Right, we now have the Crystal Empire shattered into little bits, the Princesses running a small version of the Kingdom of Equestria, and King Sombra in control of the former capitol of the Empire.

Over time, Celestia and Luna learned how to extend their influence, stabilizing some of the other former fiefdoms of the old Crystal Empire piece by piece. However, King Sombra was doing the exact same thing but from the other direction. Eventually the two groups would come into conflict, with Celestia and Luna moving against the Imperial Seat itself in an effort to remove the tyrant, and maybe even to get ahold of this magical artifact, the Crystal Heart, and add it to their growing collection (Elements of Harmony + a few other knickknacks). King Sombra, unable to compete with the pair of alicorns and the EoH, took his ball and went home rather than capitulate. Vanishing the capitol and its environs into some kind of limbo state to keep the Crystal Heart out of their hooves.

As a note, this has happened before in the MLP franchise. Tambelon was a city in G1’s My Little Pony series that shifted in and out of the Shadow World, and many fans have linked that Shadow World to Tartaurus mentioned by Twilight in Lesson Zero. The idea of a city or town that only appears on a semi-regular basis due to a curse or magic is a fairly common trope in mythology and fable, with the most well-known examples being seen in the musical Brigadoon, and the much older story of Germelshausen, which in turn is based on even older myths.

With the capitol gone and Sombra defeated, all the pony-controlled regions were swept up in the Equestria Reforms, possibly re-instating the Council of Princes with Celestia and Luna presiding over the assembly, all officially part of the new Kingdom of Equestria. The old Kingdom of Equestria possibly becoming the Duchy of Everfree, in reference to the Princesses defeating both Discord and Sombra and freeing all ponies from tyranny. As the Imperial Capitol was gone, the capital of the old Kingdom of Equestria transitioned into the capital of the new larger Kingdom. Likely centred on the Castle of the Royal Pony Sisters.

The Empire no longer existed, so there was no need for an Emperor as such. Celestia and Luna, as Presiding Princesses of the Council would be considered de-facto Empresses-Elect if anyone bothered to care.

Back to Blueblood; as an alternative to my earlier blog post it could be membership of this Council that gave Blueblood and Cadence their official titles of Prince and Princess. Again using the Holy Roman Empire as a model, there were two different types of 'Princes', ones with voting power on the Council as they actually controlled valuable land, and those with no voting power but were still considered members of the council with the right to debate as they were titled but did not hold anything of political value. In which case, Blueblood is a voting Prince as he is likely the actual Duke of Canterlot, while Cadance, prior to the return of the Crystal Empire, may have been a Princess in name only without a region of her own due to her adopted relationship to Celestia.

Everything being idylic for possibly even a hundred years or more, eventually the Nightmare Moon incident occurred. This caused a resurgence of long-dormant Discord magic, rendering the entire original Kingdom of Equestria region uninhabitable and covered by the Everfree Forest. The Castle of the Royal Pony Sisters was abandoned, and the capitol moved yet again, this time to Canterlot which very likely at one point had been part of the Kingdom of Unicornia from whence Princess Platinum originated from before the founding of old Equestria as per the Hearth's Warming Eve episode, but as part of the Equestrian Reforms had been 'downgraded' into a Duchy, much like the Duchy of Everfree.

The caverns beneath that castle are curious. It's possible that the Crystal Heart may have originated there, given up to the Crystal Emperor to use as part of his Imperial Regalia when the Duchy joined the Crystal Empire back in the day. Perhaps the other gem-based magic items seen in the show all come from those mines as well, each torn from the earth by greedy unicorns, shaped into artifacts of power, and scattered over the world by various adventurers, questers, and whatnot. Making the ancient unicorns the Equestrian equivalent of dwarves, svarts, and kobolds. (Not the D&D versions; the *mythological* ones.)

With Celestia being the only known alicorn at that time, and likely due to several hundred years of habit, she retained her position of presiding over the council despite the loss of her own Principality.

Now when the region vanished by Sombra re-appeared, it and the lands surrounding retained the name 'Crystal Empire' simply out of expedience as it was the last remnants of that old institution. When Sombra was defeated for a second time, Cadance took over the region as the 'Crystal Princess', and finally gained voting membership in the Council of Princes in her own right. This making the so-called Crystal Empire a vassal state of Equestria; a complete reversal of the original setup. Also making it perfectly valid for hosting the Equestria Games.

If Cadance was the type to climb the greasy pole, she might be able to make the case of transitioning her 'Crystal Princess' title into 'the Empress' and claim the entirety of Equestria as the former Crystal Empire. But for some reason I can't see her really wanting to do that.

Next week.... I honestly don't know. Maybe I'll do the Alicorn stuff, as I think I've only got enough for one post on that, rather than my current pattern of stretching each topic out to three posts. I know people *are* reading these, so any suggestions?