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The newly minted alicorn, Princess Mi Amore Cadenza, fresh with a unicorn horn, is eager to study magic under the eternal Princess Celestia. However, a rift is created between them over the speed of her instruction. How will Princess Celestia handle this? And how will the new Princess Cadance handle this, as well?
This was a commissioned story.
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Wow. This was flat-out painful to read. It's one thing to characterize Cadance as a mini-Sunset Shimmer--sure, we don't know what she was like as a teenager under stress, even if she's where she is due to an overwhelming act of kindness and love in the face of adversity. But Princess Celestia, a teacher with at least hundreds of years of experience, being unable to grasp the concept of engaging the student, responding and adapting to their learning styles, or even understanding how a student is feeling and why--and then behaving like a petulant child even worse than her student--simply beggars the imagination. "It's the children who are at fault" sounds natural in the mouth of Seymour Skinner, not Princess Celestia. I would not want to live in an Equestria with such a narcissist on the solar throne.
I suppose it's probably due to the nature of the commission; someone wanted Blueblood to be the good guy, and that necessitates making everyone else worse than him. Though making him an adult at this time does raise interesting questions about just what the age gap between him and Rarity was--which could theoretically justify him trying to drive her away, though that still seems a bit off if he's suddenly going to be Mister Communication.
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Not the commissioners fault. That falls on me. I've struggled with characterization of Celestia consistently, and Cadance as well, because it's a bit hard to create interpersonal conflict between them and others with the way their portrayed in the show. I imagined this would be seen as "Cadance is a teenager and Celestia is used to running things herself and having foals always enjoy her teaching methods", but it doesn't appear it quite came off that way.
It gives me a good reason to stay away from writing Celestia as a main character in stories because this is probably the third time I've flopped with her characterization. Although probably to a lesser degree in a slice of life story where she learns her lesson at the end.
Welp, this have potential for far more, and it still fells that is just the first chapter, perhaps sunset could appear and helps things a little? or make it worse? either way it needs more words XD.
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The potraying of Celestia would have been fine with more chapters, going at it slowly, one chapter wouldn't be enough, but if this is a commision, then it is at it is.
I quite liked the characterisation in this story. It may have been OOC for Princess Celestia to be like this, but the characterisation in of itself was very realistic and relatable if you don't take into account Celestia's age and time spent in a school. She would likely have known how to deal with more teaching styles as she does teach lessons at the school for gifted unicorns (meaning interactions with a lot of individuals), but it is understandable that she may not know the pegasus way of going about things.
Actually, Princess Celestia's characterisation here isn't all too much OOC when you take into account her interactions with Luna. Both in what was implied to have occurred between them in the followup to Nightmare Moon, but also in the episode where Startlight switches their marks. Princess Celestia and Luna did get quite cold to each other for similar reasons, such as not feeling that the things they did were acknowledged and respected. (Luna ignoring when Celestia put a lot of effort into making breakfast, and Celestia not acknowledging Luna's lavender scented decor at night). If you take these characterisations into account, then Celestia can be considered to be characterised in alignment with show canon here and I did see a lot of parallels between this story and that episode. Princess Celestia is a real character who has flaws, flaws which have been shown to be consistent (Leading to Nightmare Moon, Startlight's episode, the episode where Luna and Celestia disagree on how to spend retirement.)
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The idea that teachers should follow the preferred "learning style" of their students dates to the 1970s, so no, it's not *obvious* or self-evident. While modern teachers are arguably doing a better job thanks to this concept, it remains true that the vast majority of teaching has been done without it, and the near-totality of historic teachers did manage to successfully impart knowledge to most students without any such individualization.
And yes, for much of all that history, students *were* expected to learn however a teacher taught, and were regarded as stubborn, unruly, unwilling, and/or stupid if they didn't.
In addition, this story clearly shows a cultural disconnect where Celestia, being of unicorn background, is both unfamiliar with and dismissive of pegasus culture. It's not that she doesn't recognize that the learning style is different, it's that she thinks the pegasus is backwards and reckless. Which is pretty much in line with her tacit long-term support of unicorn supremacy in canon.