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My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
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Okay now your teasing us with the Trixie Alicorn thing.
But now I wonder what Trixie name would as a nightmare pony? So far the show gave us Nightmare Moon and Midnight Sparkle and the comics gave us Nightmare Rarity. Hmmmm let me think..... Trixie Nightmoon? Okay bronies brainstorm on this concept.
7615046 Not sure such a subtle thing would be Trixie. Even when she was nuts wearing the alicorn amulet she was still the Great and Powerful Trixie. Maybe when she's notorious enough she'll be known simply as Trixie, because that one word is enough to let everyone know who you're talking about, and to strike fear into their hearts.
7615637 Is Twilight going to have to hear the story of Trixie at some festival-type thing in a few hundred years in a similar vein to Nightmare Moon and Nightmare Night? That would actually be really cool and kinda funny to see her reaction.
I'm loving your story so far (not that I would have continued this far without significant enjoyment), but I do have a few little problems:
1. I can get behind your headcannon on a lack of standing army, it makes some sense (even if it does violate some basic principals of national security, like what happens if Celestia falls, or who comes to help when no one else can (eg. in the event of a natural disaster or something beyond the means of local police/militias, but I don't have a problem with letting that slide). However, there have to be some assets beyond the Wonderbolts for military power. Perhaps having the Royal Guard present would be a little obvious, but a few advisors (even if they are strictly for training) without golden uniforms might be well implemented, especially now that the command structure of the Royal Guard has to know what's up.
2. Intelligence. Everyone (even medieval kings had them) has a defensive intelligence capacity (some sort of security service), I would assume that Blueblood was found out through the efforts of these guys. If they don't exist then I can promise you that all of Equestria's secrets have been leaked (a nation that doesn't have a group dedicated to preventing the loss of its secrets presents a nice target (especially to someone like... oh, I don't know... the duke). Even if they are just a defensive agency, they would likely want to place assets on the ground in Maretania to establish contingencies in case the rebellion failed or if there were other circumstances. Further, everyone has some form of military intelligence (even the Romans had scouts), I assume that the Royal Guard has some form of MI capacity so that they can gather information before the Royal Guard and/or Celestia enter an area. They would likely want to place their own assets on the ground, if not to gather information to support the rebellion, then to at least provide an assessment of the situation to Celestia. Side note: they might also want to go help train military intelligence assets for the rebellion, or even just work as analysts for Twilight
3. Military. For the past century or so, war has been broken down into four components; grand strategic, strategic, operational and tactical.
Grand strategy is a guiding notion of what you are doing. The better defined it is the better a change you have of winning the war. The problem I have is that your rebels (and the Grand Army from what we've seen) don't have a clear vision of what they want to do. Grand strategy can generally be summed up in a cleaver catchphrase. Here we've got, "Take what lands we can until we are capable of sustaining a direct attack on the duke. Hope that everything works out. Rebuild nation." Which is all well and fine, but I have to ask by what means these will be done, will you be fighting a war of attrition, overwhelming force, insurgency, combined? How do you intend to rebuild the nation after? This needs to be defined at a leadership level, which is something that I would hope Celestia would know and pass on.
Strategy is how you execute your grand strategy. It dictates where troops are marching, what they are doing, what targets are considered acceptable, etc. This has been loosely defined, but is overall fine, considering the state of the rebellion. The problem here is that the rebellion's strategy is self-damaging; it isn't flexible enough, right now the enemy is parked in Prance and expecting the rebels to come attack Prance, grand strategy says that the duke is the goal, strategy should say that Prance is an expensive endeavour and that redirecting to take the duke might be a more prudent course of action. Grand strategy is generally decided by politicians (though that does depends where you are), but strategy is decided by generals. Whereas grand strategy may be inflexible and not change for years, the strategies employed must be decided on a month-by-month basis (at the longest, strategy should really be evaluated each week, more often if new intelligence indicates the situation has evolved)
Operational level is small-scale strategy. If you decide to have an insurgency, operational-level concerns would dictate how that insurgency plays out. It's pretty vague here, because of the inherent integration between strategic and operational concerns, as well as tactical and operational concerns that make it a point where there isn't a line, but a vague misty area in which tactics somewhere become strategy and vice-versa.
Tactical level is how things happen on a unit scale. If strategy says 'take this area', operational-level planning says 'this brigade is to take that hill', then tactics dictate how that hill is taken by the components of that brigade.
There is also another aspect to consider; the enemy. The enemy's morale must be taken into consideration at each stage of planning. At the grand strategic level you must know who can be pushed further; you or your enemy, before losses become too great for the political challenges to be overcome. At the strategic level you must consider the enemy's ability to react and change and how they are likely to do so. At the operational level morale is vital; this is where your enemy's morale will be decided (i.e. how you intend to change their morale). At the tactical level, operational considerations and plans must be implemented to deal with the enemy's morale (psychological warfare, deception, loudness of your approach, etc.).
4. Economics. Wartime economies are great for mercenaries. Everyone knows about the war, so all the mercenaries must know about the war. This is a rebellion in a backwards country; there should be more mercenaries than anyone wants to keep track of, and they will likely be approaching the winning side. This falls into the advisors thing; a lot of them will likely be offering training in exchange for money. Banditry will also be a concern, especially in recently liberated areas where the rule of law is shaky at best. There's also the fact that the Marc is probably suffered from massive inflation as food and material shortages begin to present, faith is lost in the government, looting and criminal activity increase, etc. You mentioned that the army hasn't been paid, which would indicate something to this effect, yet everyone is still living as if there has been no change in monetary value (that or the value of the Marc could increase due to the money spent on the war, but I find that highly unlikely).
Please, don't take any of these criticisms as a bad thing, I am throughly enjoying the story and only want to help it get better.