Chapter 9
The magical poison in the food lulled Cadence into a deep sleep. When she woke up four weeks later, Flurry was the ruler of the Crystal Empire. She'd gotten her cutie mark: a crystal heart and a crown.
Flurry loved her mother.
But she didn’t give the kingdom back.
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Technically this is a happy ending... I suppose.
Dang, first Archetypist and now this. Did you guys plan to release your final chapters at the same time?! And both such...tough to swallow conclusions. Dang.
Did not expect this ending, that's for sure! (Not a bad thing, just actually unexpected!)
May have already said this, and I forgot or missed it, but is there going to be a sequel, or is this the end-end?
9570956
There's a sequel. And Cheval does get unpetrified at some point (ponies get better from that).
9570963
Looking forward to it.
Thank you for writing
That ending.
Game of Thrones, Crystal Empire Edition.
No no no!! I need more! How long until the next?!
9570963
Neat, looking forward to it! And seeing how Flurry handles power, and Shining Armor's whole....him-ness in all of this.
And Flurry Heart goes ruthless at the end, betrays her mother and her sister. Figure she'll release Cheval sometime after she's crushed the changing queen and needs to install a different queen in place as a puppet ruler.
9570963
You said there'd be a happy ending. This is not a happy ending!
9571004
There were some last moment edits.
In the initial draft, Cheval escapes, and she and Flurry reconcile their difference. But given everything that Cheval did in the story, I couldn't write a version of Flurry Heart that would really be okay with her.
9570998
Is it really a betrayal? I think it feels more like she defended the Crystal Empire from a coup. And yes, in the process, she let her mom get taken off the throne, but in doing so saved her from changeling enslavement -- not to mention neatly resolving the question of "what's going to happen to make her take the throne" in a way that forces destiny's hoof with as little trauma as possible.
... And now she's going to give Amaryllis a rude gesture and drag the world into a giant bloody northern war. Hooray, everypony wins!
Why does every story in this series hurt so much to read?
Why couldn't I stop?
I was holding out for a happy ending in this chapter... I'm so happy it isn't.
This whole series has been simply superb, feel free to keep it up.
... you pulled it off. I didn't think you could and then you did.
I honestly did not think of this particular outcome. I think I did this because I did what everyone else did: I forgot about Flurry Heart.
And I see now better how Equestria managed to persist for a thousand years, but this leaves me wondering why Celestia and Luna would not agree to intervening back when Cheval was first brought to the Empire. Was it because they felt it would really be bad for the kingdom? Or was it because they felt Cadence needed to learn how to solve her own problems?
Or was it because they knew it was the only way Flurry would be able to fulfill her destiny?
9571014
Honestly i feel like you are right and the thing is, this is the best solution cause if I was flurry. I would have her kept as stone until I could resolve the biggest issue that is causing chevel to behave so reckless which is taking out Amaryllis. Cause if she really wanted to kill chevel she would of but didn't.
9571074
Flurry does intend to restore her sister at some point. Cheval will get un-petrified in the sequel.
But it's exactly like Double said. While Flurry may, one day, forgive Cheval for her crimes, she will never forget. Cheval is a dangerous predator and needs to be watched as such.
I missed it if it was there, but presumably Flurry got her cutie mark at some point?
9571098
Implied but never explicitly stated.
Meh. I'll add it.
9571087
Feel like she would be suicidal or stuck in a guilded cage under the burden of guilt and family or maybe both when she is finally released.
Needs a Dark tag. I’m disappointed with the outcome and the characters.
Wow, what a massive chapter dump and ending, which rings so true. I've very interested to see where everything goes next!
9571399
Blehp
I spent the last couple days actually dreading the release of these chapters (to the point where I actually had difficulty sleeping Monday night), since there were a limited number of ways the fic could possibly go in and still make narrative sense, and none of them were good. By good I don't mean in the emotional sense, but rather the writing sense. A story like, for example, Pet Semetary does not have a good ending in that nothing positive is occurring, but it is still narratively good because it fits the overall tone of the story and does not require character assassination or contrivances to pull off.
You did not disappoint. That is, I got the ending I expected. I held out hope for something better - I'm very much a believer in dum spiro spero - but I accepted that realistically given your comments and the development of this story, an actually good ending (in both the emotional and narrative sense) wasn't coming.
It clashes badly with the tone, theme, and conclusions of the show, of course, but we knew that going in and plenty of fics in the fandom do that - part of the point of fanfiction is to see the characters or world we know in a different light. What's worse is that it clashes badly with the tone, theme, and conclusions of your own previous fics. This doesn't feel like a natural continuation of The Third Wheel or Courtesans. It feels like someone read those fics, decided they liked the "dark" tone of them, and then went completely overboard writing this one while missing the fundamental theme of forgiveness and positivity, the idea that you have to earn your happy ending but it can be earned, in both.
But worse, it uses the worst plot contrivance in the history of mankind, the idea that you fight fate. Flurry Heart was always going to sit on the throne. Cheval was always going to overthrow her mother. Cadance can't change, Shining Armor is useless, and so on. The thing is that this theme was not present in the previous two stories, and in particular by ending Courtesans on such a positive-if-shakey note you have basically turned A Foreign Education into a giant spitball in the eye of anyone who was stupid enough to think that things could have ended any differently. It’s one thing to build a narrative around futility; I might not personally like it but I can still appreciate its technical merits or messages (the futility of fighting fate is present in most mythological stories, for example, but I still appreciate and enjoy, say, the film The Prince of Egypt). It’s another entirely to dramatically shift gears into it after establishing the idea of being able to fight fate and change who you are in previous works. Double Time can change who she is and what she was born into. Light Step can be less of a bitch. Why can’t Cheval not be a predator? Why can’t Cadance or Twilight change who they are?
I have to go to work for nine hours now so I'll be bringing this to a close with a final note: I've also spent the past few days reading over the rules of this site since I might believe in holding out for the best, but I also believe in preparing for the worst.
Plagiarism is defined in the site rules as "taking someone else's words and presenting it as your own" - which naturally means that as long as the work is not presented as my own, it's not plagiarism. Similarly, the site does not award special "copyright" status to characters, even original characters of an author's creation.
Basically, this means that I don't need your permission to use Amaryllis, Cheval, Double Time, or anyone else, as long as I make it clear that I am not their original creator and direct people to that original creator, and as long as I don't lift words directly from stories they appear in. This makes sense, of course, since broadly that's what we're all doing with the show's characters, and even with regards to fics since I doubt that, for example, Dakari King Mykan has given permission for people to use the characters of My Brave Pony: Believing is Magic in the countless fix-fics that have been written.
So, I'm taking them, in two forms. First, they'll appear in my Lunaverse series, albeit all of them under different names, mostly because I've decided to only use insect anatomy names for changelings. Amaryllis will be called Alula or something instead. But dialogue and description will make it clear who they're supposed to be, and author's notes will make it even clearer than that.
Second, I'm writing a fix-fic for this. It'll pick up right after Cheval steps off the train in the Crystal Empire. I anticipated things ending more-or-less like this, and I’ve been plotting out something better in my head for the past few days.
I don't delude myself into thinking that it'll be some great revolutionary overthrow of this fic or anything. It won't get as many readers. But it's something that needs to happen, on principle.
Oh, and of course, I won't be checking out the sequel to this. Or anything else you write.
Remember how a few days ago I said I wasn't at a "fuck you I'm out" or anywhere near it?
Fuck you, I'm out.
Chapter 7:
"poked Cheval with hoof until her"
Missing word?
"Changelings shells turn black when"
"Changelings' shells turn black when"?
"been worse if you said nothing"
"been worse if you'd said nothing"?
Are you deliberately not capitalizing "mom" in these places where it's being used in place of "Cadence"?
(And a bit later, "dad" for Shining Armor as well.)
(Oh, and there's some in the next chapter too, it looks like, so I'm guessing it is deliberate. I'll leave this comment just in case, though.)
"Congratulations, you’ve ended mom’s rule."
I wonder what exactly the chain of events was? There are a number of possibilities, I think...
"Cheval’s gazed bored into"
"Cheval’s gaze bored into"?
"a nursery worker.” Double went"
"a nursery worker,” Double went"?
"“Yes!” She snapped"
"“Yes!” she snapped"?
...Weeeell. :D
Chapter 8:
"Flurry thought, well."
Hm. Wonder which particular thing Cheval was talking about there, that would have a bearing on this particular matter...
"Cadence’s choked up, her voice"
"Cadence choked up, her voice"?
"I was going to take me with her."
"I was going to take her with me."?
...Well!
Chapter 9:
...And so many questions left unanswered. :D
Okay, and going back and replying to old comments before new ones here:
9570236
Well, this may be a bit out of date now, but:"What, is Equestria supposed to be 19th century Imperial China or something?"Imperial Chine has come to my mind in this discussion with you, yes."how did Equestria last for 1,000 years?"...Imperial China did last a long time.I still don't think Celestia is necessarily as much of an idiot as you seem to think she must be just for pursuing this sort of foreign policy. I think she's capable of seeing the flaws and risks and deciding to take this course anyway.Ah, er, reading your last comment on this story, I'm guessing you'd rather not continue this conversation. I afraid I don't seem to be understanding why this story has given you such strong negative emotions, but I'm sorry about that.
9570719
That was over a decade ago, though, wasn't it?
9570731
Ah, thank you; I wasn't aware (hadn't previously considered that) those fell within that particular category of badness, but it does make sense.
(Not, of course, that I'd previously thought it was just peachy keen for force someone into that situation, but I hadn't considered the connections tying it into rape rather than it just being its own kind of issue.)
9570963
"There's a sequel."
Oh, good! :D
"And Cheval does get unpetrified at some point (ponies get better from that)."
...It seems like there are a number of ways that could be interpreted, though. :D
(Just a few points? Petrification wears off ponies naturally over time? How long? And how, if at all, does it wear off changelings? Or is that even what you meant? :))
Ah, and aye, as 56 says, thanks! Quite excellent work from you, as usual!
9570993
Don't forget the likely massive war. Because Amaryllis might treat Flurry's coup and Equestria's intervention in two ways: by giving in and seeking a settlement... or by throwing everything she has in too. Including the crystal ponies on her side, some of whom might have rallied to Flurry but some of whom might rally against her due to the whole "coup using mind control magic on crystal ponies and petrifying her enemies-slash-family-members" thing. And if it's war, well... see the Sombra timeline from the show, for a start.
9571014
Ah, thanks for the information. I did wonder if some things had been tweaked in presentation based on feedback. Though it sounds like you may be referring to something more in the writing process, as the story did some things you weren't fully expecting on the way to the ending?
9571016
Of course, there are probably people wondering whether Cheval and Flurry didn't arrange this together, with Cheval taking the fall for the coup and most of the blame but just happening to leave Flurry in a position to take power. And Cheval is a changeling; who knows if she really was defeated, or just slipped away and met up with Flurry to toast their success later?
"... And now she's going to give Amaryllis a rude gesture and drag the world into a giant bloody northern war. Hooray, everypony wins!"
Hooray! :D
And depending on how far Flurry's newly-acknowledged talent for ruling the Crystal Empire extends, there might be a lot more winning in the future! :D
9571087
"Cheval is a dangerous predator and needs to be watched as such."
Also, a dangerous predator currently pregnant with a thousand more potential dangerous predators.
Or potential very useful assets.
Or potential ordinary reformed-changeling citizens.
Or all of the above...
I imagine that that's not an overlooked complication in deciding when and how to release her.
edit:
Oh, and by the way, does this series/universe have a name?
All I need is a sequel where Flurry Heart kicks the shit out of Bitch Bug Queen and I'll be happy.
9571452
I have such a strong negative reaction to this story because it is atonal compared with the last story, a bad sequel. Courtesans is a well-written piece of fiction. This is conversely more like a well-written train wreck. I’m watching thousands of tons of steel crash into character and plot and thematic development of the previous fic.
Also on the subject of our previous conversation, Imperial China was not a hidebound isolationist Empire for most of its history, but was actually quite expansive. It was only starting around the 18th century that it turned its interests deliberately and exclusively inward, and it took only a hundred years for that to have negative repercussions for it - and that was after a succession of weak Emperors and other leaders, whereas Equestria has had only the one Celestia.
If, as this fic would have us believe, alicorns can’t change as people, then Celestia’s rule would not have worked for 1,000 years. Rulers need to be adaptable, this fic would have us believe that alicorns literally can’t be by their nature.
Like I said, this fic is wrong in a fractal way.
9571412
Man, I'm pretty sure Jaxie will be absolutely fine with that. He'll probably want to read your story to see what you do with the same characters.
9570956
We really didn't. I'm sorry.
I'll write something happier next.
9571452
I believe the official name is the Jaxie-verse. There's no TVtropes page for it yet but someone should start one.
9571478
Don't worry about it! I was just making an observation about the timing and how both were a bit displaced from a "and they lived happily ever after" ending. I still love both of these stories, and wouldn't dare ask you to change what you're doing. You always provide a good thought provoking page turner.
Sorry if my phrasing left a negative implication
9571472
Ah. I'm afraid I think I still don't get it, but thank you for trying to explain.
I am admittedly not extensively familiar with the history of Imperial Chine, so although that's contrary to my impression, I readily admit my impression may be incorrect.
It is possible to be adaptable within a certain range but fixed to that range; I think it's possible that Celestia has had enough adaptability within whatever she's fixed to to make it work, so long as external circumstances don't stray too far.
9571483
Ah, thanks. Though what about the other universes he's written in? There's the Actingverse and the world of Vision, off the top of my head.
9571500
Those were all just pale shadows of this, the one true Jaxie-verse.
9571412
That's not how copyright works, at all.
Even a little bit.
9570972
Too few heads on pikes
9571534
But it is how precedent and the rules of this site work! Again, there are dozens of fics on this site that exist for the sole purpose of “fixing”, for example, Dakari King Mykan’s My Brave Pony: Believing is Magic. That is an awful series from the word “go” by a man who absolutely hates FiM. I doubt highly that permission was sought by anyone who wrote the fix-fics, and even if it was sought DKM did not give it. In fact he’s shown up in the comments of many of those stories specifically to decry and deride the fics. But the stories exist on this site, not taken down, so by precedent fics where you use another author’s characters without permission are permitted on this site as long as you don’t attempt to claim them as your own, and I won’t.
Plus, again, that’s literally what we’re all doing whenever we put Twilight or Celestia or Tirek or Harry Dresden or Q or whoever into our fics. Which is probably why the site’s rules don’t specifically forbid it; it’d be hypocritical in the extreme to say that it’s okay to use Twilight Sparkle but it’s not okay to use, to name some of my own original characters that others might use, Kristal Zati or Sjach the black dragon.
If we want to get legalistic about this, section 107 of the US Copyright Act, which I believe this site and everything in it would fall under, provides that using copyrighted works for purposes such as criticism or comment falls under what is considered “fair use”, which my intended use certainly falls comfortably under. I’m not trying to make a buck, I’m objecting to the direction this fic went and parodying it in order to criticize it. Parody is not necessarily funny or supposed to be funny.
9570963
9571014
I never thought I would read a series of stories like this and enjoy them, but you do such fantastic work! I am really looking forward to the sequel and (I think...) happy ending! I honestly was afraid this was the last in the series due to other comments/blog posts/I can't remember which. Congratulations!!!!!!
We're all thinking it, but I'm just gonna come out and say it: Cheval deserved that. Most characters in this series have done bad things and gotten away with it, sure, but Cheval crossed a line. There was no way this could end well for her, what with all of her poor decisions. Being the main character and a changeling does NOT excuse this kind of horrible behavior. I hope this story has a happy ending, sure, but I don't see it ending well for Cheval no matter what happens.
Wow. Now that's one way to get Flurry on the throne.
It seems to me that the whole "Cheval is inherently a monster" thing is forgetting that she's still in starvation mode with holes in her legs. That compromised her thinking even if she was being fed once she got back since it hadn't been long enough. Pump her full of love enough and she should be back to being about as much of a monster as Flurry. (Which is to say, a bit ruthless and sometimes a little stupid but overall not a monster)
But yeah, Cheval definitely deserved that. She purposefully starved herself until it started compromising her thinking, and then did inarguably evil things. I'm looking forward to the sequel, though I'm sure it'll be just as horribly depressing as this one in its own ways.
I am so very confused. Can someone sum up what happened for me? I got completely lost after Cheval became a queen, I think.
You never disappoint, Jaxie.
9571584
I’m not thinking it.
Imagine you’re a diabetic but didn’t know it. You eat sweet things and it gives you headaches or makes you tired and drains your energy and give you mood swings or any of the other symptoms of a diabetic who doesn’t know they’re suffering from diabetes. But you like the taste of doughnuts and chocolate and Coke and whatever, so you keep having them, because you don’t know you have diabetes and have been living with the symptoms for so long that you just think it’s “normal”; you might not even connect the effects of eating sweet things to the eating of sweet things because you don’t know that you should be and the effects are sometimes delayed by an hour or more.
Then one day you go into diabetic shock. That sure seems to come out of left field! But it didn’t, not really. All the warning signs were there, you just didn’t pay attention to them because you didn’t know you should be paying attention to them because the symptoms were just a normal part of your world. But I guess it’s still your own dumbass fault for not being a doctor or not being able to self-diagnose, right?
That’s where Cheval was. She was a queen. She had a sex drive. But she didn’t know it, she thought she was a sterile drone, and then she did the worst thing she could do - she went to a place where she wasn’t getting a limitless supply of love, hid her true nature so that no one would recognize the significance of what happened - because she didn’t know any better, she didn’t have the information she needed. The fact that Cadance and Shining Armor suspected but didn’t say anything and just let her go off to the griffins really only compounds GaPJaxie’s apparent distaste for the two and their continued ineptitude.
You can’t have it both ways. Cheval can’t both have been caught unawares by her own body and ignorant of her own biology while by nature and destiny having little choice but to be a dangerous predator and still be held completely 100% responsible for what happened. Up until her actual rape of Gideon she did nothing wrong, at least not anything that deserves “punishment” in some grand sense (teenagers emotionally manipulate teenagers and cause breakups all the time in high school and college, you condemn her for that you’re condemning 99% of the human race), and by the time the actual rape happens she was long established as starving - which she’d never dealt with before - and was dealing with suddenly having a sex drive out of nowhere, all of puberty hitting her all at once, and has gained a slew of what I presume to be new abilities (mind control) on an apparently subconscious level (certainly the narrative paints it as a new ability, it doesn’t seem like something she knew she could do or was really consciously aware of until after the fact).
She was dealing with a deck that was stacked against her.
If you're going to have an ending like this, you need to have a Tragedy tag.
Now for my opinion. I'll try not to be a jerk about it, but I do have a few gripes.
First, the positive. It is thrilling. I do like political drama.
In the early parts of the story, Cheval was a very believable character, as was Flurry. They were both edgy teens and they acted exactly the way you'd expect them to. Likewise, Gia and Gideon were believable as well. I also like how you actually noticed that all griffons have names starting with "G". Most authors I see fail to notice that and name their griffons "Roger" or "Tim" or something.
Now for the negative. As much as I dislike downer endings, I can accept them if they're done well. In here, it's not done well. First off, Cadance is significantly out of character. She's not one to just give up; she's a capable ruler. Maybe she does surrender, but she wouldn't simply give in as quickly as the story said. As others have mentioned, the idea that she cannot mature as a character just doesn't make sense. It precludes the idea of her being a sapient being.
Then there's Flurry Heart... what a nasty person. As mentioned earlier, I thought she was just being an edgy teen, but no, she's actually just as bad as Amaryllis. She says she loves her family. She says she loves Cheval. Her actions say otherwise. Even if she believed this was how it was supposed to go, there are better ways of going about it. I fully expect many of the crystal ponies to be comparing her to King Sombra after this. She may not be nearly as bad as him, but the ponies won't see it that way. I'm sure she thinks she's doing this with love, but she's lying to herself. I also doubt the Crystal Heart will listen to her anymore after this.
In short, there are a lot of contrived elements and plot holes in this.
And changelings shrugged.
9571628
Cheval becomes a queen, which means she now has a sex drive (that she never knew she’d have and wasn’t prepared to deal with) and mind control powers (the sudden acquisition of which would corrupt anyone), while living in Griffinstone, where she was starving but to which she had exiled herself because she refused to be used as a weapon by Amaryllis against her family.
Between sudden gobsmacking of having a sex drive out of nowhere, sudden ability to control others’ actions, and her love-starvation, she raped Gideon in order to sate her hunger. Afterwards she attempted to rationalize it as not really being rape; GaPJaxie and about 90% of the people reading this would have you believe that it’s because she was actually always fundamentally a bad person, I say bullshit to that, she was demonstrably good until she got screwed over by one bad decision (leaving her homeland, a decision that was entirely made with good and noble intentions) and a biology she wasn’t mentally or emotionally prepared to deal with.
Amaryllis showed up and took her back in an attempt to further her keikaku (translator’s note: “keikaku” means “plan” in Japanese) of screwing over the Crystal Empire.
Cadance and Shining Armor are presented as not merely bad rulers, but bad parents.
Driven into a corner by the ineptitude of Cadance and Shining Armor as parents, Cheval attempts to overthrow Cadance and put Flurry Heart on the throne, accepting that she (Cheval) has no actual control over her destiny and hoping that Flurry, a teenager, will be better able to deal with Amaryllis. However Fate doesn’t like that Cheval made one pitiable attempt to control her life (by merely drugging Cadance into sleep rather than killing her), so Flurry turned Cheval to stone for attempting to save the Crystal Empire.
Now Flurry Heart is on the throne of a rump city-state under Amaryllis’ hoof and won’t give it back to Cadance. Cheval is petrified to be released at her sister’s leisure but never to be viewed as anything but a monster on a leash ever again. Cadance is no longer princess of the Crystal Empire. And somewhere Amaryllis is muttering “keikaku doori” (“just as planned”).
I earlier described this fic as a train wreck. I’m increasingly viewing Amaryllis as the principle penny that made the train jump the track, though an entire piggy bank was broken open on it.
9571412
I agree with your assessment of the story's themes in relation to the previous two. But I'd argue that GaPJaxie wasn't trying to explore the same themes as his first two stories, but rather using the universe he'd already laid out as a framework to tackle different ones. This story was about love and power, how they come into conflict within a character's interests, and which are prioritized.
Cadance was granted power because she loves, but doesn't really want power for its own sake, only as a means to facilitate the spread of that love. Cheval, as a changeling queen, could not separate the two. For her kind, love is power in the most literal sense. In the end, as a result, she thought that the only way to earn back her family's love was to amass as much power as she could, then share her success with her family. Flurry came out on top because she was the only one who could separate the two ideas. Power is for leading a nation-state, and love is for supporting those one cares about. Once Flurry cements her rule, she'll release Cheval, as GaPJaxie has said, and use some tough love to shape her into a good person again.
Good ending. I enjoyed.
Would like to see more of this Flurry Heart.
9571672
Oh almost certainty, these things were beyond her control. However, that does not mean that she should not still be punished for it.
The food thing doesn't really work in this instance, because she CHOSE not to eat the love-cakes Cadence sent her. She CHOSE to starve instead, which only exacerbated the problems that happened later. Had she not willing done so, she might ave been able to resist these new urges.
Had she eaten the Cupcakes, she would not have had to impersonate Gia to eat Gideon's love, and Gideon would never have caught on that Gia didn't love him. Their relationship would have survived.
Had that relationship survived, Cheval would have had a harder time justifying the r-word of Gideon, and likely would have tried to use someone else instead. Would she have sill ended up mind controlling them anyway? of course, Cheval would have followed her new instincts. However, there would have at least have been a chance that her friends could have talked some sense into her, and Gideon and Gia would still be alive. H***, Cheval might have held off her instincs long enough for the queen to show up!
A better analogy would be a drunk teen hitting someone with a car. The teen, having just taste booze for the first time, would not have been able to handle the limitations to her cognition. She ignored her mom's phone call, offering a ride home, and instead decided to drive home anyway. She then snuck away from her friends, as they would have stopped her. The teen the got into the car, started driving home, and hit someone. The teen didn't mean too, she had little control over herself. It was an accident. DOes that mean that she should not still be punished?
tl;dr, Yes, Cheval had little control of herself, but it was her choices that got her to that point, and the final feather on the camel's back is what damned her.
Ouch. Harsh!
This was not what I was expecting when you said happy ending.
9571572
Even if the site rules didn't imply this was the case, that is a correct description of fair use. The site is its own matter, but there so long as characters contained within the work are not claimed as the author's when they are concocted by another, there is no legal obstacle in the United States (so long as sufficient other criteria for fair use are satisfied, and in RDD's plan, they are).
ETA:
Having had longer to think about it, no, I actually don't understand how Equestria managed to survive as long as it has, if this is how Princesses deal with problems. Let's go back to my last comment about wondering why Equestria wouldn't take action when Cheval was first introduced if it came to war:
If that's the case, it's not like this came out of nowhere. There were plenty of warning signs coming along that all was not right. If war would honestly have been bad for the kingdom, then why allow things to progress to the point that they did?
If that's the case, they did a real poor job of this, providing essentially no support or guidance. Or really, having done anything at all in history to have gotten Cadence remotely prepared to solve her own problems.
Then why bother with any of this charade at all? Really, that's the surest sign that they Flurry and Cheval were the first to figure out what Flurry's destiny was. If Celestia and Luna knew, after all, then the logical thing to do would have been to put every available resource into preparing Flurry for that role. This did not happen.
This leaves me to conclude that everything we saw in A Foreign Education happened because it was destined to happen, and there was no way out. Which calls into question everything in The Third Wheel and Courtesans about choice and choosing to be who you are, to be better than who you are.
So why have themes around choice at all, if no one really has a choice?
9571801
It was supposed to be happier than that. There were some last moment rewrites to fix a plot hole.