Chapter 10: Government
“Blueblood!”
Prince Blueblood hardly twitched on his pool chair at Princess Flurry Heart’s yell. He was tempted to correct her- it wasn’t just Blueblood, it was Prince Blueblood- but it wasn’t really worth it. The filly didn’t use honorifics like that for anypony, and he doubted he could get her to start with his.
“Blueblood! Answer me!”
She was closer this time. He opened one eyelid halfway, changed his mind, and closed it again. He was ‘sleeping’.
“I said ANSWER ME!”
She hadn’t gone to the Royal Canterlot Voice- instead, she’d used her magic to drag his ear painfully to the side of his pool chair and yelled directly into it.
He let out a shriek of combined pain and surprise, then looked at her indignantly. “What?”
“What are you doing?” she demanded.
“Relaxing,” he answered simply. The way he heard it, she didn’t really care about the titles or other decorum, as long as ponies obeyed. It didn’t exactly hurt that the entire Royal Guard backed her every word- and Captain Gleaming Shield followed her everywhere, as some sort of bodyguard.
“All day?”
“Yeah.”
“And all week?” She was definitely angry now, but he didn’t really care.
“Yeah.”
Her eyes narrowed. “The way I hear it, you’ve been bossing the palace staff around, making them do everything for you, and being lazy.”
“Isn’t that what they’re there for?”
“No, it’s not!” she barked. The two maids he had with him- the one that had been giving him a backrub, and the one that was holding his drink for him- flinched away from her. “Their job is to take care of our basic needs so that we can focus on what we NEED to be focusing on! Now tell me. What have you been doing, For. The. Country?”
“Uhh…. Relaxing.”
Her eyes narrowed.
He continued. “It’s a very important thing to-!”
She broke out the Royal Canterlot Voice, and yelled straight into his face.
“THAT DOES NOT BENEFIT THE COUNTRY!”
He let out a small squeak when she stopped to take a breath, some part of his mind wondering if he would have to worry about hearing loss. He also heard the glass from his drink shatter on the deck, so the maid must have dropped it when she yelled- and he could worry about hearing loss later.
She wasn’t done yelling. “YOU WILL DO SOMETHING USEFUL, OR YOU WILL GET OUT!” She dropped the Voice, and went all the way down to a calm tone of voice- but it was a deadly calm, he could tell. “You have seventy two hours, starting now. Find something useful to do, or I will make you a beggar on the streets.”
He looked up at Captain Gleaming Shield… who was noting the time.
Then he looked at the castle.
“Okay.” His voice came out as a bit of a squeak.
Then he scrambled off his chair and fairly fled back to the castle. He would have to keep reminding himself that Celestia was not here to protect him- and that the little princess both could and would carry out her threat.
Raven Inkwell stood aside for Prince Blueblood to gallop past her, fear in his eyes, and waited patiently as Princess Flurry Heart walked back towards the castle.
“Um,” she muttered, as the still-irritated Princess reached her. “Celestia wouldn’t have done-!”
“I don’t care,” Flurry answered her. “If he’s going to be living in the castle, he’s going to make himself useful.”
“... Understood.” She certainly couldn’t fault Flurry for taking such a hard line with Blueblood- she’d been urging Celestia to do that for years, even though she was merely Celestia’s scribe, tasked with recording every meeting she held in the Throne Room. According to Captain Gleaming Shield, nopony could anticipate Celestia’s decision like she could, and Flurry had been quick to capitalize on that. She was now Flurry’s primary advisor- and Flurry kept her by her side while she was in the throne room, to help her make the decisions Celestia would have made.
She did have to wonder, though, how Flurry had heard about Blueblood- she’d considered him not important enough to worry the harassed Princess about just yet, so hadn’t mentioned it.
Thirty Minutes Earlier, while Raven Inkwell had been using the bathroom…
“Incompetents!” Flurry barked. “Get out of my sight! And don’t come back!” She flapped a hoof at the mages that had crafted the simple spell circle on the floor. All it did was tell them that there was magic in the middle- as a matter of fact, she remembered it clearly. It was one of the things Twilight had shown her the year before- one of the simplest spells available. As Twilight had explained to her, it couldn’t be used to detect magic or spells, only wellsprings- which were only found in living ponies.
And these mages all, to a stallion, believed it would legitimately help them figure out what spell had been used against her.
The mages all fled as fast as their legs could carry them.
Flurry sighed. The Palace Arcmage had been among them. She looked up at Captain Gleaming Shield. “Are there any other incompetents on the palace staff?”
Gleaming Shield shrugged. “Not that I’m aware of- but I know Prince Blueblood regularly calls everypony around him incompetent, so…”
She raised an eyebrow. “Tell me about him.”
When she looked back on that week, Captain Gleaming Shield had to say that it had been a very busy first week of Flurry’s rule- the busiest week of her life so far, she was sure.
Through days one and two, the castle doors had been closed to the public. The Sun and Moon had stayed in their places in the sky- thus, night never fell. Those two ‘days’ had been spent with Guards and the like, processing what had happened, taking and analyzing Flurry’s report, and so on. Flurry had also built herself a staff of advisors during that time, headed by Raven Inkwell; unfortunately, none of Twilight’s friends had been able to stay to take on such duties- and the most anypony could say about which nobles Celestia trusted was ‘none of them’- at which Flurry had rolled her eyes, but accepted the answer.
On ‘day’ three, according to the clocks, Flurry had reopened the Castle for Day Court on schedule. By the time she closed it early in order to attend the meeting of the Mages in that upstairs room of the Castle- they’d reported that they had the sensing spells ready for her- three separate nobles had been sent running from the Throne Room in tears because of how quickly she’d denied their requests for more money and demanded that they earn the money. Then, she’d gone upstairs, and taken all of fifteen minutes to fire all the castle mages as incompetent, asked about Blueblood… and went after him as well. Fortunately, nopony else in the Castle was nearly as useless as Blueblood, so she hadn’t needed to go after anypony else.
On ‘day’ four, the castle chefs cheerfully referred to Blueblood as ‘The Exalted Dishwasher’, as he could be found washing dishes in the kitchen. Day Court was open for its full scheduled timeslot that day- which was even shorter than it had been open the day before, since the afternoon was filled with congress.
A congress during which Flurry had yelled at the entire nobility for voting as they did explicitly because it was what the other party wasn’t voting. She ordered them to vote based on the facts and what it would do for the nation without regard for themselves, and completely forget political parties- else she’d have them all thrown out, and new representatives elected from the general public.
The public spectators, allowed to watch but not participate in the proceedings, had actually cheered. Then, minimum wage had finally been raised to something even resembling a living wage with a nearly unanimous vote.
On ‘day’ five, a lone Changeling bearing a large white flag had shown up during Day Court, and asked after Chrysalis; they had lost contact with her four days prior, and wanted to know what had happened.
Flurry had explained and, even before Raven had an opportunity to provide her input, invited the Changelings to send their next-in-command after Chrysalis to Canterlot, this time with an honor guard, to present the same proposals to Congress the following week- which would be day ten of her rule. Flurry had then sent the next archmage to try and solve the curse problem running with tears in his eyes, as he was unable to improve on the nothing that the prior incompetents had done in six hours.
On ‘day’ six, Blueblood graduated from dishwasher to castle maintenance. It took him hardly fifteen minutes to stop every door and window in the castle from squeaking. He ran out of stuff to fix very quickly- but that wasn’t a problem, because by the time Day Court drew to a close, he had crafted a couple of spell matrixes that, if Flurry provided them power, would cycle the Sun and Moon up and down.
Finally, on ‘day’ seven, the first one to start with the sun rising in the sky, Flurry had asked Blueblood if he could take a shot at analyzing whatever had been used against her- but he had refused, explaining that his specialty was the brute force approach… which worked great for moving celestial bodies, given the amount of power she had available to her, but had a greater chance of killing her than of identifying any spell remnants left on her.
Flurry Heart could hardly believe she had already been Equestria’s sole Princess for an entire week. It seemed like it was only yesterday that the other Princesses had been attacked.
She’d dealt with so many ponies in Day Court that she’d lost count. She’d yelled at Blueblood for his uselessness- and she was seeing good results from him. Even though he’d refused to even try to discover any details on the curse that was used against her and the other Princesses, he gave her a good reason for him not to try- and he hadn’t stagnated since building those matrices to move the Sun and Moon. Last she’d seen, he was analyzing them after she’d used them, and trying to estimate how long they’d last before he’d have to re-lay them, to make sure they wouldn’t break while she was using them.
The Guards, under Captain Gleaming Shield, had been immensely helpful. Whenever she gave orders, they obeyed them immediately- and if they needed help, they simply got help. Which they didn’t usually do- whenever a task might need more than one pony, Gleaming Shield assigned multiple Guards to that task instead of just one. There had even been that one time, when that stallion had tried to kill that mare right in front of her, when she’d ordered the Guard that had stopped him to take him to prison. When she’d done that, Gleaming Shield had promptly ordered a few more Guards to go with him- and considering the attacking stallion had been a unicorn and the Guard that had stopped him a pegasus, she figured it was probably a good thing Gleaming Shield had assigned one earth and two unicorn guards to help out.
She did notice that there seemed to be a lot more Guards moving about the Castle than there ever were in Celestia’s rule- but she also recognized why it was: She was relying on them, more than anypony else, to be the backbone of her rule, whereas Celestia had been the backbone of her own rule.
She’d also had to deal with a few dozen incompetent mages that thought they would find scraps of the curse with a spell that didn’t look for them, and sent them all packing. How they’d gotten to be ‘royal mages’, she would never know.
She was contemplating closing the whole ‘find the curse’ attempt, and having Blueblood screen the incoming mages; for as much as he was afraid to try himself, he was obviously competent, something she couldn’t say about any of the other self-proclaimed mages she’d seen. Hopefully, he was also able to tell when somepony else was competent as well- and so, save her from dealing with quite so many incompetents. She had no patience for ponies pretending to be something they weren’t.
But even with all that going on, she knew she needed her breaks, or she would snap, and the whole nation would go with her.
That was why she had found a stool to put in the palace hot tub, sat on it, and relaxed, just her head above the frothy water’s surface. She’d needed a stool, because the tub had been designed with Celestia in mind, and she wasn’t nearly tall enough.
She sighed, turning her head slightly to look at Raven Inkwell, from her position in the tub. The mare had been amazingly helpful in Day Court, explaining the various laws and precedents to her almost before she could ask. And while Raven declined to pass judgement on any of the ponies petitioning the Crown, she was perfectly willing to suggest action paths after Flurry had passed judgement.
Action paths such as the details of the sentence for that one stallion.
In any case, Raven had just finished filing the day’s paperwork and retrieving tomorrow’s schedule; she’d managed Celestia’s schedule, and gladly managed Flurry’s as well. When Flurry had asked a couple days before if it was too hard, Raven had passed it off as a labor of love- she enjoyed her job, and had actually requested not to have an assistant.
“So what’s on the schedule for tomorrow?”
“Day Court is going to start with a petition by the Flim Flam brothers,” Raven informed her.
She wrinkled her nose. “Ew.” She’d heard enough stories about them from Twilight, and they weren’t pretty.
Raven chuckled. “They say it’s a simple request, and they’ve got the backing of a majority of the nobility, but I’ve gone ahead and allocated us an hour for it anyways.”
Flurry nodded. “Probably take that long to sniff out the scam through official channels, won’t it?”
Raven nodded sagely. “After that, we’ve got a few petitions for building loans, one poor stallion asking for permission to commit suicide…” She trailed off at Flurry’s sigh.
“That’s gonna be fun,” Flurry grumbled sarcastically.
Raven sighed. “Yes, it will. The good news is that if he’s asking for our permission, he doesn’t really want to do it, just sees no other option- so all we have to do is help him see his options. It’s happened before.”
“Oh good. I was worried I’d have to sentence him to misery.”
“Then there’s a team of nobles that want control of Sweet Apple Acres-!”
“Not happening,” Flurry stated simply.
She nodded. “Yeah, Celestia said that too, last month. They want to ‘own’ an Element of Harmony.”
She let out an angry snort. “Let ‘em come. I want to know who to threaten.”
“... Not how Celestia would have done it, but I can’t complain,” she continued. “Your methods may be a little unorthodox, but there’s no denying they’re effective. After that, we’ve got a whole bunch of family disputes to settle before lunch.”
She wrinkled her nose again. “I wish they didn’t have to come to the Crown to solve their family affairs,” she muttered. “It just seems so petty to seek a higher authority to tell them who gets the first shower in the morning.” She sighed. There had been one couple asking her that same question earlier that day- she hadn’t given them a definitive answer, but she had suggested they take turns.
“Couldn’t agree more,” Raven nodded. “These are a little less internal to the family, though- a good half of them are disputes over who inherits the money from their parents, two of them are seeking divorce, one couple wants your opinion on whether they should get married or not, six of them are arguing over the custody of foals born out of wedlock, and the last one will be right after lunch, a couple that wants custody of a filly whose parents were mistreating her.”
“I hope those parents are present for that last one,” she muttered.
“They should be. They approached Celestia two weeks ago, and she was unable to reach a decision because those other parents weren’t present. She had it rescheduled for today, and issued the parents in question a summons for the event.” She paused to take a breath. “We’ve got almost two hours allocated for it, and Captain Gleaming Shield has promised to have the finest psychologists from the Guard’s psychological unit present for that- you’ll want to listen, but we’ll be able to let them do all the talking for a change.”
She scowled slightly. “Wouldn’t Celestia have gone without those psychologists?”
“Celestia holds three separate psychology degrees herself,” Raven answered promptly. “She’s by far the best psychologist of the bunch. Without her, though, I don’t think I’m qualified for that, and you probably wouldn’t know what to ask.”
She nodded. “Agreed. What happens after that?”
“After that, we’ve got the protestors from the train station a month ago; when Celestia had the Guards disperse the protest-turned-riot, she also had them given the option to approach the Crown after ample time to reach a settlement. It seems they weren’t able to reach a settlement, so… there they are. We’ve got another two hours allocated to listen to both sides and reach our decision.
“Then to close out the day, we’ve got a couple that was scheduled to have Celestia marry them this evening- she already gave the go-ahead, so we don’t have to decide anything. I’ve been in contact with them since Celestia’s… disappearance, and they would like to move forward with it, if you’re comfortable performing in Celestia’s stead- if not, three of their wedding guests are ministers, and we can have one of them marry the couple instead.”
Flurry scowled. “That’ll probably depend on what mood I’m in after those protesters,” she mumbled. “But I don’t see why I can’t at least attend their wedding.”
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Flurry, you would be making your mom and auntie very proud, look at you, such a big girl! And good job getting even Blueblood to start showing some competence!
Color me surprise! This Blueblood is actually competent when pressed. Still, Flurry need Starlight if she want to have any chance against this level of spell.
Damn Flurry, you've turn Canterlot from the sitcom i sit and watch to an actually functioning capital. Good Job. I see a bright future for you as a ruler. A strong ruler.
To quote from Josh Scorcher's collab with Wambu...
As Silver Quill would say, "Celestia served as the queen/mother archetype. Her role was to nurture her charges and create an environment in which they could flourish."
I am surprised that Flurry didn’t ask Aunt Twilight’s friends for help. They could definitely take some of the lode off. I doubt any would be very happy with the foal being neglected.
10561439
She did...
No doubt they're supporting her as much as they can, but they still have lives of their own, businesses of their own that they have to take care of. Even so, they probably stuck around long enough to make sure Flurry had someone good helping her out before they left...
Very nice to see what is happening in Equestria after what happened to the Princesses
Nice chapter looking forward to more
Discord and Starlight are good at this story? I'm surprised Discord didn't come to cheer on Flurry, but considering Flurry's patience, possibly if he played a prank on her, she would turn him to stone. Now, if Starlight is good, and a student of Twilight, it is surprising that she did not go to the castle, considering that she is a good wizard, almost on the level of Twilight.
I am glad to see that Equestria is still standing and is functioning just as well (if not better) now that Flurry is the one running it!
Well... that's the first time I've seen that discordant Americanism work its way into a setting which comes across "the stuff Celestia has had influence over is more socially progressive than even the more civilized side of the developed world". Usually, it's the idea of making patients pay for non-elective medical procedures.
...and this feels like the kind of thing you don't bring up unless it's central to the plot, because it's unhelpfully difficult to predict and control its effects on how people will experience the fic.
10561366
Absolutely agreed! Good job Flurry Heart.
I feel the urge to say...
Princess Sky-La-La is in the house!
And she is not taking any horseapples while she is on that throne.
As for why I wanted to say it... This is a cool story.
10561808
Well, I needed to show that Flurry Heart had a full day at Day Court, completely independent of the rest of her new duties, and that she would be enjoying very little of it...
10562551
Oh, I fully agree with that. I just think you should have picked a slightly different set of unpleasant things for her to deal with.
I see Equestria as Europe-like, in that what the government has control over is more pro-citizen than in North America, but they still have to deal with prejudice, like when Zecora came to Ponyville or when Chancellor Neighsay came into the picture, because Celestia can push policy, but can't legislate tolerance.
When they came back Celestia was forced to retire, seeing how well Flurry Heart running the country.
Unfortunately the minimum wage does more harm then good and should be eliminated completely.
10561554
I was just wondering where the hell Starlight is
Archmage
*Nearly dies laughing*
You did swap the order of the comma and close quotes though.
So, he's either a savant, or she REALLY put the fear into him. I'm not sure which is more impressive.
She's good at this.
Apparently she's using the Solomon Method. Threaten to chop one baby in half, and it solves ALL your problems evermore (Yes, I know the real story, but it's funny when the wording is a bit misleading).
Guess ‘The Exalted Dishwasher’ was merely lazy and complacent
Who’d have thought that Blueblood would’ve amounted to anything more than a throwaway character
This is genuinely my favorite chapter so far. I would read a whole story of just this version of Flurry trying to run Equestria.
At first, I was confused as to why the interim government didn't appoint a Regent to monitor Flurry. Then, I remembered that they never had an Alicorn filly in their recorded history and since Flurry is an alicorn and the other Princesses aren't available, which means she is the de facto ruling princess, therefore she is the government.
Also, props for Flurry Heart for actually handling the nation quite well although her methods of doing it were unorthodox to the usual Equestrian standard which is Celestia's kind jurisdiction. Honestly, I could read about Flurry running Equestria all day.
Anyway, good to see Blueblood getting his hooves dirty.