• Member Since 6th Oct, 2011
  • offline last seen Jan 1st, 2018

The Equestrian Gentlecolt


E

Princess Celestia helps to fill in some of the blanks between the founding of Equestria and the present day. A story of why "alicorn" has two seemingly very different meanings, and how the world's two Alicorn Ponies came to be.

Chapters (1)
Comments ( 26 )

That certainly is an interesting take on the subject.
Very well written and amazing from my end.
-Randomosity19

Bravo, sir. I wish my random thoughts were this awesome. :eeyup:

Well, fancy that! A wonderful explanation that actually makes sense in regards of the name 'alicorn', but yet doesn't quite answer how genetics were scrambled so unusually to even create Celestia and Luna...
Either way I don't really care, because this provides a unique view on how they came to play such a crucial role and strengthen the ties with each 'tribe' and truly unite ponies.

Great work,
Frostwyrm

Hmm, so alicorn itself is simply the essence of the different talents of the three races. And an "alicorn" is just an embodiement, persay, of those three talents. That's an interesting concept, and actually quite believable, although the way that you phrase it almost makes it come across as it being possible for anypony to become alicorn, yet we know this isn't possible. Any one of the three normal races doesn't have the innate alicorn of the other two races, so a unicorn can't strengthen the alicorn of a pegasus, for example. Or, at least, if it is possible to do this, we don't know about it. Celestia and Luna were exceptions because they were born this way, while everypony else is born into a specific type of alicorn, and those like Cadence aren't "true" alicorns. Unless they also have the potential to become "true" alicorns like Celestia and Luna. Now that I think about it, were Celestia and Luna like Cadence originally, but became something more through their growth? It would make sense, or at least it would to my mind.

Never mind my ramblings on the subject, I enjoyed the story, and I understand the message you are trying to get across. It's nice to read something a little different and worded so well.

It gives a good possible theory of how Luna and celestia came into power. It was a nice read and I would recommend this to all of my brony friends that happen to like the two princeses.:twilightsmile:

Too bad Cadence...

Bravo, good sir. Have a moustache.:moustache:

+1 for bucking the trend and not describing Celestia and Luna as all-powerful goddesses who've existed since the beginning of the world. I don't know why so many fics go down that path.

-1 for describing Cadence as an alicorn. She's a unicorn. She doesn't have wings. Those were just an... an... animation error! Yeah, a weird recurring animation error that accidentally made it look like she had wings. Haha! :pinkiecrazy:

I reject the weird alternate universe where Cadence has wings. In my world Derpy can be called "Derpy", Vinyl Scratch's eyes are a beautiful ruby red, and the only alicorns are Celestia, Luna and Nyx.

I like it!

Props for describing Cadence as a genetic aberration who isn't actually an alicorn like Celestia and Luna, that is my preferred backstory for her.

SPOILER ALERT!!! (But just one comment rather than my usual "Semi-Where-I-Read" style).


Thought you were going to end it with a more explicit bit about being empowered by the belief's of the little ponies, saying that they are the alicorn of the pony races themselves, the tool through which their belief works good for all of Equestria. Instead it comes off as more like it means that every part of their body is infused with their OWN magic, every hair as indestructible as the bones of an earth-pony, each primary feather as powerful as the horn of a weather-working unicorn, etc. Not sure which your intent was.

511189 / 511923 / 512855
Cadance/Cadence is an odd beast, especially since from our side of the Fourth Wall, her wings were apparently added late in the development process. To fit her into this story's canon, I would consider her to be a unicorn with some pegasus in her but without an earth pony ancestor ("niece" being an adoptive title, not a literal relationship). Thus, she wouldn't have the unique potential to "become alicorn" that the combination of the three seemed to grant Celestia and Luna.

The requirement that all three types be present, then, hints further at a forgotten shared ancestry between the tribes. Was there a time when whole tribes of alicorn ponies walked the earth? Well, that's another story, I suppose.

517479
Yeah, that's a part of the idea that didn't make it all the way out in the writing. While I wasn't going to state explicitly that they were the alicorn of the pony races (interesting idea as well, though!), and I did mean it as their entire bodies becoming their own alicorn, I definitely also wanted to get across the point you mentioned. Much of their power is derived from the love and respect of their people, and they are shaped by it.

Kind of like a changeling, if you think about it. There's another interesting thought to file away for later.

509715
So far, device heretic had the best theory I've seen on pony genetics. Something about pony semen being a combination of Chemical X, the t-Virus, and the mutagen from TMNT. I can't quote the blog post because it's not there anymore, but the attached illustration was a bottle of Code Red.

A slow clap is in order I do believe.
I can dig the 'most humble of origins', another that this idea appears in would be in Paradise, only they started as earth ponies there and grew the missing appendages.
I know I had believed (for a while) that they probably were "the Lords" incarnate, but I like this kind of idea better. Sure "King is a bit of a step down from God" but it has a certain charm to it that fits better.

555308
Of course you do. Mine doesn't have Twilight and Celestia making out.

555638
I think we can all agree that it lends a sense of seriousness and grandeur to the whole process

Azu

That was a great read. I Loved it! :pinkiehappy:

It feels like this could fit in well to explain those simple curiosities about alicorn. :raritywink:

This is both different from and quite similar to my own interpretation of the princesses. I've always favored the idea that they aren't all-powerful goddesses, and had fairly normal lives for a while. However, I usually think of them as becoming alicorns through transformation, rather than being born different at all. Since I've never done much writing and couldn't put my story into words well enough, I made a long comic a while back in which Luna and Celestia started out as regular unicorns, then ascended, so to speak, by their connection to the ponies of the world.

Cadence (I refuse to spell her name with two As) complicates things, but I came to the same conclusion you gave here, that she's a pegasus-unicorn hybrid. Of course that'd probably mean there are other hybrids out there too, but any earth pony combination wouldn't look visibly different from a typical unicorn or pegasus, so would go unnoticed. Although there's also a part of me that rejects the idea that Cadence is anything but an ordinary unicorn like any other, and those wings were just an illusion. It's annoying to know she wasn't supposed to have wings, but just got them awkwardly shoved on for marketing.

Jesus Christ, that story was both incredibly brilliant and somehow very sad

Simply Smashing! :moustache: Very well done!

Interesting idea. very cute short piece but I gotta admit the line "We became the living ideals of female beauty," rubbed me the wrong way. It made them sound sort of arrogant as well as the whole issue of any sort of beauty standard varies wildly from pony to pony surely. :derpytongue2:

845984
When you're an immortal goddess with a razor-sharp wit and a heavenly body (*snerk*), it can be hard to state the truth without sounding a little arrogant. What I think she meant to imply is that every pony wanted to be like them, specifically because they were who they were, and thus everything they did or were became the thing to emulate. And we still see that today in supermodel ponies like Fleur de Lis, and I hear there's a picture of a mare with similar proportions in the Ponyville Beauty Salon somewhere (although I haven't been able to dig up the episode to confirm it).

846269 *Laughs* touche oh punny one :rainbowlaugh: Yeah I can accept that, jus got my dander up a touch. I could totally see fleur or someone similar up at the spa. i'll keep an eye out.:rainbowdetermined2:

Ahah!! This mainly caught my interest because me and my brother are constantly arguing over the meaning of "alicorn." We both acknowledge the obvious definition of the unicorn's horn, but because neither of us is entirely sure where the term originated in this fandom to refer to Luna and Celestia, or who else uses it, he refuses to let me us it even in reference to this fandom. Anyway, that's just why I clicked over - alicorn on my mind. :unsuresweetie:

Anyway. More then anything, I like the "origin" thing in this. I don't like the idea of Luna and Celestia being around forever. I don't like the idea that they were always around, and I don't like the idea of them being immortal. No idea if that's your belief, seeing as it really wasn't a big deal to this fic, but I really, really did appreciate the concept behind their genetics and conception, and growing up, etcetera.

-Dash

1549948
I'm glad you enjoyed it! Although I've entertained many possible origin stories for the princesses, and do like exploring the idea of them as minor deities, I honestly think that established canon supports a background like this one the best.

As for the word itself, I'm not entirely sure how it got associated with winged unicorns. All I know is that its history goes back to before FiM; I had encountered alicorns in at least two RPGs before FiM came around and I heard the term applied to the princesses. I imagine it stuck so solidly here just because it sounds so much cooler than "pegasus unicorn" or "pegacorn".

If any fan made backstory for them became cannon, I'd want it to be this one.

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