An abridged history of Equestria, exploring over two-thousand years of pony history, from the Equestrian Exodus to the Return of Luna and everything in between.
*Be aware that this is very much a fluid work-in-progress, and is subject to any and all relevant developments in the show's canon. Predominately head-canon based chapters are marked with an asterisk.*
Anno Equestria A Brief History of the Pony Nation A FiM fic by (Insert Pen Name)
Author's Foreword
This is a personal pony project that I have been tinkering with for many months, and has now reached a point where I feel confident enough to share it with you all. Anno Equestria is my attempt to write a complete and impartial chronicle of pony history, combining (in the usual fashion of fan-fiction) my own conjecture with canonical information from the show. This being said, some points must be made:
First, this writ is concerned solely with the history of Equestria (hence the name). It will not therefore contain any major content that precedes the events described in Hearth's Warming Eve, nor will it attempt to establish any form of pony creation myth.
Second, I have sought to represent pony history as realistically as possible. This isn't a sweeping epic, or a secret history of the alicorns, or anything like that. What I have written amounts to a series of plausible events, figures, places, causes, and effects that would all fit with the modern Equestria we know and love. In other words, unless you're a genuine history buff, most of it will likely be pretty boring (though feel free to prove me wrong!) Consider yourself warned.
Third, while I have used information from the show wherever applicable, much of this "document" is based on my own conjecture (aka head-canon). So, out of respect for the source material, any entries that do not derive directly from the show will be marked with an asterisk (think fictional wars, et cetera).
Fourth, a note on dates and race names. I have reckoned the Equestrian timeline as being analogous, but not parallel, to our own. In other words, our 2012 is their 2012, with Hearth's Warming Eve serving as year 1. BCE (Before Common Era) becomes PE (Pre-Equestria), and CE (Common Era) becomes AE (Anno Equestria). Given that Hearth's Warming Eve is essentially pony Christmas (both would mark the turn of an era), I daresay this is not an unreasonable way of looking at it. Race names are capitalised when they refer to a tribal/political identity, and left un-captialised when they merely identify race. For example, Princess Platinum was a unicorn, but was leader of the Unicorns.
Fifth, I am fully aware that the phrase "Anno Equestria" is not proper Latin.
Lastly, I fully acknowledge that this is all very much my own view, and it will likely run opposite to the views of many readers. I ask only that you judge my work on its own terms and merits, and not on whether or not you agree with the content (save that for the shipping).
Now that I'm done ranting, please enjoy Anno Equestria: A Brief History of the Pony Nation.
Anno Equestria A Brief History of the Pony Nation A FiM fic by (Insert Pen Name)
The Equestrian Exodus 3PE - AE1
The story of Ponykind’s arrival in Equestria is widely known and often told. Indeed, one of the most cherished traditions of ponykind is the celebration of Hearth’s Warming Eve on the winter solstice, by which even the youngest foals learn of that historic event so very long ago. Regrettably, Hearth's Warming Pageants are often the sole source of Pre-Equestrian knowledge for most ponies, and so some misinformation naturally arises as a result. History is even further compromised by the unfortunate fact that few extant records survive from the Pre-Equestrian Era. That said, the basic story is accurate enough in most regards.
Prior to the year 4PE, the three Pony races lived far to the north in a region known to us only as Old Homeland. Though the Ponies shared a common language, their civilization was otherwise deeply divided along racial lines, and the symbiotic relationship they shared did little to bridge their differences. Nonetheless, the three races managed to live in relative peace until the disaster of the Long Winter, when, starting in the year 3PE, the pony races found themselves beset by a seemingly unending period of freezing weather. Snow fell nearly every day of the year, and though the Earth-Ponies struggled to grow what they could during the brief summer thaws, the tribes were very much reliant on emergency food stores. By 1PE, these stores had finally run out and famine was widespread. An emergency summit was held to discuss potential solutions, but tempers soon flared, and the negotiations were brought to an untimely end.
The exact causes of the Long Winter are subject to debate. The traditional explanation of windigoes makes for a fine moral, but offers little substance for the objective historian. Given that Old Homeland remains frozen even now, it is more likely that the Pre-Equestrian Ponies had fallen victim to some form of catastrophic climate change, though this in itself only raises more questions. In any event, the leaders of the three races; Princess Platinum of the Unicorns, Commander Hurricane of the Pegasi, and Chancellor Puddinghead of the Earth-Ponies, each independently arrived at the conclusion that Old Homeland was doomed, and that new havens must be found farther south. The remarkable fact that the three leaders decided to undertake these expeditions personally is testament to the desperation of their cause.
Of equal note are the ponies who accompanied the three leaders on their quest. Princess Platinum brought her scribe and trusted adviser, Clover the Clever, a former pupil of the legendary Star-Swirl the Bearded*. Chancellor Puddinghead was likewise accompanied by her secretary, Smart Cookie. Commander Hurricane's companion, Private Pansy, is mostly fabrication, however. In reality, Pansy was just one of an entire cohort that accompanied the Commander. However, the names of these other Pegasus soldiers have long since been lost to history, and so in the Hearth's Warming story, all of them were compiled into the character of Private Pansy**.
The celebration of the Hearth’s Warming on the winter solstice is also more the result of dramatic fallacy than historical significance. In truth, nopony knows exactly when Princess Platinum, Commander Hurricane, Chancellor Puddinghead, and their respective followers first arrived in Equestria. The notion that they even arrived at the same time, as is so humourously represented in the pageants, is likely a poetic embellishment. That said, most historians agree that the three pony leaders must have arrived sometime in late spring or early summer. At some point they did encounter one-another, and after what must certainly have been a profound shared experience, the three groups reconciled their differences and united under the new banner of Equestria. They then spent the next several weeks exploring the region before turning back north to Old Homeland.
Now united under a common nationality, the three leaders immediately instigated a mass-migration to Equestria. With precious little left for them in Old Homeland, the Exodus set out almost overnight. The next nine weeks were a time of great hardship for the surviving ponies as they moved southward, crossing over the Crystal Mountains, and finally arriving in the Equestrian Heartland in mid-autumn. Many songs and ballads were subsequently written concerning that fateful moment; it is said that many broke down and wept for joy at seeing the bare grass for the first time in years. There would have been little time to rejoice, however; shelters needed to be built, supplies needed to be secured, and the Earth-Ponies in particular toiled hard to bring about a hasty autumn harvest before winter struck. Fortunately, that first winter in Equestria turned out to be rather milder than usual, and so the refugees were largely spared from immediate disaster.
On New Year’s Day, Clover the Clever stood before an assembled crowd and announced the start of a new reckoning of years. From that moment on, years would be counted as Anno Equestria (Year of Equestria), starting with the year AE1. Thus ended the Pre-Equestrian Era, and began what many historians have termed the Early Equestrian Period, a golden age of renewal and expansion which lasted for over six-hundred years until the events of the Lost Years (which will be covered later).
It is impossible now to accurately determine the loss of life that resulted from the Long Winter and the hardships of the Equestrian Exodus. Of the three pony nations, only the Unicorns had kept accurate census records (for tax purposes), and these had been lost by the time of their arrival in Equestria, either buried by the Long Winter or abandoned to the elements during the journey. Whatever the case, there can be no doubt that the death toll was near-catastrophic; barely over 600,000 adult ponies were counted in the first census in late AE1, and a sizable majority of these were mares. Even today, ponykind is still recovering from the disaster that befell us two-thousand years before.
* As impressive as this sounds to us today, Starswirl the Bearded in fact educated hundreds of pupils in his lifetime, so Clover the Clever was hardly unique or remarkable in this regard.
** Ironically, Private Pansy's name is the only thing we do actually know about her.
Anno Equestria A Brief History of the Pony Nation A FiM fic by (Insert Pen Name)
Building a Nation AE1-15
With the coming of the first spring in Equestria, Chancellor Puddinghead, Princess Platinum, and Commander Hurricane convened a grand summit, where they resolved to immediately begin constuction a new capital for their fledgling nation. From a practical standpoint, such an endeavour was most ill-advised; supplies of food and medicine were dangerously low, and while there was no shortage of skilled labour among the refugees, tools were scarce, infrastructure was non-existent, and the land itself was largely unexplored. Many of their advisers were quick to discourage the idea, arguing that efforts should instead be devoted towards securing supplies and resources to provide for the refugees. The three leaders were adamant in their decision, however, and in mid-spring, a large labour force was gathered, and ground was broken on the edge of what we now call the Everfree Forest. The city-to-be was named Canterlot (or Old Canterlot, as we now know it), and work began without delay.
There was in fact a subtle pragmatism behind the immediate founding of Canterlot. Though the horrors of the Long Winter were behind them, many ponies were still restless and ill at ease after their long ordeal. Morale was low among the refugees, and the three leaders realised that it was only a matter of time before their idle subjects descended back into their old prejudices and turned against one another. The construction of a new city offered an ideal solution; a shining goal for all of Ponykind to aspire to, and an expansive labour project to keep the masses occupied and cooperative.
The construction of Canterlot proved a far greater task than anypony had initially realised. The site’s proximity to the Forest provided easy access to timber and forage, but not to stone or iron. New quarries and mines had to be established in the surrounding hills, and roads had to be laid to transport stone and ore to the construction site. On top of that, the refugees still needed to be fed, so fields, mills, and graneries were needed as well. There was so much infrastructure to be established that very little actual city construction took place in the first two years after Canterlot’s founding. It wasn't until the summer of AE2 that the first cornerstones were laid.
While the working ponies toiled to bring Canterlot to realisation, the powerful and elite of the three races gathered together to establish how their new unified nation would be governed. This was no mere private brainstorming session; literally every pony of political prominence who had survived the Exodus, nearly 800 in total, were gathered in a sheltered dell just outside Canterlot (spectators likely numbered even more). Though the intent was for a civilized dialogue on the issue, tensions soon flared up as the former tribes vied to secure power and voice in the government-to-be. As a result, the council dragged on for months before an agreement was finally reached.
From the start, it was unanimously agreed that Puddinghead, Hurricane, and Platinum should continue their roles as Heads of State, now collectively known under the title of Triumvirate. Forming the actual governing body, however, proved rather more problematic. The main conflict was between the Earth-Ponies, who desired a democratic system of elected representatives, and what remained of the Unicorn nobility, who were loath to surrender their long-held positions of power and prestige. The Pegasi, for their part, generally disliked either system, opting instead for a powerful and decisive leadership that could take direct action in times of crisis. Eventually, the Earth-Ponies and the Pegasi managed to reach acompromise wherein the main governing body would remain democratic, but would in turn appoint an effectual Head of State. With the majority now against them, the Unicorn nobles continued to resist to the last as a whole, but individually they began exploring alternative avenues of power. In the final weeks of the council, many Unicorn nobles quietly established themselves as landowners, merchant lords, local governors, and (most begrudgingly) parliamentary candidates. The first elections were held in the summer of AE4, though Parliament itself would not form until more than a year later.
Canterlot was officially completed in the autumn of AE5. Puddinghead herself laid the final stone in the city walls amidst much pomp and ceremony, and Pony Parliament was convened for the first time. It’s first act was to formally establish the Triumvirate as Equestria's official Heads of State. While the concept of three equal leaders of each race ruling together was never formally entered into the Equestrian constitution, the selection of a Triumvirate remained a parliamentary tradition right up until the Lost Years, and the subsequent coronation of the Princesses. The First Triumvirate reigned until the year AE42, when Commander Hurricane died, and Platinum and Puddinghead resigned out of respect.
From the beginning, Canterlot underwent a tremendous period of economic and cultural growth. The census of AE6 marked the city’s resident population at just over 60,000; by AE15, that number had more than doubled. For the first time in pony history, all three races were now living together in one city as equals, though unicorns still comprised a disproportionate percentage of the city's urban population. The completion of Canterlot marked the start of a golden age in Equestria, and pony civilization thrived once more with the city at its shining centre. With so many different ponies living together, Canterlot became very much the cultural and intellectual centre of Equestria, as well as the political capital. Art and learning flourished, and for hundreds of years, no other city in Equestria could compare.
Anno Equestria A Brief History of the Pony Nation A FiM fic by (Insert Pen Name)
Old Hatreds AE5-72
Equestria has always been a land under siege. Throughout our history we have repelled Griffons, Changelings, and even the odd supernatural. But in the early years, the first critical threat Equestria faced came not from without, but from within.
As much as we value the ideals of harmony today, it would be naive to imagine that an entire national identity could be forged overnight solely from the personal epiphanies of a handful of ponies, however influential. Convincing the three races to abandon their tribal identities and to coexist after centuries of mutual distrust proved a challenging goal indeed. Ironically, the early success of the Equestrian nation made the problem only more difficult; the shared hardships of the the Exodus and the years that followed had been a grim equalizer among the disparate races, but as life eventually returned to normal and the races resumed their traditional symbiotic roles, tribal tensions reemerged, and the Equestrian dream was threatened almost as soon as it had begun.
Granted, in rural areas, where mixed-race communities were small and closely knit by necessity, racial conflict bordered on non-existent. In larger urban communities however, there was much less need for individual cooperation between the races, and the tribal mindset endured. Nowhere were tensions more pronounced than in the new capital of Canterlot. While the values of harmony and cosmopolitanism were much-espoused among the intellectual and ruling classes, the lower-class inhabitants of the city were another matter entirely. Ghettoisation was the norm, as groups of earth-ponies, unicorns, and pegasi alike laid claim to entire districts while forcing out all others. Tribal gangs thrived, race riots were frequent (though usually minor), and by AE50, it was clear to all but the most optimistic observer that a crisis was imminent.
The final straw came in the year AE67, in an event known as the Silverbirch Riots. According to official records, a mob of unicorns descended one night on the home of an earth-stallion named Silver Birch. Birch was an artisan of some local renown, and was recently engaged (with blessings) to the daughter of a prominent unicorn merchant. Such a union would have been radical by any standard of the day, but to the more tribal-minded unicorns, the notion of one of their own being wedded to a mere “mud-pony” was blasphemous to say the very least. Before the local guards could intervene, Birch and his two brothers had been murdered in the street, and his family home despoiled. The rioters were quickly rounded up and imprisoned, but the damage was done. The very next day, mobs of earth-ponies retaliated against the unicorn districts, leading to open violence in the streets. The fighting soon spread across the city, as earth-ponies, unicorns, and pegasi alike joined the fray over one grievance or another. Fires soon broke out in the besieged districts, but the riots continued unabated, and in many cases only intensified. Fire-brigades struggled to contain the blazes amid the fighting, and by the time the city guard was able to restore some semblance of order, much of Canterlot lay in ashes.
The aftermath of the Silverbirch Riots triggered a backlash of anti-racist sentiment in Canterlot. The original murderers of the Birch brothers were swiftly sentenced to life imprisonment, and large numbers of provocateurs were arrested in the days immediately following the riots. Most radical of all were the “Unity Measures” introduced by Parliament under the Second Triumvirate*. Guards were sent in to forcibly disperse the ghettoes, and their inhabitants were deported to other areas of the city to form deliberately mixed communities. Initial resistance to these measures was fierce, but most chose to cooperate, having already lost their homes in any event. In addition, the Triumvirate directly oversaw the rebuilding of Canterlot’s damaged districts, using mixed-racial labour crews to foster (or force) further cooperation between the disparate tribes. The government’s anti-racist doctrines soon spread to the main populace; those who still clung to their old hatreds faced near-ostrocision at the hooves of their more enlightened neighbours. The new movement even took on a spiritual element, as the city's clerics began to deliver tremendous public sermons, in which they extolled the virtues of harmony while practically demonizing the dangers of racism and tribal sentiment among the pony races. The message was clear; old hatreds would not be tolerated in the new Pony nation.
Eventually, life in Canterlot gradually settled back into peace and stability, and in AE72, Parliament promulgated the Unity Act, which formally outlawed any and all forms of cultural and social discrimination between the three pony races in Equestria**.
*Second Triumvirate (AE42-74): Smart Cookie, Lady Shimmerbeam, General Zephyr
**A common, spurious, misconception is that cloud cities such as Cloudsdale are in direct violation of the Unity Act because they are, by their very nature, uninhabitable to non-pegasi. This is not the case. Every pony in Equestria has the right to live and work in a cloud city, regardless of whether or not they are actually able to do so. It’s the principle that counts.
Anno Equestria A Brief History of the Pony Nation A FiM fic by (Insert Pen Name)
The Expanding Frontier AE5-200
Canterlot may have been the first and, for a brief time, only major city in Equestria, but it was by no means the full extent of the new pony nation. From the very moment of our arrival in Equestria, adventurous ponies of all stripes set out to explore and claim the new land for their own. In the five years it took to build Canterlot into a habitable city, ponies had spread out across the Equestrian Heartland, establishing farms and villages wherever viable resources could be found, and laying the groundwork for further expansion in the years to come.
The first city to follow Canterlot was the cloud city of Cloudsdale, founded in AE17. Cloud villages had existed from the start in Equestria, but most of these were small and sparsely populated, since most pegasi found it more practical to live alongside the earth-ponies and unicorns with whom they worked and traded. Fearing that the pegasus way of life was at risk, many of these cloud villages drifted together to quite literally form a new city of their own. Cloudsdale quickly became the hub of Equestria’s weather services, and a haven of pegasus culture, though it was never a major power on the political stage.
The decades following the completion of Canterlot were also a time of intrepid exploration and discovery. In AE26, the first great Equestrian explorer, an earth-pony cartographer named Globe Trotter, reached the Great Eastern Sea and spent the next two years mapping the coastline. He soon discovered that ponies were not the only claimants to the new land. Prides of griffons had come from across the sea, and had long established colonies of their own in the cliffs surrounding Horseshoe Bay. While the haughty griffons were largely aloof to Trotter’s expedition (and to the existence of ponies in general), it was not long before envoys were being exchanged between the griffon colonies and the burgeoning Equestrian government. Globe Trotter himself was richly rewarded by Parliament for his accomplishments. Buoyed on by his success, Trotter used his fortune to construct himself a ship, The Bellpony, with which he set out over the Eastern Sea in search of new lands and new treasures. None of these expeditions were successful; Trotter’s “Bellpony’s Chart” is currently on prominent display in the lobby of the Canterlot Archives.
Many more explorers soon followed Globe Trotter’s example, some more successfully than others. In AE31, the Trail Brothers, Merry and Bill, spent eight months forging through forests and over mountains before reaching the Western Sea and making camp on a broad plateau overlooking the coast. Their story was not widely believed on their return, so in response, the brothers set out once more with a band of loyal followers, and founded a new settlement on their former campsite. In a single inspired moment of irony, the Trail Brothers named the town Tall Tale. Contemporary records indicate that the joke was not lost on their detractors back home.
Perhaps the most celebrated of all these early explorers was the pegasus Boldly Go, who from AE89 to AE112 traveled the breadth of the Equestrian northlands, which had been largely unexplored since the Exodus. In addition to her numerous minor adventures, she is credited with discovering and naming Neighagra Falls and Galloping Gorge, and in AE93 she founded an outpost on the west coast that would eventually grow into the great city of Vanhoover. In AE113, Boldly Go departed for her boldest adventure yet. Accompanied by a crew of fifteen companions, she set out north, to cross back over the Crystal Mountains and learn what had become of Old Homeland. None returned to tell the tale.
Wherever these early explorers dared, settlers were almost sure to follow. The Equestrian East Coast was the first major frontier, and from AE28 onward, ponies flocked to the sea in droves, establishing colonies along the lenght of the coastline. In addition to land-borne agriculture, maritime ponies gathered sea-salt, sea shells (for dyes), seaweed, and pearls to trade with their Heartland cousins. The salt trade in particular was especially prosperous, and many of the new settlements thrived on the wealth it provided. More lucrative, however, was trade with the griffon colonies in Horseshoe Bay. In AE37, a group of intrepid merchants moved south from Fillydelphia and established a trading colony in the north shore of the bay. Known as the Horseshoe Bay Company, they traded fruit, grain, and cut lumber to the griffons in exchange for such exotic goods as ivory, copper, and feathers (especially down), which they would then sell to their fellow ponies for almost ludicrous profits. Their colony eventually grew into what is now the city of Baltimare, though the Company itself has waned greatly over the course of history.
Though significant, the griffons were by no means ponykind’s first contact with other sapient races in Equestria. Prior to the arrival of the Exodus, donkeys, cattle, goats, sheep, and other such creatures lived in scattered pre-literate communities across the Heartland. By all accounts, the arrival in their land of strangers in such large numbers was some cause for alarm. However, as the fledgling Equestria spread, many of these races quickly integrated with the new pony nation, trading their tribal independence for a secure (if arguably subservient) place in the new society.
Not all native races were inclined to welcome the pony newcomers, however. Tribes of deer, diamond dogs, and buffalo all actively resisted assimilation into the pony nation. The Deer in particular were frequently at odds with the early settler ponies, whom they viewed with natural suspicion. The settlers themselves were equally distrustful, and frequent deer raids on their orchards and fields did little to improve their outlook. Sporadic clashes between the Pony settlers and the Deer continued on and off until AE118, when Parliament under the Fifth Triumvirate* signed a peace treaty with the Deer. Regardless, the tribes seem to have sensed that history was passing them by, and by AE200, most of the deer had departed for the northern forests. Modern deer are now rarely seen outside of the Equestrian north, though one of the Heartland forests still bears the name Whitetail Wood in their memory.
The departure of the Deer marks the start of a long period of decline for Equestria’s native cultures. Today, most sapient creatures in Equestria have fully assimilated into pony culture, and most of these have gradually waned over the centuries. While this cultural decline was largely inevitable, and should not imply blame, we ponies would do well to remember that the foundation of our majestic nation came at a price we cannot repay.
*Fifth Triumvirate (AE116-43): Ploughshare the Burly, Lord Shinypants, Whirlwind the Swift.
Anno Equestria A Brief History of the Pony Nation A FiM fic by (Insert Pen Name)
The First Griffon War AE257-259
Though Equestria maintained excellent trade relations with the griffon colonies in Horseshoe Bay, the same could not be said for the Griffon Isles across the Great Eastern Sea. Griffon society at the time was intensely feudal, with hundreds of independent warlords vying for wealth and power across the region. Most of the colonists in Horseshoe Bay were in fact refugees from this warlike system. While both Equestria and the griffon colonies were largely ignored by the Griffon Isles at first, it wasn't long before stories of the new nation growing in the west peaked the warlords' interests.
In AE256, a number of the lesser griffon warlords, who had so far failed to make their fortunes, banded together with the intention of invading the Equestrian mainland and carving out their own personal empires overseas. Promising adventure and plunder to any who joined them, they were able to quickly recruit a large army of seasoned mercenaries, and made the flight across the Great Eastern Sea the following spring. The invaders swiftly annexed the colonies in Horseshoe Bay, and within days had overwhelmed most of the nearby coastal villages and laid siege to Fillydelphia.
So began what is now known as the First Griffon War, the first major military conflict in Equestrian history. To say Equestria was ill-prepared for such an invasion would be an understatement. Of the three original tribes, only the Pegasi had ever maintained a professional standing army (the Earth-Ponies had relied on local militias, and the Unicorns had only ever maintained private knights and guards). In Equestria, this Pegasus Army had endured mostly out of tradition, but it had been in steady decline for well over a century. At the time of the invasion, the Pegasus Army numbered less than 6000 pegasus soldiers nationwide; the garrison at Fillydelphia numbered barely over 200. The siege of Fillydelphia lasted just over a day before the griffons poured into the city. The city’s inhabitants were rounded up, herded into the main square, and forced to submit to their new griffon overlords. Of the valiant garrison, a mere three pegasus soldiers escaped the city to warn Parliament of the sudden invasion.
Incidentally, Parliament had just selected its Eleventh Triumvirate*, which included the commander of the Pegasus Army, General Stormfront. A proud Cloudsdale pegasus, Stormfront immediately saw in the war an opportunity to restore his army to its former glory, and rose vocally to the challenge of repelling the griffon invasion. Within the hour, Parliament had granted the Triumvirate (which is to say Stormfront) emergency powers to strike back at the griffons and liberate the east coast from their tyranny.
Stormfront’s first order was to recruit and train as many able-bodied pegasi as possible while the rest of the Pegasus Army moved to hold back the griffon onslaught. Fortunately, dissent had broken out among the griffon warlords over the lordship of Fillydelphia. As a result, the warlords had temporarily abandoned any pretense of a cooperative invasion, and took instead to raiding the countryside in disparate bands. The autumn of AE257 saw continuous skirmishes in the skies above the east coast, as the Pegasus Army moved to repeatedly counter the piecemeal griffon incursions. Only the onset of winter brought a temporary end to the fighting.
By the spring of AE258, fresh pegasus legions had been assembled and deployed to the front, but the griffons had also mended their alliance, and now drove north to Manehatten with a large force (estimates range between 20,000 and 30,000 griffon warriors). Stormfront responded by flying south with 9,600 pegasi, and laying a trap in the skies above a local wheatfield. The resulting Battle of Hayseed’s Field (the unfortunate farmer’s name was Hayseed) would be a textbook example of pegasus tactical acumen. Stormfront first divided his forces, ordering half to prepare a low-hanging rainstorm above the field and then form up to meet the griffon advance. When the griffons arrived, they naturally chose to avoid the unfavourable weather conditions and fly above the rainstorm instead, where they were swiftly met by the rest of Stormfront’s forces. While the battle raged above, the pegasi below used the storm as cover to flank the griffons from behind. After three bloody hours of fighting, the griffons broke out and retreated, and the pegasi claimed victory.
Unfortunately, Stormfront’s triumph came at a heavy cost. Though the enemy had been pushed back, fewer than 3000 of Stormfront’s original force were still in fighting condition, and it would be several months yet before the next wave of reinforcements could be mustered. Unable to mount an effective counterattack, the Pegasus Army was forced once more into a defensive war as the griffons made repeated attempts to advance inland. It wasn't until fresh legions arrived in mid-autumn that Stormfront was finally able to firmly hold the line.
Meanwhile, Stormfront also faced opposition on the home front. So far, the war had been fought exclusively by pegasus soldiers, and the other Triumviri, Cornbread the Honest and Baroness Beryl, felt that the other races should contribute to the defence of Equestria. Their opinion was echoed by a number of Stormfront’s junior officers, who wisely pointed out that while the griffons had plentiful access to reinforcements at home, the pegasi were slowly being stretched to their limit. Stormfront arrogantly refused to incorporate non-pegasi into his army, however, arguing that ground ponies had no business fighting "a war of flyers”. In response, several of these officers “resigned” and instead swore fealty directly to Equestria and its Parliament. These officers were promptly set to recruiting earth-ponies and unicorns alike into new Equestrian Militia, expressly trained to counter airborne attackers. The intent was to use these troops on the offensive in conjunction with pegasus attacks, forcing the griffons to divide their forces between both ground and air combat. It wasn't until AE259, however, that the Militia would finally see action.
The late winter of AE258 brought another costly victory for the Pegasus Army, this time in the skies over Rambling Rock Ridge. The griffons had attempted an all-out push to breach the pegasus lines, but were forced to take refuge on the ridge when a freak snow storm drifted in from the Everfree Forest. The pegasi quickly seized on this opportunity and fell upon the sheltering griffons in a brutal melee. Trapped between a literal rock and a proverbial hard place, the desperate griffons chose the hard place.The snowbound fighting was taxing for both sides, and once again, the griffon offensive was broken at the cost of over 5000 pegasus lives.
Again in desperate need of reinforcements, Stormfront reluctantly agreed to combine his forces with the Equestrian Militia to launch a counter-offensive on the griffon-held east coast. By all accounts, the Militia performed their function admirably. As predicted, the Griffon warlords had neither the numbers nor the tactics to effectively contest the skies and defend their ground holdings at the same time, and soon the griffon forces were in full retreat across the east coast. Fillydelphia was liberated in early spring, and by mid-summer, only Horseshoe Bay remained under the warlords’ control.
As fate would have it, the newly-vindicated Militia would yet face their first true test before the war was out. Stormfront’s intent was to completely surround Horseshoe Bay by land, hoping to force a surrender rather than commit to a costly assault. Unfortunately, the move to surround the bay was met with almost continuous counterattacks by the griffons, often forcing the pony ground forces to advance alone while their flyers mopped up. So it was that one battalion was caught out in the open by a massive griffon ambush. The earth-ponies quickly reacted by drawing back into a tight circle, thrusting their long spears out for defence while the unicorns in the centre filled the sky with magic missiles. The surprise attack quickly became a complete debacle, and by the time pegasus reinforcements arrived, the humiliated griffons were already in full retreat. This surprising skirmish was promptly dubbed the Battle of Horseshoe Bay, and was jubilantly celebrated in every town and city in Equestria (except Cloudsdale).
Realising they were facing defeat, the surviving warlords fled back across the Great Eastern Sea. Many of the griffon colonists followed, fearing retribution at the hooves of the victorious ponies. On the eve of the autumn equinox, AE259, Stormfront marched his troops into Horseshoe Bay, annexed the griffon colonies, and declared victory. After two years of desperate fighting, Equestria had prevailed.
Almost immediately, the remaining griffons of Horseshoe Bay sent envoys to Parliament, requesting to swear fealty to Equestria and seek the protection of the Unity Act.** Though Stormfront was reluctant, Cornbread and Beryl accepted their request, and on Hearth’s Warming Eve, nearly 9000 griffons, young and old, became gracious citizens of Equestria.
In AE261, Parliament oversaw the formation of a new and innovative Equestrian Army, firmly establishing the modern Equestrian military tradition of pegasus flyers, unicorn battlemages, and earth-pony rangers, heavily supplemented by a reserve militia. Though Equestria’s military has gone through numerous incarnations over the centuries, the First Griffon War will always be remembered as a vital chapter in pony history.
*Eleventh Triumvirate (AE257-299): Cornbread the Honest, Baroness Beryl, General Stormfront.
**The Unity Act had been amended in AE132 to include all sapient races under Equestrian governance. Any sapient creature living as an Equestrian citizen is thus protected from any and all forms of social and cultural discrimination.
Anno Equestria A Brief History of the Pony Nation A FiM fic by (Insert Pen Name)
A Declining Capital AE300-666
By AE300, the population of Equestria had reached over 10 million ponies. Peace and plenty flourished from coast to coast as a tremendous post-war boom gripped the nation. Despite the war, trade with the Griffon Isles was at an all-time high, thanks in no small measure to the efforts of Equestria’s new griffon diaspora. Boom-towns such as Baltimare and Los Pegasus grew by the day, and through it all, the promises of harmony brought continued hope and optimism to the pony nation.
But in the midst of this golden age, tragedy was brewing. While Equestria grew and thrived, the beloved capital of Canterlot was slowly sliding into decline. At its height, Canterlot had been the proud home to nearly 200,000 ponies, and was the golden hub of Equestria’s trade network. For generations, artists, scholars, engineers, philosophers, and innovators of every stripe had called the city home, drawn by its vast libraries, beautiful gardens, and splendid palaces. Canterlot was the jewel of Equestria, and for the longest time, its splendour seemed unassailable.
Unfortunately, fate conspired against the city from the very moment of its foundation. The great Everfree Forest that had once provided timber for its construction and forage for its populace had slowly became its greatest enemy. Of course, in the early years of Equestria, nopony had been aware of the anomalous nature of the Everfree Forest, nor could they have predicted what would become of their fair capital. But even by AE25, the forest had visibly begun to spread, and by AE300, the entire east side of the city was under the shadow of the Everfree. The walls became overgrown with vines, trees and bushes sprouted freely within the yards, and many of the homes nearest the wall had been abandoned as ponies became more and more superstitious of the mysterious forest. Despite numerous defoliant efforts, the forest was unrelenting in its expansion. Within the next three hundred years, the Everfree would almost completely encircle Canterlot.
With the roads slowly being swallowed up by the forest, merchants coming from the East Coast were forced to find alternate routes to reach the city. Eventually, the trade routes bypassed Canterlot altogether, with numerous smaller towns and villages growing rich off the detoured merchants. This loss of income was coupled with a growing need to import food from farther afield, as the encroaching Everfree began to overtake Canterlot’s surrounding farmlands. Though Canterlot’s recession was gradual, many ponies began to seek their fortunes elsewhere. In AE380, the national census put Canterlot’s population at a steadily shrinking 92,500 ponies. Compared to Manehatten’s growing 126,000, the trend was clear; Canterlot’s glory days were ending.
Even the city’s political culture was in sharp decline. Though Parliament and its Triumvirate remained the model of Equestrian democracy, the same could not be said for the rest of the nation. Throughout Equestria, most towns and cities were still controlled to some degree or another by members of the nobility. Though the Unity Act had long ended the nobility’s status as exclusively unicorn, noble families continued to maintain authority through a combination of wealth, charisma, and cooperation with other wealthy families. As the power of the nobles grew, so too did the power of the cities they controlled. By the early AE400s, many of the major cities, particularly Manehatten, Baltimare, and Los Pegasus, had virtually become city-states in their own right, exerting their own authority while Parliament became little more than a token body. Only the Triumvirate continued to wield any real power over the nation.
This pattern of political decay came to a head in the year AE453, when the famously (and almost ridiculously) corrupt former mayor of Manehatten, Tweed Suit, was appointed to the Eighteenth Triumvirate*. Though not a noble himself, he had close ties to many wealthy families, and strengthened his political base with a brutally efficient system of bribery, blackmail, and intimidation. Over the course of his fifteen years as mayor, Suit had embezzled an unfathomable sum of money, which he used to fund his Parliamentary career. As Triumvir, he began a slow, but masterful campaign to reroute power and funds back to Parliament, and thus to himself. His efforts were not without opposition. Both the nobility and his fellow (morally upstanding) Triumviri constantly worked against him, and over the next ten years, Suit managed to survive two attempts to dissolve the Triumvirate and remove him from power**. It was not until AE463 that confirmed reports of Suit’s corruption, combined with witness accounts of his personal excesses, finally gave Parliament the legal precedent to expel Tweed Suit from the government. Suit was sentenced to life imprisonment for his various crimes, and died in prison in AE479.
Ironically, Tweed Suit’s machinations had served some good for Parliament. Despite his iniquities, Suit had succeeded in weakening the power of the nobility and their cities, and Parliament immediately set about reasserting itself and imposing strict parametres for the balance of power in Equestria. The Triumvirates were restricted to twenty year term limits, and a series of new bills imposed clear limits on the powers of city governments and the nobles that controlled them. Despite Parliament’s resurgence, however, Canterlot continued to crumble. By AE600, the city was spiraling into debt, and its population had shrunk to a mere 76,000. Only the city’s artistic and intellectual heritage kept it from falling apart entirely.
Unfortunately, Canterlot’s days were numbered, as a new and unfathomable power emerged to bring the whole of Equestria to its knees...
*Eighteenth Triumvirate (AE453-458): Tweed Suit, Lady Orchid, Windchaser.
Anno Equestria A Brief History of the Pony Nation A FiM fic by (Insert Pen Name)
The Lost Years AE666-673
The Early Equestrian Period lasted for over 600 years, during which Equestria grew from a displaced herd of refugees into the largest and wealthiest nation in the known world. Unfortunately, this golden age was not to last. Starting in AE666, Equestria entered into a bizarre seven-year period of unmitigated disaster. Many titles have been attributed to this event throughout the centuries: the Time of Chaos, the Reign of Discord, the Days of Disharmony, and several variations thereof. To most historians, however, this troubled period is known simply as the Lost Years.
During the Lost Years, pony civilization all but collapsed. Untold numbers succumbed to madness, and those that retained their sanity struggled to survive. No contemporary records survive from the Lost Years; our only accounts come from the recollections of those who experienced them firsthoof. By all accounts, it was not a time for the faint of heart, or the sound of mind.
For the longest time, the exact cause and nature of the Lost Years was a complete mystery. Whatever chain of events had led to the disasters that befell Equestria, nopony seemed to have made any attempt to record these events, assuming they could even be reliably recorded at all. That said, we now know that the Lost Years were in fact the work of the malevolent and unpredictable spirit known as Discord*. Why Discord chose to strike when he did or what he sought to gain from his subjugation of Equestria is unknown, if there was indeed any method to his madness (unlikely, all things considered). What is clear is that if recent events are any indication, the Lost Years must have been a troublesome time indeed.
It is worth noting that despite the chaos, Equestrian society did not descend entirely into anarchy. However, most socio-political constructs were quickly abandoned. Parliament and the Triumvirate ceased to be, as did any official body of law and order. Ultimately, it was family ties that became the new cornerstone for Pony society. In a time when trust was in short supply, a tightly-knit family group could mean all the difference between a secure existence and a life of fear. Families that lacked the numbers or resources to survive alone banded together into larger clans, usually run by a matriarch. The noble families survived easily under this system, and to this day, many of the larger families of Equestria, noble and otherwise, are a continuing byproduct of the Lost Years.
Despite the success of the clans, life remained hard, and ponykind as a whole languished under the harsh conditions that Discord imposed on the land. Then, in AE673, two very unexpected heroines arose, and altered the course of Pony history forever...
It is quite literally impossible to write an objective historical account of the Princesses. It simply cannot be done. Virtually every written source is either heavily biased, or blatantly apocryphal. Contemporary sources from the period border on propaganda (doubtless undesired by the Princesses themselves), while modern accounts are often obscenely mythological. It is a peculiar irony, therefore, that the most reliable references are the words of the Princesses themselves. While the Princesses have deliberately avoided giving any detailed account of their lives and their exploits, Princess Celestia has permitted the publishing of select excerpts from her personal journals. From these, and from some of the less fanciful (and therefore probably more accurate) tales of the era, we may glean some insight into the story of the Princesses.
Princess Celestia was born, by her own account, on the Summer Solstice of AE650. Princess Luna was born on Hearth’s Warming Eve, AE656. Their place of birth is unknown, and their parentage is a matter of sharp debate. Nothing is known of their childhood, which was in any event cut abruptly short; Celestia was sixteen when Discord appeared, Luna was only ten. What is known is that both sisters went into hiding together when the chaos began, fearing that Discord would single them out for their alicorn nature (whether they were alicorns at birth is unclear). For the next several years, the fugitive sisters roamed Equestria in disguise, lamenting the state of their fellow ponies, until they finally made an earth-shattering discovery.
It is unclear how the two sisters learned of the Elements of Harmony, let alone recovered them (though to imply that they were discovered through sheer serendipity is, in this historian’s opinion, laughable). Stories range from dreamlike visions to conversations with a flaming shrub. Whatever the case, Celestia and Luna eventually came to face Discord on a broad plateau atop the Canterhorn, armed with the Elements of Harmony. Some accounts say that the sisters discovered (or received) the Elements at the peak of the mountain, and that they encountered Discord on the way back down. Details of the battle (if indeed there was one) are lost, but in the end, the magic of Harmony was unleashed, Discord was reduced to stone, and Celestia and Luna descended the Canterhorn in triumph.
The events on the mountain had not gone unnoticed, and by the time the two sisters reached the valley floor, a large crowd had gathered to investigate. By all accounts, including Celestia’s own, their appearance before the gathered onlookers was truly historic. Upon being told that Discord was gone, and that Equestria was freed, the crowd erupted into cheers.
And then sank to their knees.
*Discord's inclusion in this volume is due solely to last-minute edits. His recent escape and subsequent re-imprisonment at the hooves of the current Element Bearers will not be included in this document.
Anno Equestria A Brief History of the Pony Nation A FiM fic by (Insert Pen Name)
The First Diarchy AE673-950
Equestria’s troubles did not immediately end with the fall of Discord. Lawlessness had taken hold across the nation, infrastructure had all but vanished, and those towns and cities that hadn't been abandoned had devolved into isolated holdouts surrounded by wilderness. Though Discord was gone, fear and confusion reigned in his stead.
Only in Canterlot was the end of the Lost Years recognised with any significant jubilation. Following their triumphant descent from the Canterhorn, Celestia and Luna made their way to the ailing capital. Their new followers quickly determined that a celebration was in order, and runners hurried ahead to bring word to Canterlot of the alicorns’ approach. When Celestia and Luna finally arrived at the city gates, preparations were already underway for an ad hoc festival to commemorate their victory. The Feast of Canterlot, as it was later known, lasted for a full week, one day of joy for every year of chaos. It was during this time that the two sisters discovered their natural affinity for the Sun and Moon, each accomplishing single-hoofedly the task that traditionally required an entire team of able-minded unicorns.
During the Feast, Celestia and Luna made every effort to commune with the ponies they had saved. When the celebrations ended, however, they quietly withdrew from the public eye, seeking to contemplate on the Elements of Harmony and the responsibilities they represented. At least, that was their intent. Unfortunately, their over-zealous followers had no intention of leaving their beloved heroines in peace, and the two sisters were eventually forced to take refuge with the clerics of Canterlot Abbey. During this self-imposed hermitage, both sisters found the freedom to begin immersing themselves in individual pursuits. Celestia poured herself into study, taking full advantage of the fact that the monastery’s library was one of the few in Equestria to survive the Lost Years.* Luna devoted herself to art and poetry**, though she had her academic interests as well. Both sisters also studied the Abbey's extensive collections of the works of Starswirl the Bearded, whose magical treatises are said to have greatly benefited the Princesses in their development.
While Celestia and Luna were shut away in their monastic retreat, the tattered remnants of Pony Parliament gathered at Canterlot in an effort to restore some semblance of order to the struggling nation. Unfortunately, the circumstances seemed insurmountable; no copy of the Equestrian Constitution had survived the Lost Years, and none of the major cities had made any overtures towards reunification with Canterlot. To make matters worse, a veritable cult of personality was emerging around Celestia and Luna (undesired by the two sisters themselves). The ponies of Canterlot had ultimately lost faith in the abilities of politicians to safeguard them, and many began to vocally pledge their support to any act that might put their newfound heroines in power. Even in Parliament, there were those who openly suggested that the appearance of the alicorns must mark the start of something new and significant for the pony nation.
By Hearth’s Warming Eve, AE673, many weeks after the defeat of Discord, Parliament made their decision. Celestia and Luna were summoned from the Abbey to appear at Canterlot Palace. The two sisters were initially reluctant; though no official announcements had been made, they had heard the rumblings of the mob, and were not unprepared for what lay ahead. As the two sisters stood before the assembled crowd (which included a great many of their self-styled disciples), three representatives of Parliament approached with two newly crafted diadems, and asked the sisters, with no small amount of pomp and rhetoric, to accept the titles of Princess, Equestria’s new Heads of State.
To call the whole affair ‘coercive’ would be very much appropriate.
Nonetheless, Celestia and Luna accepted their fate and agreed. Celestia was crowned Princess Celestia of the Sun, and Luna was crowned Princess Luna of the Night. From that moment on, the old Triumvirate system became a relic, and the First Diarchy assumed its reign. The Equestrian Constitution was soon rewritten, almost identical to the original, save for the fact that both Celestia and Luna were officially identified by name as Equestria’s Heads of State. The new Princesses took up residence in Canterlot Palace, which was later renamed the Castle of the Two Sisters, and immediately began renovating it to suit their needs. Hundreds of architects, craftsponies, and engineers were employed over the decades, though the nature of their work is not recorded.
From the start, the Princesses faced massive challenges as the new rulers of Equestria. The Pony Nation was in a state of near-anarchy, and Canterlot itself was on the brink of collapse. Food and medicine were scarce, crime was rampant, and commerce was non-existent. With almost no lines of communication to the rest of the nation, the Princesses’ first years in power were spent restoring Canterlot to general stability. Parliament became little more than a liaison between the Princesses and their subjects, as Princess Celestia and Princess Luna assumed administration of local agriculture, industry, healthcare, education, and judicial courts. In AE674, the first new official judges were sworn in, and in AE675, Celestia formed the Royal Guard from remnants of the air and battlemage segments of the Equestrian Forces (the rangers were retained to safeguard the countryside from brigands). The Princesses openly extolled the values of Harmony, and publicly endorsed the clerics and their chapels, granting them resources to care for the sick and impoverished. By AE677, Canterlot had been restored to some semblance of peace and prosperity, and Princess Celestia and Princess Luna announced their intent to reunite Equestria.
Over the next several years, the Princesses embarked on a massive tour of Equestria, adding a very personal touch to their goal of reunification. The first city to return to the fold was Cloudsdale, closely followed by smaller towns such as Hoofington, Trottingham, and Hollow Shades. In AE678, Manehatten and Baltimare signed onto the new Equestria, then Fillydelphia in AE679, Tall Tale and Vanhoover in AE680, and finally Los Pegasus in AE682. In each city, the Princesses briefly assumed full control, overseeing sustainable agriculture and administration, and re-establishing trade with the rest of Equestria. Opposition to their rule was negligible; any would-be upstart quickly re-evaluated their position upon actually seeing the Princess for the first time.
In AE700, the Princesses celebrated the turn of the century with the first Pan-Equestrian Fair, celebrating new achievements in technology, commerce, art, science, and national unity. Both Princesses gave tremendous speeches to the assembled masses, and both were received with thunderous applause. For the first time in over thirty years, Equestria seemed on the verge of a new golden age. The next two centuries saw continued growth and progress under the Princesses’ rule. In AE732, Princess Celestia used her own personal money to fund the construction of a new library within the palace, and set about filling it with books of every conceivable subject and variety. Orders went out to all the surviving libraries in Equestria to have copies made of their collections, and rare books owned by private collectors were ‘appropriated’ for generous sums. Princess Luna became a great patron of the arts, and it was considered the mark of a truly great artist to be able to count the Princess of the Night among their sponsors.
Politically, the Princesses favoured and encouraged democracy and the rule of merit wherever the situation allowed. Though Parliament made no attempts to regain any of its waning powers, the nobility were extremely vocal in maintaining their long-held grip on local government. The Princesses were largely lenient in this issue until, in AE842, allegations of corruption and incompetence forced the noble mayor of Trottingham, Lady Crystal Slipper, to resign. Princess Celestia promptly stepped in and ordered democratic elections to select a new mayor. Within the year, a local earth-pony lawyer named Quill Nub*** was elected, and became the first elected mayor in Equestria. Building on this success, the Princesses later passed the Mayoral Act in AE846, which required democratic elections of all local political offices in Equestria.
The next 150 years were relatively (and mercifully) uneventful for Equestria, but Princess Celestia and Princess Luna were not idle. By AE950, the population of Equestria was counted at over 30 million, and quality of life was at an all time high. Unfortunately, the peace was not to last, and Equestria was soon to face two grim trials that would alter its history for centuries to come.
* Discord seems to have taken a particular pleasure in wiping out written knowledge at random. What few collections did survive seem to have done so but by the grace of his own whims of disinterest.
** The illuminations in the famous 8th century Canterlot Manuscript are traditionally attributed to the future Princess Luna, the only surviving works, if any, from the Princess's early portfolio.
*** Quill Nub served as Mayor of Trottingham until her retirement in AE867, and was honoured twice for administrative excellence. A statue of her now stands in Trottingham square.
Anno Equestria A Brief History of the Pony Nation A FiM fic by (Insert Pen Name)
The Fall of the Crystal Empire AE989-1000
The story of the Crystal Empire is easily the most overlooked aspect of pony history. Public knowledge of the Empire is virtually non-existent, and few academic publications acknowledge that it even existed. This lack of knowledge is understandable; Equestria's first contact with the Crystal Empire occurred just over a decade before it fell, and during that time there were few opportunities to document it. Nonetheless, the story of the Empire’s end marks an important turning point in the history of Equestria and its royalty.
The Crystal Empire, initially known as the Crystal Kingdom, was located in the northern reaches of the Crystal Mountains, where the ponies took advantage of natural crystalline formations to form their exotic structures and implements. While the origins of the Kingdom are unclear, the most likely hypothesis is that it was founded during the Lost Years as an enclave against Discord’s rule of chaos. To this end, the Crystal Ponies developed a unique means of projecting a powerful energy field that protected the Kingdom from both the harsh arctic conditions, and from external threats. Unfortunately, this impressive defense did little to protect the Kingdom from within.
Equestria first learned of the Crystal Empire when a delegation from the Empire arrived unexpectedly in Canterlot in AE989. This delegation in fact consisted of several exiled youths of the Empire’s former royal family, accompanied by a small escort of servants and intimates. The eldest of the Crystal princes, whose name is lost to history, met with Princess Celestia and Princess Luna, and told them of the solitary kingdom from which they had fled. According to his account, the Crystal Kingdom had recently been beset by popular unrest and strife. Some historians believe that the Kingdom’s population had outstripped its ability to expand, resulting in shortages. Whatever the case, the captain of the Kingdom’s royal guard, a ruthless unicorn stallion named Sombra, took advantage of this groundswell of unrest to launch a coup d’etat and seize the throne. The newly crowned King Sombra quickly set about transforming the Crystal Kingdom into a military dictatorship, which he promptly renamed the Crystal Empire, using his own personal honour guard to eliminate any who might oppose him. The royal family were the first to be targeted. The younger princes and princesses were sent into exile, lest they incur the sympathy of the Empire’s subjects. The fate of the king and queen is not known.
Almost straight away, the prince asked the Princesses for Equestria’s aid in retaking the Crystal Empire, offering vassalage in exchange for his throne. While the Princesses were sympathetic, neither was willing to risk lives or resources for the sake of one deposed prince, certainly not without further investigation into the matter. Indignant, the prince left the palace in disgust to seek his fortune elsewhere. The younger princes and princesses, however, were welcomed into the palace as long-term guests. In time, these colts and fillies came to be almost as a family to the ruling Princesses, who for their part regarded them with open affection. However, the issue of the Crystal Empire remained, and the Princesses discreetly dispatched a diplomatic mission to King Sombra, in the hopes of gaining a better understanding the situation. No report was ever received, and the envoy was never heard from again.
Equestria’s next contact with the Crystal Empire did not come until AE997, when large numbers of refugees began appearing in the northern villages of Equestria, the vast majority of whom were unicorns and pegasi. The Princesses immediately dispatched agents to question these refugees, and it was soon learned that King Sombra had begun a series of purges to rid the Empire of potential threats to his rule. Scholars, mages, and dissenting guards were the chief targets, though it was clear that any non-earth-pony was viewed as a threat by the bigoted king. Appalled, the Princesses again sent envoys to the Crystal Empire to demand a response from Sombra. Months passed before the battered delegation limped back into Canterlot, bearing a letter from the king. While the contents of the letter are not known, Princess Celestia is said to have incinerated it with a stare after reading it.
The next year saw more and more refugees arriving from the Crystal Empire, each bearing horror stories more terrible than those that came before. Finally, in the autumn of AE998, Princess Celestia announced that a military expedition would be sent north to liberate the Crystal Empire, and bring the tyrant Sombra to justice. For the first time since the Princesses ascended the throne, Equestria would be marching to war.
In the early spring of AE999, Princess Celestia and Princess Luna departed Canterlot with an expeditionary force 6,000 strong. The vast majority of this Crystal Expedition were militias recruited over the winter, since the Princesses had not yet restored Equestria’s standing army. In addition to the militia were an elite unit of 200 of the Princesses’ finest Royal Guards. While the size of the expeditionary force may seem relatively small to most observers, one must bear in mind that the army would be marching into one of the most inhospitable regions of Equestria, where it would be exceedingly difficult to sustain a larger force, even on survival rations. The trek north was slow, as the army made frequent stops to conduct training exercises and to build a roadway in their wake for their supply convoys to use. The Crystal Expedition did not arrive at the Crystal Mountains until early autumn, at which point the order was given to make camp for the winter. Princess Celestia and Princess Luna remained with the expeditionary force throughout, using magical correspondence to continue governing over the winter.
After the spring thaw of AE1000, the army continued on its march, finally reaching the Crystal Empire in under three weeks. Upon entering the Empire’s protective shield, the army stood aghast at the sight of the kingdom they had been sent to save. Sombra’s tyranny had reduced the Empire to a slave state, held together by the brutality of his fanatical honour guard, and his own considerable magics. The mad king was not unprepared for the arrival of the Crystal Expedition; a large force of conscripted slaves had been amassed at the edge of the Crystal City, driven by the whips of Sombra’s honour guard. Princess Celestia’s calls for a parlay were met with jeers and insults on behalf of the wicked king. Seeing no alternative, Princess Celestia gave the order to advance.
What followed next was promptly dubbed the Battle of the Crystal Plains, though it would be more fair to call it a righteous massacre. Sensing that their liberation was at hoof, the desperate slaves either broke ranks and fled, or hurried forth to join forces with their liberators. Now horribly outnumbered, Sombra’s honour guard made one last desperate stand, but their fight was short-lived. Despite their ferocity, Sombra’s troops had little experience beyond bullying hapless civilians, while the Equestrian militia were well-trained and hardened by their march north. While the battle raged, the Princesses flew ahead to confront Sombra directly. What followed then is not known, but it is clear that the Princesses ultimately resorted to using the Elements of Harmony to neutralise Sombra. Unfortunately, the consequences of this act were dire.
In a matter of seconds, the entire Crystal Empire, including its ponies, vanished suddenly without a trace. The very confused expeditionary force was left in the middle of a barren plain, now open to the freezing winds. Princess Celestia and Princess Luna returned to their army in solemn spirits and immediately gave the order to make for home. The Crystal Expedition trudged back into Canterlot two months later. Their account was met with much confusion by the general populace, and indeed it would seem that many chose to forget the Crystal Empire out of simple convenience. To this day, the disappearance of the Crystal Empire remains a mystery, though several theories have been advanced. Some claim that Sombra must have cursed the Empire prior to his defeat; others suggest that he had corrupted the Empire to the point where it too was purged by the Elements. Whatever the case, it must be made clear that the Crystal Empire did not vanish entirely. The many refugees who came south to Equestria remained, and in time their descendants also forgot their old kingdom.
The aftermath of the Crystal Expedition did lead to a massive revival of Equestria’s military forces. Though the Princesses have always maintained a vocal anti-war stance, the events in the Crystal Empire had nonetheless convinced them of the need for a loyal and capable military. The Equestrian Forces were officially reformed in AE1002. Oddly enough, the new army’s first duty was to maintain the roadway leading to the Crystal Empire's former location. Even today, this mandate still stands, with a modern railway now replacing the ancient stone path.
Perhaps the greatest legacy of the Empire, however, lies within the royal court. In AE1001, Princess Celestia and Princess Luna officially adopted the exiled princes and princesses of the Empire as their official “nephews and nieces”. While many other ponies of all ranks have held the honour of joining the Royal Family over the centuries, rumour abounds that at least one of the Princesses’ adopted kin may yet trace their ancestry back to the lost throne of the Crystal Empire.
Anno Equestria A Brief History of the Pony Nation A FiM fic by (Insert Pen Name)
The Nightmare Moon Crisis AE1010
In AE1000, Equestria celebrated the dawn of the new millenium with unparalleled optimism. Though the Princesses were away on campaign during the celebrations, their names were the toast of every raised glass throughout Equestria. For over three centuries, Princess Celestia and Princess Luna had led the pony nation towards peace and prosperity, and many ponies were certain that the next millenium would be no different.
Unfortunately, as the average reader is no doubt well aware, such optimism was ill-placed.
No other event in history has had such impact, or inspired such controversy, as the Nightmare Moon Crisis of AE1010, once widely dismissed as little more than an old mare's tale. Though recent events have since vindicated the legend, many ponies remain oblivious to the true details of this tragic turning point in pony history.
The classic account of the Nightmare Moon Crisis relates that Luna’s transformation into Nightmare Moon was driven by a long-standing jealousy and resentment over the fact that ponies frolicked in her sister’s day, but feared and slept through her own night. Obviously, this representation is both inaccurate and grossly over-simplified. Though ponies are indeed diurnal by nature, Luna’s nights were by no means unappreciated. Astronomy was a popular pursuit among ponies of all sorts, and the nightlife of a thousand years ago was hardly any less active than it is today. In Canterlot, for example, where it was considered fashionable for a business to display a picture of one of the Princesses, the image of Luna was the preferred decor for such nocturnal locales as taverns, theatres, dance halls, and even brothels.*
However, the Princess of the Night did not lack for troubles. Despite her incredible age, Luna was still on the relative cusp of maturity, barely an adult, and there were increasingly frequent whispers amongst both Parliament and the royal court concerning whether or not Princess Luna was truly mature enough to handle the responsibilities of her throne (three centuries of experience notwithstanding, it would seem). Some even questioned if Luna was even an active leader at all, and if Celestia was not in fact the de facto monarch of Equestria. Indeed, the latter years of Luna’s co-reign were marked with increasing insolence from various nobles and politicians. Though little actually came of this dissent, the open favouritism towards her older sister was painfully apparent to the young Princess.
Princess Luna's personal issues only made matters worse. From the very start of her reign, servants and statesponies alike had consistently noted the younger Princess to be awkward, introverted, and prone to minor bouts of hostility or melancholy. While these quirks were largely concealed from the general public, it was clear that Luna was not a pony of social grace. Of course, given the state of Luna’s adolescent years, this is hardly surprising; growing up in exile during the Lost Years would have been a traumatic experience indeed.
Given these political and personal difficulties, it is not difficult to imagine how Princess Luna could have fallen as she did. The final straw came on the eve of the summer solstice, AE1010, the shortest night of the year. How Luna was transformed into Nightmare Moon is unclear**, but in her new and terrible form, she raised the Moon to bring about a total eclipse of the Sun, and declared that her night would last forever. Princess Celestia immediately confronted Nightmare, but the former Princess refused to parlay with her, and soon the two alicorns were locked in a spectacular and destructive duel atop the palace. Eyewitness accounts vary wildly from this point, but Celestia eventually relented and summoned forth the Elements of Harmony. In an instant, Nightmare Moon was ripped from the world. Her corrupted soul was imprisoned within the moon, which bore her image on its surface from that moment onward. Popular legend holds that Celestia broke down and wept for a full day’s time upon seeing the Mare in the Moon and realising what had happened. In any event, with Nightmare Moon defeated, Princess Celestia was finally able to return the Moon to its rightful place, and restore the day. The Nightmare Moon Crisis was over.
Unfortunately, there was little celebration. Nightmare's eclipse and the sight of the alicorns' battle had whipped the city's residents into a panic. By the time Celestia had resorted to the Elements, ponies were abandoning the city in droves. Despite the Princesses’ energetic vision, Canterlot had grown grim and destitute under the shadow of the surrounding Everfree, and its ponies had finally had enough. Alone now in her ruined castle, Celestia sadly concluded that Canterlot’s end had come. In the days following Nightmare’s defeat, the Princess rallied those who still remained, and led them to the base of the Canterhorn. There, Princess Celestia declared that they would construct a new capital, a new Canterlot, a city “that shall serve once more as the shining jewel of our fair nation”.
The construction of New Canterlot will be explored later. In the meantime, the political aftermath of the Nightmare Moon Crisis continued for several decades at least. While the common pony was generally content to continue on and forget the crisis ever happened, the upper classes became a hotbed of anti-Luna sentiment. In AE1023, Parliament struck Luna’s name and title from the Equestrian Constitution, leaving Princess Celestia as the sole ruler of the pony nation. The nobility also did their part, using their influence to silently discourage any and all public discourse on the fallen Princess. Eventually, both Luna and Nightmare Moon passed into the realm of legend, and the younger Princess was all but forgotten.
However, Luna’s mark on history did not fade entirely. Many artists continued to use her image in minor ways, and the memory of the Nightmare Moon Crisis lives on in the autumn festival of Nightmare Night (albeit in a much more family-friendly manner). Most intriguing of all is the esoteric prediction known as the “Nightmare Prophecy”, which foretold the return of Nightmare Moon after a thousand years of her imprisonment. The origins of the prophecy are unknown, and for the longest time, many historians (myself included) believed it to be little more than a hoax. As everypony is aware, however, such was not the case, and a time would indeed come when the lost Princess would return...
* This is not to imply that Princess Luna in any way endorsed prostitution. Modern myths of the Princess’ sexual deviancy are completely unfounded.
** The various theories concerning Nightmare Moon will be touched upon later in the chapter dealing with Luna’s return.
Anno Equestria A Brief History of the Pony Nation A FiM fic by (Insert Pen Name)
New Canterlot AE1010-1300
The Nightmare Moon Crisis marked the end of an age for Equestria. The loss of both Canterlot and Princess Luna shook the nation, and for many months Equestria must have seemed on the brink of collapse. More than ever now, the ponies of Equestria found themselves relying on the strength and vision of their Princess to guide them through the proverbial darkness.
Two days after the end of the Crisis, Princess Celestia gathered those refugees who had not yet fled the area, and led them to a sheltered glen at the base of the Canterhorn. A refugee camp was soon erected, and at dusk the Princess stood before her tired subjects and announced her intent to found a new capital that would forever stand as a beacon for all Equestria. The Princess's proclamation was met with no small amount of skepticism, and over the next few days, hundreds of ponies quietly packed up and set out in search of greener pastures. Those that remained, however, immediately set about preparing the camp for the long term.
While the refugees worked, Princess Celestia quietly gathered to herself a small band of able-bodied ponies and led them up the Canterhorn to a large plateau that jutted out from the mountainside (allegedly the same place where Celestia and Luna had fought Discord centuries before). There, the Princess searched about with her magic until she suddenly stopped and ordered her followers to start digging. Soon after, they struck groundwater. By nightfall, the well had been dug out and lined, and the founding of New Canterlot was declared.
For many weeks afterwards, architects, artisans, and tradesponies of all kinds flocked to the Canterhorn. A plan was finalised within the first month, and construction proper began less than a week after. Princess Celestia herself actively participated in the construction effort. Much of the city’s architecture is attributed to her input and design, and popular legend describes the Princess hoisting loads of stone and mortar to gleeful crews. Such an ambitious project did present difficulties, however. The plateau upon which the city was situated sat atop a near-unbroken stretch of sheer cliff, which made transportation between the city and the plains below exceedingly difficult. It took months to widen and level the mountain trail into a usable roadway, and even then, access to the city was strictly from the north side of the mountain. Trade caravans might have found the way discouraging, but a stroke of good fortune had provided the city with a very desirable resource: gemstones.
In the summer of AE1011, work crews excavating foundations for the planned Royal Palace uncovered a network of caverns leading down into the mountain. Survey crews sent in to explore discovered enormous gemstone deposits throughout the cave, and within days, miners were hauling up loads of garnets and amethysts, even as construction on the Palace continued up above. Canterlot gems quickly became the talk of Equestria, and Princess Celestia took full advantage of this to boost her coffers and build her city in luxurious fashion. Bronze and marble became the mainstays of Canterlot architecture, and the mountain road was frequently packed with the heavy-laden trade carts.
New Canterlot was officially completed in AE1018, after seven years of construction. Princess Celestia’s first act was to convene Pony Parliament amidst a massive celebration in the city’s upper district. In doing so, Celestia clearly sought to shift power back to the democratic body, and ease what had surely become a burdensome workload for herself. Unfortunately, Equestria had, if anything, become even more reliant on the righteous will and energy of its lone Princess, and Parliament made no effort to return to its former dynamism.
Starting in early AE1011, Princess Celestia ordered numerous salvage operations to Old Canterlot to recover the city’s reserves of silver and gold bullion, as well as a number of important documents and records. The libraries of Canterlot Abbey and the city’s colleges were recovered almost in their entirety, but the royal castle was left severely alone. As the years passed, Old Canterlot was engulfed more and more by the Everfree Forest, which seemed to double its pace in the wake of the city’s abandonment. By AE1029, most of the city’s important items had been relocated to New Canterlot, and official salvage missions ceased, though private treasure hunters continued to comb the ruins long after. The earthquake of 1289, though only slightly damaging in New Canterlot, finally leveled the remains of the city. Today, Old Canterlot lies deep within the Everfree Forest, and even then, little remains to be seen.
Eventually, New Canterlot eventually came to be known simply as Canterlot, and the old city was almost completely forgotten. In fact, all of Equestria seemed to undergo a minor period of historical amnesia. As stated in the previous chapter, Princess Luna was eventually stricken from the records and forgotten, and Princess Celestia came to be regarded as the one true ruler of Equestria. This trend eventually culminated in the founding of the modern Summer Sun Celebration in AE1279. While the celebration of the summer solstice had long been a joyous tradition among ponies, it was now extravagantly elevated from a traditional festival to a massive state holiday. By all accounts, the first Summer Sun Celebration was a huge success, except in Manehatten, where it triggered a rather excessive response from the local populace.*
While Princess Celestia in no way encouraged her rising reputation, she spared no effort in living up to it. Taking after her sister, Celestia became a great patron of the arts, and under her encouragement, Canterlot returned to the artistic splendour of its predecessor. More important to posterity were Celestia’s numerous revisions to the antiquated Codex Equestria, the legal code of the pony nation. Among Celestia’s reforms were the guaranteed right of all ponies to legal trial by jury and an impartial judge, and the removal of certain laws against unwed couples and same-sex unions. Celestia also reformed electoral law to extend the vote to all landed ponies.** Most important however, was her promulgation of the Great Charter in AE1215. The Charter stated, in no uncertain terms, that nopony was above the law, including the Princess***, an unprecedented move by a monarch so beloved by her subjects.
Canterlot continued to grow well into the fourteenth century. The proliferation of the standard gold bit in the late 1200s ensured that Canterlot was the centre of wealth and fiscal power in Equestria, even as the gemstone mines were eventually depleted and closed up. Wealth flowed freely throughout the city, and even the poorest did not want for much. However, as we shall soon see, it would the nobility who gained the most from the prosperity of New Canterlot.
* The resulting Burning of Manehatten has since become a Summer Sun tradition for Manehatten, although today, the city is burned in effigy instead.
** This did not include spouses and tenants, however. As such, the female majority continued to dominate the electoral process until AE1917, when the Electoral Act granted the vote to all ponies of legal age.
*** The Great Charter did not, however, overturn the Constitutional statement that the Princess is the law. This has led to some rather ironic legal interpretations over the centuries.
Anno Equestria A Brief History of the Pony Nation A FiM fic by (Insert Pen Name)
The Noble Resurgence AE1350-1450
Throughout history, no group has endured quite like the Equestrian nobility. From the start, the nobility's very existence has been challenged by social upheavals and popular reform, and yet they have always managed to survive in some form or another to rise again.
At the start of the fourteenth century, the nobility was very different from both its Unicorn origins, and the modern elite with which we are familiar. Centuries of political reform had reduced the nobility to little more than a cultural relic, and intermarriage with other races and families had diluted their bloodlines to the point where any noble's attempt to claim a "pure" lineage was laughable, even to other nobles. Most noble families had long since lost their avenues of wealth and power, and, as a result, many had become virtually indistinguishable from their common neighbours.
All this changed with the introduction of the gold bit. By AE1320, bits had effectively overturned the old barter system in Equestria. While coinage was nothing new to pony civilization, this was the first time that a standard currency was in widespread use. The rise of money over material goods created new opportunities for the savvy businesspony, and it wasn't long before several noble families took advantage of this fact. In AE1339, the first bank was opened in Canterlot by the Silver family, and by AE1345, over a dozen other families followed their example, opening multiple bank branches in several cities. Other nobles, inspired by the dynamism of their peers, poured their renewed energy into other, more traditional money-making efforts, and many became very wealthy indeed through trade, land-ownership, and resource speculation.
By AE1350, the nobility had once again become practically synonymous with money and opulence. Rivalries soon sprouted between the various families and their competing businesses, and a new culture of wealth emerged as they vied to display their fortunes and splendour. Grand mansions, extravagant feasts and parties, expensive clothes, and public patronage all became the norm for those of noble standing. Not surprisingly, it was at this point that the nobility began to distance itself from the common ponies, creating a social gulf that continues to this day. Through it all, the nobility never ceased its drive for wealth and power. By the start of the fifteenth century, noble families were ruling entire cities with their wealth, funding such civic necessities as government salaries, public works, and even city guards.
This last, worrisome aspect of noble power was made possible by the effects of the bit on Equestria's military. Prior to the introduction of the bit, Equestria had relied on grain surpluses and other benefits to pay its armies. The bit offered a much more agreeable method of payment, especially since the bulk of Equestria's military were militias, who were paid only a modest salary in times of peace; just enough to entice any pony looking to supplement their income. However, with the resurgence of the nobility, a new demand was created for private household guards. It soon became common practise for prospective guards to join the Militia, undergo training, and then hire themselves out to whichever family was hiring, thus receiving payment from both their noble employers and the Equestrian government. It wasn't long before the noble families began hiring these mercenaries out as city guards. Thus, the nobles of Equestria were being paid by local taxpayers to provide security that was already on the government's payroll! This irony was not lost on the average pony, and resulted in a deep resentment of the nobility and their associates in some of the larger cities.
All of this came to a head in AE1441, in an event known as the Trottingham Incident. At the time, there were two noble families controlling Trottingham, the Rubies and the Bluebloods. Both families had close ties to the government, both families had guards on the city watch, and both families fervently hated one another. The Ruby-Blueblood feud frequently dominated local politics, and it was not uncommon for their guards to clash violently in the street. It was much to everypony's shock and amazement, therefore, when a pair of young, star-crossed members of the two families announced their loving betrothal.
The rest of Trottingham eagerly encouraged the match, hoping that the union of the two families would end the feud. Unfortunately (and unsurprisingly) the two families hated each other even more as in-laws. During the wedding reception, tempers flared, until finally, after a great deal of drink had been consumed all around, a group of Blueblood youths overpowered two young Rubies and threw them into the canal from a second story window.* Enraged, the Rubies declared war on the Bluebloods, and both families gave orders for their guards to ready for battle (readers must bear in mind that the wedding reception was still going strong at this point).
Fortunately, word immediately reached Princess Celestia, who had planted informants among the two families for this very reason. The Princess flew to Trottingham without delay, accompanied only by her charioteers and several kegs of her private stock. Nopony exactly knows what happened after the Princess entered the reception hall, but when she reemerged the next morning, the kegs were dry, peace had been restored, the family guards disbanded, and choice members of each family had been adopted into the Royal Family to ward against future conflicts.
New reforms were instituted by Princess Celestia soon after. New taxes were levied against the nobility, laws were put in place to limit private patronage of civic functions and public works, and the Militia salaries were soon replaced by tax benefits instead, thus putting a swift end to the mercenary element. By AE1450, the nobility had once again been reduced to a wealthy, but ineffectual, cultural elite. Today, the nobility still enjoys tremendous wealth and influence, though few among them can claim any true political power. Nonetheless, the Noble Resurgence marked the final major turning point in the evolution of the Equestrian nobility, and ensured that they will continue to be a major facet of Equestrian society for many years to come.
* This act, known as the Defenestration of Trottingham, is now commemorated in a modestly popular local festival, and is traditionally believed to have inspired the invention of the dunk-tank.
Anno Equestria A Brief History of the Pony Nation A FiM fic by (Insert Pen Name)
The Time of Reason AE1450-1650
Prior to the fifteenth century, the intellectual landscape of Equestria was very different than it is today. All books and other written materials had to be produced by hoof in scriptoria, usually staffed by clerics or professional scribes, a slow and tedious process that made books a relatively rare and expensive commodity. Most extant volumes were kept in the libraries of monasteries and universities. Though Princess Celestia, ever the scholar, had made great efforts to make these collections accessible to the public, most ponies of the time remained illiterate.
This is not to say that sciences and the pursuit of knowledge did not exist. For centuries, scholars of all stripes had followed the example of the great savant, Starswirl the Bearded.* During his remarkable career, Starswirl invented over two-hundred magic spells, perfected countless others, and wrote dozens of treatises on natural sciences, astronomy, physics, optics, chemistry, backgammon, and acoustics. For over a millenium, his legacy was an inspiration for mages and scientists alike, many of whom devoted their entire careers to replicating his experiments and inventions.
Nonetheless, literacy was the luxury of a relative few until the mid-fifteenth century, when an unlikely invention took the literary world by storm. In AE1450, an unsung, but heavily indebted clerk named Rubber Stamp developed the first movable-type printing press. Nopony is sure what inspired Rubber Stamp to create such a device, but it drew tremendous attention when he demonstrated his press at a symposium at the Royal University in Canterlot. Princess Celestia was especially impressed, and rewarded Stamp handsomely in exchange for his agreement not to patent his invention. Instead, the Royal Presses were established almost overnight, and within mere months, new books were being printed in large numbers and shipped to schools and libraries all across Equestria.
Privately owned print shops, including Rubber Stamp's (which enjoyed the exclusive patronage of the Royal University for decades after), followed soon after, printing popular books and poems of the day, as well as pamphlets, missives, letters, and handbills for all manner of clients. The sudden abundance of written material led to a surge in literacy, especially once schools across Equestria began offering reading lessons to the general public (at a cost, of course). Publicly-funded literacy programs were established soon after. By AE1500, the literacy rate in Equestria had skyrocketed to an estimated 70% of the adult population. The written word became an integral part of everyday life; written signs, letters, posted information, et cetera all became commonplace during this period.
The surge in literacy soon led to a growing demand for education, and the old universities, long accustomed to serving the wealthy few, soon found themselves unable to meet the growing demand. New public schools were soon established to educate common ponies of all ages in language, mathematics, logic, sciences, and the arts. Such a curriculum allowed many "common" ponies to rise to greater positions, furthering the long drive to equality in Equestria.
In AE1504, Princess Celestia established the Royal Council of Scholars to oversee the advancement of research and education in Equestria. Unfortunately, the Council soon became a hotbed of dysfunction as disputes, both personal and professional, kept the Council in a near-constant state of gridlock. Moderates within the Council managed to keep the organisation functional, but as a whole, the Council, and scientific progress in general, stagnated until a revolutionary discovery brought the entire system crashing down.
Of all the inventions of Starswirl the Bearded, none was treasured more by the Council of Scholars than Starswirl's Orrery. Painstakingly designed by Starswirl himself, and built by a group of his former pupils in the early first century AE, the Orrery was a mechanical representation of Starswirl's geocentric model of the universe, including all the known planets and both hemispheres of the night sky with the Earth at the very centre. The Orrery had been carefully salvaged from Old Canterlot following the Nightmare Moon Crisis, and for centuries it had been used by astronomers to help predict the movements of the stars and planets. The Orrery was considered a marvel of engineering, and the single greatest device in the Council's possession. It was therefore much to everypony's consternation when, in AE1542, the whole thing suddenly and unexpectedly broke down.
It was swiftly and unanimously agreed that a team should be formed to bring the device back to working order. However, the Orrery had been under-maintained for so long, that nopony any longer had sufficient knowledge of how it actually worked. As a result, the repair team was forced to study and analyse the Orrery before they could begin to fix it.
Among the repair team was a novice cleric and mathematical prodigy named Rhubarb Pi. Pi was tasked with reviewing Starswirl's notes, which contained the astronomic figures on which the Orrery's movements were based. However, Pi soon noticed a number of minor errors in Starswirl's calculations. When he corrected these errors and followed through with the rest of the calculation, he found that the correct figures he produced were very different from those that Starswirl had used to design the Orrery in the first place! Initially unsure of how to proceed, Pi finally gathered up all of Starswirl's observations, as well as several contemporary astronomy texts and treatises, and set about trying to calculate a new set of figures that could conform to the Orrery's design. He couldn't. Again and again he tried, and again and again he found himself unable to reconcile the observed movements of the heavenly bodies with Starswirl's model.
By this point, the Council was growing impatient, and Rhubarb Pi was forced to appear before them to account for his delays. Reluctantly, Pi presented his conclusions; that the Orrery was inherently flawed, and that for all his genius as a mage, Starswirl the Bearded was a rank amateur when it came to math. Predictably, the Council did not react well. Even those fellow clerics who sat on the Council admonished Pi for embarrassing them and their order. Nonetheless, Pi's work aroused the curiosity of many of his younger colleagues, and a few months later, Pi was approached by an astronomer named Clear Skies.
Clear Skies had been studying the motions of the planets, and she too had found Starswirl's model increasingly unsatisfactory. The two scholars now began collaborating to develop a more accurate model to replace it. However, neither had initially thought to question the geocentric concept itself. It wasn't until AE1545 that Clear Skies first hypothesised that the Sun, and not the Earth, was the centre of the visible cosmos. Rhubarb Pi soon confirmed this theory, constructing a mathematical model that almost perfectly** conformed to all major planetary observations, and even explained such phenomena as the apparent "retrograde" motion of certain planets. Armed as such, the duo reappeared before the Council to present their complete theory of a heliocentric universe. Events may have unfolded poorly even then, were it not for the fact that Princess Celestia herself (who, incidentally, was a leading authority on the Sun and its properties) was in attendance. While we have no authoritative transcript of the presentation, one alleged witness quotes the Princess as loudly commenting; "This actually makes sense!"
A new trend of scientific reason and discovery followed that fateful day. The Council of Scholars was eventually disbanded in AE1546, after several other independent astronomers had confirmed the heliocentric theory. In its place, Princess Celestia created the Royal Research Council, devoted to advancing scientific and technological discovery. Rhubarb Pi and Cloudy Skies (who were eventually married) continued to pursue their respective fields well into their twilight years, though they never again made any significant discoveries. Instead, new scholars and explorers (who to describe here would require an entire volume in its own right) emerged with advancing theories of physics, chemistry, medicine, engineering, et cetera. Though this "Time of Reason", as it has been poetically dubbed, eventually tapered off around 1650, its legacy continues to affect our daily lives in ways we seldom consider.
* Starswirl the Bearded (PE103-5). To attempt describe his complete life and achievements, even in summary, would be utterly tangential to the purpose of this text. Those interested are encouraged to read "The Lauded Life of Starswirl the Bearded" by E. Tail & S.B. Weaver, Royal Press, AE1842.
** It was not until 1609 that astronomer Kelp Green proposed elliptical planetary orbits, thus perfecting the heliocentric model.
Anno Equestria A Brief History of the Pony Nation A FiM fic by (Insert Pen Name)
The Second Griffon War AE1682-1685
In Equestria, the First Griffon War is celebrated as a desperate fight for our nation's survival. In the Griffon Isles across the Eastern Sea, however, the war did not produce any significant reaction among the griffons, who were far more concerned with their own feudal conflicts than the failed adventures of a rabble of unsuccessful lesser warlords against a nation of refugees.
Starting in AE1674, however, a new power was rising in the Griffon Isles. An ambitious and shrewd young warlord named Garth, the bastard son and sole heir of one of the more powerful Griffon warlords, set out to bring the whole of the Griffon Isles under his rule, taking through conquest what he could not take through bribery or threat. One by one, the disparate Griffon fiefdoms submitted to Garth, until by AE1679, most of the Griffon Isles was under his control. Only a few of the more powerful fiefdoms resisted his ambitions. Regardless, in AE1680, Garth had himself crowned King of the newly formed Griffon Kingdom.
Under King Garth's rule, trade flourished, and the common griffons knew peace and stability for the first time in centuries. Despite his successes, however, King Garth remained deeply suspicious of the remaining independent warlords and the armies they commanded. Seeking to expand his empire and exhaust his military rivals, Garth proposed a grand military campaign against Equestria, with promises of land and plunder for any warlord who joined his ranks. In mid-summer, AE1682, King Garth and his allies departed the Griffon Isles with a combined force over 200,000 strong, with thousands more waiting in reserve.
Of course, Equestria was scarcely unaware of the impending invasion. For months, a motley network of spies, many of whom were griffons of the Equestrian diaspora, had been keeping Princess Celestia and her highest-ranking officers informed of Garth's intent. In the months preceding the invasion, a number of units had been quietly garrisoned at the three coastal cities of Manehatten, Fillydelphia, and Baltimare. Equestria's top military commander, General Windrider, was also deployed outside of Hollow Shades with a large reserve force, ready to respond wherever the Griffons landed.
King Garth was a cunning strategist, however, and had devised a simple, but effective plan for the initial attack. The first wave of the Griffon invasion launched a simultaneous three-pronged assault on Manehatten, Fillydelphia, and Baltimare. The second wave advanced the next day, reinforcing the besiegers and spreading out into the surrounding countryside. General Windrider immediately levied local militias and marched on the besieged cities with over 80,000 troops. It was then that the third and final wave attacked, bypassing the cities entirely and meeting Windrider's armies in the field. Many ponies fought gallantly, but could not resist the Griffon onslaught. After five days of intense fighting, the coastal cities had fallen, and Windrider's forces were in varying stages of retreat all across the East Coast.
King Garth now entered his newly-conquered territories in triumph. Fillydelphia was soon established as the capital of his conquered territories, while Manehatten and Baltimare were granted as independent duchies to two of his warlord allies*. The next few weeks were spent consolidating his strategic position before continuing the push inland. By this time, however, General Windrider had managed to recover some of his forces, and resisted the Griffon advance in a series of desperate skirmishes. His efforts almost certainly prevented the Heartland from being overrun, but he ultimately lacked the strength to fight on indefinitely. In mid-autumn, Windrider's army was surrounded and overwhelmed at the Battle of Hollow Shades. Windrider was captured**, and his forces were almost completely annihilated.
By this point, the threat of winter prevented Garth from continuing his advance towards Canterlot. This hardly spelled an end to the fighting, however. Though Windrider's main army had been crushed, the wily general had deployed a number of earth-pony ranger cells in the forests behind the Griffon lines. Throughout the winter, these rangers raided supply depots, assassinated officers, and generally made life difficult for the Griffon occupiers. Attempts to root out the rangers were never successful; accustomed as they were to fighting in the skies above the Griffon Isles, the griffon warriors were at a complete disadvantage in the confined quarters of the Equestrian forests.
While the rangers kept up the fight in the wilds, civilian resistance movements began sprouting in the occupied coastal cities. Fillydelphia was relatively peaceful in this regard; King Garth had no intention of provoking further hostility amongst his new subjects, and maintained a civil, if somewhat strict, relationship with the local populace. In Manehatten and Baltimare, however, where the warlords ruled, conditions were far worse, and the ponies there were subject to frequent depredations. Ironically, it was the diaspora griffons who fared the worst, regarded as "race-traitors" by their former brethren. As a result, the Equestrian Resistance (as it was collectively known) was far stronger in these cities than elsewhere. Though the risk of reprisals limited the scale of their efforts, the Equestrian Resistance was nevertheless a consistent thorn in the Griffons' side.
Meanwhile, in Canterlot, tremendous wartime upheavals were underway. Princess Celestia had reluctantly assumed the position of Commander-in-Chief of Equestria's military, and despite her distaste for war, she would prove to be an able strategist. Throughout the winter, militia units gathered daily at the base of the Canterhorn, and the city's forges and foundries worked day and night producing spears, armour, and (much to everypony's cynical comfort) cannons. Most impressive of all, Celestia's mages had been hard at work perfecting a massive energy shield to protect the city (drawing their inspiration from tales of the Crystal Empire). Such a device would surely keep the the invaders at bay in the event of a siege, but Princess Celestia had a far bolder plan in mind.
With the arrival of spring in AE1683, King Garth set out for Canterlot, leading a siege force of nearly 90,000, most of whom were fighting under the banners of his warlord allies. Their flight to Canterlot was largely unopposed, until they reached the shores of Saddle Lake. The Ponies had constructed a wood fort on the opposite shore, effectively herding Garth northward to the base of the Canterhorn. There, Princess Celestia had arrayed the bulk of her forces, including over 40,000 militias, supported by a hundred brazen cannons dug into the mountain slopes. Griffon airborne attacks were swiftly and brutally repelled; though Celestia lacked air-power of her own***, her cannons, loaded with grapeshot, proved a fair enough substitute. Over the next six days, Garth repeatedly probed the Equestrian lines for weaknesses, and on the seventh day, the Griffons finally managed to overwhelm the fort on Saddle Lake, allowing Garth to sweep around past Celestia's west flank. However, the Princess had one last trick to play.
King Garth swiftly sent a vanguard ahead to assault Canterlot. No sooner had these warriors entered the city, however, when the Royal Guard deployed the city's energy field, trapping the attackers inside. Unable to advance any further, Garth turned and faced Celestia's army in a vicious melee. Though outnumbered, Celestia managed to gain the upper hoof by breaking off forces to recapture the fort on Saddle Lake, while using her few battlemages to quickly teleport their cannons to the front lines. By nightfall, the griffons in the city had been defeated, and Garth was forced to retreat, leaving over 30,000 ponies, dead and wounded, in his wake.
Princess Celestia now gained the initiative, and slowly began pushing the Griffons back toward the East Coast, finally arriving outside Fillydelphia in late autumn. After considering her options, the Princess decided against putting the cities, and their pony inhabitants, to a winter siege, and instead withdrew for the winter to regroup and bolster her forces. By the spring thaw of AE1684, however, the griffons at Fillydelphia found themselves facing a massive army of 120,000 battle-hardened militias, supported by 10,000 of Equestria's finest battlemages. Desperate, Garth urgently appealed to his allies in Manehatten and Baltimare for aid. Thousands of griffon warriors answered the call, reducing the garrisons in those cities by nearly half.
What Garth did not know was that Princess Celestia had spent the winter drilling her battlemages in the hologram spell, to the point that each could reliably maintain the illusion of a dozen battle-ready ponies...
With the Griffon garrisons weakened, Celestia sprang her trap. On her command, 60,000 soldiers, under the command of General Shield Wall, assaulted Manehatten from their hidden camps in the hills. In the south, General Arctic Gale took Baltimare with ease by moving her force of 50,000 through the Hayseed Swamps and across the neck of Horseshoe Bay to attack the city from behind. Within ten days, both cities had been secured, and only Fillydelphia remained under Griffon control. Garth's remaining allies took the opportunity to retreat back across the East Sea, but Garth refused to discredit himself by fleeing, and chose to stay and fight.
Princess Celestia initially attempted to negotiate with Garth, but the Griffon King refused to be taken into custody, and so the Princess was forced to assault the city. After five days of fighting, Garth finally allowed himself to retreat, leaving Fillydelphia to its liberators. While the ponies celebrated in the streets, Princess Celestia withdrew back to Canterlot to discuss the next phase of the war.
Back in the Griffon Isles, King Garth now found himself in an increasingly dire situation. The threat of a Pony invasion now loomed, and many of his former subjects had begun to rebel. When Equestrian sails did appear on the horizon, however, they belonged not to an invading fleet, but to a lone ship bearing a letter from Princess Celestia. The Princess's terms of surrender were simple: an immediate end to hostilities, and heavy reparations from the Griffon Kingdom. In exchange, Equestria would recognise King Garth as the sole ruler of the Griffon Isles, and would fully support his right to rule. It was an offer the Griffon King could not refuse. On Hearth's Warming Eve, AE1685, Princess Celestia and King Garth signed the Treaty of Fillydelphia, and the Second Griffon War came to an end.
* Regrettably, the names of these warlords have been lost to history. In typical despotic fashion, King Garth appears to have ordered all record of his rivals destroyed after their deaths.
** General Windrider (b. AE1619) was brought to Fillydelphia, where he died in captivity during the late winter of AE1684, mere months before the city's liberation.
*** During the Battle of Canterlot, most of Equestria's air-power was stationed in and around Cloudsdale as a precautionary measure should Canterlot fall.
Anno Equestria A Brief History of the Pony Nation A FiM fic by (Insert Pen Name)
The Age of Adventure AE1685-1800
The period following the end of the Second Griffon War is often referred to as the Age of Adventure, and while this may seem a fanciful title, it is certainly an apt one. Since the upheavals surrounding the Nightmare Moon Crisis and the founding of New Canterlot, Equestria seemed to have slipped into a sort of disinterested lethargy as far as the outside world was concerned. The Second Griffon War put that to an abrupt end. Equestria's turnabout victory over a hostile foreign power galvanised the nation, and for the first time in centuries, ponies began to look out towards the world at large.
As was explained last chapter, the end of the Second Griffon War was ultimately brought about by diplomacy. However, the possibility of having to invade the Griffon Kingdom was not ignored, and in the months following the liberation of the East Coast, the shipyards of Manehatten and Baltimare were engaged in the construction of warships to spearhead the invasion. With the promulgation of the Treaty of Fillydelphia, these warships were now given the new purpose of escort duty. The Griffon Kingdom had elected to pay its war reparations in the form of silver and gold bullion, and, naturally, the ships carrying these payments quickly became prime targets for pirates. Thus began the "classic" age of piracy in the East Sea. Famous pirate leaders such as the earth-pony Captain Pinkbeard* and the griffon Gaston la Serre, have become the stuff of legend, although these highly romanticised portrayals are a far cry from the brutal realities of life on the high seas. For decades, the Equestrian Navy struggled to protect their convoys from pirate attacks until AE1757, when the navy was finally able to muster the strength to begin rooting out pirate strongholds one by one. Even so, the pirate threat remained strong until the Griffon reparations ceased in AE1771, and commercial traffic in the East sea gradually returned to pre-war levels.
The post-war period also saw the rise of a renewed interest in exploration and discovery that had not been seen since the early centuries of Equestria. In AE1698, a unicorn named Book Smart accompanied a diplomatic attache to the Griffon Kingdom, and spent the next year exploring the Isles. When he returned, he published his "experiences" under the title Mysteries of the Griffon Isles. The book was almost absurdly biased, even by the standards of the day, but Smart's story, and the controversy surrounding it**, quickly inspired a new breed of adventurers. Equestria had long had trade relations with such far off places as Zebrica, Cervada, and Saddle Arabia; but now the merchants were accompanied by scientists, geographers, historians, missionaries, entrepreneurs, and other such adventurous folk. It is said that the Pony worldview expanded tenfold over the turn of the 18th century.
In AE1703, Princess Celestia created the Canterlot Geographical Society, with the purspose of compiling a complete comprehensive atlas of the world. Over the course of the next century, the Society funded hundreds of expeditions, large and small, to seek out and explore new lands across the world. Many explorers rose to prominence in this period, but easily the most famed of all was the unassuming Toby the Donkey. Prior to his rise to fame, Toby was a lower-class sailor, working out of Baltimare. In AE1707, he was hired on as a pilot for the exploration vessel Hippocampus, which was destined to try and sail around the southern tip of the continent and reach the West Coast of Equestria. Early in the voyage, the captain of the Hippocampus was killed in an accident involving the ship's anchor, and Toby ultimately stepped forth as her de facto successor.
With Toby at the helm, the Hippocampus continued to sail south, while its crew mapped the coastline as they went. By mid-winter, they had passed the coastal Dragonlands and began to follow the coastline west, past the scrubby Prancing Plains, before finally turning back north in early AE1708. Eight months later, the Hippocampus landed at Los Pegasus, and Toby the Donkey was hailed as a national hero. Toby went on to captain several more voyages, and in AE1722, he joined the famous World Expedition to sail around the world from West Coast to East. The expedition consisted of seven ships, captained by some of the finest naval commanders in Equestria. It took three years to complete the voyage from Los Pegasus to Baltimare, during which all but two of the ships were lost and hundreds of sailors with them, including Toby. Nonetheless, the success of the World Expedition was a vital part in the compilation of the first Canterlot World Atlas, which was finally completed in AE1789.
The later 18th century saw further exploration closer to home. In AE1772, the pegasus explorer Cloudjumper led an ocean voyage north from Vanhoover to try and reach the North Pole, and to search for passage over the northern tip of the continent. Her expedition was turned away by inclement weather, however, so in AE1773, she set out for the South Pole instead, landing in the Frozen South after two months at sea without land. Cloudjumper reached the South Pole the following year, after wintering on the coast, and returned to Canterlot in the summer of AE1775, in poor health but in excellent spirits. Many more attempts were made to sail to the North Pole after her death in AE1779, but none succeeded, and nopony yet dared cross the Crystal Mountains. To this day, the Frozen North, and the remains of Old Homeland therein, are still a mystery to modern geography.
The Age of Adventure was not exclusively one of sail, however. For many centuries, unicorns and earth-ponies alike had sought to achieve the miracle of flight that was so enjoyed by their pegasus neighbours. Magical efforts had produced spells that could grant temporary wings to non-pegasi, but results were inconsistent and often impractical. Instead, aspiring aviators had begun to look to more artificial methods of flight. In AE1789, a unicorn kite-maker, Shining Bright, designed and built the precursor to the modern hang-glider. Unfortunately, she failed to factor the effect of her own weight into the design, and her very first test-glide ended in tragedy. Bright's close friend, a Cloudsdale-born earth-pony named Daylily, took over her late friend's efforts and made the first successful artificial glide just outside Canterlot in AE1790.
The first actual flight was made nearly five years later, when the Skylark siblings developed the first hot air balloon. Lark and Sky had begun their careers as con-artists, claiming extraordinary inventions that could accomplish extraordinary ends, for a price. During one such demonstration, in which the siblings claimed they would bring the power of flight to the common pony, one persistent heckler quickly earned their ire by repeatedly challenging their credentials and insulting their mother. Offended, the siblings vowed to actually accomplish their proposed feat (for a change), and spent the next two years exploring various ideas of flight. The final breakthrough came when Lark noticed the tendency of warm air to rise, and in AE1794, the Skylarks demonstrated the first hot air balloon at the Royal Canterlot Fair to tumultuous applause. For the first time in history, the skies were open to anypony, anywhere. It was truly a revolutionary invention.
* Contrary to popular misconception, Pinkbeard was, in fact, a natural pink. Her reputation for setting her tail on fire, however, is pure fabrication.
** The book caused little uproar in the Griffon Kingdom, where most griffons were illiterate, but King Garth is reported to have been so offended that he wrote a letter to Princess Celestia demanding Book Smart's extradition for slander. No such action was taken, but Celestia did respond by publicly discrediting Book Smart's work, and so the controversy abated.
Anno Equestria A Brief History of the Pony Nation A FiM fic by (Insert Pen Name)
Industry and Expansion AE1800-1950
The turn of the 19th century brought with it new challenges for the Pony nation. The country's population was rapidly expanding, and more and more ponies were living in poverty as a result. There was simply not enough trade, not enough industry to provide sufficient employment, and even Equestria's flourishing agricultural base could not keep up with the demand.
In an effort to encourage private industry, Princess Celestia passed a number of bills through Parliament to relax some of the country's property and development laws. The led to the creation of some new factories and workshops, but even these were fairly limited enterprises, able only to employ a relative few skilled labourers. Manufacturing at the time was largely reliant on water or muscle power, an investment that few prospective entrepreneurs were willing to make. In AE1802, however, a new and exciting invention revolutionised the face of Equestrian industry forever.
As stewards of the weather, the Pegasi had long ago mastered a rudimentary form of steam power in the manufacturing of clouds. It was a retired weather technician, Chilly Breeze, who first brought this power to earth, developing the first working steam pump around AE1790. It was Chilly's daughter, Summer Breeze, who perfected his invention after his death in AE1801, and the very next year demonstrated a large-scale working model of her father's steam pump. The new invention took the industrial word by storm. Steam-powered machinery quickly replaced the work of factory labourers, and while many complained that their skills were being made obsolete, the veritable explosion of industry that followed the steam engine's introduction brought with it a tremendous boost to employment.
Perhaps the greatest impact that steam power had on Equestria was in transportation. By AE1820, many different inventors had built upon the concept of steam engines to produce functional locomotives. Easily the most advanced of these was a design by the earth-pony Rocket Red, a vehicle he curiously dubbed "Steve"*. In AE1825, the first railroad in Equestria opened between Canterlot and Manehatten. More railroads to other cities gradually followed suit, until by AE1867, every major city in Equestria was connected by rail. Even the old army road leading to the former site of the Crystal Empire was replaced with a modern railroad.
Naturally, such technological advancement created an enormous demand for resources, especially coal and iron. In AE1841, Princess Celestia founded the Geological Survey of Equestria to research the country's geology and uncover new sources of coal to fuel its growing industries. The Survey's first assignment was to explore the vast and largely uninhabited Equestrian north. While no coal was discovered there (the rock formations of northern Equestria are billions of years old, far older than any coal beds), the Survey did uncover a veritable treasure trove of mineral deposits, especially copper, iron, and nickel. The Survey's success garnered nation-wide recognition, and a thriving mining industry quickly sprouted up across the north.
For all its advances, the early industrialisation of Equestria had great social costs as well. There was little to no regulation of private factories and businesses, and as a result, many workers endured long hours and horrible conditions for low pay. Attempts to negotiate with their employers usually ended in termination of employment (or worse), and strikes and unions were suppressed using a combination of threats, bribes, and violence at the hooves of hired thugs. Conditions were better in Canterlot than in the rest of Equestria, owing to the Princess's benevolent presence, but there was initially little the Princess could do for the rest of Equestria. At the time, Equestria's political landscape was still quite exclusive. As has been stated before, only land, home, or business owners had the vote, effectively disenfranchising the urban millions who lived as tenants. Parliament was composed largely of industrialists, all of whom had a natural stake in avoiding the "unwanted expenses" associated with workers' rights. For decades, Princess Celestia and a coalition of some of the more scrupulous Parliamentary figures fought against the gridlock to push through more and greater reforms, including universal health-codes and a minimum wage. It wasn't until AE1917 that Princess Celestia was able to enact the Universal Suffrage Ruling, which granted all adult ponies the right to vote**. No sooner had the ruling been passed when the Princess promptly dissolved Parliament and held a new election. Not surprisingly, few incumbents retained their seats.
Perhaps the greatest cultural legacy of the 19th century was the colonisation of the Equestrian south-west. In AE1852, the Geological Survey discovered gold in the Macintosh Hills on the edge of the San Palomino desert. Prospectors, and later settlers, hurried south to find their fortunes. Though this gold rush lasted for only three years, it did result in the founding of numerous frontier towns such as Dodge Junction, linked to the rest of the nation by rail. The lure of the frontier attracted many more settlers over the following years, but the settler ponies soon came into conflict with the indigenous Buffalo tribes, who resented having their ancestral lands taken by the pony invaders. Sporadic clashes between the settlers and the buffalo continued until AE1882, when Princess Celestia and several Tribal Chiefs signed the Buffalo Treaty, in which Equestria agreed not to support any new colonies, while the Buffalo agreed to recognise the existing settlements in the region***.
No study of Equestria's modern colonies would be complete without the story of Ponyville. The site that would become Ponyville was first settled in AE1942, in the fertile plains south of the Canterhorn. This region had been uninhabited since the founding of New Canterlot (the city is near-inaccessible from the south), but in that year, Princess Celestia granted the land as a favour to a roving family of the Apple clan, looking for a place to settle. The apple farm they built might have remained in obscurity, were it not for an extraordinary discovery by the young Apple maiden, Lady Smith. In AE1943, Lady Smith ventured into the Everfree Forest, and there discovered the mysterious zap-apple. Though electrifyingly unsuitable for eating raw or baking, Lady Smith soon discovered that the zap-apples made excellent preserves, and her zap-apple jam created a new trade that drew in hundreds of ambitious new settlers. By AE1950, Ponyville was a bustling village, living proof that Equestria is still growing to this day.
* Steve is now on exhibit at the Manehatten Museum of Technology.
** And finally granted stallions truly equal voting rights with mares!
*** The treaty does not, however, forbid further settlement per se, though it does stipulate that any new pony settlements in the region would exist outside the protection of the Equestrian government.
Anno Equestria A Brief History of the Pony Nation A FiM fic by (Insert Pen Name)
The Return of Luna AE2010
The summer of AE2010 would be a time of unprecedented significance for the Pony nation. The previous decades had been a period of relative peace and stability, and many ponies naively lived under the tacit impression that the crises and revolutions of history were a thing of the past, and that their lives would continue on, as always, without incident.
As we are all now well aware, of course, great events were in motion that would shake the very foundations of modern Equestria.
As has been discussed, few modern ponies, if any, realised that Princess Luna had once sat alongside her sister, Princess Celestia, as co-ruler of Equestria. Though the story of the Royal Sisters and Nightmare Moon had long been a staple of Equestrian folklore, it now existed in a heavily bowdlerised form, to the point where Princess Celestia was scarcely recognised as the elder princess of legend. The Nightmare Prophesy, while not unknown, existed only in a select few works, and even then its authenticity was, at the time, dubious. As a result, the significance of the year AE2010, the thousandth anniversary of Princess Celestia's reign as monarch and the purported date of Nightmare Moon's return from exile, was completely overlooked.
Even the Princess herself hardly seemed concerned for such an historic milestone. For the Summer Sun Celebration of AE2010, Princess Celestia had chosen to make her appearance in the small and hitherto unsung village of Ponyville. Naturally, the town was quite elated at the prospect of the Princess's visit. At the height of the Celebration, most of the townsfolk had gathered into the town hall to witness Princess Celestia's raising of the Sun. It was much to everypony's shock and horror, therefore, when instead of their beloved Princess, a shadowy mare of darkness suddenly appeared before them.
Nightmare Moon had returned, "on the longest day of the thousandth year".
Eyewitness reports vary wildly concerning this event (hysteria being what it is), but all agree that Nightmare Moon cruelly proclaimed that Princess Celestia had been somehow eliminated, and that the she had once again brought about darkness everlasting, before vanishing into the night. Panic soon set in, and a state of emergency was declared in Ponyville. Elements of the Royal Guard attempted to cordon off the village, but word of Nightmare Moon's return somehow got out anyway, spreading through nearby Canterlot like wildfire and reaching as far as Manehatten before the Sun returned the next day. Within less than three days, all of Equestria had learned of Nightmare Moon and her vow of eternal night. Only the brief duration of the crisis averted a nation-wide panic.
Back in Ponyville, however, not every pony in town was taken quite so off-guard by the return of Nightmare Moon. Among the crowd was nineteen-year-old Twilight Sparkle, Princess Celestia's personal student protege, who had been deployed to Ponyville to oversee preparations for the Celebration. In a stroke of providence, Sparkle had stumbled upon a copy of the Nightmare Prophesy in her studies, and now made haste for the Ponyville library in search of further information on Nightmare Moon and her previous defeat a thousand years prior. Sparkle was soon joined by five other young mares from Ponyville: Applejack, a local apple-farmer; Rainbow Dash, the village weatherpony; Rarity, a prominent local seamstress; Pinkamina Pie, an eccentric baker and entertainer; and Fluttershy, a self-employed conservationist. Their research evidently provided the information they needed, for within the hour, the six mares had ventured into the nearby Everfree Forest in search of the ruins of Old Canterlot, where the Elements of Harmony were purported to still reside.
The details of their quest are, unfortunately, largely classified, but it is known that Nightmare Moon pursued them through the Forest to the ruins of the old palace in Old Canterlot, where Sparkle and her companions successfully recovered the Elements of Harmony. In the confrontation that followed, Nightmare Moon attempted to destroy the Elements, but she was too late; the Elements bonded to the six young mares, and together they unleashed their power against Nightmare Moon. Instead of banishing her again, however, the Elements of Harmony purged the fallen princess of her corruption, restoring her to her original form as Princess Luna. In that moment, the sun finally rose again, and Princess Celestia reappeared in the palace.* Freed from Nightmare's dark influence, Luna tearfully reconciled with her sister, and together they returned to Ponyville amidst a massive celebration.
The aftermath of Luna's return, however, was rather less triumphant. The day after the events in Ponyville, Princess Celestia brought Luna to the new palace in Canterlot, and presented her to a very surprised crowd. Unfortunately, instead of welcoming their lost Princess with open hearts as Celestia had no doubt hoped**, the populace reacted with near-universal terror and dismay. The truth of Luna's identity had preceded her arrival in Canterlot, and as a result, the distinction between Princess Luna and Nightmare Moon was one that few ponies were able or willing to make. Princess Celestia would spend the next several months grappling with Parliament and the nobility in an effort to restore the Diarchy and return her sister to her rightful throne. Her opponents, fearful of the public backlash, bottlenecked her at every turn, and attempts to appeal to the general public were only marginally more successful.
During this period of uncertainty, Luna withdrew from the public eye. By all accounts, her return to the world was not a painless affair. Though physically unaged by her millennium-long interregnum, Luna had been greatly inflicted by her ordeal; emotionally traumatised, magically weak, and repentant to the point of self-loathing, it would be months before Princess Luna regained the strength and confidence to assume her throne as co-ruler of Equestria.
While Luna slowly readjusted to life in Equestria, the media quickly zeroed in on the mysterious new Princess. Before long, a significant amount of rumour and speculation had arisen around Luna, quite unbeknownst to the Princess herself. Much of this was focused around the nature of Nightmare Moon, specifically what her relation was to Luna, and more specifically whether she might possibly return again. Princess Celestia was quick to release an official statement declaring that Luna's corruption was the result of an outside force, but this did not deter many sensationalist authors from publishing theories that Nightmare Moon was somehow still connected with Luna, some even going so far as to spuriously suggest that Princess Luna was merely Nightmare Moon in disguise, awaiting her next chance to strike. As one can imagine, these publications did little to aid Luna in winning the hearts and minds of her subjects. Even today, the younger Princess still struggles against her dark reputation.
For all the media focus on Princess Luna, there was surprisingly little attention on the heroines of the day. Despite official recognition as Bearers of Harmony, and the dedication of a splendid commemorative stained-glass window in Canterlot Tower to their deed, Twilight Sparkle and the other Bearers quickly receded back into obscurity. Sparkle herself remained in Ponyville with her new friends, and has not became a figure of significant public renown, even despite her connections to Princess Celestia. While the six Bearers have since committed many great and noble deeds (none of which shall be described here), few have garnered much media attention. Whether this is due to modern media trends or the result of some sort of royally-mandated blackout is subject to debate.
Princess Luna finally resumed her throne on the eve of the autumn equinox, AE2010. The day before, Princess Celestia unveiled a new Equestrian Constitution that, in addition to other minor amendments, officially restored the Diarchy between Princess Celestia and Princess Luna. Night Court was opened for the first time in a thousand years, and on Hearth's Warming Eve, Princess Luna resumed her stewardship of the moon as well. After a millennium of loss and regret, Equestria's Royal Sisters once again sat the throne together.
The return of Luna marks the passing of over two-thousand years of Pony history. In that time, ponykind has risen from a race in exile to the most advanced nation in the world. We have experienced prosperity and hardship, loss and gain, peace and bloodshed in no small measures. And now, with our beloved Princesses to lead us, new heroes to inspire us, and new discoveries yet ahead, it may very well be that even now the story of Equestria is still only just beginning...
~ FIN ~
* The whereabouts of Princess Celestia during this time are a complete mystery. The Princess herself has declined all attempts to question her on the matter.
** Some have suggested that this was Celestia's intent in allowing her sister's name and memory to fade; in the hope that she might have a "fresh start" on returning to Equestria. Others have simply accused Celestia of whitewashing history for her own benefit. This historian is more inclined towards the former.
