Luna's Lesson
Dear Princess Celestia
...Or should I say, Sister?
It's been a long time since I've been completely honest with you. A long time, in fact, since I've been completely honest with anypony. I'd much prefer to tell the truth to your face - or at least, tell you the truth somewhere you'll actually hear it. But if, heaven forbid, you're actually reading this, something has gone seriously wrong.
Yes, this is a private letter, to nopony in particular. I imagine I'll feel better for having written it, perhaps fooling myself into thinking I've genuinely made amends. And let's not mince words here; we have quite a lot of apologizing to do - you and I both.
It all started, I suppose, shortly after I was born. I know, it's not exactly original to trace one's problems to the circumstances surrounding one's origin, but bear with me.
You still haven't told me who your mother is. You remember, the one who spun the sun out of hydrogen and helium and set it alight? But that's neither here nor there, and at this point I've resigned myself to never knowing. What's important is what happened after.
Mere days after you emerged from the sun, you fashioned the moon from dust and set it spinning. And mere hours after that, you found me. Do you remember what you said when we first met?
You didn't name me. You didn't say “Hello.” You gave me a title.
“Sister.”
You could have called me by any of a dozen names. You could have called me your daughter. You could have called me your first subject. You could have called me a freak and left me to live out the rest of eternity alone.
But instead you called me “Sister,” and with that you made a promise. A promise, I now know, neither of us even realized you were making at the time. By calling me "Sister," you named me as your flesh and blood. I was your closest kin, equal in everything. We would live together, laugh and cry together, and we would support each other until the end of all things. I may have preferred being your daughter, in retrospect. It would have made everything that followed so much easier to bear.
But in your rapture, you named me your sister, and there was no going back.
I remember your face as we built the Earth, looking forward to another companion. You were so happy! We were going to make a game of it, you and I, forming worlds to spin around your sun and seeing who would climb out of them, as I had.
But we didn't get another like us, did we? No, we got the mortal pony races. And that was even better.
We spent years tarting ourselves up for our grand entrance, layering glamour upon glamour to make ourselves look the part of gods. It eludes me, to this day, why you cared so much about what these tiny ponies would think of you.
Remember when we tried turning your coat pink? That was fun.
Finally, we were ready. We stood tall and proud, our coats were flawless, our manes billowed in the solar wind like... well, like nothing else does, really. And when we touched down on solid ground for the first time, our subjects certainly knew who their leaders were, didn't they? I wish I could say that, like you, I eventually tired of their constant deference and submission... But I think we both know I never did.
So, we ruled together. Eventually, Equestria conveniently formed nearby and we claimed the nation as our seat of power. It didn't even cover a quarter of what we had made together, but it was enough.
And then who should show up in our new-found order but the embodiment of chaos itself?
I'll admit, Discord was a horrible being. What he asked of us was unspeakable. But I may have gone through with it had I known how far apart the alternative would eventually drive you and me.
We didn't know it, but we were waging war on the being who represented it in its purest form - a creature who at his very heart was at war with everything, including himself. Ponies were meant to be harmonious creatures. We didn't know how to fight. So, we had to learn. All of us.
And if Discord told us the truth that day in Pelennor, that his goal was nothing more than to bring about a world of chaos - a world where once-loving ponies angered and hated and tore at each other - I should say he has won. By forcing us to learn how to fight a war, dredging up all the negative emotion that comes with it, his victory was total and complete, before either side so much as fired a shot.
I can't bring myself to go into detail about it, and I know you wouldn't want to hear it. Good friends died. Every last casualty hung on us as if we carried the dead on our shoulders. Eventually, though, we found a way.
The Elements of Harmony - molded from the last six good ponies in a kingdom torn by strife and loss. Truly, they were our greatest creation. Unfortunately, the fact that the War Council assumed they were your creation rather than ours was the first sign to me that something very fundamental had changed.
With Discord entombed in stone, we celebrated. All hail the conquering heroes, our loyal subjects sang out! Only, it was more the conquering hero, alone. I went over the many verses composed about the event several years hence. Most of them mentioned me only as an accessory to the Great Celestia's defeat of the dread chaos spirit Discord, and that's if they mentioned me at all. The rest treated me as an equal at the very best - not to mention with some very generous interpretation of the verse - and a sidekick at worst. Hardly equal representation.
What was different?
Well, I was hardly the more visible ruler. You ruled the day, when our subjects were awake. I was the equivalent to the modern Sandmare, putting the world to rest and tending to dreams, unless some nocturnal threat arose, in which case I sprang into action like any sensible ruler would.
Unfortunately, this meant I was a strictly B-list princess, to use the modern parlance. Ponies back then just didn't care about what went on at night. More often than I would like to admit, I put out the stars, just to see if anypony would notice. They didn't. And as you may have gathered, this started to drive me a little crazy.
Without even realizing it, I had faded into obscurity. The kingdom, by and large, only knew who I was because you deigned to keep me in the byline. What was a mare to do?
Well, at first, I tried to insinuate myself back into public view, and we both saw how that turned out. I quickly found out, to my dismay, that the nobility viewed me as worse than irrelevant. To them I had long ago lost the right to be called Celestia's Sister. I was not one of two co-princesses, and I certainly didn't hold the right to half the kingdom's leadership. Instead, I was “little Princess Luna” - mere window dressing. A curiosity. I had been reduced to a bit of trivia a few ponies knew pertaining to the actual princess. ("Did you know Celestia had a sibling? Crazy, right? I didn't, either!")
You knew that was no way to live, princess or not, and you welcomed me into Day Court with open hooves. I loved you for that. But the upper crust reacted less than ideally.
Do you have any idea how infuriating it is to be talked down to by something so far beneath you, so insignificant that it barely registers above an insect? Can you comprehend the indignity of being condescended to by a pony less than half your height, with a lifespan so short you could blink and miss him and a generation of his descendants? Do you know the sheer rage a single noblemare can bring - her name, thankfully, is lost to time - when she barges into your private counsel, attempting to talk over you despite the fact that, with a thought, you can wipe her off the face of the Earth?
Of course you don't. You're Princess Celestia. Nopony has talked down to you since the beginning of time.
Eventually I started using the Royal Canterlot Voice as a matter of course. There was no other way to get those fools to listen to me. And that caused a shift in the nobles' opinion that was arguably even worse.
No longer was I young, innocent, Celestia's-little-sister Luna. I was the petulant brat on the throne. I was the venomous, unattractive sister whose every act was a pathetic bid for attention. Don't pretend you were ignorant of it. It was carved on your face plain as day - the sting, the embarrassed helplessness. The complete inability to do anything about it, despite your divinity. I know you would have leaped at the chance to stop it. At least, I know that now.
I hated it. Several times, I considered dissolving the courts just to see the looks they'd give me - to revel in the knowledge that, yes, as a matter of fact, I did have the final say. To bask in the knowledge that I was still this nation's dread ruler, even if I had to decapitate that rule prove it. Only once did I humour the thought out loud. Do you remember what you said?
“That would just prove them right. Are you the vindictive child who would do such a thing? Are you the irresponsible adolescent of a ruler who would leave the people without a voice in their government?”
And do you want to know the answer? The truth, after thousands of years believing the lie I gave you?
I wanted to be.
I wanted, desperately, to be a whining, simpering teenager with a bruised ego. I wanted so badly to become what they accused me of being, so I could enjoy demonstrating to them just what that would entail. I wanted to burn Canterlot Castle to ashes around me on the slimmest of chances that I might catch them in the flames.
It was tempting. So very tempting.
Do you see why I can never show you this letter, Celestia? Do you know now why you'd never want to read it?
I decided that anarchy was not the answer. I would prove to them that I was as capable a ruler as you were. And let me be frank in saying that abstaining from the urge to flout my true power in front of them - to indulge, even for a moment, the constant opportunity of corruption that presents itself to the absolute ruler - took an effort that was nothing short of herculean.
All it would take was a single mind-control spell. I could goad any number of nobleponies into situations I could hold over them for the rest of their lives - and beyond, should I stumble into one suitably humiliating. But you raised me better than that, sadly, and I decided I would prove myself a worthy ruler by virtue of my rule, not by sacrificing what little love my subjects held for me in a desperate bid for power.
Hundreds of years passed, and little changed. I wondered what I was doing wrong. Then I realized I was not acting in a vacuum. I was being measured. Judged. And I was found wanting. Compared to what, I asked myself?
You.
You, who had queenliness down to an art form. You, who had remained unchanged and dependable for centuries. You, the elder sister, who would eternally surpass the younger in everything. You, who above all else commanded the world's respect.
The respect, I then realized, that I craved so desperately.
I wanted to be loved and feared like you. I wanted to be looked up to like you were. And it showed. Soon enough, I became Celestia in miniature. I conducted myself like you, I judged my decisions based on what I thought you would do, and in all things I sought your approval.
I wonder what you thought as all of this happened. Did you prefer this new Luna, who ruled like you did? Did you hate what I was doing to myself, as I tried to become accepted as you had been for so long? Did you even realize what was going on?
But the years went on and I continued my charade. I tried to be Celestia after dark, a wise and unshakable presence in every situation. But the nobles were smarter than I gave them credit for at the time. They saw right through me.
I was not only a little foal, too immature to rule. Now I was a silly little filly playing dress-up, trying to give off the illusion of maturity by imitating big sister, who everyone else preferred for obvious reasons.
I was at the end of my rope. I had tried everything, it seemed. I had tried ruling as I was meant to, and that way led to obscurity. I had tried ruling alongside you, and that way led to frustration. I had tried ruling like you - let's be honest, I tried to become you - and I ended up fooling nopony.
Nothing would make them love me like they loved you. Nothing would win their respect, which I wanted more than anything. I was unappreciated. I was unnecessary. I was a joke. And I knew it.
In my desperation, I turned to you and bore my soul out to you. They hated me. Nothing I did was good enough. Do you remember what you said?
“Give them time, Luna. Ponies can change. We are immortal, remember? We can afford to be patient.”
You didn't realize my patience had run out. I had been patient. For hundreds of years, I bore the scorn of the nobleponies and the silent indifference of the masses. And I had learned something.
You told me ponies can change. I knew you were wrong.
Ponies don't change, I thought. Nothing ever changes. To me, the world existed in one giant, static pattern that repeated and repeated until something unexpected broke in and mixed things up. I thought that ponies would never change - the world would never change - unless I made them.
The rest is history.
In the end, the whole spiel about wanting my night to be as loved as your day was only a part of it - a small, tiny part that was convenient enough for the stage persona that was Nightmare Moon. Yes, Celestia, you read that right. All this modern mythology of the “Nightmare being,” this shadowy cloud monster that infiltrates ponies' minds and turns them into corrupted beings of darkness - that's complete bunk.
Nightmare Moon was simply myself, only shrouded in glamours like we used upon our first arrival to the Earth. I was not possessed. I wasn't driven mad with jealousy, even though now it certainly sounds that way, even to me. That romantic divide between Luna and the Nightmare that the authors and poets so love to play up never existed.
Please understand, Celestia, I never intended for it to get out of control like it did. When I barged into the throne room that day in the guise of the Nightmare, I planned on keeping the whole “Eternal Night” charade up for a couple of weeks, at most. Long enough to convince the court that I was serious. Long enough to win their fear and respect.
Then some idiot with no job took up a torch and declared fealty to a monster who didn't exist. Young ponies and old began to rise up in support of me. “I love the Moon” became a war cry. It was quite flattering. But it reflected badly on me.
I wasn't a princess demanding equal treatment anymore. I was the figurehead of a burgeoning civil war. I thought I could keep my head above water long enough to both make my point and quell the uprisings. I assumed I was just as capable of dealing with a crisis as you were.
Well, you certainly proved me wrong on that point, didn't you?
I could scarcely believe it when you came at me with the Elements. A few days ago I had started an innocent, if elaborate, masquerade play, and now there were riots in my name and my sister was shooting Draconequus repellent at me.
You thought I was serious, I realized. You thought I was actually capable of such a thing. You thought I wanted all of this to happen, like I had assumed only the nobles would. In allowing you to come to such a measure, I had failed, both as a ruler and as your sister.
But a thousand years was a bit much.
All I could think about for the first few months was How dare she. How dare she send me up here! How dare she banish her only sister! I only wanted respect! I only wanted to have what she had! How dare she!
Then, when that became ever more pointless, I began to wonder what was happening back in Equestria. What would become of the rioters? They were apparently the only loyal subjects I had. What was going to become of the kingdom? Surely you couldn't rule all by yourself, I thought desperately. Surely you would bring me back and I could explain myself, and we could all have a laugh at good old Luna and her crazy schemes.
A year passed. Then another. And another.
Eventually I had to face the possibility that you weren't coming to get me. I couldn't handle that, I found. Then I had to consider the possibility that maybe I was a superfluous hanger-on after all, and I really couldn't handle that. The years compounded the problem. I eventually became quite deranged.
One decade, I was convinced I was the rightful ruler, and some upstart had usurped me. The next decade, I was convinced I had always been up there, and started to build a kingdom out of moon rock, complete with stone subjects, a stone court, and a stone sister princess, all of whom had “I LOVE YOU, LUNA” carved into their sides. The last few decades, I was convinced that you thought I was a nuisance and gladly betrayed me to get rid of me.
I'm not proud of it. But I was stuck, alone, possibly forever. I was queen of a country of one. I was going to go as insane as I bloody well pleased, and there was nopony to stop me. The stars were what saved me, as you know. They knew their ruler. They came to me and offered me a way home. I jumped at it. At long last, I thought, I could take my revenge for a thousand years of solitude.
You proved me wrong once again.
The Elements of Harmony did their job well. They scrubbed my mind clean of insanity. Unfortunately, they also wiped away my glamours, shorted out my magic, and left me bare in front of the Elements' bearers. That was quite embarrassing. Of course, what happened next beat everything else out by a wide margin.
You descended from the heavens on a beam of light, you big show-off. There, in front of everyone, you selflessly offered my throne back to me and asked for me to “accept your friendship.” Like I didn't know exactly what you meant. You were offering to accept my surrender.
And before you say anything, think about it. I had been reduced to the foal that we hid inside that illusion magic millennia ago. I was helpless without my magic. I had recently had my sanity reasserted so I could consider just how bad a girl I had been for the past thousand years.
What else could I do but throw myself on your mercy and beg for forgiveness?
It's getting harder and harder not to throw this letter into the fire right now, to ignore the guilt and shame in hopes that they'll go away in another century or so. But I owe it to both of us to keep going. Even if you never do read it.
After the whole Nightmare debacle was over and done with, I spent a few months recuperating in my old room. And they were good months. I didn't have to attend court. I didn't have to put on appearances of any sort for anypony. All I had to do was talk to a sister who really did love me after all. It was nice.
Then I took a single glance at the court one day and found that - surprise! - nothing had changed. The nobles were still as petty as ever, squabbling over matters of microscopic importance. The one thing that had changed was me. Nopony knew what to think of me, it seemed. I was a curiosity, but the good kind this time. Ponies were intrigued by me. I had a mystique that only a thousand years' absence could impart. Things were looking up.
Then came Nightmare Night.
I discovered then what the masses thought of me. I wasn't the obscure, nonentity princess. I wasn't the bratty half-wit with pretensions to authority. I wasn't the pretender with no clue how to rule. I was the Bogeymare. Behave, little ones, or Nightmare Moon will gobble you up!
Ponies fled at the sight of me. I was a pariah. This was worse than disrespect. This was worse than being unloved. I thought I had wanted to be feared, but I didn't want this. What amounted to a prank had spiralled and spiralled until it had been blown completely out of proportion.
I was nothing more than a monster. An entire holiday was dedicated to the fact that ponies only remembered me as a destructive, evil, unloveable being, and that infuriated me to no end. I cancelled it on the spot in a fit of indignation. Then I did what I had done for a thousand years when something made me angry: I sulked.
Do you remember back in '57 when you said you were waiting for the perfect pony to make your apprentice? I can't help but appreciate that attitude now.
Twilight Sparkle: The Element of Magic. She truly is special. She came to me when nopony else dared. She listened. She didn't treat me like the commoners did so long ago, with endless bowing and scraping. She didn't treat me like the nobility had, as though I were a child in constant need of chastisement. She treated me like you did. She treated me like a pony who had actual feelings. That is a rare joy for me. I can't imagine how long it's been since somepony did the same for you.
With her help, I made it through the rest of the night. She showed me that the public wasn't as uninformed as I thought, and I had fallen victim to a cruel irony - Just as I had been banished for playing at being a villain, Ponyville had nearly lost one of its most beloved holidays for playing at being scared of that villain. I had hardly enjoyed the consequences from just such a misunderstanding. I didn't want anypony else to suffer the same thing.
Imagine my relief! I wasn't unloved! I wasn't hated! I had just been fooled into thinking I was because of my own fears and preconceptions. In reality, I was more welcomed than ever. Plus, acting like Big Bad Nightmare Moon again was entertaining. As it turns out, scaring ponies out of their wits is more fun than it ought to be.
And now it's the present. Night Court is due to reconvene in a few days, and I'm as prepared as I can be, given the circumstances. Your student taught me something very important - mind-bogglingly important - no, something incredibly, world-endingly, earth-shatteringly important - on Nightmare Night, that I thought I should share with you before I'm forced back into the world.
Ahem.
Dear Princess Celestia, again:
We can spend all the time in the world regretting what happened in our past. It's a constant temptation, and reflecting on what we should have done or could have done better is oddly addicting. To fantasize about one's present, had one's past been different, is a comfort. But to waste your life obsessing over your mistakes is, itself, the worst mistake we can make. I know that now.
In what I thought was a horrendous punishment, I have been given a new lease on life - a chance to start anew. The past should not, and indeed, does not have any hold over who I choose to be today and who I will choose to become in the years hence. Instead of agonizing over what could have been... what should have been, we must choose to focus on what will be.
Rather than hanging onto grudges and old hatreds, rather than angrily stamping our hooves and ranting about what should have been, we must forgive the mistakes that others have made, and apologize for those we have made ourselves. And though you will never see this letter, I hope that one day you will realize that I have done exactly that.
It's a new day, Celestia. I'm ready to start it right.
Your loving sister,
---Luna.
----
Luna set the quill down, letting out a long sigh. She felt... good, surprisingly better than she had when she started the letter. She looked at the lengthy parchment, nodding to herself. Everything she had ever wanted to say was here. She had transcribed every sorrow, every regret, and every pain onto the paper in midnight blue ink.
And now she was ready to let it all go.
“Your majesty?” That would be the guard, calling her to some meeting she had with Duke Something. She didn't remember.
“I shall be out in a moment, Whipper.”
Whipper Will nodded and stepped back out of Luna's study, his morningstar rattling noisily at his side. Luna turned to the letter, rolling it neatly and sealing the scroll with a dab of blue, white-dotted wax. She stood, took a deep breath, and walked out, tossing the letter into the fireplace without a second glance.
A second glace, perhaps, that she should have taken, for if she did she would notice that the scroll refused to burn.
----
Whipper Snap was not a clever pony - not officially, anyway. He was out of university for the summer, and his cutie mark (which was going to be either physics or chemistry, he knew it with every fiber of his being) still had yet to appear. A rare case, but hardly unheard of. Until it came in, he didn't exactly have a job to go to when further education was not an option.
And so, it was back to the old standby: Janitorial work, with his brother's recommendation the only thing separating him from a life without a paycheck.
Sure, Will knows his place in the world, Snap thought grumpily as he shoved the mop bucket into the study. He swings a big chain mace whip thing around, and he gets a spot in the Royal Guard. Meanwhile, I'm wasting four years of my life actually making something useful of myself. It's bloody unfair, is what it is.
Still, getting paid to "clean" the Royal Lunar study was not the worst job in the world. Her Majesty Princess Luna was neat almost to a fault, and the study was rarely anything but spotless. On a normal day, Snap could spend the entire hour laying in the princess's bed, writing things using her ink, reading her books, and nopony would be the wiser.
Imagine his surprise, then, when he found the floor covered in soot.
As he set to scrubbing, he took notice of the softly-glowing light he had heretofore assumed to be the fire in the nearby hearth. It was a scroll, nestled in the ashes, lightly singed on the edges and glowing a dull red with the heat rebounding off of an insulation spell.
He slowly lifted it out of the ashes (thank you, telekinesis) and pried the seal open. He could always reseal it afterward, right? Nothing to be worried about...
"Oh. Um. Oh my."
He resealed the scroll hurriedly and tucked it into his saddlebag. With a renewed purpose, Snap set to wiping the floor clean, and as soon as that was done, rushed out of the study as fast as his legs could carry him. Forget meddling with the princess's things. He now had a duty that was far, far more important.
----
“Your Highness?”
Princess Celestia looked up from her book, smiling warmly.
“Ah, Mister Snap. Are you finished already?”
“Yes, Your Highness. I, uh... I found this.” The adolescent unicorn levitated a good-sized scroll from the pack on his side. "It's addressed to you.”
The princess took it, noting the insulation spell on it - cast unconsciously, from the looks of things. Whoever had written this letter had tried to burn it, but had enchanted the paper without realizing it.
“It's hot,” Celestia said, for lack of anything else to note about it.
“Yeah. It was, ah, in Princess Luna's fireplace when I found it.”
Now more intrigued than anything, Celestia flipped open the seal (which had been opened and rather sloppily redone, she noticed) and began to read.
Dear Princess Celestia
...Or should I say, Sister?
“Leave me, please.”
“Yes, Your Highness,” Snap muttered, bowing and running backwards as fast as he could.
----
Dear Luna:
I agree. We both have much to apologize for. Seeing as I have never read your letter, there's no better time to do it than now, wouldn't you agree?
And for what it's worth, I couldn't stop thinking "How dare I," either.
It's good to have you back, Luna. Welcome home.
Your loving sister,
Celestia.