I keep having to check for the [Dark] tag on this thing.
4019766
4019740
For his callous disregard of potential implications of his actions the protagonist has been sentenced to an eternal tea party with the remnants of Nightmare Moon who now go by the communal name Miss Bunny Wunny Snugglekins.
...
I really hope this story isn't leading up to a terrible horse pun as its conclusion.
So how big are ponies
4019960
I say this big. http://starbat.deviantart.com/art/Williams-Family-Comparative-Heights-430042937
Although I've heard many different interpretations. Some prefer to think of them as half that size, more like average dog-sized, while others might even consider them a little larger, more like real ponies.
I'm loving the academic style of this story. It's funny how a kid's show can inspire such intellectual speculation.
I was especially intrigued by the "staring intently in the eyes for protracted periods" behavior for courting ponies. If visual cues and eye contact are so critical for the initiation of the mating process, then it can become a basis for sexual selection. I've sometimes wondered what could be a scientific explanation for the proportionally large orbits of these fictional ponies, considering they would not need enhanced eyesight for nocturnal navigation, as they are clearly daytime creatures. But if large, expressive eyes are a significant factor in mating success, then clearly this offers an alternate hypothesis for how a species of equine could have developed such large eyes.
Also, I've only just recently read the main series comics, so I much appreciated those references to the bookworm and the mermare. ;)
Oh, I'd say we learned something.
4019960
This story isn't in my "Chronoverse," as I'm trying to hew as closely as I can to canonical material, but I envision them about the size of Shetland ponies, that is, big enough to deserve to be called ponies.
4019740
My own degrees are in anthropology. If I try to put an anthropologist or ethnologist in my stories, he will almost inevitably end up being a clueless windbag. There is no man on Earth more blithely unaware of how real people actually think and act than an anthropologist with his theories.
4019618
Oh, forgot to say: yes, I can't call myself an admirer of Tiptree either. Her worldview and her final actions were horrid. But I do respect her talent, and I appreciate some of her stories. One of them counts among my all-time favorites.
Ouch. The MGS is not going to like that...
I have to say, at times the tone of scientific detachment borders on the almost sociopathic. I mean...
Yeah.
That being said, "bacchic functionary" is a fantastic technical term for the minor chaos avatars that call themselves party planners. A dose of the Dionysian in an otherwise appallingly Apollonian society.
(Also, I didn't know Pinkie had acquired the Morph Ball.)
The more I hear about Lovestruck, the more intrigued I am. Especially the line about her being "one of Cadence's." Is that just figurative, or is there some kind of investment procedure?
In any case, eagerly looking forward to more.
I noticed something. When talking about the humans you've only mentioned males and the problems they've had with mares. Aren't there any cases of females trying to date stallions? I know this is grey area leaning towards red but this story is different from what I've read before and find myself genuinely curious.
4020891
The "small coterie of primitivists" is of course the Ponyville Mutual Grooming Society!
4020135 According to Twilight in the Hearths Warming episode Scootaloo is about four feet from hoof to ear.
4020670 I like that it adds a fear factor to the cuteness
4021257
Of course. I was just commenting on how they'll dislike being called a small coterie of primitivists. Probably the "small" part more than anything.
4019800
I'm... kinda hoping it is.
So, if everything is in the gaze, how do visually impaired ponies find their special muffin?
4023127
I admit that, too me, that really does sound backwards. We don't see that in the animal world aside from some hybridization within a genus. If we are merely talking about biological adaptations, then I would expect adaptations to survive and thrive that were adapted toward reproduction rather than away from it.
I disagree with this statement. There is numerous evidence to the contrary, and most of it places mares close to three and a half feet tall at the crown.
derpicdn.net/img/view/2013/8/9/395227__safe_twilight+sparkle_fluttershy_princess+luna_princess+celestia_spike_equestria+girls_princess+cadance_angel+bunny_spike+the+dog.png
——I get that this is fanfiction so you can make ponies as big or small as you damn please... but in the show, the average mare should be around 3'0"–3'9" tall and weigh 80–120 lbs. Which makes them slightly smaller than a man.
4024040
But there are other factors to consider. The ponies are social, intelligent creatures interacting with other social, intelligent creatures. They aren't always going to react in the most biologically rational way.
4020164
If so, it may beg to question as to how important it is the entire look with the facial structure, such as eyebrows and eyelashes. After all, when you look at Rarity in "MMMystery on the Friendship Express," one can't help but wonder how important it could be in the field of romance.
And with that you've lost me.
Ah. Such a wordsmith. I'm in heaven.
4024040
Would your view change if hippogriffs(sp?) became canon?
In any event I think the recognition of other sapient species would mean some intermingling if only because sapience opens the avenue for other forms of love.
4083655 My Little Lovestruck: Love is Magic
4019431
A los periodistas latinoamericanos les pasa lo mismo.