Which of the Mane 6 had the happiest childhood?

[ggg-2 3,550]

Personally, I say Twilight. Why? Well, while we don't know much about Rarity's childhood, we do know something about the others' childhoods. Applejack had to start working on the farm very early, and of course there's the death of her parents. Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy were both stated to be victims of bullying in Flight School. Again, we don't know much about Rarity's childhood. Pinkie Pie is a very close second but, hey, she grew up on a rock farm. That doesn't exactly scream fun times, even with party planning as your special talent. And Twilight, she had a foalsitter and loving big brother who both cared for her, played with her and brought her hours upon hours of joy, not to mention she was the prized personal student of Celestia herself, which is a position most ponies can only dream of.

[Venomous 18,814]

I would have to say RainbowDash or Rarity

[colt .45 259]

I'm going to have to go with Twilight on this one for the reasons the OP stated. Wealthy parents ( at least upper middle class). However she didn't have any friends. So how happy was her foalhood?

My first thought was going to be Rainbow Dash. But I figured that was just my biasis as an only child myself (my headcanon is that pegasi are all only foals, and many are orphans due to reasons i'm not going into here) anyhow, i've always been pretty happy as an only child. I didn't HAVE to share my stuff unless i wanted too. Even if her family wasn't wealthy, her father made sure she had the oppertunity to have life enriching experiences, like going to flight camp and getting to carry the flag for Cloudsdale at the Equestria games. She had friends and at least knew about friendship. Yeah, i'd say Dashie had a pretty sweet foalhood.

[The Awesome One 1,314]

Definitely has to be Twilight or Rainbow Dash.

 

Twilight is Celestia's protege so it's obvious that she was great in school and there is nothing to suggest that her family was poor.

 

Rainbow Dash is clearly rich/from a rich family by looking at her house. Therefore it is safe to assume that she had a comfortable foalhood.

[Shanks 10,811]

Twilight, I am not saying she didn't work hard but she did have quite a lot of advantages early on. Like Applejack she is shown to having a loving yet a bit smaller family and a foalsitter who was practically like a sister to her and I guess now that she married his brother is a sister to her. Twilight did become Celestias apprentice by demonstrating some extraordinary talent but lets be realistic here, Twilight had the talent but it wouldn't have manifested itself the way it did if it weren't for the sonic rainboom.

 

It would have eventually shown itself but probably not until much later and probably would never have become Celestia's apprentice. It wasn't just her talent that prompted Celestia to take her as an apprentice as she also realized that it would be difficult to learn to control such power and wanted to make sure Twilight didn't fall to the dark side.

 

During Twilight's apprenticeship with Celestia she lived fairly comfortably as can be expected of an apprentice of a princess and had access to a quality education that most ponies in Equestria would probably not have had access to. We clearly saw in It's About Time that Twilight had access to high level scrolls and spell books that most other ponies didn't have any access to. That guard even let her in to get that time travel spell.

Edited April 29, 2015 by Black Adam

[Steve Piranha 28,885]

Either Rarity our Twilight. The former..... well, we don't know much really. The latter, she was studying unfer Celestia, and she didn't care of her lack of friends 

[RarityFan01 2,444]

I will go with Rainbow Dash if going by hints but Rarity if going by what we definitely know. 

 

Twilight's childhood had to have included lots of stress staying up all night studying. Getting into Princess Celestia's school was a big deal for her. 

 

Applejack wasn't satisfied with her life when she was a child. 

 

Rainbow Dash had an average childhood. Not too bad, not too good. 

 

Rarity probably didn't see eye to eye with her parents. She knew what she wanted though, so that's something good. 

 

Fluttershy was frequently bullied. 

 

Pinkie Pie had a sad childhood. 

 

 

Rarity is different from her parents, so chances are that they didn't see eye to eye on things. Maybe that didn't affect her childhood, but maybe it did. If it didn't, Rarity had the happiest childhood. If it did, Rainbow had the happiest childhood. 

 

We need to learn more about Rarity's childhood. 

[Pastel 7,627]

Rainbow Dash and Rarity are the only ones who had a decent childhood actually.

Twilight too, although she had some problems with magic.

[TopQuark 409]

It's difficult to judge, as we've only ever seen small slices of their foalhoods, but I will have to go with Twilight. She had a passion for magic (and all knowledge, to a lesser degree), and devoted most of her time to it. She enjoyed learning so much that she never felt the need to go out of her way to make friends, not to mention her good relationships with her brother and two princesses.

 

Rainbow Dash would probably be second, from what we saw of her time at flight camp. She may have bee bullied, but she clearly had enough skills to defend herself, and to a certain extent, Fluttershy. Also, she seemed to thrive under the constant threat of her reputation being damaged.

 

The only parts (that I can remember) of Applejack, Pinkie Pie and Rarity's foalhoods that we see are all quite similar; them being discontent with their lives in some way, then finding some way to appreciate/deal with/improve it (respectively).

 

Fluttershy would seem to have had the worst foalhood. She was in flight school even though she hated flying (why?), and was constantly bullied for it. We only see her happy when she dicoveres that she loves the Earth. And even then, I expect she would had one heck of a time convincing her parents, who presumably wanted her to be a flyer, to let her live on the ground.

Edited April 29, 2015 by TopQuark

[colt_following 169]

Since Pinkie and Applejack are clearly out, and not knowing much about Rarity's or Fluttershy's childhoods (we can assume Fluttershy's wasn't great)

I'd say Rainbow or Twilight. Both of them seemed to grow up doing what they loved most, and what they continue to do to this day.

[duidamasterXD 9,626]

My ranking of childhood unhappiness

 

1: Applejack, and easily. Dead parents coupled with a lot of responsibility blows anything else out of the water

 

2: Fluttershy, due to lingering trauma and social anxiety from Cloudsdale bullying

 

3: Rainbow Dash, was also a victim of bullying in Cloudsdale and dropped out of school due to repeated failure. Likely fell in with the wrong crowd if Gilda is any indication.

 

4: Pinkie Pie. She might be third, but I don't get the impression that her life was all that unhappy after she found her mark. Her family seemed welcoming of her personality and talents in spite of their sternish temperaments, and she was presumably very close to Maud.

 

5: Twilight, no friends, probably a boatload of academic stress. Otherwise looks pretty good. Awesome brother, supportive parents, Celestia, getting to be BFFs with Spike ...

 

6: Rarity. Typical siblingish spats and power struggles with Sweetie Belle, and her goals and personality doesn't match her parents' at all. All of this seems pretty normal though, and while I think the very plain background of her family is a driving force in her wanting to be successful and live the high life, I don't really think she's plagued by what happened in her childhood to the degree of some of the others.

 

So yeah, going with Rarity for the time being. Subject to change if we find out more about her youth.

[Princess Lona 381]

Happiness is so subjective, I think we can't really say who had the happiest childhood. How happy each of their childhoods were will depend on what each of them required to feel happy. We can however, say who had the most (insert specific trait here) childhood, and how each of those unique childhood traits lead to any happiness they may have experienced.

 

Most secure feeling childhood - Twilight. She was wealthy and from a young age she had the approval of the sovereign of Equestria.

 

Most supported childhood - Rarity. As has been pointed out, she has very different tastes than her parents but that obviously did not stop them from encouraging her to follow her dreams.

 

Most character-building childhood - Applejack. Although the death of her parents is not officially canon, they clearly weren't there for one reason or another. Whatever that reason was, Applejack was able to learn and grow because of it. While this may have made her early childhood a bit difficult, her later childhood would have been made easier in some ways because of her heightened maturity level.

 

Most protected childhood - Pinkie Pie. Being way out there on that rock farm with a loving family would isolate Pinkie from some of the more troublesome things about the world, allowing her to incubate her unique personality without the outside world influencing it too much.

 

Most free-range childhood - Rainbow Dash. We hear and see all these cool stories from her childhood, but we rarely see her parents. Rainbow Dash seems to have had that killer confidence since day one. Being allowed to go out and try things unsupervised fostered that confidence and allowed it to grow into her most notable personality trait.

 

Had the best friend in childhood - Fluttershy. It was tough to think of a positive childhood trait for Fluttershy because everything we hear about her life before the show is negative. I do recall that in Cutie Mark Chronicles, Rainbow Dash specifically says she had to "defend Fluttershy's honour". That's serious friendship. Assuming that Fluttershy had a pretty hard time of it during childhood, we can assume that having a friend like that would have been a light for her in an otherwise dark time. Having such a good friend when everyone else was mean to her would remind her of the importance of kindness and shape her into adulthood.

[ggg-2 3,550]

Happiness is so subjective, I think we can't really say who had the happiest childhood. How happy each of their childhoods were will depend on what each of them required to feel happy. We can however, say who had the most (insert specific trait here) childhood, and how each of those unique childhood traits lead to any happiness they may have experienced.

 

Most secure feeling childhood - Twilight. She was wealthy and from a young age she had the approval of the sovereign of Equestria.

 

Most supported childhood - Rarity. As has been pointed out, she has very different tastes than her parents but that obviously did not stop them from encouraging her to follow her dreams.

 

Most character-building childhood - Applejack. Although the death of her parents is not officially canon, they clearly weren't there for one reason or another. Whatever that reason was, Applejack was able to learn and grow because of it. While this may have made her early childhood a bit difficult, her later childhood would have been made easier in some ways because of her heightened maturity level.

 

Most protected childhood - Pinkie Pie. Being way out there on that rock farm with a loving family would isolate Pinkie from some of the more troublesome things about the world, allowing her to incubate her unique personality without the outside world influencing it too much.

 

Most free-range childhood - Rainbow Dash. We hear and see all these cool stories from her childhood, but we rarely see her parents. Rainbow Dash seems to have had that killer confidence since day one. Being allowed to go out and try things unsupervised fostered that confidence and allowed it to grow into her most notable personality trait.

 

Had the best friend in childhood - Fluttershy. It was tough to think of a positive childhood trait for Fluttershy because everything we hear about her life before the show is negative. I do recall that in Cutie Mark Chronicles, Rainbow Dash specifically says she had to "defend Fluttershy's honour". That's serious friendship. Assuming that Fluttershy had a pretty hard time of it during childhood, we can assume that having a friend like that would have been a light for her in an otherwise dark time. Having such a good friend when everyone else was mean to her would remind her of the importance of kindness and shape her into adulthood.

One of the writers (i forget whom) confirmed that AJ's parents had passed away through Twitter around the time that Apple Family Reunion aired. And Lauren stated that she had always considered Applejack's mother and father to be dead.

[FlutterDash4072 189]

Despite not making any friends, Twilight didn't seem unhappy during her childhood, and we haven't see anything so far that implied Rarity had a bad childhood either.

[Bright Honor 2,413]

I'd probably go with Twilight. She may not have made any friends, but from what we've seen she seemed perfectly happy.

[The Awesome One 1,314]

I guess popular opinion goes with Twilight and I would not argue with that. She got to become Celestia's personal protege at such a young age and that must have had her over the moon.

[Stellafera 3,835]

Gonna go with Rarity myself as well as definitely putting her as having the most normal childhood. Twilight liked learning from Celestia, but the loneliness and misanthropy probably didn't do her favors, you know? RD was bullied as a kid and if Testing, Testing, 1, 2, 3 and the "Got kicked out of any flight schools lately?" line from Sonic Rainboom are any indication, probably had a really tough time of things in school academically too.

 

Rarity has her personality/ambition clash with her parents and sister, but other than that she was probably a pretty OK, socially well adjusted filly.

Edited May 3, 2015 by Stellafera

[Grumpy Enchantress 586]

Unfortunately not Pinkie Pie. Although, I'm gonna invent a time machine and go back to the moment she was born and make sure that she's happy every single moment of her life by having future Dashie do the Rainboom early!!!         

Edited May 3, 2015 by Grumpy Enchantress

[BlackWater627 700]

I think I'm going to also go with Rarity on this one. Twilight seems to have had a good childhood overall, but her perfectionism may have dampened it as well. From what I know, Rarity's early life was as enjoyable as normally possible - with a little sister anyways. 

[They call me Loyalty 1,941]

If I had to choose one childhood for myself, my choice would be Twilight's. As it's, mine was more like Fluttershy's.

[rarity1 461]

Probably Twilight, she seems to have had a happy life with a loving family and now she's an Alicorn princess.

[sweetolebob18 724]

I'd go with Apple Jack until her parents died.  After that, I'd say Rarity.  She was in the theater group & had the looks to be one of the popular girls.