The Whole Thing
"Princess Luna, Princess Celestia, I need to talk to the both of you," Twilight said as she walked into the personal chambers of the princesses. She sat down with a humph as she looked up at her mentor, disappointment and anger in her eyes.
"What is it, Twilight?" Princess Celestia asked.
"I have been doing a lot of thinking these past few months and have come to a startling and disturbing conclusion."
"That is?"
"After the invasion of the Changelings and your subsequent defeat at the hooves of Queen Chrysalis, things just didn't add up. Even if Chrysalis was fully charged with the power of love from my brother, how is it possible for you to be overpowered by her? You raise the sun!" Twilight was pacing backwards and forwards now, "Not only that, Chrysalis also failed to kill you, a clear oversight on her part despite being able to beat you in a battle of raw magical power, the question remains: why did she do so? Everypony knows that you were the only one capable of defeating her if her powers faded even slightly. So why take the risk? It made no sense!"
The princesses exchanged looks.
"Even if we take into consideration that you were really overpowered by the changeling queen, and even if your powers were not fully charged because of some reason, and taking the lack of concern you displayed during your so-called capture, I have come to a worrying and disturbing conclusion." Twilight stopped and looked at the two of them panting quickly, "One that would explain why all this was possible, and also why Princess Luna was nowhere to be seen during the entire invasion."
"And what is that?" Celestia asked calmly.
Twilight took a deep breath and looked her mentor in the eye, "It was all an elaborate setup. A lie. The invasion was fake and was an inside job fully planned out and executed by none other than you!"
Celestia blinked at that. "What?"
"Yes, you heard me! I'm accusing you for it. I don't know why, but it's the only thing that makes sense! The reason why you were defeated was because you let yourself lose. The reason why you weren't worried about the Queen or her soldiers harming anypony was because you knew that they wouldn't. How can there be a hostile takeover with no casualties? It makes no sense! Why didn't I see it before?"
The princesses stared at Twilight shocked.
"How Chrysalis let me find Princess Cadence in those caves! How she let me bring her back, using those mares to guard the exit instead of her changeling soldiers? How Princess Cadence was allowed to stay near Shining Armor and restore his memory and power through her own magic when Chrysalis spent so long in keeping them apart! It's all so obvious, why didn't I see it before..."
"You're rambling, my dear," Celestia informed her.
Twilight stopped and lowered her eyes to the ground, "The Queen of the changelings... was... Princess Luna!" She pointed an accusatory hoof at the Princess of the Night.
There was a long silence.
"Please tell me I'm wrong?" Twilight asked looking up. When silence met her question she pressed the point, "I'm wrong, right?"
Luna stood up and walked over to the mare. "No."
Twilight couldn't believe her ears. "Y-y-you were?"
"I was. Am."
Shutting her eyes tightly closed to absorb the shock of what she had just heard, Twilight turned on the princess. She glared up at her, anger evident in her eyes, "But... but why?"
Luna smiled at Twilight gently, "I am impressed that you have made such a discovery. I had thought that our plan to help the Princess of the Crystal Empire had worked without arousing any suspicion. She truly is a bright student, one that you have underestimated, sister."
The Sun Princess shook her head, "No. I expected that one day she might discover it."
"Oh? Well, I shall answer your question, Twilight Sparkle. Princess Cadence is the princess of the Crystal Empire. Her position in our kingdom was nothing more than a figurehead of a fabled kingdom that had vanished without a trace over a thousand years ago. When the Crystal Empire disappeared because of King Sombra's curse after we had defeated him, Cadence's ancestors were forced to live in Equestria as exiles."
"Cadence isn't... immortal?" Twilight asked.
"She is as immortal as any alicorn can be, but her line is that of unicorn. She is... special."
Princess Celestia smiled at Twilight, "Just like my faithful student."
At those words, and despite her earlier anger, Twilight couldn't help flush at the praise from her mentor. She looked at her wings and folded them backwards, "But... why did you have to go that far?"
Luna once again started to walk around Twilight, talking to her as if she were a student in her class. Twilight listened to every word as she spoke.
"As she is the Crystal Princess, we needed to establish her as a powerful and capable leader able to protect her ponies from harm. You have to understand that prior to the reappearance of the Crystal Empire, your sister-in-law was seen as something of a..."
"Wastrel."
"Sister!" Luna snapped at Celestia. "You need not be so blunt."
"It is time she learns the ways of the courts, Luna. It isn't always pleasant, and not everypony sees reason. Greed and power are at constant play, and weakness is shunned. Displaying Cadence as an assertive ruler was a necessity that we had to... orchestrate."
"Then... is that why you allowed yourself to be beaten by Chrysalis- I mean Luna?"
"In part, yes. If we had allowed Cadence to rule as she was, nopony in our kingdom or our neighbors would have taken her seriously. She would command no respect and will forever be dependent on us to rule over her realm. Celestia and I agreed that it was necessary for this charade to take place to acclimate our subjects to a new and powerful alicorn."
"But it's a lie! You lied to us all!" Twilight shouted, "Lied to me."
Princess Celestia looked at her faithful student with compassion, "Yes. We had to lie to you all. You especially, my faithful student."
"Then... even that time was a test? For me?"
"You saw through our ruse even when we had tried to postpone it for as long as possible. You had found Princess Cadence at the right moment and revealed her perfectly in front of all of Canterlot to see. If you had been informed that it was all just an act, then you wouldn't have fought as hard as you did and there would have been those that would have suspected foul play. Until now, you have been the only one to actually solve the puzzle."
"I nearly died!"
"You were never really in any danger, Twilight. Never, at any point."
"The caves? You knew?"
"I've been alive for over a thousand years, Twilight, and a vast majority of that time I've lived here. Do you really believe I would have no idea about the caverns beneath my own home? There is no reason for any of my ponies to go down there, so I used it to keep Cadence safely hidden away until it was time for her big reveal."
"But... but Chrysalis' magic was green, and Princess Luna's is blue. You can't disguise your magic... can you?" Twilight still refused to believe that it was all an act.
"I had given Luna some of my power to maintain her changeling form. I had also given some of my power to many of our most loyal Guards to maintain their changeling appearance. The mixture of our powers together... well, what do you get when you mix blue and yellow?"
"Green. That makes sense," Twilight said to herself. "You thought of everything."
"And you still saw right through it once you applied what you know to what had happened, as is expected from you, Princess Twilight."
Again, Twilight's face blushed again at the praise.
"So, let me get this straight. You orchestrated the entire invasion of Canterlot to promote Cadence's appearance to your subjects-"
"Our subjects, Twilight," Princess Celestia reminded her student.
"Our subjects. You did all that just to prove that Cadence is a strong, capable ruler so that she will be respected and admired as the leader of the Crystal Empire, which was still missing at the time of the invasion, and this was done by concocting strange creatures called changelings who followed their queen, which you have admitted were actually guards that you had disguised probably through the use of some transfiguration magic so they could have just turned the incantation off and look like their normal selves-"
"It's a divergence of the spell they use to keep their coats and their eyes uniform," Celestia pointed out. "A type of vanity spell. Surely you don't think that I'd only keep white pegasi and unicorns in my service, do you? Or that Luna only keeps those with dark blue or indigo coats."
"No, I guess not... but don't try and change the subject," Twilight replied. "How did Chrysalis -- I mean Luna -- and the changeling army get blasted away by the spell?"
"Although I had expected her to use some sort of repelling spell to banish us from Canterlot, I had severely underestimated the strength of the spell. It took me a while to recover and teleport back. Luckily I managed to do so in time for the reception. I am still very upset that I missed my own niece's wedding, but at least I can say that I helped her cement her position as the Princess of the Crystal Empire."
Twilight blinked for a few minutes, "Are the Canterlot courts really difficult to get along with?"
"You have no idea," both the princesses stated together.
"I had hoped that you would understand why we had to try and do this, Twilight. Sometimes I forget that you haven't lived and learned for as long as we have. There are some things you are going to find out about our kind that will put to the test everything you've ever believed. We do not like manipulating our subjects this way, but sometimes it is a necessity in order to maintain harmony."
"Will... will I have to do this also?"
"One day, yes."
"Then... was putting Cadence as my sitter also part of the plan to help shape me?" Twilight asked, afraid of the answer.
At this Celestia shook her head, "Actually, she was taken by you. I had nothing to do with that. You did. Then, afterwards, she fell for your brother. If it weren't for her, I would have never found you, Twilight."
"I'm sorry, Princess. This is too much for me to handle right now. I'm going to have to think for a bit. I'll be okay."
"Take all the time you need. We'll be here. I only ask that you do not endanger your sister-in-law's life by revealing what you have learned here to others."
"And believe us when we say that there will be those that will try to take your sister's throne by force if they sense any kind of weakness," Luna added. "Your brother won't be able to protect her all the time."
"Don't worry. I won't tell anypony."
With that, Twilight left.
As soon as she was gone, Luna turned to her, "Why did you lie and say that you didn't purposely send Cadence to foalsit her?"
"I didn't. I sent Cadence there to deliver a letter for her father. She fell for their son after she felt his love for her, you know. It was through that relationship that she ended up foalsitting Twilight Sparkle as an excuse to be with him."
Luna looked at Celestia for a moment before shaking her head, "You are so full of hot air sometimes, sister."
"I'm serious!" Celestia tried to convince Luna, but failed miserably.
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Pretty good actually *wears a tinfoil hat* They won't get ME!
Seems legit.
This actually makes sense
Interesting and feasible. A definite like.
Well then...I...huh...yeah...I'll buy that.
...have a thumb.
Twilight seems to have taken kinda well the fact her teacher is a Magnificent Bastard and she has been her pawn (and recently, her queen) during most of her life.
I have to admit for Twilight to accept this explaination a bit to easy...I mean if I were her, I would be more angry than easy going in this case for Celestia and Luna to gamble the kingdom like that in a cause for testing her and her friends.
Although that would be just me. This was a great short tale as it does explain some things within the episode itself.
Do keep up the good work upon such great ideas in future stories.
Well I guess that makes sense.
Nice, certainly an unexpected twist. Though I think revealing the Changelings as real creatures of a more benign nature that Celestia has made arrangements with would have made it a bit better. A harmless pest of sorts that was useful to have on her side in the past and present.
2202292 Ooh. That is actually interesting.
So Celestia's powerful enough that losing to Chrysalis is unrealistic, yet she needs these sorts of charades in order to engineer Cadance's public image, and still has problems with her court.
Instead of, you know, cleaning up the court.
2202311 Thanks, I like to think interesting is what I do best. To be honest though it’s mostly because I’m a Changeling fan. I have an almost irrational distaste for them being used as thorough bread bad guys or mindless monsters.
That was bazaar and unexpected. But I still enjoyed it.
So Changelings... don't... exist?
Still, interesting take on the S2 finale!
So... changelings don't exist? Because if they actually do exist, they're stuck in a PR nightmare. Oh, well!
2202157 2202160
I don't think that Twilight has 'accepted' anything. She's in shock at the moment and trying to process what Celestia and Luna have told her. She'll keep the secret for Cadence's sake (and that emotional bond, too, might be entirely according to Celestia's plan) but she hasn't decided yet whether she can ever unconditionally trust the Sisters ever again.
I half believe Celestia's last statement, being alive for thousands of years, being a chess master, Celestia strikes me as having MANY plans to find the element of magic and marry off Cadence. She likely had a list of young Stallions that where perfect for Cadence, and sent her on meaningless little trips to make she she encountered them, and when Cadence told Celestia about Twilight, well two birds one stone. Reveling everything to Twilight was a calculated risk, but Celestia intimately knows Twilight, trusts Twilight will understand WHY everything was done, and even learn an important lesson about the kind of unpleasant things a good princess must do to maintain a near Utopian Kingdom.
2202317
Which is Princess Luna´s (from the Lunaverse) regular policy:
1)Select worthy ones for nobility.
2)Wait decades/centuries until the Night Court is so collapsed from corruption than cannot work properly.
3)Dismiss the corrupt nobles and repeat
Not perfect (admitely from Luna herself), but better than such overcomplicated schemes
2203238
And yet, such behaviour reminds me suspiciously to Celestia from "Lines and Webs". And I find it revulsive for the same reason (people-are-not-toys-period).
>What do you get when you combine blue and yellow?
You get white, of course. Horns give off light, and yellow light is blue light's complement, being made of the other two primary colors, red and green. Therefore, the combination of blue and yellow light would be white, or perhaps a shade of gray depending on the intensity of the colors.
2203063
After the wedding shenanigans, Celestia received a letter from the actual Queen of the Changelings, demanding an explanation for just what the HELL happened at the wedding, and is very upset about how several of her relatively harmless changelings got rooted out of their homes and chased out of town by paranoid villagers.
Cue Celestia realized that she basically just engineered a publicity stunt where she had an entire species painted as monsters. Too bad that species actually existed and was upset about their portrayal.
(Take all the swags)
A novel idea, though events seemed a little bit rushed.
2203089
It would make an interesting continuation. One thing about a chessmaster Celestia is that some people don't react well at all to being treated like pawns. The entire practice would go against the whole magic of friendship thing Celestia has been grooming Twilght for. Cold fury Twilicorn would probably be terrifying.
2204325
I tried to capture the panicked, annoyed, fast-speaking Twilight. You know how she sometimes goes off on this rapid-fire tirades? That's what I had in mind when she was talking.
2202317 In my head, even Celestia cannot read the true intentions of her own court. But yeah, fixing up the court would be the best way -- only maybe it's not that simple?
2203396 Oh no!
Thanks for the tid-bit of science. I'll just do the convenient thing and blame it on magic...
Well done! Got any other conspiracies floating around in your head?
It's nice to see one that doesn't have to do with taking over the world-
SHUT UP, BISON!
But seriously, conspiracies for harmony rather than against it are intriguing. Maybe you can make this a series?
Instead of "unpredicted" I think the word "underestimated" would work better.
2204743 I have a couple more, but I need to plan it out a bit better. They sound better in my head.
2204882 It does sounds better.
you have a very good imagination
2204222
Oh wow, that would be amazing. This.
I like the way you filled several plot holes with one neat story. Pretty entertaining too.
But to me it raises one as well.
Princess Cadance, who was in exile due to a powerful, malicious force, was around and quite probably active during her time at the Equestrian court. She would be seen and known, and could take actions to promote herself. However, when it came down to reinstating her in her rightful position Celestia and Luna cooked up a plot to have a mysterious race invade, try and wreck the wedding, and be defeated by Cadance so she could be seen as legitimate and capable.
Princess Luna, who was banished to the moon for a thousand years for falling from grace, has no idea what modern society is like, and who is completely unknown to the Equestrian populace, immediately gets her position right back with no apparent major plots. Unless you're counting the whole Nightmare Moon return as a plot. Though it strikes me that the whole "eternal night" thing would seem to do more reputation damage than would be recovered by everything else, forcing her to slog through winning her reputation back the hard way.
2212997 Ironically, I have been toying with a story similar to this based on the return of Luna. If you'd like, when I'm done, I can let you proof read it.
2204222 Awesome!
I found it a bit dull. The conversation didn't seem nearly as dramatic as it should have. There didn't seem to be much actual conflict.
They have an elaborate lie, just so that they can get Cadence to maintain power, instead of letting a better (or democratically elected) pony go into power. I hope ponies eventually grow wise to the alicorns tyranny and overthrow them.
2203298
Or you could have the court elected democratically, so that anypony found out to be corrupt can be impeached or not re-elected.
An interesting twist on the story. I like
Relevance, slightly different, but relevant.
Twilight took it far too well. Should have been more 'Twilight Freakout'
It is interesting. This topic gets pondered a lot. Neat story.
I bet there are a lot of things to disprove this theory. However, I know of none, so whatever.
Interesting theory. Boring infodump. No actual story.
5304274
Like any conspiracy theory on a large scale, there's just too many possibilities of it getting out.
I haven't read it yet but... A dark comedy... Nice but difficult choice.
I forgave this story's premise being based on the assumption that Chrysalis couldn't beat Celestia even with a love boost, since this story was written before Season 4 and there were far less canon examples of Alicorn power.
But I could not suspend my disbelief here:
I'm pretty sure it was established by the time this story was written that Cadence was born a pegasus.
But the real problem comes from the fact that the Crystal Empire has no natural unicorns! Or pegasi! The crystals ponies (at least natural ones, not crystalized versions of regular Equestrians) are all hornless and wingless. The case could be made that Sombra is a unicorn, but he isn't a crystal pony and by the indication of the show is an outside invader who conquered the Empire. So unless Celestia appointed Cadence as ruler over a vanished empire that Cadence wasn't even part of the Royal bloodline for, this story makes no sense.
5353191 Pegasus (what she is) + Unicorn (her hereditary line).
I suppose it was a brave foot forward, but I still wanted to see if anyone would notice.
5353191 Or maybe in the thousand years since her family was exiled into equestria the nobles of the crystal empire hooked up with enough of the equestrian nobles (who happen to be mostly unicorns) that they eventually all started being born unicorns? I also get the impression that being an earth pony is recessive, because in the show you only ever see large groups of them in isolated regions, like the Crystal Empire, Ponyville, and Appaloosa. The majority of ponies in Canterlot seem to be unicorns, Cloudsdale is exclusively pegasi, and I'd bet that the earth ponies and pegasi in Canterlot haven't been there for more than a generation or two. Manehatten is probably riddled with ethnic neighborhoods, like Harlem in real NY or the "Chinatowns" that exist in some larger cities.
5555051
Actually, the Cakes demonstrate that unicorns and Pegasi are the recessive traits. And Co-dominant (co-recessive? ), if pony genetics are like ours.
5556254 Something like that. I freaking bombed biology class, but I understand basic stuff.
The changeling conspiracy, is a Government conspiracy.
Interesting.
Not sure how I feel about this, but it's interesting.
too bad I didn't find this until after season 6's finale...