"This is an outrage!"
Celestia was unmoved, even as the reverberations from the doors swinging open caused her coffee to splash and orbit her mug. "What's the outrage this time?"
"Behold." Celestia's breakfast was lucky to escape the path of the book being slapped down on the table.
"What am I looking at."
"Here!"
Celestia murmured while she read the passage that Luna was jabbing her hoof at. "...year 838… royal summer villa in what is now the Silver Coast… Princess Luna and her friend Dione…"
"See? This is libelous!"
Celestia blinked.
"My 'friend'?"
"You're going to have to jog my memory, I knew a lot of Diones back then."
"Dione was my lover."
"Oh. That Dione."
"We had a wedding. You were there. I cared for her in her old age."
Celestia took a deep breath, and a long sip of coffee.
"Why on earth would a publication claiming to be a history publish such an obvious lie?"
"Were you planning on retiring in the next hour?"
"Class in session, is it?"
"Yes. Have some coffee."
"I shouldn't, I've already had seven tonight."
"You took to it quickly."
"A necessity when researching for whom historians have decided the gift of my heart was not significant enough to be recorded. Much is written about my tryst with King Sombra, presumably because of the melodrama, but prior to that only Augustus, Lyterius and Colonnus are listed as romantically involved with me. Lutetia and Petra are described as 'handmaidens and advisors', and poor Cygna isn't even mentioned at all…"
Celestia held a grimace.
"What's that look for?"
"Have you noticed a pattern?"
Luna squinted, and looked back through the book for a second, then let it fall down again suddenly. "It's all the mares! They only erased my relationships with women!"
Celestia had progressed to a wince, but nodded.
"That is simply vile! Why would they do such a thing? And why did you not correct them?"
"This is something that goes back to the feudal period. To La Princesse en Dieul."
"You had that long?"
"Let me finish, there's lots of things in play here. You remember how things were during the first diarchy around the subject of…" Celestia circled a hoof while she searched for the word. "Coupling."
"Yes. Anyone could love as they wished because nobody could really stop them."
"You were… setting an example so to speak."
"Is that not the state of nature? That the heart go where it will?"
"Well, you see… gosh, this is difficult to explain because it's so abstract. Do you remember when Lutetia eloped with you?"
"Yes, her father wanted title in exchange for her hoof and I was insulted that he would consider her property to be bargained, she told me later that he had all but imprisoned her in their villa and she had to undertake an escape."
"Why did you think he did that?"
"Greed, pure and simple."
"Basically, yes. But he was already a landowner, and such an attitude was not… uncommon among landowners. With money to be made, everything starts to be for sale."
"Regrettably so. Such a custom was difficult to police when the equites themselves were engaging in it."
"Well, after the Nightmare Moon crisis and the birth of feudalism… who do you think was writing the laws?"
"No…"
"How do you think I feel about taking a vow of silence for 87 years?"
"Was our social order really that fragile?"
"It was something of a perfect storm. My renunciation of absolute power coincided with the peak of the perception of you as, well… a monster. Everything you represented became somewhat tainted - even today, the word 'lunacy' refers to insanity. But this included your… prolific personal life."
Luna afforded herself a brief smirk at Celestia's discretion.
"To have multiple lovers, to engage in relations with the same sex, to place the heart above the wishes of the head of the household… they became associated with a descent into violent madness. At the same time, I was becoming the image of purity. The chaste, silent, passive queen."
"This is all bullshit."
Celestia lurched, spilling her coffee into her cereal.
"Did I use that word right?"
"Yes, Luna. I just wasn't ready for such unbecoming language."
Luna seemed quite pleased with herself.
"But yes, you are correct, there was no substance to any of this - it was just a narrative that suited the interests of those who benefited from feudalism. The public figure most associated with a liberated personal life could be pointed to as a villain in a story whose moral was obedience. Marry who father says you are to marry and produce lots of heirs to carry on the title."
"The head of the house was the father?"
"That part is a little less settled. There were definitely a lot of feudal lords who would have liked to subjugate the entire female sex using my silence and passiveness as a template, but that was difficult to square with the whole…" Celestia gestured vaguely at her spectral mane. "Either I was divine, which meant ponies were superior but so were mares, or I wasn't, which meant stallions were free to order their wives around, but ponies' position on this earth wasn't privileged. You ended up with a lot of complicated regional variation on the approach. In the feudal period we had a lot of contact with Grifreich-"
"And, presumably, their wild warrior hens."
Celestia smiled. "- which could be alternately used as evidence of equality or a symptom of barbarism. In the south, the old deer tribes were frequently patriarchal, so the same trend could be reversed. The precise details of Equestria's gender politics are very complicated, especially over such a long time, but the important part is that the rise of feudalism was a powerful push towards a more restrained, reserved way of life. It planted a seed that still blossoms today."
"So why did this not change with the liberal revolution and your return to public life?"
"Well… some of it changed. It became difficult to justify the subjugation of women after that point. Male primogeniture never fully took in Equestria, and all but died out by the 17th century. Parliament has always been mixed. The last vestige of this sexism in law was the transition from householder voting to individual suffrage in the 1878 constitution. In this respect Equestria has been something of a leader in civil rights, with some countries taking until the 20th century to catch up fully."
"But my wives have still gone down in history as 'confidants'."
"Well… yes, unfortunately. Even after the institution of parliament, inheritance remained a crucial pillar of social organisation, and try as you might-"
"Oh, we did try."
"Two mares will not produce an heir."
"Surely you must have known, in your heart of hearts, that to punish such relationships was a baseless oppression."
"This was the period where we were sending armies into Sylvania every couple of years, so my moral judgement at the time is not what I'd call the most reliable. Truth be told, the issue never really made it to the top of my agenda. I was always fighting Parliament, conducting diplomacy, performing royalty, participating in the study of magic…"
Luna was quiet for a moment.
"I'm… I'm sorry, Luna."
The table was quiet enough to hear palace workers shuffling all the way down the hall, or birds alighting on the flagpoles at the gate.
"Luna?"
"In all of the things I have learned about the turns of history in my absence - all of your mistakes and compromises - I think this is the first one that is specifically to my detriment."
Celestia waited, and listened.
"The wars, the colonies, the… deference to the greediest ponies imaginable, these harms are obvious, and have impacted untold millions throughout history, but this is the first thing I've learned about where it feels like… you betrayed me, personally."
"Luna, I…"
"Don't… I don't want an apology for something you neglected hundreds of years ago. It feels selfish to ask for one from you, when this was presumably neglect and not active participation."
Celestia breathed for a moment. "Would you like to hear the rest of the story?"
"Does it get worse?"
"It gets better."
"Go on."
"I cannot, unfortunately, take credit for such progress though. It started with the scientific advances of the industrial revolution. Among the superstitions peeled away by the advance of science was the idea that homosexuality causes insanity. The idea was slow to spread, but by the 1930s, the foundations of modern medical practice around sex and sexuality were being laid - and then the Tyrians got involved."
"I thought you said it gets better."
"Well it didn't get better immediately, in fact it got rather a bit worse for a while. The Tyrians hated the Institute for Sexual Studies. They didn't want their understanding of the world upended. So they created a moral panic - they seized the zeitgeist from Labour with a reactionary platform, and when it got them elected, policing them out of existence and reaffirming the penalties on homosexuality was one of the bills that crossed my desk."
"And you did object, right?"
"My objecting quill got a lot of use in that session. The welfare state barely survived. Targeting the Institute was ruled unconstitutional by the court, but their penal laws went all the way to referendum, and… passed."
"It passed?"
"At that point Parliament had gotten quite good at dealing with the Right of Sovereign Objection. They just factored referendum campaigns into their policy calculations. I did all I could, but that doesn't mean the people were idle." Celestia paused. "Remember that Pride parade I mentioned last year?"
"Dimly."
"It's time you learned what that was about. As you will very well know, the heart wanders where it will, and no amount of legislation is going to change that."
"Indeed."
"So the penal laws didn't stop anyone from being…" The word seemed to stumble on her lips. "... gay, it just forced them to meet in secret. Well, more than they already were."
"That is the current word for this… kind of relationship? Gay?"
"Yes, they use it themselves. For decades this subculture continued underground, until eventually, in the 1960s, it… burst. The social pendulum was swinging back towards progress anyway, but it was being pushed from the bottom. A police raid against a suspected gay bar in Seaddle turned into a riot, which turned into a rallying point for demonstrations. They made allies in the unions, which made gay rights a Labour party policy, and from the 1990s on it's only become better and better to be openly gay in Equestria. Pride is the celebration of that progress, as in, the opposite of the shame of being forced to hide their love from the world."
"Wonderful. Only a millennium of shame to undo."
Celestia chuckled and groaned. "Luna, please, we're trying, okay?"
"I know, I know. Say, I have to ask about this… alliance with the unions. It seems unlikely at first blush. Perhaps I am underestimating the common factory worker."
"Well, there are two aspects to it. One is the inherent egalitarianism of the underlying philosophy of the organised labour movement. The other is the simple practicality that they found themselves a common enemy in the police."
"Huh."
"These days the police have both gay officers and a union, so maybe love really does conquer all."
Luna remained quiet, with a furrowed brow.
"Something wrong?"
"Just something I hadn't thought about until now. In the old days we would be surrounded by guardsponies; today there are police officers. Something has felt different between the two but it's been difficult to describe exactly what. They appear in places I don't expect them to be, like heralds of misfortune."
"It's a bit of a tangent, but criminal justice has evolved considerably in the last thousand years. We don't have travelling magistrates and tithings and night watches anymore - we have professional civil servants tasked with the preservation of the peace, and we call them police. They don't even carry blades around anymore - most of the time the uniform is sufficient, and failing that, sticks and tactics."
"So if the police are merely acting in preservation of the peace, and the unions and gays were able to find a common enemy in the police, that sounds rather like an accusation that they were disturbing the peace."
Celestia paused. "I suppose. There is a natural… disorder to the tactics of protest. There is a proper way to conduct demonstrations, in which an interested group expresses a desire to march on a particular day, and the city and the police know what to expect and can prepare. The same applies to a strike, it's common for striking workers to picket outside their workplace to make their dissatisfaction known, but there are laws about where and how you can do so to minimise disruption outside of the specific dispute."
"But it's more than that, isn't it? It was a police raid that ignited the…" Luna closed one eye for a moment. "... gay rights movement. Is this to imply that the gay bar was disturbing the peace?"
"Well, no, the police were just pursuing the enforcement of a law which was, in hindsight, unjust."
"Hindsight? You knew it was unjust when it was passed!"
"I know, but I was overruled by the referendum, there was nothing I could do."
"I'm not sure I fully believe that anymore."
"That there was nothing I could do?"
"Those words come from your lips very often. Every time your principles and bureaucratic process collide, the process wins, and someone suffers for it."
"Luna, I can't just override the institutions of democracy whenever I want, it's not right! Do you think I should just threaten people with the unmitigated power of the sun every time a bad actor takes advantage of parliament? Should every silver-tongued scoundrel be sent to the moon? Have you judged democracy a failure and we should just… go back to being tyrants to save people from themselves?"
Luna scrunched her muzzle up, and shrank a little in her seat. "That's… not what I'm saying."
Celestia brushed a stray hair out of her eyes, and cleared her throat. "You can't catch all the rain, Luna. If there's anything you should be taking from these conversations, it's that things that seem like good ideas at the time can come back to bite you. An alarming amount of our laws are written in blood."
Luna remained quiet for a while, before taking the book off the table. "I have historians to contact."
"I'm surprised you haven't been drowning in solicitations."
The completeness with which Celestia's frayed temper of a moment ago had vanished gave Luna a moment's pause. "A few have. I believe their conclusion was that I had little to offer that they had not already learned from you."
"It seems they were mistaken."
"Indeed." Luna stood to leave, and dithered as Celestia finished her toast. "Did you ever accept a suitor?"
"What?"
"You used to be swarmed by them. Princes, lords, dukes, all of them you turned away. You seemed more bored by them than anything else. None catch your eye in the meantime?"
"Oh." Celestia thought for a moment. "No, not really. The idea of courtship, especially with someone who I'd be guaranteed to outlive, seemed like… a waste of time. Cheap power plays from nobles trying to increase their standing. It would be improper."
"Not even a torrid affair in secret?" Luna smirked.
"I had no desire to. My favourite bedfellows have always been a warm cup of tea and a good book. In fact - speaking of the gay movement, there are some who would describe me as asexual. Probably because that would make me one of their own."
"And do you consider yourself as such?"
"Oh, interest groups try to claim my membership all the time. Remember the Daybreak Party?"
"I would prefer not to."
Celestia chuckled. "I never particularly understood your proclivity for… consorting. Didn't it break your heart? Falling in love and watching them wither, over and over?"
"I never saw it that way. All those around us are doomed to perish, whether we bring them close or keep them at a distance. T'is better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all."
"Oh dear, you've gotten into the romantic poets, have you?"
"Fitting, is it not?"
An update to this was unexpected, but entirely welcome~ I'd forgotten how cozy this was <3
i doubt they know the term "women" ^^
11679322
I feel we can assume that it stands in there as a multi-species inclusive term as mare would be specific to ponies.
11679326
but wouldn't "female" the better therm?
since woman is bound to humans
I like Luna coming to the conclusion that the system isn't ideal and more should be done. The criticism of the police state is nice. You don't need absolute rule to have a greater impact than Celestia's quiet disapproval, the fact is she simply doesn't act when she could. As a princess in the modern age you have a lot of reach on the social front to make a difference in public.
Celestia suffers from the fact that it is very easy to keep doing the same thing over and over again just a little more this time, allowing all of this to build up around her. While Luna can look at it as a whole and say "This is all bullshit."
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The story is, however, being read by humans in English, so it prefer to write in language that flows naturally to them, rather than garble it by forcing horse terminology in. I find such inclusions to not really add immersion, so they just make the prose lumpy and off kilter for no benefit
That's 100% not the state of nature the state of nature would be population and selective genes
This is a question assuming that in this version of Equestria the the male female rate is about 50/50 for this to be true
11679354
People will remember the clothes fist more than the wagging finger.
11679456
There you seem to have confused biological nature with social nature and, in this topic, we can safely discard biological nature as not applying to sentient and sapient beings such as humans or, in this setting, ponies. When looking at it from a societal viewpoint though, strict monogamy is a very recent concept and most prehistoric societies tending towards much more open relationship structures. though this is also directly addressed in the story where the precise tracking of family lines became important for inheritance reasons.
Damn it, now I'm gonna lose sleep wondering if Tia actually IS some degree of ace... her description of her feelings on the matter does perfectly match what I've heard from most of the ace peeps in my life.
And yes, Luna. The heart will go where it wills. Be that to somepony of the opposite sex, somepony of the same sex, somepony somewhere in between, the sky, the depths of the sea, the vast openness of space... or anywhere, really. And once it's been there and left, it WILL return to where it feels it belongs
The fic still keeps being a very engaging character examination
It is AU, though. But it's fun to imagine that ponies' lives and history really got complicated enough to be fully compared to the real world, with all the implications
11679547
You might love it https://www.fimfiction.net/blog/1015462/celestia-is-an-aroace-icon-or-writing-celestia
11679516
Respectfully, I hold a differing view on two key points. Firstly, the symbiotic relationship between the biological and social aspects of human and pony behavior mustn't be overlooked. Society's very essence is rooted in the imperative of repopulation, underscoring the significance of the perspective you propose discarding. Secondly, the institution of marriage, documented across diverse cultures spanning extensive historical epochs, underscores its enduring presence. Likewise, the concept of monogamy, including its strict iteration, boasts a venerable lineage entrenched within the annals of human societies.
Furthermore, both humans and, intriguingly, ponies, evince inclinations towards possessiveness and territoriality in relationships, suggesting an innate drive for resource security and family stability. Considering the first point, delving into the world's population dynamics as delineated by the show, an extrapolation of its logic underscores the intriguing prospect of a skewed gender ratio. Such an arrangement would inevitably recalibrate gender-based interactions, thus prompting my second assertion: the contemplation of potential gender bias within a world characterized by a surplus of females. This phenomenon, situated within the unique demographic confines posited by the show, raises pertinent questions about the intricacies of sexism.
But from what I read it seems like a 50-50 split even though and the TV show it heavily favored females population wise over men. And if that's true, it's very hard to see men being in the majority of things in the world. Proven by the point by every position of high authority is exclusively held by mayor in MIP
11679661
The animal kingdom is rife with examples of homosexuality and promiscuity, excuse you, never mind the extremely varied examples of third genders throughout the world in pre-industrial societies, and the actual thing Luna was talking about, which is that feelings are uncontrollable and it's not the universe that punishes you for breaches of propriety, it's society, and any assertion otherwise is pseudoscientific rationalisation
And as for the gender imbalance I simply find such a thing tedious and irrelevant to write about. The reason the cartoon designed primarily to sell toys to little girls depicts an apparent gender imbalance is because it's designed primarily to sell toys to little girls. It would be like suggesting that Middle Earth has a population of 98% men because Tolkien wrote like a handful of named female characters ever.
No, the purpose of this chapter is to discuss the origins of social conservatism in this world, because it is a construct that had to be invented. The timing is modelled on the invention of racism in our world during the Crusades as a method of squashing the differences between the various European and Arabian peoples involved in the conflicts into a simple equation of good and evil, a way to square the circle of butchering people in the name of a God who says love thy neighbour. It's part of the broader lesson of this story which is that modernity as a social concept had to be invented and it was invented more recently than we think
CHAMPION THE FREE LOVE MOVEMENT, LUNA!
Cue Luna convincing Celestia to go to the next parade, taking a sledgehammer to the foundation philosophy of most repression groups. Wouldn't stop them or weaken them more in the short term, but would reduce their future attraction and reinforce future generations acceptance. A very long lived play, one that Celestia hasn't been taking and Thai Luna called her out on.
One that she could start taking now she has her sister by her side once more.
Also have a follow.
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11679684
Oh it's fun to have a good debate. But to clarify something before I drop these couple of points. I appreciate the idea of free love. I just find the idea unrealistic. It is true that only 5% of animals practice monogamous species include wolves, otters, a few hooved animals, some bats, certain species of fox, and the Eurasian beaver. But on multiple factors of animals who don't practice it are all almost pray animals, animals that would be extinct if they did not have rapid practice of reproduction. And even in all those animals homosexual reality can be seen, but it is still less than a minority in each category. The claim that society is the only one that punished homosexuality when the universe does a great job of it in itself, it's this more direct. The act of homosexuality in large scale is extinction. Any animal, human or otherwise creature that does not have the ability to reproduce asexually or both male and female genders can repopulate our extinct. There is no large group where homosexuality is in large numbers in the only groups that can have things like monogamy are all higher level predators or have very little enemies. You pretty much answered my question about there being close to a 50/50 balance between males and females in your story. But I think you're underestimating the ideas of the universe you're exploring. You can only explain the way so much by saying it's a children's cartoon and it was meant for girls. That's why it seems to be a heavy and balance in the series. When there's clear examples of the scale being a scared to women in the cell and in the comic books. And if you're going to use token as example, I can match you tick for cat. You know there's an equal amount of men and women because they are equally described even though most of the world building is either done through the experience of whatever character you're following at the time. The story you're in, there are discussions about women, their accomplishments, their place in society in token stories, their examples of warrior, queens, princesses and other historical figures of both men and women. When you listen to MLP it is heavily has scared towards females and they're being an imbalance of male to female ratio. But you have answered every other question I have asked. Thank you for that.
I love it! Thank you for the update.
This is another instance where I never knew how much I enjoyed this kind of story. No big epic, no magic duels, no grand quests. Just talking.
11680248
We're not here to debate our existence though, not when you're just going to start parroting anti-queer rhetoric like population numbers. The reality, biological and sociological, is that queerness and non-monogamy exist, and are in fact quite common. Anti-queer bigotry on the other hand, occurs only within humanity.
11680248
Naturalistic fallacy, 10 yard penalty.
11680370
Impressive perspective! Your creative approach stands out in addressing my viewpoint as bigoted. However, I must clarify that I'm not only bisexual; I've had relationships with both men and women. Returning to your other argument, if you're suggesting that statistics, facts, or information are seen as bigoted or less accurate due to personal preferences, my words may never hold meaning for you. It seems your perception of the world is shaped by your unique perspective, similar to how I strive for a truthful, unbiased understanding. Yet, I understand not everyone shares this approach. People here seem to hold diverse opinions.
Regarding the topic of animals, I thought we'd moved on, but you've continued to bring them up. The animal analogy stemmed from my response about the "Mercy" concept related to animals. It's intriguing that many believe animals are kinder than humans, though they can display harsh behaviors. Instances of animals rejecting same-sex pairings or even causing harm exist, especially in species with strong pack bonds like horses, wolves, and penguins. This illustrates that animals might not be the best examples when discussing inclusivity and acceptance.
11680414
Flag on the play for the naturalistic fallacy! Looks like someone tried to sneak an appeal to nature past the referees of rational discourse. But hey, I'm not the biology referee, and this isn't a football game. Let's keep our logical plays clean and aim for a touchdown of well-reasoned arguments!
11680535
You mean the same penguins where, quite famously, male couples will adopt eggs that have been orphaned? You continually make claims to some kind of natural order that simply does not exist and never has, your "statistics, facts, or information" is based on, at most, two thousand years of human history, out of some twelve thousand years of human civilization and over two hundred thousand years of humanity as a species. Even within the bible, a dubious source at best, non-monogamous relationships are mentioned and treated as a societal norm in large portions of it.
Within the Americas alone the majority of societies embraced non-monogamy and non-heterosexuality up until the modern norms were enforced on them by colonization. Within the UK homosexuality was not criminalized until the Victorian era, and that change came as a great shock to the people of the UK. In the US, polygamy was only outlawed in that same era due to a conflict between the US Government and the Mormon church.
You speak of these things as some great biological and historical constant when by and large they are less than 500 years old.
11680535
oh piss off
11679322
.., which is exactly why Twilight repeatedly refers to her friends collectively as 'girls' in the show.
You really, really haven't thought this through, have you?
Took me a while to get around to reading this but it was very good and very interesting. It's not often to see a story like this around and wow has it made some weirdos angry, nice.
11680691
Bigots ignore reality.
Plenty of evidence throughout human history and nature proves them wrong.