"Luna! Good morning. Care to join me for a little breakfast, or are you heading to bed?"
"We believe the scent of this so-called coffee is already enough to prolong the royal rest for another hour."
Celestia giggled. "Sit down. Have some juice. Share with me, your company."
"We suppose it is worth spending some sisterly bonding time."
"Now, Luna, dear sister, I don't mean to nitpick…"
Luna's eyebrows leapt.
"It's the we-I thing. I know you're still adjusting to how language has changed in the time you've been away, but that feels like a relatively important one. For clarity, you see."
"We… I must wonder about this particular development of the tongue."
"It's fairly straightforward, over time there became a need to distinguish between the singular and the collective first person. I, and we."
"Of course, dear sister, but… I, have questions about the consequences of such a shift."
"The shift was hardly intentional."
"I am aware, but just because the great Ursa does not intend to cause harm by its passage close to town, does not mean that the behaviour of the people is unaffected."
"A fair point."
"So then does language set the boundaries of our thought. It is incredibly difficult to grasp concepts for which there is no name."
"Up to 20th century philosophers already, I see?"
Luna snorted. "Hardly. They may return to us when they can explain their thoughts without the use of the ten bit words. Perhaps then they can demonstrate that they understand them themselves."
"A bold accusation from one pontificating about the psychological ramifications of a finite vocabulary."
Luna scowled, then a smirk crept into the side of her face, and both Princesses laughed.
"Anyway. Such an observation is blindingly obvious to one in ou- my unique position, encountering a…" She smirked again. "... cavalcade of new expressions in quick succession. Words like 'microwave' and 'assembly line' and 'superglue'. Prior to my banishment I would hardly have believed that these things were possible, and yet today they are ordinary."
"I'm confident that the name 'superglue' followed the invention, not the other way around."
"But…" Luna clicked her horseshoes together rapidly. "The assembly line! There was no reason that in the tenth century we could not have arranged our production capacities in such a way. All we would have needed to switch from the artisanal mode of production to one where workers pass baskets and pots and carts along line to increase efficiency is to have thought of it. Whether they would have benefited from such a change is another matter, but it could have been tried!"
"I still think you're reaching a little bit, but continue. Let's see where you're going with this."
The presence of a plural first person in Celestia's reply did not evade Luna's notice. "When one thinks in terms of 'we' and 'our' and 'us', we bind ourselves to the collective. We are constrained to considering the group as a whole. Thinking in terms of 'me' and 'I' and 'mine' creates… an individualistic perspective. You separate yourself from the group and allow your conception of your needs to diverge."
"That is… interesting to think about, but I'm fairly sure that selfish ponies existed in our childhoods as much as they exist now."
"True, we suppose."
Celestia smiled, and proceeded to her eggs before they got cold. "So. Have you had any thoughts about returning to civic life yet?"
"The subject has been gathering increasing amounts of my attention lately, though we are aware there is… hesitation among the population around a restoration."
"That we are. Don't worry, I'm sure they'll come around."
"After a thousand years on the moon, a few more for public opinion to change is hardly worth fretting about. Still," Luna paused, hoof in the air while her thoughts caught up. "I thought I would put any such sabbatical to good use and use this time to familiarise myself with the events that transpired during my exile. Study the context of the current political moment."
Celestia's eggs briefly went down the wrong way. "You've got a lot to catch up on there, sister."
Luna chuckled. "I can imagine."
"The palace libraries are of course completely open to you, and if you like, I can request a tutor for you. I'm sure there would be many who would be eager for such a position."
"Actually, before I commence any such studies by myself, I wished to ask for your perspective, my beloved sister whom I trust the most in the whole wide world."
Celestia giggled bashfully. "I… how to put this without being rude. I am of course, dear sister, eager to spend the time with you that I so neglected in the past. But for such a large span of history, wouldn't you benefit from the attention of a full-time scholar to get you through the basics? If you were relying entirely on me for the fundamentals, between my appointments, and court hours, and foreign visits, it could take… months!"
"Well, if you are unavailable, I suppose I could see what this supposed 'internet' can teach me. I hear it's a marvellously complete archive."
"Okay. We're doing this right now. I'm cancelling my 10 o'clock."
Luna rested on a hoof with a sly grin. "So. What happened?"
"Where would you like to start?"
"Well, I keep hearing about this 'parliament' around the palace, but I've hardly seen a single owl outside the zoological gardens. What is it?"
Celestia looked at her empty coffee mug, and considered cancelling all of her morning appointments. "The Parliament is a representative elected body. All of Equestria is divided into constituencies - areas with roughly the same number of people according to the census - and each one elects a representative to send to Parliament. Then, Parliament makes the laws that govern the land."
"Oh. So we… do not make the laws?"
"I know, I know, it's a pretty substantial change. Don't worry, it's been there for about four hundred years, and it hasn't gotten us into too much trouble. Think of it like the old Advisory Council, but with a few hundred members instead of just a half dozen."
"Then… the people have rejected us?"
"Oh, hardly. My role - and, presumably, in time, yours - is as the Head of State. We still represent Equestria, and its values of harmony and friendship. Our opinions still matter a great deal to the public, we meet foreign leaders, we generally bind society together."
"That would make us little more than performers."
"Well, we are still the two most powerful living mages on the planet. We delegate our legal power to Parliament, backed by our physical power."
Luna looked deep in thought.
"After the Nightmare Moon crisis of 1010, there was a lot of collateral damage. It was the first time I had exercised the full power of the sun to such an extreme degree. I knew that I could not exercise this power again unless it was an absolute emergency."
"So… why did it take you six hundred years to set up Parliament?"
"Because parliamentary democracy wasn't the first thing I tried. The first thing I did was delegate more legal power to the provinces. Provincial advisors gained noble titles like duke, baron, count - and under them were created knights, who held smaller amounts of land, and peasants worked on the land. Each tier of society swore fealty to the tier above, with me at the top. This was the feudal system."
"Seems sensible. Princess, then governors, then equites, then the plebeians."
The image of someone in 2011 calling the feudal system 'sensible' caught Celestia with a breathy, nervous chuckle. "That's what I thought at the time, but in hindsight, it had a lot of problems. The local lords, with a high degree of autonomy, were prone to fighting each other. And of course, I couldn't step in to stop these squabbles personally, because I didn't want to reduce wide portions of the countryside to ashes. The least worst solution was to try and lead diplomatically, and where that fails, lead the most loyal dukes and barons, and their sworn knights, to put an end to fighting that was getting out of control."
"Oh." Luna's nose wrinkled. "That's barbaric."
"Is it more barbaric than controlling a wayward province by incinerating it?"
"A difficult question."
"Anyway. Another problem, besides the constant infighting, was what I came to call le monde créé."
"The created world?"
"Even under this system of delegated power, I was still the most influential person within it. Which meant that the nobles absolutely fell over each other to try and be close to me - to promote their own interests. Within the aristocracy there condensed a circle around me of obsequious toads who… exploited my guilt. There's no other word for it. They knew that my heart was heavy with the consequences of the Nightmare Moon crisis and the bloody side-effects of the feudal system, and used that to keep me contained. Oblivious to reality. You want to talk about being a mere performer, that's how I felt in the 13th century. This alliance of landed gentry told me whatever was useful for them to keep me as la Princesse en Deuil, always in her white veil, obsessed with the past, never-"
Luna gently touched a hoof to Celestia's. She stopped. Part of the tablecloth had begun to char.
"My apologies."
"Are you alright? Do you wish to continue another time?"
"No, I'm fine. It was a long time ago. Let's carry on."
"Are you certain?"
"Yes. Thank you, Luna." Celestia smiled, and sniffed. "Le monde créé was the web of distortions that isolated me from contemporary reality and allowed the aristocracy to entrench their delegated power. This was what allowed resentment to fester among the peasantry. They had it the worst, you see. But being a starving underclass, there was very little they could do about it. This was until the rise of the merchant classes."
"But we have always had merchants."
"Yes, but with the advance of technology, there came more opportunities to accumulate wealth outside of the feudal hierarchy. Merchants gained wealth comparable to that of the aristocracy without having noble titles, but they lacked the political authority of those noble titles."
"I see where this is going."
"Indeed. By the 16th century the feudal system was crumbling. Wealthy merchants could afford armies of sellswords to compete with the sworn knights of the aristocracy, and the invention of the printing press meant the spread of literacy outside of the wealthiest and most powerful."
"A disenfranchised peasantry becoming increasingly informed, an absentee monarch, a self-absorbed patrician class, and the rise of dual power."
"This was the crucible of liberalism. All it took was a little crisis to knock it all over. A poor harvest, a plague, international troubles. Funnily enough, you might like to know that you were a symbol of some of these movements."
"Oh?"
"Yes! Being that I was the Mourning Princess, who never showed her face or seemingly did anything, one folk idea that went around was that Nightmare Moon was right. That the little sister who just wanted to be loved was right to stand up and demand it, because that's how people felt at the time. That's how the word 'republic' entered modern Equestrian. Because obviously, you weren't around to lead a state, so the liberal thinkers of the time began to devise a new form of governing, without a Princess or nobility, called the republic - the New Lunar Republic."
Luna chuckled. "A contradiction in terms, I would have thought. Did you… Let this happen?"
"It was a close thing. This was around the time that I was breaking out of my Created World. A regent can mislead their charge when they are an infant or senile, but a presumably immortal being like myself-"
"Did anyone ever find out whether or not that's the case?"
"- no. But over time, the contradictions in the Created World began to pile up, just as the contradictions in feudalism were straining that system. And very well that they were, because I shudder to think what would have happened if a revolution had progressed to the point of attempting to depose me. No, I stepped in quite early to try and prevent bloodshed. The New Lunar Republic was never more than a thought experiment."
"A shame."
"I had no choice but to call a constitutional convention. The compromise struck was that we would create the body known as Parliament with two houses, a lower house with members elected by the people, and an upper house taking the place of the Advisory Council, on which the hereditary leaders of the provinces and sovereign cities would sit. Parliament writes laws, both houses approve them by majority vote, and then they pass by my desk for approval."
"And you must approve everything they send you?"
Celestia curled her lips. "No."
"That does not sound particularly… democratic, considering that prior to your intervention these people were presumably ready to do unspeakable things to you, and the nobles."
"This was part of the compromise. See, remember that the upper house at the time was all the nobles who put me in a cage. As soon as things were beginning to unravel, I distanced myself from them as much as I could, and I was the threat of force bringing everyone to the negotiating table. If the people had an ally in the constitutional convention, it was me. So they were more than happy to grant me this veto power within the system. We call this the Right of Sovereign Objection. But that's not the best part."
"There's more?"
"Early parliament is at a deadlock. The two houses can't agree on anything. The lower house are writing liberal reforms, and the upper house are sending back conservative reactions. The lower house want freedom of speech and habeas corpus, the upper house want to go back to how it was two hundred years earlier. In four years, two bills crossed my desk."
"A year?"
"Total."
"Stars above."
"The innovation that follows is the Tyrian party - after Parliament, the nobles and the wealthy merchant class I mentioned earlier found they had a lot of things in common - they had wealth and power they wanted to protect. So in the election of 1634, with the public tired of this Parliament they'd worked so hard to build, apparently doing nothing, the Tyrians took power in the lower house."
"I thought this was supposed to be the best part. This sounds like the liberal experiment was failing at the first hurdle."
"It was - but for one thing. So. On with the story. The Tyrian parliament basically wants to dismantle the thing from the inside. They have no interest in representative democracy and start sending me all sorts of reforms that would all but abolish the lower house, election maps designed to entrench them in power, all sorts of things." Celestia paused, and licked her lips. "In its original form, the Right of Sovereign Objection had no caveats."
Luna burst out laughing.
"Every single one of these ghoulish bills went straight into the trash."
"But surely they would have spun that as autocratic?"
"Oh, they did. So then they started sending me bills to remove Sovereign Objection."
"Which went in the trash," Luna snickered.
"Then amend it."
"Which went in the trash."
"Eventually the Prime Minister had to come over and beg me to approve literally any kind of limitation on Sovereign Objection, at which point I knew I could effectively write the bill myself. Which is how we get the version we still use today. Three stages of objection - first it goes back to Parliament for reconsideration, then if I'm still not happy I can refer it to the judiciary who ensure that the law is constitutional, and then if I'm still not happy-"
"It goes in the trash?"
"No. It goes to a referendum. The general population votes on it."
"Celestia, you sly old witch.
"When you're over 1600 years old, you get very good at this sort of thing."
"I'll wager the Tyrians hated it."
"Oh, absolutely, but they knew they weren't going to get anything better, because I'd just strike it down, and the alternative was violence, which they knew would be unpopular, and probably result in some sunburned estates."
"So that is how Parliament works today, then? Elected representatives, a body of the gentry, and your approval, subject to judicial and popular assent?"
"More or less. It became quickly apparent that the lower house was the fulcrum of power, so nobles started losing interest in the upper house, especially when provinces started getting the idea of shedding their hereditary titles as well. It became very unpopular to hold bills up in the upper house, so these days it's largely a meeting body of governors and mayors where they advise on how national and local affairs intersect."
"Like an Advisory Council is supposed to do."
"Exactly. Since then there have been minor reforms to expand suffrage, amend the constitution, it was redrafted in 1878 but is substantially the same document in more modern language…"
Bells could be heard. "Is that eleven o'clock?"
Celestia snapped her hooves together. "Good heavens, it is. Luna, I should scurry on to my appointment, and you should probably sleep."
"I should… this has been enlightening, sister."
Hurriedly checking her face for crumbs, Celestia flashed a warm smile. "I look forward to next time."
That is certainly a curious examination
And yeah, ponies totally would've evolved into democracy. Maybe even the best there is in fiction
Ah, just imagine
I've thought along the lines of republic state myself, it is definitely interesting to mull over, and consider why it would or wouldn't work
Ah, Celestia playing politics with her court.
Interesting start
First comment AND first like! And first time politics actually made sense to me, very well done!!
Me and the boys writing a dozen or so pamphlets in a single sitting propagating Lunar Republicanism.
Damn, this realities Robespierre was probably just a successful lawyer who eventually wound up in a mental institution.
Interesting concept. But I imagine that every step of this process, surely the ponies of their time each thought that the system of right now was much better than the systems which preceded it. Which has obvious implications for the system of the current "right now." It's probably not the best, regardless of which system it is.
Also, this seems a bit grounded in the real world. I imagine that having an immortal monarch would vastly change a political landscape. The British love their monarch. Or at least, they loved Elizabeth. who was Queen long enough that people not only grew up their entire lives with the same ruler, people grew up with the same ruler that their grandparents grew up with. It's a stark contrast with the US system for example, where the head of state potentially changes every four years.
Now try to imagine a country with the same ruler for over a thousand years...that's going to have consequences for which there's no real world equivalent. Now toss in the notion that the immortal ruler going back for as long as anyone alive can remember also happens to sustain all life on the planet. What does that do to foreign policy, for example? It maty be tempting to compare this to nuclear weapons, but it goes so much beyond that. Yes, the United States could theoretically drop nukes on Sri Lanka and there would be absolutely nothing anyone could do to stop it.
But in the case of Equestria, the nukes are on a dead man's switch. The princess doesn't have to push a button to destroy a civilization. It takes her pushing a button every day to stop civilization from being destroyed. Suppose she becomes so weary of the scheming nobles and their nonsense that she merely decides to sleep in one day. What then? Even if some few are so single-minded that they continue their selfishness in the face of global annihilation, would Celestia even need to do anything? Or would all the other ponies immediately take action to "deal with" the ponies causing the problems?
It's fascinating to use ponies as a vehicle for examining real world governance. But imagine using ants for this. Does it make sense to imagine ants going to their queen to make demands for political change? Without the queen, no new ants will be born and the entire colony will die. Imagine talking to sea horses about female abortion rights. Imagine telling a praying mantis that women are oppressed.
The basic rules under which ponies operate are different enough that their social and political systems would likely not resemble those of humans.
I love this story. Please right more ASAP.
It's not often that something I read spurs me to look something up to better understand it, but I for the life of me couldn't figure out what "parliament" had to do with owls, so I looked it up. A quick look on Wikipedia tells me about what I already knew: Its a legislative body, but no owls. I check the etymology section, maybe the owls show up in the words origin, but no, the words origins only deal with discourse and debates and negotiations, but still no owls.
Then it hits me: New Lunar Republic. The ponies who conceived of the idea of democracy, inspired by Nightmare Moon, named their ideas after her Night. So when deciding on what to call a representative legislative body, they named it after a group of Night's followers: owls. An old definition of "parliament" in this universe, the one Luna is familiar with, is a group of owls.
I think this is the most bizarre, backwards way I've ever discovered a neat world building detail. Brilliant.
God damn, this is great. Can't wait for the next chapter, i am already curious what they are going to talk about next!
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I don't know if you found it in your research but a parliament is the official name for a group of owls in our world as well. Obviously in our world it comes from the association of owls with wisdom and thus to name a group of them a parliament was after the legislative body but it being the other way round there is interesting.
Ah, I see you are a man of culture political science as well...
As a compulsive worldbuilder and head-canon artillerist, I loved this story and hope you do more of it. But more than that, as someone who's had similar thoughts about how Equestria's monarchy (eventually, dyarchy) evolved, it seems we may be thinking alike on a lot of the details. (Not surprising, since you and I were looking at the same stuff, mine was basically drawn from The Queen, which was based in large part off The Audience.)
And this part?
*Chef's kiss.* That's S-Tier constitutional thinking!
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My research went the way all proper google searches do: I scoured the top 1 link for all of 2 full seconds. I had looked up "parliament" thinking that this specifically might be true, but didn't find that! That is good to know, thank you. I just looked again, and even if I'd checked a dictionary site, I wouldn't have found much better. But being smart enough to search "parliament owl" quickly got me this definition however (on Wikipedia, no less). Guess I should've tried looking harder, so I guess I was actually just ranting some crap out my butt then, I don't know
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Collective nouns can be fun, getting you an unkindness of ravens, a murder of crows, towers or journeys of giraffes¹, skulks of foxes, etc.
Some local variations can be odd however. For instance, in parts of southern Ontario a group of Blue Jays is called a "team".
1: Depending on if they are moving or standing still.
While I'm not necessarily a fan of pony worlds having an identical calendar system to our Earth, this is an interesting concept that I haven't seen before.
Looking forward to future chapters!
One of the more notable (but understandable because kid-show) missed world building opportunities of FIM is the question of how does Equestria's political system work. Maybe it's just my autistic little brain, but I always love reading about these kinds of things. So naturally I was hooked fro the description alone.
And I have to say well done! This fun little retelling of English political history. And I love the way you portrayed Celestia here, ruthlessly clever, and yet benevolent and wise enough to simply step aside when necessary. It seems a lot of people just like to make Equestria into some sort of dystopia (albeit with varying degrees of seriousness), so this was a nice change of pace.
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I've also looked into that.
I found there are even such words describing gatherings of many mythical creatures, too.
Oddly, though, there's no such word describing a gathering of dragons.
Ryuu pointed that one out to me, and professional authors can't seem to agree on a term, either. Peter Dickenson used a "flight", Anne McCaffery used a "wing", and Milla Vane is using just the generic "gathering". Even Ryuu has his several of character (many of the same ones we're collaborating with on in our story) of using the term "squadron of firelizards" very late in their timeline, where they visited McCaffery's Pern.
But while working with him, he came across a Youtube channel where someone had been compiling an awesome selection of epic genre tunes, and he said he realized that "DragonStorm" should be it. (sadly, DragonStorm seems to have shut down all his YT channels)
"Considering how much damage just one dragon, like Smaug, could do, just imagine what effect a cluster of dragons would have on the landscape?" he said. "A 'storm' fits that description perfectly!"
Can openers count, too.
According to Wikipedia, the "Royal We" (in English) dates back to Henry II (12th century) & refers to "God & I". It gradually came to be understood to mean "when a monarch is speaking for the state".
The ponies seem to at least arguably be a theocracy (with at least Celestia being considered divine. However, Celestia at least doesn't seem to use it. Nor does she use The Canterlot Royal Voice.
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Checked my memory & according to Wikipedia, a group of dragons = "a thunder of dragons".
I always figured McCaffrey used "wing" because her groups were primarily military.
One point. There doesn't seem to have been a Magna Carta. (I suppose no battle of Runnemede because Celestia controls the sun.)
Also, the USA has a collective written constitution that all laws must conform to. England does NOT. They just have a bunch of laws.
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I had repeatedly looked at Wikipedia for it, too.
I can only find references of dragons being the cause of thunderstorms, but nothing to indicate that the term "Thunder" applied to a group or collection of dragons. Maybe the ancient people were just too terrified to contemplate the implications.
Still, either "storm" or "thunder" would be appropriate.
I was not expecting to see a discussion of political history on this site. A suprise to be sure, but a welcome one.
For reasons, not the least of which, Celie doesn't want to break Luna's mind when she stumbles across Rule34.
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Well, the thing to remember: Equestria is neither the USA nor the UK.
Different set of physics laws & different set of political rules.
Doesn't mean similarities can't exist--they're just--different.
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So, BIG question. Does EQ have a specific written constitution that all other laws must confirm to or just a bunch of laws?
Also, the Federal government does not have recall, referendum, or line item veto for bills.
The government in Glen Cook's world lets anyone who wants to coin their own money (as long as the coins meet certain standards. Many nobles do for vanity). Plus each state used to have its own money. (IDK if it's illegal or they just stopped.)
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As I said, there might be similarities, but there are bound to be differences, too.
Some of which could have a profound effect improving the stability of a nation.
Authors here can float all kinds of ideas for those differences, such as rather than allowing legislators to give themselves pay raises whenever they wish (as it is currently allowed in the American Constitution), that such approval instead requires a voter referendum--even going so far as giving the voters three choices of 1) approving, 2) keep their pay unchanged, or 3) even cutting their pay by the same amount they're wanting to raise it by.
Had such a requirement existed in the US Constitution, it could have prevented a certain former senator from making the false claim that he had been the "lowest paid senator when he was first came into office" since there is no "seniority pay" for members of Congress. His unrelenting greed and incompetence could have been checked at the door right from the start. Although, nothing is currently being helped by the fact that a complicit news media refuses to report on what he admitted.
As for the money, funny thing about that. The Constitution requires that only Congress has the power to print money. That's never been changed. However, Congress has NEVER printed a single dollar in America's entire existence.
You're right, it was the states (actually banks within those states) that printed their money, up until about 1913 with the Federal Reserve Act. That was when Congress finally awarded ONE bank the delegated authority to print our money.
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Here in Arizona, you do (or did, IDK) have to get a referendum for a raise. They used the argument "You don't get George Washington for $25,000/yr.".
I wrote a letter to the editor "Historically, yes you do. That was Washington's first salary. "
IDK if it still needs a referendum because it's been awhile since I've seen a raise on the ballot.
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Awesome! Good for them--at least for as long as the people could get away with it.
And good for you for at least trying to hold them to account.
But somehow, I doubt the editor ever published your letter.
looks very interesting
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ICR who said "Freedom of the press is important only if you're rich enough to afford a press.".
Over the last 30 years, the internet has changed that. In essence, now EVERYONE has a printing press.
SCOTUS case, New York Times v Sullivan you can sue the author for libel, but the publisher can only be sued if they "knowingly & maliciously" published false information. Poor fact checking isn't enough & stating it as an opinion (not a fact) is usually enough to save you.
Both Fox News & YouTube are in trouble over this (Editors are held to a higher standard).
Oh, & can't wait for Luna to encounter telemarketers.
What a joyous little take on Equestrian history. The left right dialog took a bit to get used to but I enjoyed the characterizations and very historical content.
Truth be told though, I'm a sucker for anything that makes celly look this good.
This was really good!
I'm going to be keeping my eyes on this one, good work.
The back and forth style at the top of the chapter, was that intentional or just a weird glitch? it took me a bit to figure out how to read it.
This is actually a really clever way to get around the inherent contradiction of "Lunar Republic". The word "republic" is contrary to monarchy? That's only in our world, simply change the origin of the word in this world!
Also salute a fellow writer of historical materialist pony history.
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