Theorycrafting Alicorns are Gods and Mortals (Fan Theory)

[Misty Shadow 7,088]

Yeah, I know, I can't believe it's not about Sombra either. 

https://www.deviantart.com/cloudmistdragon/art/Alicorns-are-Gods-and-Mortals-MLP-Theory-966460849

Opening

Recently, in Make Your Mark Chapter 4, we were provided new information about alicorns in MLP. Although I’ve theorized the possibility of Opaline being the daughter of Radiant Hope in the past, it seems that this is no longer a possibility with Opaline’s backstory of being a fire alicorn involving her knowing Princesses Celestia and Luna as a kid, being around the same age as them. While Opaline is definitely the kind of pony who’s known to lie, and some fans do believe she is lying about her backstory, having her be the daughter of Hope and King Sombra is not the direction I believe the writers are going in anymore.

This does not mean I’m disregarding all the evidence we’ve seen, but I’m more than open to admitting that I was wrong. That’s why I’ve put my three most recent Sombra theories under scrutiny, meaning I’m watching closely for a full disconfirmation on any major speculations made in them. Very obviously, I’m no omniscient deity…I’m more like Zipp Storm. Sorry for potentially insulting Zipp, I’m not stroking my ego with that comparison. It only means that like Zipp, I’m just someone doing their best with their research and acting on hunches, hunches that can be wrong. We still have good reason to believe in Hope and Sombra having a part in G5’s lore (especially with three new likely Sombra references). For all we know, we could have just had it backwards with Opaline being Hope’s mother instead of her daughter or something of the sort. However, everything’s ultimately for the G5 team to decide, as we know.

In any case, this theory is not going to focus on Hope or Sombra. This theory will center on what I’ve postulated about the lore of alicorns in MLP that will provide answers to unanswered questions and explain apparent inconsistencies.

The Natural-Born Alicorn Problem

I’m sure the exact same question is on everyone’s mind right now, “If Celestia and Luna didn’t understand how a natural-born alicorn like Flurry Heart could exist in Equestria, how can they be natural-born alicorns themselves?”. There actually is a simple answer to this. If Celestia and Luna are from Skyros as Opaline alleges, it could be that Skyros is a realm separate from Equestria. If you go back to Friendship is Magic’s The Crystalling, you’ll see that Celestia said that the birth of an alicorn was something Equestria had never seen.

How would Skyros be separate from Equestria though if Equestria covers everything? Think of Skyros like heaven and Equestria like earth. If the alicorns are supposed to be like gods, it would make sense for them to first be born outside of a mortal realm. Given Opaline’s talk of having an “elemental duty”, it is apparent to us that Skyros is where the alicorns are given their element to represent in the world. But why not just have them be born as alicorns in Equestria? We know for absolute certain that Princesses Cadance and Twilight Sparkle, representing love and friendship respectively, were not born as alicorns and still had their elements. I’ll give my answer to this after I elaborate on another apparent plothole.

Opaline Being Born a Unicorn

In the second issue of the MLP G5 comics, Opaline described herself as a unicorn. Was she lying, casting some sort of spell on herself to make her appear as one? Not likely, considering that in MYM’s A Little Horse, she expressed great frustration over ponies not being taught about her in school, seeing it as an insult to her pride. Not only that, but this frustration followed Misty relaying to her the discoveries Zipp had made about alicorns, learning almost everything about her. Are the comics simply non-canon? Even if they are, I doubt there would be a continuity inconsistency about a major character’s pony type, especially this early on. It is true that Tell Your Tale and Make Your Mark, the G5 shows, may have different continuities, but share almost all the same established elements and of course, the same character sheets.  

However, if we offer the benefit of the doubt that nothing from the comics has misled us, the question is obviously begged. How can Opaline or any alicorn for that matter be both born as an alicorn and born as another breed of pony? My hypothesis is this, as previously alluded to. The alicorns are first born as spiritual beings in Skyros before they inhabit a mortal body in Equestria. My answer for why they are not just born as alicorns in Equestria is because they must first live a life as a normal, mortal pony to abstain from arrogance and becoming drunk on their power. It's possible that Opaline had an experience similar to Luna’s before she became Nightmare Moon, given her jealousy of Celestia and Luna.

Opaline also made a rather uncharacteristic description about Celestia and Luna as fillies, claiming that they pompously snubbed her and pushed her around. However, we can’t refute this, since we don’t know anything about what Celestia and Luna were like when they were young in Skyros. If they truly were stuck-up as Opaline purports, is it possible that the reason they had to be mentored by Starswirl the Bearded, a mortal unicorn, was to be taught humility? You wouldn’t think an alicorn god could learn anything from a mortal unicorn…unless they were first born as one. There does exist evidence that the alicorns are physically born mortal.

Evidence of Alicorn Mortality

What if the real reason why Celestia and Luna “almost never helped” in FiM before Season 9 is because they’re not as powerful as we presume? Even ordinary unicorns can raise the sun and moon while Flurry Heart, a natural-born alicorn, can destroy a powerful ancient artifact with her voice alone as a baby. Granted, they’re still powerful, but there seems to be a difference in power here.

One thing that makes Celestia in particular seem so powerful is her knowledge of Twilight’s destiny, even as it’s made clear throughout the series that she’s not all-knowing. What if being born in Skyros is not only how she knew of Twilight’s destiny, but also Twilight’s existence? Despite the fact that Twilight was born so long after Celestia came to Equestria, Opaline didn’t wreak the havoc we saw her make in Equestria until the time of Twilight’s reign even with her grudge against Celestia and Luna allegedly going back to the time of her childhood with them in Skyros. Time must work differently between the realms or not exist in Skyros. All the alicorns could theoretically be “born at the same time” in Skyros and also be born in different time periods in Equestria if what I’ve hypothesized is correct.

This also explains how Cadance can be the Crystal Princess of an empire that vanished a millennium before she was born. I also believe this would tie everything together with Twilight, even explaining why she appears to have “died” when she is transported to an ethereal realm to become an alicorn. As a unicorn, she is mortal and possibly had her physical body destroyed. But as an alicorn, she is ethereal, only bearing a “physical” form that she learned to shape to her liking. This could be why she doesn’t appear in her form like Celestia’s in her message to the Mane 5. A question of what being ethereal was like was even something a pony asked Sunny Starscout in MYM’s Ali-Conned.

Furthermore, this explains the apparent “deaths” of Celestia and Luna at the end of FiM. Since an alicorn’s role is to fulfill their elemental duties in Equestria, passing their roles onto Twilight must have been what caused them to leave the mortal world.  

Finally, I’ll add that this even introduces a dark possibility for why Twilight is absent from the world of G5 despite being an immortal alicorn. She said it took all of her magical strength to stop Opaline from stealing the magic. What if after doing that, she no longer had the power to fulfill her role of maintaining friendship and harmony in Equestria, thus leading Equestria to become as divided as it did, and in turn, causing her to “pass on”? There’s just so much you can explain by considering all these possibilities.  

Conclusion

Again, before I close out, obligatory reminder, I am just a researcher. The show doing something different than what I theorize is never going to shock me. Still, I will amend whatever I have to in my theories or even mark them as disconfirmed if I have to. I’ll also say that if there’s something that did shock me, it’s how everything just kind of came to me with this theory despite it only being my second theory not related to Sombra and my first non-Sombra theory related to official MLP content, not fan content, at that. That may have something to do with my fascination for providing answers to things in the show that were barely or never explained. Even if my answers turn out to be incorrect, at least they temporarily fill a gap the show left. Nevertheless, I’m excited for whatever the show will do with the new alicorn lore, but for now, I hope you find my answers to the unexplained satisfactory.  

[Props Valroa 26,051]

@CloudMistDragon

This is a very good theory you have made. I am not exactly sure whether I 100% agree with it myself, but I will generally say that I have always been against the idea of Celestia and Luna not being born alicorns. It was always my own personal headcannon that Celestia and Luna are the offspring of Alicorns who were from some ancient empire that has long since died out. Skyross does generally fit in well with my own personal theories about the world. Your own theory of it, seems to be close to what I consider "Elysium" to be.

As for Opaline, you raise a point I didn't think of. We don't know what Celestia and Luna were like in their youth. Maybe Opaline was just a scared, nervous filly who was hurt by what Celestia and Luna did to her? Though, there is much to explain. At least this gives us a look into things more than before. I did not expect Opaline to have been around when Celestia and Luna were fillies, I expected her to be a former student of Twilight, to be honest.