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Governor of Ponyville


Fhaolan

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I was going to talk about the pony’s categorization and treatment of Monsters, but every time I sat down to write it all out, I came up with half a paragraph of text. I honestly thought I’d be able to do more with that, so I’m going to delay that topic for a bit in hopes of developing more material.

 


 

In the meantime, let’s talk about government. Specifically local, or Ponyville, government.

In my episode notes I regularly mention Ponyville’s government, so what have we gathered so far:

 

Ponyville’s Town Hall is a huge structure that dominates the main square. It’s a typical hall, but large enough to accommodate a good chunk of the population of Ponyville, as seen when Nightmare Moon crashed the Summer Sun Celebration at the beginning of the series. Likely there are offices on the top floors above the ‘hall’ itself. The ponies regularly use the hall for celebrations and events, and surrounding it is what passes for Ponyville 'Downtown' district, with the public market and most of the businesses that have their own buildings, such as the Spa, shops, boutiques, etc. It's possible that the town hall is also the Ponyville courthouse, but we have nothing to support that.

 

The town’s government is headed by Mayor Mare, and it is implied that there are at least two others involved, a pony with a gavel cutie mark who is likely a judge, and a pony with an open scroll who is likely a town councilor. The judge character is apparently named Lady Justice according to the collectable card for her, and the councilor has been labeled by fans as William Wright, although there is some confusion as ponies with similar appearances but different cutie-marks or coat colors appeared in other episodes.

 

Western governments usually break down into three branches, Executive, Legislative, and Judicial. As I’ve said in other venues, those that keep the law, those that write the law, and those that argue the law. Exactly how this is implemented varies wildly, but the divisions are pretty solid. In this case we have the Mayor (Executive), the Councilor (Legislative), and the Judge (Judicial). While normally the town council would have several members given the population of Ponyville, the ponies are by nature more herd-orientated than humans and may not need as many representatives as we do. In which case it’s entirely possible the town council is in fact just these three ponies. Or these three form a Privy Council, with other less influential members being the full council.

 

Schools normally fall under local or state government as well, but we only know about the one school in Ponyville. Given the population of Ponyville, it wouldn’t be surprising for there to be other schools, unless they really do adhere to the old late 1800’s style of education that I talked about in a previous entry. As such Cheerilee is an employee of the town council, and if there is only one school she may even be on the full council itself. Heck, for that matter Rainbow Dash is likely a government employee as Ponyville’s top weather pony, although that job may be military. Again, I’ve talked about that previously.

 

For that matter, libraries nominally fall under local government, which brings us to Twilight Sparkle, who even before becoming an alicorn had a strange position in local government.

 

Twilight Sparkle is the town librarian. Sort of. She rarely seems to do anything librarian-ish, other than regularly re-arranging the library so that nobody else can find anything. And the only ponies we see using the library *as* a library are Twilight’s immediate friends like Rarity and Rainbow Dash (for Daring Do books). The rest of Ponyville seems to studiously avoid going into the library unless they want Twilight to do something for them.

 

She was concerned about missing a meeting with the Ponyville Hay Board, not a meeting *for* the Board. Which means she doesn’t think of herself as being on the Board itself, but is critical advisor for them. While most food boards are nominally marketing boards that are used as central advertising agencies sponsored by the government, most act as price and supply regulators, and are also funding sources for alternative usage of the products. The example most people know about are the various Milk Boards across several nations and states, which outside of advertising milk also act as a regulatory agency for quality and price, and often sponsor new milk product manufactories. In this case the ‘Hay’ board is likely also responsible for price, distribution, and ensuring supply of feed grass, timothy, rye, fescue, alfalfa, clover, oat, barley, wheat, all of which are considered ‘Hay’. Obviously Hay is being treated as an absolute staple food that it is critical to maintain the supply of, and so the government is taking steps to ensure it.

 

Back to Twilight, in most situations that call for local government running special events and festivals, Twilight is front and center either organizing the event or fronting it. Royal visits, seasonal ceremonies, etc., all seem to have Twilight involved. Usually with Mayor Mare sitting off to the side, visibly frustrated by the situation, and trying to direct Twilight off onto other paths that would allow the Mayor to have nominal control. However, the Mayor rarely if ever takes direct action against Twilight.

 

Twilight’s position as Librarian appears to be by decree of Celestia back in the first episode. Likely this is a position employed by the town council, and they had to accept the pony Celestia sent them. Added to the fact that she appears to be Celestia’s only personal student and protégé, Twilight is more than just the Librarian. She is the direct appointee of Celestia, and the local government thinks of her as Celstia’s representative.

 

This is all before the ‘Princess Twilight’ events. She was already in effect the Governor of Ponyville. It is unlikely this is official, and it’s entirely probable that Twilight is naïve enough to have not noticed. It is for this reason that the upgrade to Princess isn’t much of a shock to Ponyville. They were basically treating her as an extension of Celestia anyway up until that point, so no real change from their point of view.

 

What will be interesting to see is if we ever have an episode for an election in Ponyville. It’s not guaranteed that Mayors, Judges, and Councilors, are elected officials. They can be, even historically in monarchies. Mayors, for example, have been elected officials in England ever since King John (of Robin Hood fame).

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