What's your theories for what happened to equestria between generations?

[Tony_Pony 4]

My theory is that while twilight is a good teacher, her lessons failed to really reach her student, and maybe she was forced into a retirement earlier than anticipated by some unforseen circumstances. Either way twilight likely left without a proper heir and the ponies appointed leaders as guides and figureheads. 

 

I think twilight had a hoof in creating the 3 major cities, maybe seeking to showcase the beauty of each pony species in their own unique ways. After she left (or maybe disappeared) the ponies and their new leaders over time began to congregate in their cities out of growing fear and mistrust of their own kind. 

 

I do think maybe a small war even broke out, driving ponies deeper into their cities and cementing generations of stories about how terrible the others are and to be afraid. All this time magic seeps away slowly and becomes nothing more than a legend. I really do think that the G4 series is as ancient to the G5 ponies as greek and roman mythos is to us. 

 

I don't have any basis on any if this aside from what i know about the series and just seeing the movie the other night.  It's just for fun! Don't take this too seriously ^w^

[Evil Pink One 12,990]

there's a high chance that twilight is still alive and took a rest for she couldn't find her successor.... or is observing.....

a major villain sure is the reason why the races didn't cooperate I guess....

[Fluttershutter 2,118]

we'll never know. 

But I say Twilight realized that at some point the ponies would break apart again so she created the crystals knowing that eventually a new group would bring them back together again.

[Tony_Pony 4]

1 hour ago, Fluttershutter said:

we'll never know. 

But I say Twilight realized that at some point the ponies would break apart again so she created the crystals knowing that eventually a new group would bring them back together again.

I like this idea! Maybe she knew she couldn't hold ponykind's hooves forever and things would need to get worse before they hot better 

It would be pretty awful for an entire species to have to rely on their princess to even get along at a basic level. She'd be stuck in that position for eternity teaching the same lessons over and over, and they'd never really learn for themselves 

[RulesofRarity 489]

Everyone keeps wondering about Twilight but what about Flurry Heart? We see that she eventually rules the Crystal Empire and she should also have an extended lifespan. 

Edited September 29, 2021 by RulesofRarity

[mlploverlizzy 289]

A villain who had a big influence was most likely the reason for the divide

[Shadow_Storm 0]

The last episodes of mlp kind of remind me of what's happening in the new movie. What if Tirek, Chrysalis and Cozy Glow escaped, drove everypony apart, and used Grogar's bell to take away magic? The magic might have also disappeared because there was no friendship.

[TotallyNotGrogar 11]

On 2021-09-29 at 12:52 PM, RulesofRarity said:

Everyone keeps wondering about Twilight but what about Flurry Heart? We see that she eventually rules the Crystal Empire and she should also have an extended lifespan. 

When thinking about a time span in the (possibly) thousands of years McFlurry Heart's age wasn't too different to Twilight's or Cadence's, so we'll have to see if any alicorn from the ancient Equestria days is still kicking.

Or at least whatever the Crystal Empire became without the magical Crystal Heart.

Edited October 2, 2021 by TotallyNotGrogar

[ShadOBabe 18,984]

Nothing in depth yet, but I get the feeling that something happened to Twilight. She was the glue that held all the tribes and races together.

I’m guessing that she died or was otherwise indisposed, and the individuals that she left behind tried to keep her teachings going. But that could only last so long. Eventually everyone that new her and the Magic of Friendship would be gone, and presumably some kind of cross tribe tension broke the ponies up again.

[StitchandMLPlover 930]

My theory is something bad happened to the Mane 6 like what happened to the Pillars before Luster could fully appreciate friendship and be a good princess and losing the mane 6 led to suspicion among ponies and each race blamed the other. We know from Sprout's lines that Earth Ponies believed the unicorns attacked them so their must have been physical fighting at some point. Once ponies separated magic drained out leading to more tension. Perhaps Windigos even appeared and ponies separated into 3 geographic areas to prevent Windigos from feeding. Another theory is that Twilight was never immortal so after her death things eroded. 

Edited October 2, 2021 by StitchandMLPlover

[StitchandMLPlover 930]

On 2021-09-28 at 10:33 AM, Fluttershutter said:

we'll never know. 

But I say Twilight realized that at some point the ponies would break apart again so she created the crystals knowing that eventually a new group would bring them back together again.

This makes sense. In the movie we see Twilight's cutie mark and the crystals together on the stain glass and it looks like Twilight's magic got infused into them like how the Pillars made the elements and the tree of harmony before disappearing so perhaps Twilight knew the Mane 6 would disappear and made the crystals to control moon and sun and harness the 3 types of magic of each tribe from her friends. When pony races separated the crystals didn't work and magic disappeared. 

[Goat-kun 2,498]

Everything changed when Tambelon attacked.

[BornAgainBrony 2,395]

13 hours ago, StitchandMLPlover said:

Once ponies separated magic drained out leading to more tension. Perhaps Windigos even appeared and ponies separated into 3 geographic areas to prevent Windigos from feeding.

Maybe a bit of both. I don't think magic just happened to drain. It didn't happen with the pre-Hearthswarming divide, but it did here. I think the disappearance of magic was intentional, sort of like a "nuclear disarming" before things devolved into Fallout Equestria. The magic gets stored into the crystals and scattered to the three kingdoms, so the only way to restore magic is by the three coming back together. It's like a really clever time capsule that will only open when the users of what's inside have demonstrated that they have the wisdom to use it responsibly.

The removal of magic may have also disabled the Wendigos, if what they feed on is somehow linked to Pony magic.

[Skylight Scintillate 1,851]

I think that it was a really long time between the two seasons, and it was a gradual decline before completely falling apart sort of like the Roman Empire or the Chinese Dynasties IRL. In addition, I would say that it would have been such a long time after Twilight's rein that there would basically nothing she could have done to prevent it from happening.

[Rushing cash 824]

It will be cool if the show will touch on it but I will not hold my breath. We actually saw only 3 locations, I am pretty sure there are many other places that we will visit, perhaps there are still (if sunny is not a permanent alicorn) some alicorns, maybe in the crystal empire, we still need to learn how the sun and moon movie, is there an artifact that someone usues, alicorm magic or was it a permanant spell that was placed that keeps the sun and moon moving? 

We also did not see or heard anything about other races, do some still live in equestria? What ponies think of them?

I believe that it was gradual, once twilight was gone, eventually ponies started to distrust other species (perhaps they have done something or some ponies started to believe that other species were inferior to them and drove them away (in G4 ponies were the most developed species)) and started to drift away from them, at some point, maybe there were some villains that gave each race a bad name and slowly caused a discord between the races.