“Flurry, we—that is, Cadence and Celestia and Luna and me. That is to say, the other alicorns. We are, um, collectively. I mean, all together. We’re concerned about some of your actions. Recently.”
After a moment, Twilight cleared her throat. “We’re worried a bit.”
Flurry sat on the throne of the Crystal Empire—her throne. She wore her full battle armor, and rested her glaive by her side. And she made quite the sight. The throne sparkled, her armor was a work of art, her weapon had a shaft of ivory and its blade was magically formed as a single diamond. She was young and beautiful and always would be, but where Twilight was young and soft, Flurry’s limbs showed muscle.
There were two lines of crystal pony guards, flanking her throne on either side.
Flurry allowed the silence to hang. She considered Twilight and Cadence, and sat as a ruler sat, with her forehooves on her throne and her back straight. It was only when she was done thinking that she allowed the conversation to proceed: “Are you?”
“Flurry, dear…” Cadence took half a step forward. “We know you’re in a difficult situation. The Crystal Empire still isn’t safe and action needs to be taken. But some of these sedition laws you’ve been enacting… you can’t. You just can’t.”
“Or you’ll scold me and send me to bed early?” Flurry let out a derisive snort. Her horn glowed, and she pulled her glaive over to her, idly inspecting the shaft. “I think we’re a bit past that, Mother.”
“It’s un-Equestrian,” Twilight interjected. “Alicorns have a divine right to rule because we embody good things: love and friendship, the warmth of the sun and the beauty of the night sky. We’re avatars of harmony. We can’t hurt the ponies we rule.”
“I’ve hurt the ponies I rule; my wings haven’t fallen off.” When Flurry lifted her eyes from her glaive, her expression was hard. “And I will hurt them again, if it is necessary to keep the Empire safe.”
“This isn’t necessary! Amaryllis is retreating and—”
“She is retreating to preserve her army to fight another day. Which it will.” Flurry raised her voice, and assumed a commanding tone. “You have liberated empty tundra and logging camps, while Yakyakistan, the Diamond Republic, and Vanhoover remain under Amaryllis’s control. You have suffered heavy casualties, and are now far enough from Equestria that supply is becoming a serious problem. The griffons are preparing for a major offensive against the badlands. And I will not—”
“—we will protect the Crystal—” Twilight tried to cut in.
But Flurry shouted over her, her face twisting back into a snarl. “And I will not lose my throne the way she did!”
With a flick of her muzzle, Flurry indicated Cadence. “Weak and helpless, unable to protect my ponies, waiting for Equestria to save me. You left us to die, Twilight. We screamed for help and you didn’t come. So this time I’m not wasting my breath. The Crystal Empire must be able to defend itself and wage war in the North in its own right. I will not weaken our defensive posture in return for promises of Equestrian protection.”
“And how does killing ponies who question your rule enhance your ‘defensive posture’?” Twilight demanded.
“Don’t be a fool. Nearly a fifth of the Crystal Empire thinks that Amaryllis would be a better ruler than me. Our ranks are riddled with spies. We talk about changeling infiltrators, but for every shapeshifter, there are three traitors who willingly support Amaryllis’s cause. Left free to act, their influence will spread, and we will lose the Empire not through any military action but when I am overthrown. Sedition is a crime, and if I want to enact exceptionally severe punishments for that crime, the circumstances warrant it.”
Silence hung over the courtroom. Cadence looked at her hooves.
“You can enact laws to that effect if you wish,” Twilight said, her tone cool. “But when you accuse ponies of breaking those laws, they get a trial. They get to defend themselves. And if they are found guilty, they get a punishment that is appropriate to the severity of their offense. You don’t have the right to have them abducted in the night and murdered.”
“Why not?”
Cadence’s head snapped up. Her mouth hung open in shock. Twilight pulled back, and grimaced like she’d eaten something sour. “So you don’t deny it?”
“No.” Flurry folded back her ears, and stared down Twilight and her mother. “Why should I? When a naive young stallion defects from the army, it is my right to have him summarily executed for treason. But when a scheming mare with a love for changelings in her heart encourages him to defect, she is somehow entitled to a trial and fair treatment? Better that the schemer dies and the young pony lives.”
“So you’re bringing back the secret police. Just like in King Sombra’s day. What’s next?” Twilight snapped. “Banning public gatherings? They might be plotting against you. Arresting ponies with foreign friends? They might be communists. In fact, why have courts at all? Declare martial law, and you can personally dispense justice with your glaive and a storm drain for the blood.”
“Flurry, dear, please,” Cadence said. Her voice was weak, and it wavered up and down. “I know I was a terrible ruler. I made so many mistakes, and I’m sorry. But you were my sweet little foal. Don’t do this. You were a princess. Please don’t grow up to be a warlord.”
“Mother, I am a warlord.” Flurry sighed, and lowered her voice back to something like normal. “At this point, the Crystal Empire doesn’t do much except wage war. Food is grown for the army, crystals shaped for weapons, schools exist to train young ponies to calculate artillery tables and march in formation.”
“And when does it end?” Twilight snarled.
“When my enemies are dead.”
“And if Amaryllis surrenders?”
Flurry’s snort perfectly captured her contempt. “Then that would make it much easier to kill her.”
Then Cadence said: “And what about your sister?”
Twilight, midway through another angry retort, fell silent. She turned to look at Cadence, and Flurry did as well. The Alicorn of Love was trembling where she stood, and quite obviously trying not to cry. “What about Cheval?”
“She’s a threat to the Empire. She stays where she is.”
“How?” Cadence demand. “How is she a threat? She’s a teenage mare.”
“That is an exceptionally stupid question,” Flurry snarled. “She’s a changeling queen, and she’s pregnant. She can start another hive.”
“And her first batch of drones will come of age in, what, fourteen years?” Cadence struggled to speak, her eyes red and bloodshot. “Is that strategically relevant? Were you planning for this to go on for that long?”
“It’s not over until it’s over,” Flurry said.
“And that doesn’t happen until all your enemies are dead,” Twilight summarized, her words laced with disgust. “Is Cheval one of your enemies? Are her unborn children? Are you plotting to have your nieces and nephews killed because they might one day be a threat to your rule?”
“I will do whatever is necessary to protect the Crystal Empire,” Flurry snapped. She descended from her throne, picking up her glaive as she did. “That’s my destiny. That’s why I was born. And that’s why Cheval put me on the throne in the first place.”
“Then she made a mistake,” Twilight said. Her horn glowed. “This is wrong, and I can’t allow it to continue.”
Flurry didn’t wait. As her horn formed a shield in front of her, she pointed to her guards. “Shoot her, now!”
A bright purple beam fired from Twilight’s horn.
“Bitch!” Flurry kicked Twilight’s unconscious body. She lay in the rubble, surrounded by guards, her body burnt by laser blasts. Flurry’s battle armor was blackened and dented, and her glaive had a notch on the shaft. Long scorch marks covered the walls of the throne room, meandering along it’s walls and ceiling like great serpents.
“Think you can come and tell me how to run my kingdom!” She kicked Twilight again. “Like you know what war is?” She kicked again, and one of Twilight’s ribs broke.
“I have watched ponies die. I have seen what torture does to a creature. I saw what happened when my own sister tortured one of her inlaws until she tried to kill herself. And I know that it will!” She kicked Twilight again. “Not!” Again. “Stop!”
She lifted a hoof, and brought it down on Twilight’s exposed leg. It snapped, and bone protruded from the skin. “Until they are all gone. You understand? It’s not over until it’s over!”
Tears were streaming down Flurry’s face. She wiped at them with an ash-stained hoof, and then violently shook her head. “Make sure she doesn’t die,” she snapped at a guard, before storming off.
Cadence hadn’t fought. She’d thrown up shields to protect Twilight, but she hadn’t attacked herself. As Flurry marched out of the throne room, she shot one last curse at her mother: “What? Nothing to say?”
Cadence was crying as well, but she kept her composure better. She reached up and gently wiped her tears away. She straightened her back, and stood like an Equestrian princess should.
Then she said, “Both of my daughters are monsters.”
And who's to blame?
9623490
Amaryllis, obviously.
H*** YEAH, Flurry!
Where's Thorax's hive in all of this?
At this point, I'm pretty sure a happy ending is impossible, unless you count several characters being forced to wear rictus grins at gunpoint as happy. Flurry is a goddamn monster in this chapter, and I don't even mean from beating Twilight half to death. Excellent story, but yeah... you have a gift for darkness in your writing.
9623514
Bit busy ATM.
9623490
Considering how this universe has ascended alicorns stuck at a single point in their life...I dunno.
9623518
alrighty
9616684
Had a spell. I think the story was implying that it blew up in the raid when Twilight teleported her sister and her out of the vault it was contained in.
9623575
Twilight always can recreat this spell again.
9623575
She figured it out once, she could easily do it again.
Ho boy
9623516
Agreed... at the very least it will require a remarkable shift in Flurry's personality over the intervening decades; because as of this chapter, she has become a monster to surpass all others. Warlord Flurry Heart has saved the Crystal Empire, but at what cost?
Flurry thinks that she can make all her problems go away if she simply kills enough enemies, breaks enough bones, hangs enough dissenters; but dictators who fall into that trap quickly discover that there are always more enemies to be found. It never stops, and it never ends.
*sighs in Equish*
9623496
Is it? Because really if the other Princesses had actually stepped in and stopped Amaryllis at any point before, this wouldn't be happening. I'm not completely for "Flurry the Executioner," but she's not entirely wrong either. Cadance and Shining were incapable of defending the Crystal Empire and Equestria didn't do anything to help the last few times either, so they get to live with the fact that their uselessness created an alicorn of Tyranny.
Well, I’m glad you skipped the fight, because I do not buy for a second that the closest thing Equestria has to a Warrior Princess with decades of combat experience behind her, reinforced as still being as competent as ever in The Virgin Princess, would be beaten so thoroughly by a comparative novice.
I buy even less that she’d give up even after being beaten, but I guess we’ll see. We’ll add that as a question. Tally of questions now stands at 37.
At least Cadance can admit she failed. At the moment. Give her a few hours, she’ll forget to be outraged.
9623496
No, that’s too easy. Amaryllis may have set up a shit situation, but there were a million and one things Cadance and Shining could have done to stop it, and Flurry herself was not a puppet dancing on strings, this is the destiny she’s chosen for herself the same way Cheval did, only without the excuse of being gobsmacked by power and hormones beforehand. Cheval slid down a slippery slope; she didn’t do as much as she could have to stop her slide, but at least the fall took time. Flurry just teleported to the bottom based on what we see here.
Her parents, and Flurry herself, and to an extent Cheval, have to shoulder a large portion of the blame.
9623680
Unfortunately it can’t be said that it doesn’t get results if you do it “right”. Three generations of the Kim family as de facto kings of North Korea prove that.
Of course a large part of that is because no one’s DONE anything about them for reasons of the Norks holding Seoul hostage under threat of massive artillery bombardment should war ever begin again, long before they developed nukes of their own. But even that was only a result of bowing to MAD theory, North Korea falling under the USSR’s and later China’s nuclear umbrella allowing it to build up its artillery to that point.
Autocorrect initially changed “artillery” to “stilettos”. There’s something to make us laugh right now, the idea of the Norks cornering the high heel market and threatening to cut off the world’s Prada supplies. We need it.
The Crystal Empire, being remote, at least can’t do that, so there’s really no reason for Equestria to not force the issue of Flurry’s throne, especially with her having given such a clear indicator of what happens when you ignore a problem.
9623773
The empire was defeated several times via deception and enemy agents and her father was even killed the same way. Her very sister betrayed her family as part of a plot by the Queen (even if not the Queen's intention). Up until then Flurry wouldn't have gone that direction.
You can only suffer loss from the same method so often before you change your ways against it, not helped by alicorn ascension locking her into that mindset, something the Queen was aware of.
The Queen's actions were the equivalent of chemical warfare escalation, and Flurry's brutal attitude change is one of the possible responses to combat that kind of duplicitous behavior meant to turn one's citizens against you,
Well more please and where thorax hive
and also why flurry so dark is like she a fucking warlord and what gonna happen next Will another war or not
I hope not war cause is need to stop a.s.a.p
9623792
Even the Kim's have failed to escape the trap i described. Every year thousands of new 'dissidents' get sent to the North Korean Gulag. If the Kim family, or the Generals, even suspect a citizen of disloyalty (or just doesn't like them for any reason at all), that person is promptly rounded up, along with their entire family, and tossed into a military run super max, where inmates are regularly worked to death, and occasionally gassed with chemical weapons, ensuring the inmates die just as fast as new victims can be shoved into that veritable pit of hell.
The Kim family has firmly entrenched the whole North Korean population in a staggeringly strong cult of personality, but that doesn't stop them from perceiving enemies everywhere, I recall Kim Jong Un in the first few months of his reign, having a top ranking general of his army executed with a mother fraggin antiaircraft gun, on suspicion of disloyalty.
9623514
I have a terrible feeling that they’re all either dead or hibernating as of the start of this fic. Would you believe that it’d be more positive for the fic if the former was the case, depending on how they died?
We’ll save the discussion as to why for when we get there.
9623516
I pointed out earlier that a story can have a lot of darkness in it but still have a happy ending. Schindler’s List was my example.
Of course, Oskar Schindler as portrayed by Liam Neeson saved people, he didn’t kill them, and he made an active attempt to mitigate what the Nazis were doing and then started actively trying to help the Jews throughout the film. And even then I wouldn’t exactly call the end of the film 100% happy. How many more people could Schindler have saved if he’d sold his car?
But Jaxie’s promised us 100% happiness. We’ll see.
9623822
You’re absolutely right. But still, the Kims continue to rule the world’s only necrocracy. They’ve kept power for 70 years.
Like I said, it gets results, depending on the results you’re trying to get.
9623816
See RDD's response because I agree. Amaryllis set up the show, but the alicorns danced to her script the entire way.
Also what i want to know is nkvd involved on this is staliongrad on this story is equestria at war mod of heart of iron 4
9623826
I'd rather not reply to that poster due to how incredibly negative they are about the story and the author to the point of obsession. Needless to say I disagree with their commentary, unless you honestly believe any of the other alicorns' attitudes and action over the course of a life would naturally result in such a dysfunctional family and produce sociopaths without a third party interfering.
Oh, on a much more positive note, I’m glad that you finally just started calling them Communists in the story itself. It’s what they were and it was a bit clunky to keep seeing “International Party” as a stand-in. Though I do have to wonder how such a materially obsessed culture as the Griffons could have turned to Communism en masse.
We’ll add that to the tally of questions. Back up to 38.
9623833
Dude, I can read your comments still. Not responding directly to me doesn’t prevent that. Nor does not saying my name. I’m not Beetlejuice.
To answer your question, Amaryllis does have some of the blame as well. Of course she does, she’s a dark specter that corrupts everything she touches. But that doesn’t change that there are things that Cadance and her family could have done differently, arguably should have done differently. It’s too easy to place all the blame on Amaryllis.
Dimes to dollars Jaxie will actually agree with this, whatever our mutual other opinions for each other are.
9623833
Going by this series' own rules, alicorns get stuck at whenever they truly ascend. It's the most noticable with Twilight because she's stuck at the youngest age, and thus will never go beyond the person she was at 16. Cadance is said to have stuck at around late 20s or early 30s, probably soon after she had Flurry, assuming getting stuck prevents having children (and please let this be the case, because dear god I would not want to be this Twilight's kid with her stuck the way she is). This is why Cadance was such a bad ruler, because she got stuck before she had any real experience as a ruler...and it probably contributed to Flurry and Cheval turning out the way they did, because even accounting for her foalsitting, Cadance only had experience raising pre-teens before she was stuck, leaving her unable to learn and adapt to the trials of raising teenagers and beyond.
So yeah, with one half the parents effectively incapable of being a parent to anything but little kids, I can totally see how Flurry and Cheval ended up like this, even without all the political shit involved. Kids have gone bad over less.
9623851
It's actually worse than that. Cutie marks aren't just destiny marks, and actually at times the show has taken steps to point out just the opposite, that cutie marks are definitely not representative of your destiny, or at least they leave themselves open to wide interpretations. A good example of this is Rainbow Dash. Her cutie mark doesn't represent her love of weather patrol or racing, she explicitly identifies that she earned her cutie mark because in a moment of perfect clarity she realized that she loved winning. And that's how most cutie marks get earned, a moment of perfect clarity and self-realization. Ponies like Troubleshoes are extreme outliers, far from the norm.
For Flurry to have earned her cutie mark by petrifying her sister, usurping her mother, plunging the Crystal Empire into war, and (presuming that she has more than two brain cells to rub together) knowing as she did so that she would likely have to become a tyrant, and still earn her cutie mark?
The possibility is that she actually loves all of it. That doing all this makes her happy.
Which means she badly needs to Taste the Rainbow™
9623864
Would that actually do anything to her personality wise though? At least with Luna we can reasonably assume her ascension wasn't at Nightmare Moon, even if it means that she might be doomed to repeat it. With Flurry's ascension mindset, the best case scenario might be that she's the one in stone now...
9623879
Actually on reflection it is possible that Furry's cutie mark is all oriented around trying to protect Cheval in her own insane way, which is why she won't just smash Cheval's statue and arguably explains even keeping her in it: while petrified, Flurry can protect Cheval from herself, even as she burns the rest of the world clear of anything else that could threaten Cheval. However a cutie mark of a crystal heart and a crown isn't what I'd expect for that talent in the slightest, and Flurry was working to protect Cheval in her own way for years beforehand, so if that were her special talent then she should have earned her cutie mark earlier since she was always pretty self-aware of what she truly loved.
So while that'd be much nicer for all involved parties (except, of course, the ones who died), it strikes me as both unlikely since it should have happened sooner, and a bit of a cop-out to excuse her actions. So I doubt that's the direction we're heading.
The best-case scenario is that Twilight Sparkle played Ogres & Oubliettes with Shining Armor a few times and so knows how to scry-and-die, taught Celestia or Luna or Cadance (or ideally, all of them, plus Starlight Glimmer, Trixie, Sunset Shimmer, Sunburst, Star Swirl the Bearded, really anypony she could get her hooves on) the anti-alicornization spell, and then bamf'd them all to the Crystal Throne for Round 2 with the spells already in the process of being cast so that Flurry doesn't have the chance to respond. While at the same time also bringing her Elemental friends so that Flurry could Taste the Rainbow™.
Flurry is at once felled and gets a full burst of Harmony magic to hopefully clear her systems. And even if that doesn't work, let's see her repeat her trick against four alicorns, the most powerful unicorn in Equestria, and basically an army teleporting into her room.
Also it'd mean that Flurry's been aging for awhile now.
Seriously, sixteen-year-olds in real life figure out how to scry-and-die in D&D, so there's no reason it shouldn't work here.
9623900
Its her choice.
9623919
It literally isn’t. The fic makes that clear. She actually can’t choose.
9623900
She recognized the need once, I'm certain she could do it again. She might not accept that the time is right for centuries, but eventually she would.
Alright, Chapter 4!
...Hm. Water-damaged? So... what more than time happened here?
"How’s my favorite niece in the whole world doing?"
...Which might just be an exaggeration from the emotion of seeing Cheval again and such. But, if it isn't... that raises some questions about Twilight's current relationship with Flurry.
"One of the mare stepped"
"One of the mares stepped"?
"Okay,” Cheval glanced"
"Okay.” Cheval glanced"?
Ah. Yep. So... not just an exaggeration, sounds like.
...Wow, that's a lot of damage, though. Exactly how long after Cheval was stoned was this fight, I wonder?
"Did mom fight"
"Did Mom fight"?
"Eventually, one of Twilight’s friends whistled. “Aaaawwkward.”"
...I mean, on the bright side, that might mean they're less afraid of Cheval now? :D
9623756
Oh, right, good point about the gryphon's hooflessness; I didn't even notice that.
Chapter The Crystal Throne! Oh, wait, which I guess is Chapter 5, since we went from 2 to 4 with the named chapter in between.
"and it’s blade was"
"and its blade was"?
"She was young and beautiful and always would be"
I wonder if that indicates she's stopped growing?
"But some of these sedition laws you’ve been enacting"
Yep, using the war to crush dissent, looks like.
"past that, mother"
"past that, Mother"?
Oh, I wonder if Vanhoover wasn't part of Equestria in this universe, or if it was taken after Equestria joined the war?
"You don’t have the right to have them abducted in the night and murdered."
Woo, really going all-in (well, not counting options such as mind magic, I suppose) on securing power. I wonder how long after the previous two stories this scene took place?
"Twilight, mid-way through"
"Twilight, midway through"?
"“How?” Cadence demand. “How"
"“How?” Cadence demanded. “How"?
"Is Cheval one of your enemies? Are her unborn children? Are you plotting to have your nieces and nephews killed because they might one day be a threat to your rule?"
If Flurry wanted them dead, that statue would have been ground to sand or somesuch thing by now. No, I don't think Flurry considers any of them enemies. She called Cheval a threat, not an enemy, and moreover, well, Cheval is currently helpless before Flurry, and Flurry's just explained her view of the proper treatment of helpless enemies. I expect Flurry would kill Cheval and her children if she thinks she needs to, but she's clearly thinking that she doesn't yet, and possibly actively wanting a different outcome.
"Bitch!"
Oh, language, Flurry! Is there really a call for rudeness here?
"body. She lay in the rubble, surrounded by guards, her body burnt by laser blasts"
...Hm. Probably fine, but that "She" tripped me up a little bit; the antecedent felt a bit more naturally Flurry to me, though I swiftly realized what it was meant to mean. If on looking at this again you concur, perhaps something like "body where it lay in the rubble, surrounded by guards and burnt by laser blasts"?
"along it’s walls and ceilings like"
"along its walls and ceiling like"?
(Or did the plural on "ceiling" indicate multiple vaults or somesuch thing?)
"sister tortured once of her inlaws"
"sister tortured one of her inlaws"?
...And, ah, yeah, reason for rudeness, and likely a number of other things, now more understood.
...Ow. Yeah, I'm rather wondering if the thought "If I'd just had the will to launch my own coup earlier, Cheval wouldn't have had to try hers with all that entailed" entered into matters.
...And ow on the last line too. :D
Though I'm wondering how this fits with Cadence's period(s?) of exile. I'm guessing this is after The Virgin Princess, meaning Cadence was exiled, but here she is again. Allowed back after Cheval had sufficiently cemented her rule, or maybe named a diplomat by Equestria? I wonder if she was exiled again after this, or allowed to stay. Hm. Well, perhaps we'll see. :)
Also, I wasn't sure whether to comment on this at first or not, but:
"Silence hung over the courtroom. Cadence"
That appears to be the only time it's called the courtroom in the chapter, with "throne room" used twice. Not sure if the usage was deliberate or not, but I thought I'd mention it just in case.
...So, let's see what the comments are like...
9623841
I... hesitate to get into a conversation with you in the comments to one of these stories again, but this seems safe enough:
"Oh, on a much more positive note, I’m glad that you finally just started calling them Communists in the story itself. It’s what they were and it was a bit clunky to keep seeing “International Party” as a stand-in."
I just interpreted that as the International Party being a specific organization, rather than a stand-in for the ideology.
9623851
Oh, interesting hypothesis regarding the timing of Cadence's getting stuck; I'd assumed it was just on ascension.
9623930
Well, like I said, it was getting a little clunky, so I’m glad we’ve just dropped using it at all times. Though personally I would have changed the name to “Internationalists” after so many chapters of not calling them commies, especially since such a radical shift in griffin culture is difficult to parse (i.e. we know their Red stand-ins but we don’t actually have to call them that and so don’t need to explain their huge departure from canon and can imagine some kind of weird anarchy-socialist-capitalist Revolution). But that’s me and not intended as a slight.
Flurry Heart is not the ruler the Empire deserves. But she's the one it needs.
9623936
I imagine the International party is still called the International party, like how people called the Bolsheviks the Bolsheviks even when they knew they where communists. It seemed pretty obvious that they where communists from the start, it didn't really need to be stated openly.
Also they weren't even referring to the International party in this chapter anyway, just local communists.
Hmm, it makes a lot of sense that Twilight lost, actually. She was a teenage fighting against her niece for what she believes in, but still her niece and with the purpose of defeating without causing harm, without any gear whatsoever.
Flurry, on the other hand, was not only geared for war with Crystal and magic, but also was fighting what she saw as an enemy of her kingdom. Even if weaker (and she most certainly is, for Flurry is no decades old magical genius), she was willing to do whatever it took to win. And so she did.
I'm really curious on how she changed in those decades, though. If she still can change, that is... If she hasn't freed Cheval in order to pass the empire forward, for Flurry has grown old and without heirs.
9623990
Personally I struggle to accept that Twilight can lose after what we saw in The Virgin Princess, but I suppose it is theoretically possible. But there’s no way in Hell she wouldn’t come back for Round 2, much better prepared, in a later chapter. Hence the scry-and-die strategy I mentioned (n.b. “scry-and-die”, a term originating from 3e Dungeons & Dragons, does not literally require lethal force, it’s just the idea of tactics that take teleportation and magical perceptions into account, especially across long distances).
Especially with Luna being around, there really shouldn’t be a way for Flurry to defend against scry-and-die tactics, at least not without crippling her ability to run a nation at the same time.
Come to think of it scry-and-die is what Celestia and Luna seemed to do to Sombra back in the day, so there’s even precedent...
I'm not sure what's more disturbing, the bloody Queen in the North or that Twilight's looking back on it with something bordering on nostalgia. Of course, that latter part might just be the general low-level horror I get from seeing this Twilight, which grows the further in the future we go.
Also, I do have to wonder what Twilight might have done had she won the battle against Flurry. Seriously, where would she go from there, especially with the war still in progress?
Of course, that was never really a concern with other villains. (Twilight's perspective, not my own. She'd definitely slipped intothe season premiere/finale mindset by that point.) Beat the baddy, maybe befriend them, all's well, roll credits. That's not the formula at work here, and indeed, Twilight fighting the last war may have been part of how she lost.
Whatever the case, the Flurry situation in the present is clearly more complex than her just beating her glaive into a pruning-hook. Looking forward to further insight.
9623997
Who said she wants to hurt her niece? Not to mention the other enemies had at the time. Flurry most likely revoked those laws when it all ended, and then Twilight had no reason to fight again.
Probably it has more to do with Flurry being mortal and getting old, though.
9624021
Excepting, of course, for all the people hurt or killed by those laws while they were in effect, under her direct orders. That’s a bit like arguing that if Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi were to retire to Florida, no one should take any steps to make him pay for what he’s done as the head of ISIL.
Also this chapter it’s established that Flurry’s immortal now (“She was young and beautiful and always would be”). Unless she de-alicornized herself at some point. But that still wouldn’t excuse her crimes.
9624033
If they can forgive Cheval for her crimes, they can forgive Flurry Heart of hers.
It might actually be impossible for Cadance and Twilight Sparkle to hold a grudge as they are, no matter the crime, given enough time to have passed and if someone just claims they are sorry afterwards.
9624045
No one said that Flurry shouldn’t be forgiven (or at least I’m not saying that), if she takes steps to earn it. I’m only saying that merely rescinding the laws is not enough to earn the that forgiveness, and nor should anyone who put them in place in the first place get to remain sovereign of a nation.
9624050
Except we're not talking about democracy here, but as Twilight herself put it, Divine Right to Rule. She even used those words.
It doesn't matter if she was a tyrant, as long as she stops being one. She is an Alicorn, therefore she's the one that has the RIGHT to rule. No ifs nor buts about it, unless another Alicorn wants to depose her.
Also, you're forgetting that ponies are BIG on forgiveness. They're not ones to punish when reformation is possible, nor are the crimes of Alicorns remembered for long while they're alive. Or do you really think Celestia's reign was an entirely benign one, the same Alicorn who thought it ok to imprison her student in an eternal teenage hell in order to have a weapon to face big threats at her beck and call?
While the chapter with Shining was kind of pointless in regards to the overall narrative, I didn't mind it. But as for what you're doing with Flurry... I'm not sure. In A Foreign Education, the picture of her you painted was one of a mare in control, who took the best of both worlds and applied them for her people. The compassion of an Equestrian tempered by the pragmatism of a true ruler. A heart overlaid with a crown, the mark of an ideal leader. Still, I'll withhold judgement until the end, as this warmongering attitude shift of hers may very well be temporary.
9624084
Neece...this is a harsher world than the show. By all reason and sanity then, it should have harsher ponies. That doesn't meant that they don’t go in for forgiveness and doesn’t mean that they don’t prefer rehabilitation over vengeance, but it does mean that Flurry doing nothing more than rescinding her laws that have hurt and killed people shouldn’t be enough on its own.
Twilight didn’t just give alicorns a blanket divine right to rule. She qualified it with “because we embody good things”. Even trapped-in-Happy-Hell Twilight realizes that merely being an alicorn is not enough in and of itself.
To be honest, and only because you directly asked me because otherwise I’d sworn off bringing it up until this fic ends...at this point, I don’t know what to think. Jaxie has gone out of his way at several points to suggest that this Equestria is exactly the same as the one we see in the show. Twilight still does song and dance routines in Ponyville about Friendship, for Chrissake. But the world around it clearly isn’t the one from the show, it’s a darker, harsher, crueler one. Like I said, like I’ve been saying for months now, I can’t see how childrens’ show Equestria could make it for 1,000 years in this world, but that has been the implication from the start.
My honest-to-God working theory is that Discord is a complete asshole and decided to isekai the entire nation to Game of Thrones: Pony Edition without telling anyone, because that’s what makes the most sense. That’s the only way any of this makes sense in-universe.
9623785
I mean, to be fair, she never defeated anyone through combat, canonically speaking, and she also didn't defeat Chrysalis in the two canonical times she's had to fight her.
9624096
You’re absolutely right, D, you are absolutely right with regards to the show’s canon. But she also didn’t canonically exist in a world that would have produced Amaryllis, the War of the North and it’s atrocities, or the International Party. No one in Friendship is Magic was ever burned alive or nailed to a cross. No one in My Little Pony was ever raped.
9624105 But you are quoting previous battles as of being a canonical value to determine whether Flurry should, or should not, have won against Twilight. I posit that—on that basis—Twilight had no reason to win, given that post canonical values, she is stuck as a teenager with no real battle experience that amounts to combat prowess, whereas post-canonical Flurry, achieved immortality by becoming a fighter.
Even though Flurry won, the description does say that Twilight got some good hits in at least.
9624123
Yes, but again: harsher world, which by all reason should have produced harsher ponies - and correspondingly harsher villains that Twilight has fought and defeated, plus an additional 20 or so years’ worth with a series of new friends and new adventures. So while show-Twilight doesn’t have direct victories under her belt, Jaxie-Twilight should nevertheless if she’s been fighting the Jaxie versions of her villains (+20 years more villains) have substantial combat experience even without actual victories. A veteran is a veteran.
But even without that, it doesn’t erase the second point: this was Round 1, and there is no reason at all to suspect that Twilight won’t leave, regroup, and come back for Round 2 with whatever she considers to be overwhelming force, and with a mad alicorn running the Crystal Empire and killing ponies as a direct result of previous negligence, it would’ve extremely out-of-character for ANY version of Twilight to not go full tilt at Flurry with everyone she can pull in.
Discord, Tirek, the plunder vines, Sombra...Twilight’s been beaten before, and her usual follow up is overwhelming escalation.
9624153 You are also assuming she recuperated quickly enough to do that, and was able to muster support to do that quickly enough to stop Flurry from achieving her objectives. It was established earlier that C,L and T all were hesitant to step into Flurry's rule, since she is not subservient to Equestria or answers to any of them. Twilight went because she's family.
While I agree that she wouldn't give up on trying to change the course of things, I don't know if she'd necessarily be able to, and we don't know if she tried again.