The events of Cadence's wedding just didn't add up to Twilight. Despite everything, the entire event went off without a hitch, which then left many unanswered questions. This kept on nagging her until she started to put the pieces together. After convincing herself that there was simply no other way, she decides it's time she confronted Celestia and Luna about it.
What she learns is both shocking and educational. Shocking because of what she learned, and educational as to how far the Princesses were willing to go to ensure the safety of their land and its subjects.
Chapters (1)
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...