The year is 1502. Long gone are the times of subjective harmony, long gone are the times of friendship. The sun shines brightly and unyieldingly over a new land, the Solar Empire. Ruled solely and perfectly by Empress Daybreaker.
I'm kind of disappointed Chrysalis was being hyped up to be this super bad evil person and basically see pretty much could have been one shot by Celestia at any time. And we get no real clarification on her motives other than a appetite to basically say she's the one if she would play smarter.
11371741 Chrysalis' motives were just to cause pain. She didn't care about why, or how, or when, she just did it to do it. It was mechanical, food is needed, food can be gotten, and the hunt was fun. She's too childish to have a long-term plan, which is why she killed the one leader willing to work with her after a reasonable criticism. While Daybreaker is seasoned, only waging the war to have her ponies live and die in loyalty, thus strengthening to nationalist spirit of the Empire for the majority which had come to support her "shock and awe" approach, Chrysalis is an overgrown child surrounded by nothing but subjects that were essentially an extension of her own mind and never said no. The exception being Pharynx and Thorax, of course, who had minds of their own. She tried to make big plans, but they failed, and eventually she realized that even with her greatest weapon, she was no match for Daybreaker's army, and she knew from the start that she was no match for Daybreaker herself.
As to why Daybreaker didn't snip her head off immediately, it's for the aforementioned reason. War is a business one way or another, and having an existential threat makes people not only united against it, but ever more loyal to their protector as well. The whole thing was a political play to establish their loyalty, but of course that's not made brazenly obvious because that would defeat the purpose of the propaganda. It's a tell to both Chrysalis and Daybreaker that they went through all this time and effort when Chrysalis knew what would happen in the end, and Daybreaker knew she could do that in the end.
I'm kind of disappointed Chrysalis was being hyped up to be this super bad evil person and basically see pretty much could have been one shot by Celestia at any time. And we get no real clarification on her motives other than a appetite to basically say she's the one if she would play smarter.
11371741
Chrysalis' motives were just to cause pain. She didn't care about why, or how, or when, she just did it to do it. It was mechanical, food is needed, food can be gotten, and the hunt was fun. She's too childish to have a long-term plan, which is why she killed the one leader willing to work with her after a reasonable criticism. While Daybreaker is seasoned, only waging the war to have her ponies live and die in loyalty, thus strengthening to nationalist spirit of the Empire for the majority which had come to support her "shock and awe" approach, Chrysalis is an overgrown child surrounded by nothing but subjects that were essentially an extension of her own mind and never said no. The exception being Pharynx and Thorax, of course, who had minds of their own. She tried to make big plans, but they failed, and eventually she realized that even with her greatest weapon, she was no match for Daybreaker's army, and she knew from the start that she was no match for Daybreaker herself.
As to why Daybreaker didn't snip her head off immediately, it's for the aforementioned reason. War is a business one way or another, and having an existential threat makes people not only united against it, but ever more loyal to their protector as well. The whole thing was a political play to establish their loyalty, but of course that's not made brazenly obvious because that would defeat the purpose of the propaganda. It's a tell to both Chrysalis and Daybreaker that they went through all this time and effort when Chrysalis knew what would happen in the end, and Daybreaker knew she could do that in the end.