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Alicorns: Celestia and Luna's past


Fhaolan

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As always with these things we have to leave the land of 'what we know', and move into 'is there any way to make sense of it?' @@TheGr3ml1n, and @@Noble have mentioned things in their own speculations that I have incorporated into this as I see no reason not to. Thanks for the ideas!

 

Can we assemble a consistent time-line of Celestia and Luna out of what we know? Yes, but it does get a bit strained in places. It's definitely a house of cards, which any further information from the show could topple down. As an added bonus, let's see if we can get a popular meme around Discord into the mess and have it fit.

 

We have to start with the Hearth’s Warming Eve panto as being the earliest known point in Equestrian history, predating everything else we’ve seen. Supposedly predating Celestia and Luna themselves. At least, this is the earliest known point within this specific show. If we allow for the previous generations to actually *be* previous generations.... things get weirder, and not necessarily in good ways.

 

Clover the Clever is billed as Starswirl’s apprentice, yet Luna gives the impression of personally knowing how Starswirl looked and dressed during the Luna Eclipsed episode, and Celestia gives the impression of personally knowing how Starswirl behaved during the Magical Mystery Cure episode, as well as having his personal journal stashed away. This means that even if Celestia and Luna weren’t around for the Windigo attack, because their roles were being filled by the Unicorn tribe as a whole, they arrived on-scene ‘shortly’ afterwards in order to have met Starswirl in person. Shortly meaning at least within a pony’s normal lifespan, whatever that actually is. This assumes that Starswirl was still alive during the Hearth's Warming Eve period, probably advising the Unicorn King that was mentioned as Princess Platinum's father and therefore the pair of them being off-screen in order to give Clover and Platinum the spotlight.

 

Starswirl’s spells that we know about officially all seem to revolve around attempts to change destiny. Either going back into the past, or switching cutie-marks. I have stuff to say about that last spell, and why it was incomplete, but BronyCurious has already said most of the same things in this video:

. My emphasis is a bit different, and I have some alternate speculation to add, but the end result is much the same, so I'll leave it for now until I develop more divergent analysis.

 

Discord was taken down by Celestia and Luna, which means Discord’s reign took place after the events of Hearth’s Warming Eve, as they were not yet in evidence then. There is the possiblity that the Windigoes were part of Discord’s reign, but for some reason I think Discord would have been mentioned in the play if that had been so.

 

We know that Celestia and Luna were not ascended, but were born as alicorns according to 'the word of God' (read Lauren Faust), at least until the current showrunner overrides it officially. It is implied that this is an extremely rare occurance. If we pull in the toy line as evidience, the Princess Skyla toy means that the child of an alicorn (ascended or not) will be born an alicorn. Therefore it is likely that Celestia and Luna’s mother was an alicorn.

 

We know that extreme demonstrations of the magic of friendship and love cause alicorinations. A demonstration that Clover pulled off during the Hearth’s Warming Eve story.

 

We also know of one alicorn that predates Discord, the mysterious Princess of the love poison.

 

An interesting thing to add to this is Sombra. My previous speculations had Celestia and Luna taking down Sombra after Discord, but there is a chance that they tackled Sombra as a lead-in on Discord, learning how the Elements worked before going after the far more powerful and dangerous Discord. This isn't really relevant to this specific discussion, but I thought I'd mention it. A side-bar on this particular bit is if they did take on Sombra *before* Discord, then it's technically possible that 'King' Sombra is in fact Princess Platinum's father, the former Unicorn King who has succumbed to dark magic (and/or Discorded?)

 


 

Let’s weave this all together. Remember that all of this occurs over twenty, possibly even thirty years, so this compressed version includes twists and turns that would be more natural seeming over the longer period of time:

 

Clover the Clever, shortly after the events of Hearth’s Warming Eve due to her demonstration of extreme magic of friendship, undergoes the alicoronation process, while her mentor Starswirl the Bearded watches in confusion. Clover naturally takes the position of ruling Equestria as the Principle member of the pony council, previously composed of three: an Earth Pony (Puddinghead), a Pegasis (Hurricane), and a Unicorn (Platinum). Now adding an Alicorn that combines the features of Earth Pony, Unicorn, and Pegasis.

Starswirl, because he doesn’t understand the magics of friendship or love as per Celestia’s comments, tries several methods to duplicate this alicoronation, each ending with failure. Eventually he tries to ‘simulate’ love via a love potion to trigger a similar transformation. Making him the 'Prince' mentioned in the story, but with different motivations than the author assumed. (See my prior blog entry on the definition of 'Prince' and 'Princess', and why this actually works if you use classical definitions rather than modern ones.)

 

It all goes wrong; the potion turns out to be a poison distorting Clover’s and Starswirl’s minds. Clover and Starswirl consummate their artificial love, all while Equestria’s tenuous new-found stability falls apart, leading to monstrous invasions from manticores, chimera, basilisks, and dragons. Clover gives birth to two little filly alicorns. If we go dark with this, perhaps she doesn’t survive the last birth a la Padme Amidala.

 

Starswirl is still affected by the poison, and goes nuts. He tries to look for ways to either undo these events, or still to duplicate the transformation for himself, leading to the limited time travel spell of It’s About Time, and the failed destiny re-write spell of the Magical Mystery Cure. When the filly Princesses have reached something around the CMC’s ages, in a final attempt to raise his magical potential to what he believes is alicorn-like status, Starswirl uses transformation magic to blend himself with other highly magical creatures, taking on their power into himself.

 

And becomes Discord, which fulfills one of the popular fandom memes.

 

The Princesses grow up to late teen/early adulthood in a world ruled by Discord. When the eldest, Celestia, reaches Twilight’s age they go on a quest to find the various Elements of Harmony, and eventually get enough together to take on Discord.

 

And turn what’s left of their father to stone.

 

This is really a pretty standard Fantasy Novel plot. Not necessarily a *good* plot as such, but pretty average in complexity.

 


 

Next time, I'm going to address a problem with the MLP universe as a whole. We can pretty much cover anything the writers come up culturally and historically with a Real Life model when worldbuilding, because truth really can be stranger than fiction. But there's something that can't be worked around so easily and is a genuine problem with trying to flesh out the MLP:FiM setting.

 

It's all a matter of scale.

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An interesting head canon. It certainly does a good job tying everything together logically, and I kinda always liked the idea of Clover the Clever being the Sisters' mother.

 

But to be honest, not a a big fan of Starswirl being Discord. From all the evidence the show has given us regarding his fixation on spells that alter fate or destiny in some way, shape, or form, I think he could make an interesting character by himself without linking him to another character who is already fascinating in his own way.

 

It's kinda like who Steven Moffat has been stressing the Timey-Wimey links every main character in current Doctor Who has to the other main characters. It makes the mythology feel smaller.

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An interesting head canon. It certainly does a good job tying everything together logically, and I kinda always liked the idea of Clover the Clever being the Sisters' mother.

 

But to be honest, not a a big fan of Starswirl being Discord. From all the evidence the show has given us regarding his fixation on spells that alter fate or destiny in some way, shape, or form, I think he could make an interesting character by himself without linking him to another character who is already fascinating in his own way.

 

It's kinda like who Steven Moffat has been stressing the Timey-Wimey links every main character in current Doctor Who has to the other main characters. It makes the mythology feel smaller.

 

Yeah, personally I don't like the Starswirl -> Discord for that exact same reason. However, the idea that Celestia has a habit of imprisoning family members for a thousand years, hoping that someone else can come up with a better option later, amuses my nasty mind.

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