Rarity

By Sazama Ichida

• March 12, 2015




Age: Unknown

Gender: Female

Species: Unicorn

Appearance: Lauren Faust was inspired to create Rarity by her childhood toy G1 ponies Glory and Sparkler. Rarity uses Glory's color scheme, Sparkler's cutie mark and appearance, and some mannerisms of G3 Rainbow Dash, like the Trans-Atlantic English accent and a tendency to flip her mane and say "darling". She shares her name with a G3 pony who was voiced by Cathy Weseluck, who currently voices Spike in the new series. She shares some personality traits with the G1 pony named Melody. Rarity's eye design is less frequently used than most other designs: Lotus Blossom and Aloe share the same eye design as Rarity, including color, shape and design of upper and lower eyelashes. During running sequences, Lemon Hearts has the same eye shape as Rarity as well. In The Best Night Ever, Rarity puts fake eyelashes on before going to the Grand Galloping Gala. She is seen wearing fake eyelashes again in MMMystery on the Friendship Express while being interrogated by Twilight Sparkle. Rarity's dressmaking shop, the Carousel Boutique, is designed after a toy of the My Little Pony line sold by Hasbro. In Lauren Faust's "pitch bible" for the show, the boutique was named the Carousel Couture, and it specialized in carousel-inspired designs. Rarity was originally the "Element of Inspiration", but this was considered "too tough for kids to wrap their heads around." Faust stated that Audrey Hepburn was her biggest influence on Rarity. In Sweet and Elite, Rarity states she was born in Ponyville. During The Cutie Mark Chronicles, Rarity retells her story of her life as a filly to the Cutie Mark Crusaders. The flashback starts on an outdoor theater near the schoolhouse, where some fillies are practicing for a school play, dressed as various foods. The teacher compliments Rarity on her costume design, but the perfectionist Rarity insists that the dresses don't meet her expectations and tries to create new ones to no avail. Almost immediately, a light ignites in her horn, and it drags Rarity leftward until it stumbles into a very large, geode-like boulder. Rarity, having thought her horn would help her find "[her] destiny", is deeply unsatisfied. Then, Rainbow Dash's sonic rainboom occurs, causing the boulder to split in two, revealing it to be filled with gemstones. Rarity decides to add these to the existing costumes to jazz them up, earning both the admiration of the crowd and her cutie mark. Rarity is responsible for the decor during the Summer Sun Celebration. When she sees what Rainbow Dash accidentally did to Twilight's hair, she is compelled to give the latter a makeover. She also develops a fascination with Twilight when she hears she is from Canterlot. Twilight flees the Carousel Boutique in fear of the thought of Rarity dying her coat a new color. Rarity daydreams in The Ticket Master about meeting Princess Celestia's dashing "nephew" at the Grand Galloping Gala, with her fantasy culminating in marriage and induction into royalty. Upon attending the Gala in The Best Night Ever, she spots a stallion, depicted with the same character design as the one in her fantasy, who is identified as Prince Blueblood. Although handsome and initially charming, Blueblood turns out to be conceited, rude, and narrow-minded. He expects Rarity to care for him while doing nothing in return. Rarity tries to be patient with the prince's manner, but his selfish ways finally exhaust her patience when Blueblood uses her as a shield from an incoming cake. She then angrily declares him to be "a royal pain" and splatters frosting all over him. Sweetie Belle is introduced as Rarity's little sister in Stare Master. Her clumsiness, paired with an insistent willingness to help, tests Rarity's patience and she eventually asks Sweetie Belle to let her work in peace. Sweetie Belle "borrows" important supplies from Rarity in Stare Master and The Show Stoppers, using her most expensive fabrics to make amateurishly-stitched costumes for her friends. Even though Sweetie's eagerness to help usually unintentionally causes messes, she and Rarity truly do love and care for each other. At the end of Sisterhooves Social, they agree to embrace and love each other's differences, and send a letter to Celestia describing how being sisters is mainly about having fun, but that it also requires compromises and work to keep a strong relationship.<br />In Sleepless in Ponyville, Sweetie Belle invites Rarity to go on a camping trip with Apple Bloom, Applejack, Scootaloo and Rainbow Dash. Rarity refuses at first, since she does not usually enjoy being around nature, but she reluctantly agrees to go after seeing some disappointed faces made by Sweetie. Though Rarity is not necessarily mean towards Sweetie Belle, she makes her carry all of her luggage on the trip and wait on her after they set up camp. Later, Rarity shows compassion towards Sweetie Belle, such as letting Scootaloo carry her luggage in order to give Sweetie Belle a rest, comforting her when she's frightened by Rainbow Dash's ghost stories, and happily racing with her at the end of the episode. In an episode of season five, Rarity, seated at a table with Octavia Melody and DJ Pon-3, watches Sweetie Belle sing on stage.

Cutie Mark: Diamonds representing her talent as a Fashionesta

Personality: When Rarity meets Twilight Sparkle for the first time, she is busy decorating Ponyville's pavilion for the Summer Sun Celebration. As soon as Rarity turns to look at Twilight, she expresses concern for Twilight's messy mane and practically forces on her the first of many makeovers while the besotted Spike looks on.<br /><br />Rarity cares for her own beauty as well. She tries to show up Trixie in Boast Busters by making herself a dress from Trixie's curtain, but Trixie retaliates by ruining Rarity's mane, making her burst into tears and run away. Rarity is also particular about her cleanliness: she panics while trying to avoid getting muddy in Look Before You Sleep and tries to keep herself from getting soaked in the rain to avoid it messing up her mane. This causes some conflict with her friend Applejack, who is, by contrast, not at all bothered about getting muddy or wet. Her fashion consciousness extends even to times of peril: in Dragonshy, she wears a scarf on the way to the dragon's lair, wondering if she should carry a tiara to match. She indulges in a full spa treatment with Fluttershy in Green Isn't Your Color as part of their "weekly get-together", and she puts on eyelash extensions as part of her gala preparations in The Best Night Ever. In MMMystery on the Friendship Express, she wears false eyelashes, and in the latter part of the episode, she wears her hair in such a way to prevent this becoming known to her friends, having lost one of them while trying to make her escape from Pinkie Pie. Rarity's vocabulary is formal, and she is prone to use complex words and more sophisticated, refined phrasing than her friends. As a fashionista, she often uses French-based terms in her vernacular. She speaks with a cultivated trans-Atlantic dialect, and shares some mannerisms with similarly accented Hollywood actresses, such as Katharine Hepburn.​ Rarity sometimes gets carried away with her attention to detail. In Look Before You Sleep, she has difficulty tearing herself away from fixing a messy bookcase despite the much bigger problem of a tree that crashed into Twilight's bedroom. In Winter Wrap Up, she becomes so preoccupied with fixing Twilight's messy bird's nest that she spends nearly the entire day on it, when she was supposed to be producing nests in large numbers. Rarity shows herself to be tough and resourceful in dealing with the Diamond Dogs in A Dog and Pony Show. Even though the others are worried she would panic over how dirty the underground was, Rarity takes control of the situation quite well, manipulating the Diamond Dogs into releasing her and even letting her have several carts full of gems. Rarity's prim ways and aversion to disorder and dirt clashes with Applejack's brashness in Look Before You Sleep. They bicker throughout the episode about each other's attitude, but they finally unite in the face of adversity when a tree crashes into Twilight's library. They work together and eventually come to enjoy the company of one another, which becomes more apparent in later episodes. In Over a Barrel, Rarity is baffled at the level of care Applejack bestows on Bloomberg, an apple tree being taken to Appleloosa for planting. Rarity complains that the tree received a private coach; however, Applejack takes this in stride and takes no offense at Rarity's complaints. Rarity later provides Applejack with much-appreciated support in their attempts to protect Appleloosa from a buffalo stampede. Rarity even comes to compliment Applejack's manners when she doesn't charge Rarity for food from her stand at the Grand Galloping Gala in The Best Night Ever. While Rarity cares about her appearance quite a bit, being averse to stepping in mud or risking getting herself messy, she is not above getting her hooves dirty when it comes to helping her friends or creatures in need. She slices off her own tail to calm down the sea serpent in Friendship is Magic, part 2, willing to sacrifice her beauty to help restore the distressed serpent's "fabulosity". This action earns her the element of generosity, and later, when she activates the element, her tail is restored. She has been out on rugged pursuits such as in Dragonshy and Over a Barrel in aid of her friends. The episode Suited For Success heavily revolves around Rarity's generosity, as she is willing to not only make five unique dresses for her friends for the Grand Galloping Gala but additionally re-work and redesign them as her friends desire. The overworking runs Rarity ragged and, despite her friends' designs being horrible fashion-wise, she continues making them in order to satisfy her friends. At the end of the episode, Rarity's friends realize that her original dresses were beautiful and perfectly matched for each of them, and that they should not have taken advantage of Rarity's generosity. Rarity is hypnotized by Discord into believing a large boulder is actually a giant diamond in The Return of Harmony Part 1. For a short moment she resists the temptation, but soon she becomes brainwashed, obsessively protecting her "diamond" and refusing to let anybody near it, as she becomes possessive and greedy. This continues in The Return of Harmony Part 2, where she refuses to part with the boulder and names it "Tom", while additionally hoarding other items she sees as valuable, such as the jewelry of the Elements of Harmony themselves. After the brainwashing is cured, she throws the boulder away and tells her friends to "never speak of this again" in a hushed but assertive whisper.<br />In Sisterhooves Social, Applejack mentions to Rarity that sisterhood is a give-and-take relationship that requires compromise. To this end, Rarity takes part in the Sisterhooves Social with Sweetie Belle while disguised as Applejack. Rarity's generosity is a major plot point of Rarity Takes Manehattan. The unscrupulous fashion designer Suri Polomare uses it against her by asking for some of the unique material Rarity made to "accentuate" her own dresses. Instead, Suri uses the material to copy Rarity's designs. Rarity beats Suri in the end, and pledges not to let the experience sour her on being generous in the future.

Backstory: Rarity is a female unicorn pony and one of the main characters of My Little Pony Friendship is Magic. She is Sweetie Belle's older sister and the love interest of Spike. Rarity works as both a fashion designer and as a seamstress at her own shop in Ponyville, the Carousel Boutique. She has a white Persian cat named Opalescence. She represents the element of generosity. Unlike Twilight Sparkle, she only uses her magic for activities related to her special talent and for basic tasks such as holding and carrying items or finding gems. Rarity works as a fashion designer at Carousel Boutique. Rarity's work ethic and dedication to her customers is depicted in Suited For Success. She initially sews dresses of her own design for her friends, but when they're not satisfied with the result, she sews them brand new dresses under their direction. Rarity stresses herself into making a new set of dresses the way her friends want them, going as far as following all their instructions instead of her own instincts. She is unhappy with the results, even though her friends are very satisfied. When these dresses are devastatingly criticized by "the bigwig fashion hotshot" Hoity Toity, she locks herself in her room, lamenting her ruined career; luckily for her, her friends are able to convince Hoity Toity to hold another fashion show, this time with the original dresses.