Those that know me will probably be wondering why this essay has taken so long to show up. Mainly this is due to prioritization, enough other people have discussed this topic that I didn’t feel it was that urgent. However, the discussion has reached a point where I am disagreeing just enough with the various conclusions reached that I’ve decided to put this one together.

First, what do we know? There are several references to weaponry in FiM and some of them have interesting features.

The Canterlot guards regularly have spears. Spears are pretty universal weapons known in every culture around the world. Not much to be learned here, other than they are depicted very clearly as hewing spears with broad heads rather than throwing spears (and are too large to be javelins) with narrow piercing heads.

Bow & Arrow cutie marks show up on several crystal ponies, plus one colt in Cherilee’s class named by the fandom ‘Archer’. Archer’s cutie mark is sufficiently stylized that it could be a cupid reference instead of a weapon. However, the crystal ponies’ cutie marks are standard bows and we can assume from that that actual archery is familiar to the ponies. Archery is an odd thing for the ponies, given that it very definitely requires fingers to work normally. There are ways around that, however.

Also during the Crystal Empire episodes, Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy have a little go at tilting, sometimes known as jousting. Lances as used in tilting are specialized spears, developed during the transition of jousting between war training and sport. In this case, the lances appear to be mounted right on the armor rather than held in any way. This is… odd, but when jousting became a sport in real life, similar odd things occurred to the equipment. The idea of a knight being winched into place in full armor is from very late-period 'jousting as a sport'. It wouldn't be unheard of during this time (17th century) that a knight would get up onto their horse unarmored, and have his armor assembled around him after-the fact. In the most extreme cases some German knights would be unable to move except for one arm operating the reins, and the armor would be loaded with springs and clockwork so it would make a more spectacular *SMASH* when the collision happened.

Pipsqueak’s ‘pirate sword’. This is a classic cartoon sword, and very obviously a toy. Interestingly, it’s not what is popularly thought of as a pirate sword at all (a cutlass), but what they usually use as a toy knightly sword in most animations. For some reason, they’re always drawn as a leaf-blade, a sort of two-edged machete being very tip-heavy. This is a style of blade in real life that really only occurs when a culture is transitioning from bronze weapons to steel weapons. As a note, wrought iron weapons rarely work as iron is less effective for blades than bronze, providing no advantage. It’s only when steel gets involved do bronze weapons become obsolete. It’s during this transition period that leaf-blade weapons show up. The weapon is used by Pipsqueak as a mouth-tool.

Rainbow Dash’s reference to wanting a pet ‘as fast as a bullet’. Many have taken this to mean that ponies are aware of firearms, which may in fact be true. However, this is not necessarily a reference to guns. Bullets have existed long before guns were invented. Romans were using bullets, and comparing things to their speed, as that’s what the ammunition of slings is called in Roman Latin. Now, I’m not talking about slingshots, but the proper slings that were considered weapons of war and of hunting since pre-history. David and Goliath stuff. Slings are difficult to use, and take a *lot* more practice than pretty much any other weapon out there. In ancient armies, the slingers were usually trained from early childhood.

Pinkie Pie’s party cannon is real reason why ponies are likely aware of firearms. Guns were first invented in China near the end of the 12th century as a development of fire lances, tubes mounted on spears that spewed fire and shrapnel. This technology spread *fast* in medieval times, handguns hitting the Middle East in the early 13th century, and entering Europe in about the late 13th century. Think about that, the concept of crop rotation, knowledge of medicine, and the printing press could take 500 years or more to get from one end of the Eurasian continent to the other, but working firearms and the industry necessary to support them took less than a 100 years to spread over that entire area. Full-sized cannons showed up later in the middle of the 14th century. This is a bit that people usually forget; handguns predate cannons. Mainly because it took a while to figure out how to produce gunpowder in quantities necessary to be able to operate large artillery pieces. Pinkie Pie’s cannon is missing a couple of the indicators of an actual weapon. There are always several reinforcing rings on the barrel of a cannon, to reduce the chance of the case or breech from… exploding to be honest, usually at the muzzle (known as a swell), and where the cannon is mounted on the carriage (known as rimbases), as well as the entire cascable is drawn rather simplified. Of course, being a cartoon drawing of cannon, these details are lost.

So, as far as I can tell, that’s it for weaponry in the series itself. There are several fan-concepts that are fascinating, like ‘wingblades’ that are specialized weapons used by pegasi, but I’ll come back to that later.

Overall, there isn’t much weaponry in Equestria. Despite the fact that there are enough monsters and nasty critters that would justify such. Early depictions of pegasi peg them as militaristic, which carries on into the Wonderbolts training regime. And several ponies are depicted as wearing various states of armor, but those tend to be remnants of ‘a thousand years ago’, indicating that the ponies have not needed any form of warfare in living memory.

Ah, that’s a good point. Weapons aren’t everything in the Armory, there’s armor as well of course. So what have we seen for armor?

Next week!