Princesses Celestia and Luna Almost Never Helping

[Misty Shadow 7,710]

I was inspired to make this topic after watching this fantastic analysis video.

WARNING: This video contains strong language people may consider offensive, viewer discretion is advised. 

Don't take the video too seriously if you're a fan of the royal sisters, the mockery's tongue-in-cheek. I like Celestia and love Luna and never liked how they never really did much in the show. After watching this, I do feel like their lack of doing much in the show was worse than I remember and wanted to see if anyone else felt the same way.

Edited July 7 by Misty Shadow

[Cheerilee 26,571]

Oh, totally, I never found the Princesses interesting specifically because they have never done much of anything and the writers seemed to never want to answer anything about their backstories. To me they are rather boring, unpopular opinion, I know.

[Metemponychosis 1,252]

I've been talking about this since season 4. The difference is that I blame the writers and not the characters.

[Megas 27,498]

Yeah, I feel this is on the writers rather than the characters themselves. I've always felt Celestia in particular they went out of their way to neglect, specific moments where she's left out entirely. The fact that it took them 7 seasons to give her a single focus episode is absolutely inexcusable

And really the way they were written to give Twilight tasks to "test her" never sat right with me. I'd rather they just be incompetent or be jobbers instead, because the alternative just seems actively douchy

[Sparklefan1234 168,018]

Luna helped the Cutie Mark Crusaders so at least that's something. 

[LittleEpona 34]

I feel like it’s more the writer's problem than the princesses themselves. I love Celestia and Luna but I wish that the writers would’ve given them more to do. 

[Player the FNFL Boi 117]

Kinda funny how the main 6 always does the work while the princesses probably just watch from the side eating snacks 

[Rafa Stary 2,651]

I personally have almost no issues with how the Princesses are treated in the show, and I think the criticism towards them should be directed to Discord too.

The thing is, they are super overpowered beings in a story where they aren't the protagonists, the show isn't about them, it's about Twilight and her 5 friends, the Mane Six need to be the ones to solve the problems, they're the heroes.

If Luna and Celestia always tried to solve the problems by their own, not only they would steal the spotlight from the protagonists and ruin their character arcs, as they would also prevent the story from being told, know about the popular question "If God is so powerful, then why doesn't he just eliminate Satan, Demons, Hell and all of the evil things?" It's hard to make a story where your protagonist befriends a overpowered being. If Celestia and Luna tried to defeat Tirek the moment he popped up, then "Twilight's Kingdom" and all the awesome moments that fans love in that two-parter just wouldn't have happened. The writers need to make a excuse for these stories to work without the interference from these kinds of characters.

That's why I mentioned Discord earlier, because, isn't he treated the exactly same way as the Princesses? Let's see, he was this super overpowered creature who literally won for a moment during his time as a antagonist. When the protagonists befriended him, what happens later? He tries to help against Tirek, but he is fooled and gets his power stolen. He tries to help in the 2nd Changeling Invasion, but once he arrives at their home, he can't use his powers. And in the final story, he's once again fooled and get his power stolen. Also, what about the events he wasn't present? Where was he during the Stygian attack? The Storm King's army invasion? Cozy Glow's arc? 

That's pretty much how it is, he can't participate in the incidents nor use his powers to solve the problems, because the story just won't work with him, it won't happen, so, either the writers had to leave him out of these events, or nerf him, it's exactly the same that happened with Celestia and Luna, the difference is that Discord had his own story arc, so we could see very well how powerful he was when a villain, he was almost invincible and could do anything. But when he becomes an ally, things change, he can't do all that stuff he did when he was a villain anymore (just like Fluttershy says to him in Season 3 Ep 10), becaus if he tries to, the story ends. That's a common practice in fictional works, it happens all the time. Look at how ridiculously powerful Vegeta was during his Villain arc, he seemed to be nearly immortal (as the characters themselves say), but once he becomes an ally in the next arcs, he's nerfed and beaten multiple times.

But back to the Princesses, I at least give props to the writers for at least trying to explain why they can't help, I really think it wasn't good to completely ignore Luna in the 1st Changeling invasion, but the rest for me was actually fine, at least in the first seasons. People must think that Celestia losing to Chrysalis was really lame, but I personally think that was really good, when I saw it for the first time I thought it was awesome and seeing Celestia losing shocked me positively, because they explained why it happened. Chrysalis makes it very clear that a being can become insanely powerful by absorbing "love energy", yet, their Energy Clash wasn't just "Celestia lost, weakling", nope, we actually get to see Chrysalis struggling a lot and Celestia almost winning, even though Chrysalis become very strong with the power she stole, Celestia with her own power could almost defeat her, and I think that was really awesome to see.

And I really like how in the early seasons they give a reason for them to not interfere, Celestia makes very clear to Twilight and her friends (and even Luna, in The Crystal Empire) that she wants them to solve the problems for themselves, for their own character developments and specially for Twilight's growth into a princess, so she knew that she had to leave these problems for her pupil, so she could become an Alicorn Princess, so it was all part of her plans and how much she trusted Twilight (although I admit, A Canterlot Wedding was a huge exception, but Celestia made it very clear from the beginning of the first part that she was going to deal with the situation this time, as she was watching for any kind of threat).

Also, I said before, this is Twilight's and her friends' show, still, the writers again gives us another reason for them to not interfere by showing that the two already confronted these villains in the past, Celestia "defeated" Nightmare Moon (and that episode shows us that she's stronger than Celestia), the two defeated Discord and King Sombra, etc, plus that was a time in history where they were the only beings capable of dealing with such opponents, so they had to do with by themselves. But once Twilight and her Frienda arrive, they are no more alone, they now have a group of individuals that they can trust to solve these problems. So the two had their time to shine, and decided to leave the situations to Twilight and her friends, so they could become their successors, something that in fact happened in the series finale.

So I definitely don't think that the two were written poorly or anything, and I think the show have very good reasons to not let them deal with the situations, of course you can disagree and dislike it, I actually do think some of the explanations for them to not participe or for losing are a bit half-assed, I think the explanations in the first four Seasons were good, but post-Season 4 I think they kinda lost it, making they lose multiple times indeed makes them look weakling or useless. I personally think they could've done here was was done with Beerus and Whis in Dragon Ball Super, they are insanely powerful gods and befriended the protagonists, still, they are never show losing, they actually only help when things go very out of control, and sometimes they have major roles in the arcs, but they never are the ones to solve the problem, but they help without losing their position, they are still feared and respected, I think they could've done the same with the Princesses here, both of them losing to someone like Cozy Glow is indeed very hard to swallow 

[Luciferase 15]

Have to also agree that it's more writing problem than the sisters themselves, as that always sadly tends to be the case whenever you have some kind of media with super all-powerful characters. If the writers were gonna keep the princesses on the sidelines, then I think it would've at least helped to explain why. Perhaps the whole original Nightmare Moon incident resulted in their power being nerfed, or even just them having been at the whole princess and protector business for so long that their strength was finally wearing out and that they simply weren't as young and full of energy as they used to be (I mean, they did end up ultimately going to the old-folks retirement village so ). After all, those two have been at it for literal millennia and probably weren't even originally intending to rule for as long as they did, so I can only imagine the burn-out they've accumulated over the years.

Would be a shame, but at least then it wouldn't have felt as big of a cop-out to see these supposedly all-powerful ancient rulers kept having the Mane 6 handle everything each time they tripped and stubbed their hooves 

[Iforgotmybrain 5,007]

I feel like what I'm going to say has pretty much already been stated. But yeah. They kinda wrote themselves into a corner with Celestia and Luna, I feel. They have these two super powerful, ancient, borderline Godly alicorns who could theoretically handle pretty much any threat that could face Equestria. Buttttt the show isn't really focused on these two sisters, it's about Twilight and the rest of the Mane 6 (+1 when Starlight joins). So they can't just have them solving and dealing with everything like you would kinda logically expect, given that they're the the divine rulers and all. So they come up with various reasons/excuses for why they can't deal with the villains, or they just delegate it off to Twilight and pals by default since they're the main protagonists.

On 2024-06-29 at 3:49 PM, Sparklefan1234 said:

Luna helped the Cutie Mark Crusaders so at least that's something. 

She did! I feel like they were kinda setting her up to be a mentor to them like Celestia was to Twilight but it didn't really end up going anywhere sadly. Would've loved to see that.

[Twinkie Pie 95]

can we sit down and talk about how princess cadence isnt relevant to the plot 90% of the time