> Mother Hen Syndrome
>  by Ice Star
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> And Maybe a Little More
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Auntie, you won’t believe the news I have to share!” Cadance says to me. She enters the throne room in leaps and bounds, her regalia nowhere nearly as bright as her smile. As joyous as her youthful temperament was, never could I recall a time when that happiness was able to outshine the most important things she owned. The day I had given her regalia to her, and even the time of its preparation, was one of utmost ceremony between us. The occasion had required my instinctual formality to be made into something sterner and more apparent than ever.

This could only mean surprises were at hoof, and there is nothing that I am more apprehensive of than a surprise I did not plan myself. Such an innocent word like 'surprise' was polite, and thus necessary. But it did not correctly fit what was really just disturbing proper plans or upsetting natural order, which in turn were the smaller threads in the tapestry of Destiny. Very reluctantly, I dismissed Raven from her usual place at the foot of my throne. She always lurked there, fragile and ready to skitter wherever I commanded like some kind of mouse. The gesture was a familiar, wordless nod between us, and she took the paperwork from my aura with the same obedient silence before retreating from view. I dismissed my loyal guards to wait outside the throne room’s doors with a typical stern motion. 

It was shortly after the last two guards were leaving that I spied Shining Armor in the halls, and mere seconds later when he entered. My customary and constant smile settled further at the sight of him trotting after my extremely giddy niece. While no surprises were desirable, any that involved him could not be so bad, not when a coltfriend only had ever been a good thing in Cadance’s life. Why, she even was ‘crushing’ — as I believe the foals say — on my latest Faithful Student’s brother all by herself! It is always such a miracle of Destiny when I find that my possible plans for optimal arrangements are already put in action. To have some actions plucked from my hooves so that they remain idle, and to see how well-controlled everything is brings me such relief. I knew it would be useful to have the elder brother of my little Twilight Sparkle as the continued dalliance of my second-hoof mare. I would like to think that my niece is somewhat like myself, always with her eyes towards a handsome and heroic stallion, but she has only ever had eyes for Shining Armor, at least as far as I can guess. That has always been... rather odd to me, and certainly for a mare her age.  

“Welcome, Mi Amore—”

“Oh goodness,” Cadance said with a hop and a giggle that caused her long mane to swish. “You should know to call me Cadance after all these years.”

“Mhm, I suppose I should. Though, a young lady like yourself should know an old gray mare like me learns nothing new.” 

I watched her snicker after nuzzling Shining, who bowed respectfully and deeply toward me. 

“You can’t even grow old, Auntie, and what god grows gray?”

“None,” I said truthfully. “Now, what is it that has you bursting through the throne room brighter than a sunflower on this fine morning? And why has Shining Armor left his post, hmm?”

Shining Armor gave an exaggerated swallow and a sheepish smile, looking from Cadance to myself. His captain’s armor was still fairly new, but no longer gleamed with being fresh from the finest forges of Canterlot. “Your Highness, I am so, so sorry—”

“Shhh!” Cadance said, snickering and pressing a forehoof to his mouth. She pulled him close to nuzzle into his mane as she did so. This, admittedly, was a touch too personal, too amorous, and emotional of conduct for somepony of her rank — even if she were in love. I certainly would have never permitted myself to show such a display with any of my stallion paramours. “Shiny, you don’t need to speak to her that away!” 

I wanted to protest, but all the shackles of habit and propriety most high were always first in my mind. Cadance was only ever to assume control of the EUP in the event that I am displaced, missing, or made inaccessible by some means. She cannot go cantering around like she is the higher princess who bears all the authority in this nation, for it is both immodest and against all Equestrian law, of which I am its head. The confusion alone simply isn't worth it. There are some nations — none as kind as mine, and all my little ponies, mind you — where her actions could be regarded as an attempt at usurping her higher-ups. This is the kind of conduct I have tried to get her to understand the immense repercussions behind, and to do away with. Yet, all the nuances of power and control are lost on somepony who did not have high birth, and Cadance has always been so sweet — and, unfortunately, in far too honest a manner. 

I would have always wished that the Princess of Love would have known better than to be so honest. It isn't as though I've tried to nudge her away from those kinds of poor habits over the years, the kinds that can bring such displeasure. To be direct is to venture too close to what I wish to dissuade, and I do not have a bone in my body capable of such bluntness. Still, I would like to see her change, especially when my lovely niece has already taken on so many perfections because of my actions.

“Captain Shining Armor,” I say, flashing him the kindest smile I have for my subjects, “you needn’t trip over your words for me. I shall not be punishing any of my little ponies for adhering to the fancies of my niece. Now, why don’t you tell me what sweet little prank that she has roped you into this time, and I am sure we can get things all sorted—”

Much to my surprise, I caught Cadance’s smile. She was grinning much, much wider, and almost ferociously so. An odd sense of apprehension I hadn’t expected settled over me, bringing a slight chill to my stomach. I allowed my smile to slip away, and confusion to take its place instead. 

There were two fantastic bands decorating the horns of both Shining Armor and my niece. They had not been there yesterday, and the make and luster of them absolutely jumped out at me! Each was too fancy to be anything for a couple’s party or Equestrian holiday, and far beyond a normal gift. But they were still things that I would expect to be within the bit-budget of a pony of middle-class means — even a captain of my guard. 

“WE’RE GOING TO GET MARRIED!” Cadance shrieked, her ears perking forward severely. Her purple eyes were faintly teary with more emotion than I had seen in her in many years — the kind that felt so threatening to behold. Of course, this included when I first found her wandering the realms only… my kind… had any access to. 

Immediately, that distant chill became a clawing freeze in my stomach, and only all the graces I had cultivated over the years kept that claw from tearing me open.

“SHINY PROPOSED!” squealed Cadance, every part of how she carried herself animated with pure, effervescent joy. Even shoving her face into the mane of her adoring, nuzzling fian— coltfriend could not muffle her joyous nickers and noises. In that regard, Cadance had always been a smidge too close to how Luna was. 

I had to smile so much wider because of it, and let the corners of my mouth turn upward in a simple, closed-mouth look. It was the exact same one I gave my little ponies for each Summer Sun Celebration and proclamation of love where I was invoked as the most beautiful mare in the world. They were the kind of verse that told of how only every poet's beloved could be compared to me, and to whom all other mares were less than those two. In other nations, where the other divine are given more attention, the looks of mortals are compared to a wider range of other Alicorns.

“Married…” I murmured, trying to let all my emotions simmer and be properly stifled beneath my surprise. There was always a perfect measure to show, and an even larger one to drain. Thankfully, even the smallest slip-ups could potentially go unnoticed — and had, many times before — because surprise was an emotion that knew how to change. 

Now, I could only look at Shining Armor out of the corner of my eyes. I saw how he nodded rapidly along with her words and returned Cadance’s every gesture of affection with a nearly-automatic speed even my many lovers had never ascended to. They adored me utterly, and worshipped me as I always craved they would, but this level of back-and-forth complexity was never anything I had. Though some might call it balance I knew that there was nothing but instability in a relationship where one could not master their other. 

“Your Highness, I will defend your niece and love her for all my days,” Shining Armor tells me when Cadance’s very forward affections finally relent. The earnestness of his conviction is the slow twist of a knife that they cannot see already hilted within my stomach.   

Thankfully, my smile was stuck fast to my muzzle. “I have no doubt you will be her — snrk — ah, how should I say this? Live up to your namesake. Yes, that’s the best way to do so. In all the time you have served under the flag of Equestria and among your pony-kin in the ranks of the EUP, you have been nothing but the bravest and most dutiful of heroes.”

They had been dating even before Twilight Sparkle had become my Faithful Student, and at first, I thought nothing of it. Cadance was somepony I had taken under my wing and fussed over since she was fourteen, and she had known her knight almost just as long. She was permitted to have serious partners, and I’d hired the perfect tutor to give her a second, more comprehensive ‘talk’ on relationship matters, just in case her health education had proved inadequate — though, this one had given her some of the expectations of higher society thrown in too. I hadn't ever instructed Cadance to be given a marriage etiquette talk specifically, but I know that it had been in that tutor's repertoire of things to teach, along with other Equestrian values — namely those related to consent, conviction, fidelity, and the like. 

Never in all my years would I have thought they were courting.

“I… I am sure you make my niece feel like a very lucky mare, Shining Armor,” I say coolly and sweetly. “Gracious me, is this ever the surprise… Cadance, my niece, is there any reason you had not told me that you were, ah, considering your relationship… more seriously?” 

There was nothing in my tone to provoke Cadance, but she was pulled from her present preoccupations instantly. I caught sight of how she pulled slightly away from Shining Armor, the way she bit her lip slightly and teased a curl with her magic in thought. 

“Well, umm…”

Shining Armor was her first serious coltfriend. As I understand, she’d had a chaste little relationship with a local colt that lasted shortly into her time in high school. Cadance proudly told me about her adoptive parents, and that in a very common Istallion tradition, they expected their daughter to show strong character and good judgment. Cadance took on a tradition of  ‘saving herself’, as it is often called, of her own volition. I had never asked her to tell me this, and found it breached what I wanted to know about my ward in an area I had never asked her about. And frankly, I do not care how common or nigh-universal to nearly every culture such traditions were, I had never seen any merit in them. 

It was a considerably uncommon view. Romance was always of great value in this nation, and most all others. Lust never had been, and that was entirely understandable, considering all the ways it could ravage the ethics of any creature, mortal or divine, when elevated to any level beyond what it actually was. That, I would never downplay, as much as I could never divorce it from romantic relationships the way Cadance apparently could. How anypony could try to apply the quality of intimacy to a non-sexual attempt at romance — and how it could ever be more than an attempt — felt more like a breezie tale than reality. But I cannot understand what virtue there is in what feels like mere deprivation of the inherent physical needs to all parties involved. Though it was not a subject I really cared to be specific about with my chosen-kin, despite her adulthood, I was careful to give her messages I found healthy in the most discreet ways possible.

Something was starting to take root in my head. It was just the itsy-bitsiest guess that Cadance may not have taken those lessons to heart. 

One of those lessons was that as long as she was responsible above all else. I care not if she took her relationships to a physical level — with nearly whoever she chose. There were always limitations, of course. Laws governing love were not rooted in nothing, nor was love ungovernable. Being somepony in a position of authority as long as I have has given me many chances to see how there are all kinds of heinous abuses that rotten individuals will try and put under the label of love. Cadance knew this more than most ponies, though not with the weary, firsthoof experience I had. She could be a healthy young mare with a healthy physically intimate life — but what I had never told her was that I had never, ever wanted her to get married. 

“My dear, I am not asking for all the reasons you love him—”

But I would like to know, I didn’t say, how you could decide that this stallion, this second-coltfriend-next-door, a middle-class son of a spy-glass maker was worth flinging yourself at...

...forever.

“Oh!” gasped Cadance, bringing a forehoof to her mouth. I watched her eyes go wide with all the emotions I wish she would learn to tame, and have given her so many — unfortunately rather ineffective — lessons in. “Oh gods, Auntie. I don’t think I would be able to list every reason I love Shiny… there are just too many, and trying to pull them apart… Hrm, well it’s like trying to pick one note out of a constant symphony in my head and explain it to somepony as the beginning of everything. I… I just can’t do it! Shiny is the pony I want to spend the rest of my life with, no matter what befalls us, who I want to be my one and only, my peer of peers, my husband and greatest love—”

“—and I feel the same, dear,” Shining Armor finished all too sweetly, giving Cadance a far-too romantic, quick kiss on the cheek I sat through. “Erm, except for, y’know —  the husband part?”

Both Cadance and I blinked at him in varying displays of confusion. 

“‘Cause, uh…” He flashed that same awkward smile, “...I don’t want a husband? Cady’s not a stallion. I don’t like stallions.”

“Mmm, yes,” I said levelly. “It is always understandable to make one’s limited attraction clear, but I do think that you were the only pony who was confused by Cadance’s words, my little pony.” The titter I managed at the end was able to sound far from forced, and I was able to project it past the way I held my forehoof in front of my muzzle in my signature, stifled noblemare’s laugh. 

The three of us all shared smiles, and the moment of awkwardness passed easily. My stomach had fallen past my hooves at this point, and I could not whisper a word of this ill-feeling to anypony. I never could, for this was not the first time such a feeling had seized me. The very idea that Cadance could do this... and after all, I had offered her simply hurt me. She has been mine since she was so young. I have shaped her into a mare who can better guide her kindness and talents so that they might be extended to a whole nation instead of kept for show and selfishness. 

I do not believe in marriage. The other gods invented it, have praised it, and have spoken of all the ways it has amplified the love magic of creatures everywhere for millions of years. Since then, it has been replicated — in some fashion — across every culture to ever exist, though mortals like to think themselves its inventor much of the time. I do not try and correct them. To be married is to be known, to have a kind of terrible unity that I would never suggest any bring into their life. No matter how many married friends I have had across centuries, I have never once been an advocate for it. To sleep with somepony under acceptable, legal circumstances is one matter, to be married is another thing entirely. It has ruined good ponies before, among other things.  

I will always encourage — oh, and even indulge — in stallions. Many stallions have been my partner, and not all of them were even ponies. Heavens know that the males I have kept as lovers and I have rarely seen any purpose in the monoamory (or monogamy) that is the norm across most species, much less something like matrimony. The other, this idea of marriage, is little more than empty sentiment, and a mere antique that I cannot seem to shake from the world. That my ponies, and all other creatures, have perpetuated it as beautiful is not something I have understood, not when it also meant a time of living chattel in the past. Even though that was one dark, forgotten stain of the Tribal Era against millions of years of gods and mortals in 'beautiful unions' or whatever they wish to call them. In all my years, I have received no shortage of proposals and even more knowledge into all the ways that marriage ruins a pony. Worse still, it can mean sharing — of home, foals, and even oneself in a frightful way beyond physicality. As much as nopony can know their lover if they do not know them — yes, I believe my implication is clear — there's just something so... frightful at the thought of there being more than that. Let that be the end. 

Somepony in my position would very likely need to share the truest sign of life — the crown — should they agree to any proposal. 

For that reason alone, there is no shortage of reasons to decline every one of the proposals I have been offered. 

Love may happen, and let it happen. It is a candle meant to burn until it is done, not something to put such work into that it can be cultivated. To dig so deeply into it, to breed romance is just not something I can understand or see as an acceptable indulgence. Cadance is certainly all heart in that area, and the utter opposite to all the ideas of passion I can only try to kindly pop. One day, she will grow older, and hopefully, by then she will understand that the greatest love in the world is not what the Arcadian ponies and minotaurs called agápē, storage, philía, and it certainly wasn’t érōs.

The greatest love to ever be was that between ruler and subject, benefactor and the protected, the helper and the helpless, and the keeper and the kept. Let the thaumaturges, poets, and everypony outside of Equestria continue to firmly insist otherwise. My ponies and I were the one nation who put Harmony and Destiny so highly, and this was one good reason to. In my observance and experience, I have found no more fulfilling relationship and the idea of romance to be over-romanticized. And I am not quite sure if it ever had to be in the first place. 

“Well...” My voice sounds weaker, and not just because I hadn’t bothered with trying to make it sound forceful — I rarely ever wished to. “Marriage is a very big responsibility, Mi Amore Cad—”

“Cadance,” she insists, putting on a sweet, teasing smile. 

“Yes, Cadance—”

—don’t you realize what marriage means? It is a frightening announcement of a desire for equality, for a peer to seep into your life instead of you holding theirs within your grasp.

“Auntie,” she says with an unexpected, gentle seriousness, wrapping one wing around Shining Armor, “I’m not a little filly anymore… I know what I want from my life. Maybe even as much as you do.”

I pretend to meet the delicate, truly serene smile she gives me with my own plaster parody. The same one she has seen for years, and most ponies see for a lifetime. 

But what could keep her from the great fear that is being known? How is she unable to understand that terror? She tells me that she understands, but to go through with this — my little Mi Amore Cadenza has no knowledge of the vulnerability she wishes to inflict upon herself!

When I take somepony small enough to stand in my shadow under my wing, I am not without expectations. In every Faithful Student — and in Cadance herself — I need to see that these ponies will change and give their whole selves to the nation, just as I have. What I need is a pony like me, who will not think their life is about them and what they make, but for being a bridge upon which others may walk. It is only pure folly that made the Arcadians think that their Great Bull idol Atlas carrying the world was a crushing, unwelcome burden. 

I cannot look upon those stone visages of the bull without my heart melting at the sight. Why must the most beautiful thing in the world be portrayed as though it were some sort of agony? Yet, those minotaurs were the same ones who deemed Icarus tragic instead of arrogant and Sisyphus clever instead of disobedient and rightly punished in Tartarus. A pony cannot exactly trust their taste in tales. There is a reason I ask those who are in charge of adapting the tales of foreign stories into ones that display more appropriately Equestrian values. Just because a story for a world fables course in Equestrian schoolhouses may be from elsewhere does not mean it can’t be written the right way instead. My little ponies are given the happiest tale of Atlas to ever grace any page — for what can call itself a story if it doesn't have a happy ending? 

Atlas does not hug the world, he does not bear it at his side. There is no lie of scales for each to occupy one side of. Atlas grasps the world, and each is above and below is the perfect display of the kinds of powers in this world. Ruler, subject. Less, more. Pet, owner. Black, white. Unbound, chained. Gift-giver, recipient. Teacher, student. Fixed, broken. Wrong, right. The needed, inevitable dichotomy. Such a simple story takes my breath away. I need my Faithful Students and those I hold so closely as Atlas holds the world to know one simple thing — that the world is sketched only in relationships of power, no matter how that relationship may manifest.

And it is not the only reason why one should not be married. To be married is to think any life can be shared, and to think life can be shared is to think that it belongs to oneself. I am beyond that kind of foalish thought; if I am Atlas who holds the world that submits to me, my world is my kingdom. My nation is my marriage. If I am to have a husband, he must submit to me as my kingdom — and all my past stallions — have. 

“...If that is so, my niece, then I suppose you, Shining Armor, and I can discuss what it will mean for him to be Equestria’s first—” (and if all is well, its only) “—royal consort—”

“Umm,” Cadance says, her gaze suddenly inscrutable to me. For a mare whose heart is worn more obviously than her skin, I cannot help but feel a quiet needle of alarm running down my spine. Even if I do not let it show, I know the threat of it is there. 

I do not correct her interruption; I merely appear unbothered by it, as I have for thousands of ponies before her. It is simply within my nature to do so. My own heart’s beat is more unnatural than the calm I submerge myself in. However, I can feel the distant threat of a headache upon me. 

“Auntie… I don’t exactly…” She pauses, her words uncharacteristically faltering. Has my training failed her? “I think that Shining Armor should be more than just my prince — I think he should be Equestria’s too.”

When she says that — that deeply startling suggestion of a stallion in power in my country — she looks at him, and only at him. The way that they look at one another is so evident — I know the sight of a mare and stallion so deeply and utterly in love, and they have no idea how much it hurts.

How much it hurts me.

I need Cadance. Though she fits no prophecy — her mark has made that clear before I ever knew Twilight Sparkle — she does not understand the full importance of her presence in my life. Its necessity is something she is so painfully oblivious to — painful, I suppose, only for me. That is if I was to dwell on it, and only if. Without her, what really veils me from…

...loneliness?

Even though Luna is back, I am not sure if I know her. If I ever have.

To be a ruler is to be of service, to be benevolent above all else. I am simply concerned with the fact that marriage would divide the attentions of my niece from where they ought to be, and that she would no longer revere me. Or, she might pick up the rather unhealthy implication that it is wrong for any of my subjects to do so. There is no deep disturbance in that. All it is — just a smidge of worry, that's it. Nothing more. Nothing less. In fact, I would call what I feel about this whole deal— 

“My dearest niece, what I have is just a simple case of—”

—mother hen syndrome, if anything. Really. 

“—empty nest syndrome in the making! I am just an old mare trying to make up for a lack of gray hair, and nothing more!” I laugh so pleasantly that both Cadance and Shining Armor chuckle warmly at the sound. 

“My wonderful niece,” I saw, dabbing at my eyes with a conjured hoofkerchief and smiling widely, “and my nephew-to-be… you have no idea how happy I am for you both.”

It is the kindest lie I have to share, and it leaves my heart easier than the praise a mother might give her beloved foal.

Even if I have never had a niece before, there has always been a reason I have had a Faithful Student instead.

"Now," I said, my tone ringing out in the throne room with the kindest cheer, "I think this calls for some celebratory tea! Wouldn't you two agree?"

I do wish that nopony else will ever betray me like this again.