In his influential analysis of the coup d'etat that would become known as the Rutting Revolution, Curly Marks wrote that history repeats itself — "the first time as tragedy, the second time as Prince Blueblood."
Marks actually used other words in place of the name, but this is a family-friendly publication.
* * * * *
This story is a sprawling literary mash-up of Prince Blueblood, the French Revolution, linguistic homicide, male suffrage, Prince Blueblood, educational blackmail, epically bad puns, and Prince Blueblood. Also a story about how to be a hero when you're rotten to the core. But mostly, Blueblood.
First-place winner of the "History Repeats" writeoff * Featured on Equestria Daily
"Highly Recommended (Top 15 Stories)" by Titanium Dragon * "Highly Recommended" by PresentPerfect * Rated "Definitely Read This" by Super Trampoline
"★★★★" from Louder Yay * Other word of mouth
A shout-out and thank you to everyone who read/enjoyed/critiqued it for the writeoff competition; to Titanium Dragon for the early signal boost that made me realize I'd better publish this ASAP rather than getting snarled up in my usual edit cycles; and to nemryn for this joke in Footnote 12.
Sorry about the delay in posting; there was a bunch of back-and-forth with the story approvers over the placement of footnotes.
The linguistic sickle and rhetorical daggers are truly a thing of beauty.
4801576
Also it doesn't count if you make the first post yourself.
4801576 Seriously? They rejected a great story because they didn't like how you did your footnotes? Who is this "they", anyway?
4801585
You saw it in the brief gap between when I thought, "I never made a first comment for my author's notes and now the story is live … GOTTA POST SOMETHING" and when I ninja'd in the comments now visible there.
Pfft, Mr. Speedy.
4801609
That is exactly what happened. It was resolved without drama, however, and so I do not want to unnecessarily stir anything up. Props to Obselescence for the assist, because Obs is a genuinely cool person.
So beautiful! Blue blood doing the right thing for all the wrong reasons
A stopped clock may be right twice a day, but a Blueblood in motion is right... well, we haven't seen it yet, but we'll know it when it happens.
And so comes the right to free speech, cunningly disguised as the right to tell Prince Blueblood exactly what you think of him.
How many times do you think Prince Blueblood has to accidentally promote and/or defend freedom before he starts realizing that he gets more and more positive attention for that than he does for being, well, Blueblood?
blueblood is a trainwreck i just can't look away from
Bloody brilliant! I must say, that while the whole thing is hilarious, I am especially tickled by the implication that Blueblood's going to end up like Napoléon II; in the future everypony will remember him as some great champion of freedom and justice, while the part where he's a poncy git gets swept under the rug.
Also, digging the footnotes. Very Pratchettesque.
Blueblood...the greatest unwitting hero of liberty in Equestrian history. Who said good things couldn't come in wrongly addressed packages?
Footnotes are truly a beautiful thing.
You wrote this? Seriously? I am pleasantly surprised. But you replied to me! You led me astray! Grr, that was just mean.
I really don't know how to feel about this.
On the one hand, what he's trying to accomplish is completely whack. On the other, he's at least somewhat aware how idiotic he's being, and that must suck big time. I feel sorry for him.
Well, at least one aunt realised what's going on with him.
4802465
That would require him to actually ever figure out what was going on.
But let it never be said that he is a useless idiot.
Mors ex pun.
Number eight was a cringer.
Fantastically done from start to finish. Blueblood's sisters were an especially delightful treat. This was a wonderful tale of doing the right thing for all the wrong reasons. Thank you for it, and may no one raid your lexicographic armory.
The biggest crime in history is that one can't upvote this story monce*.
*Translator's note: more than once as according to Blueblood
wat.
Proper response, "Why yes, it certainly is 'little'!"
BURRRRRRRNNNNNNNN!!
If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, clearly the road to heaven is paved with bad ones.
4802004 When the sky breaks and the already-frozen hell descends from the darkness between the stars, granting flight to all manner of animals whose movement through the air destroys the very laws physics in their wake, enabling monstrosities from being the conception of man or pony to ooze into reality?
Anyways, wow. This is quite possibly the most offensive and stupid Blueblood I've ever read.
Although I think this story would have ended a bit sooner if Luna had known about the droit du seigneur part of Blueblood's... idea. And it would come nearly as soon if Shining Armor had heard of it.
Ended with a funeral.
Sooooooo, if you're a blithering idiot who gets lucky for making a terrible decision and things miraculously work out... the ends justify the means...
*thinks*
Ok, I'm going to go nuke Pyongyang right now! I am acting with righteousness in my heart!
*Seriously, was this tongue-in-cheek? I hope to god it is, because I'm terrified that anyone is naive enough to think this way in reality.*
4802004 Great advances in civil rights die when idiots lead the charge.
4805497
I hope you didn't not read it as a result of that; it is a great story. I added it to that group because, well, it seemed appropriate? Also I couldn't find a generic Prince Blueblood group.
4802004 Exactly the phrase I was thinking of.
4805226
Given Blueblood's jerkward resolution utterly fails despite his best efforts and the story makes no pretense of him being at all anything beyond a dunce who'll hang himself if you give him enough rope- a sympathetic one but still a dunce-
Why yes this story was completely and utterly serious about every point it made. It should be taught in sociology classes. This is the new manifesto of our times.
This may be the snootiest fanfic I've ever read and I love it.
4801576
Also, this looks promising, re: footnotes.
Prince Blueblood, the most idiotic pioneer of civil rights in Equestrian History.
Just thought of this for fun:
1.000 years later...
The young foal Prince Blueblood sat in front of the statue of his ancestor, Prince Blueblood. His sulking gradually died down as his aunt Luna told him the story. "Auntie Luna," he began, deep thought on his face as he struggled to construct his next sentence. "If not really great grandfather was so..." He tried to look for the word. "Idiotty-" Luna stifled a giggle. "-how did he get all that great stuff done?"
Luna thought for a few moments. "He acted with righteousness in a part of his heart-" A small part, to clarify. "-and the ponies of Equestria reaped a great bounty. Thou canst do so also, if thou wouldst put thy heart into it."
The young foal thought about this deeply, although in reality that deep thought was just him trying to process the statement. Then his face brightened. "Then I know what I'm going to do!" he exclaimed, and Luna's face brightened. "I'm going to get foals to tell their parents what to do!" He skipped off to come up with his amazing plan before Luna could even register what he'd just set to doing. And then she ran.
-Spirit
So, the sole guard member who participated in the first day of the revolution was named Inside Job. Beautiful.
Ahh, I see what you did there. If the younger sister is Daring, I suppose that means that older sister is Ditzy.
4802004
If he'd just stop finding new and exciting ways to screw up, he could keep making the same mistakes forever, and end up being right on occasion!
4805226
You know, it's funny you point that out, because in hindsight it's true: the moral core of this story is probably the most hardened, cynical, reprehensible thing that I've written. The Aesop is so broke it can't afford the -n. I think that's my politics voice talking.
A lot more terrible things happen to the characters in Hard Reset 2, and the ponies act a lot more shockingly in Social Lubricant, but those stories come from a fundamentally pony core. Good things result from good actions. Ponies grow and sacrifice and find what they need. Morally, this is the nightmare Kafka antiparticle of that, so of course it's among the lightest of my lighthearted comedies.
I'd like to think that Celestia's master plan here was to give Blueblood a moment, a single shining moment of redemption, to justify his existence after decades of being a waste of breathable air. Or perhaps to get some good out of him while letting him humiliate himself so completely that he'd discredit himself and neutralize his ability to further wreck the country. Any "morals" involved were spun out of whole cloth to get him to go along with the plan.
… I'll keep telling myself that.
Everybody's saying the footnotes remind them of Terry Pratchett, but they feel slightly different to me. More like the ones in Will Cuppy's The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody. And that is a very good thing.
By an odd coincidence, I happen to call mine Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.
4807094
I am so glad someone caught both of those.
Writing this story firmly embedded within my headcanon the idea that Ditzy is secretly a princess. I am totally reusing that somewhere.
That was really quite fun. Gotta love a Blueblood who is mostly harmless and accidentally very helpful.
4807115 I had to stop reading for a moment and wait for the laughter to stop when I saw Inside Job go by.
4804386
You know, now that you mention it, my Chekov's Gun seems to have gone missing.
Oh well, I figure it'll turn back up …
4802465
I take back what I said in 4807104. The moral core of this story is Celestia dragging him kicking and screaming into finally doing something right for the first time. Now that he finally has one of those under his belt, albeit accidentally, that process of carrot and stick can begin.
4806931
Hee! Thank you — I love these little comment continuations! (Even got a collection for them and everything …)
It certainly does run in the family.
Thoroughly enjoyable. Even the part about the kama, which made me want to grab your footnotes and shake them up and down a lot. We really need a group for Dry Footnotey Humor.
4807104 You know, it was the same questionable moral of "Daring Don't".
Dash almost got Daring killed, but when she stopped Ahuizotl by sheer cartoonish luck, Dash was rewarded by getting a self-insert!
Really, that episode was like some bad fanon or like some plan by an obsessed fanboi stalker to get a celebrity to fall in love with him by engineering an accident from which to 'save' the celebrity.
In a more realistic setting, Daring would have told Dash to never bother her again, and then stopped writing when she finally realizes that writing about your exploits when your archenemies are still alive and coming after you is probably an incredibly stupid idea.
Equestria later invaded Saddle Arabia to steal their oil!
Only to find out there was none since Equestria is a magical land created by the goddess Faust and is actually only 4 years old and thus has no ancient geological layers...
4802573
Do you realize you've just rewritten my story in 10 words? That's a magnificent compression ratio.
4802597
My legal team has advised me that, if this story has given you lasting atrial trainwrecks, I need to simultaneously advise you to see a doctor and serve you with a disclaimer that this story is sold as-is and its purchase is strictly at the reader's risk.
4803210
mylittlefacewhen.com/media/f/rsz/mlfw3030_small.jpg
Technically, I just guessed who the author might be. I apparently suck at guessing.
4807113
Ack! My atrial trainwreck! brb
I have made it a personal goal of mine to casually use the phrase "dirty cricket" at some point in the near future.
I can get behind this interpretation of Blueblood. He's still an asshole, of course, but assholey in a way that doesn't make me completely hate him. Minus the "trying to pass a law forcing mares to have sex with him whenever he asks" thing, mind you. But the way he just can't wrap his head around why everyone else finds the idea disgusting is kind of endearing. Like a dog that doesn't get why people never let him sniff their crotches.
Enjoyable read! I had only just guessed at how obnoxious Blue Blood really is. Thanks.
4807164
I just got a new idea for what Blueblood's special talent may be. His compass cutie mark symbolizes his ability to have no idea where he's going, but still find a way through. We can imagine this saving his princely career on multiply hilarious occasions.
4807241
Having few to no redeeming traits can make for a useful character in a story.
Also, double negatives aren't necessarily wrong, and I was being somewhat silly. My point was actually "I hope you read this story, because it is really, really good."
Out of curiousity, why have you never published this story? It won another write-off, but I don't see it on your profile anywhere. Am I missing something, or did you really never post it to FIMFiction?
4807104
So now Celestia is using Napoleon's equally idiotic descendant to right that particular civil rights issue. Honestly, that kind of, I want to say maneuvering, seems very much like her. 
Well, history isn't exactly exempt of idiots who did the right thing for all the wrong reasons. But perhaps more to the point, what we see here might be Celestia righting a wrong from generations ago, using the descendant of the catalyst to do it, while also perhaps making some use of him. The implication here in the story being that After Napoleon made his little war, despite it ultimately resulting in as much good as bad (arguably more, even if the bad was pretty awful), Celestia or Parliament or both decided to remove suffrage from a full half of the population. (And for the motion to go to war to have passed, at least some of the female population would have voted for it.) Yes, Napoleon made a bad call, and yes, the stallions who voted for it made a pretty boneheaded call themselves, but unless you want to try and sell me that afterwards, the female voting population never made a stupid decision, I may have to call shenanigans.
Maybe it's not so much, "if you're an idiot, you can do something truly stupid but it's okay because it all works in the end", but rather, "if you're really good at long term planning, you can get idiots to accomplish great things."
Celestia, you're a sly one.
VIVA LA REVOLUCIÓN!
Or however the hell is it written.
Fun little thing, I have a hard time deciding whether the story itself of the footnotes are better
4807164 *squee* Senpai noticed me!