Is Princess Celestia really that bad at making decisions?

[Commander_PonyShep 349]

So in Twilight's Kingdom, Princesses Celestia, Luna, and Cadence thought transferring all their magic into Twilight would be a good idea.  Not only would they hide it inside her, even though she would eventually be discovered in a window painting, but they would also believe that all that power would be enough to defeat even Tirek.  They would even go far as to make Twilight keep it a secret from her five friends, for the sake of "protecting" them.  Unfortunately, as the big, dumb Dragon Ball Z-style battle between Twilight and Tirek proved, alicorn magic is ineffective against someone like him, compared to the blue box and the friendship-powered Rainbow Power contained inside... in other words, just a simple-yet-strong friendship between Twilight and co., period.

 

So why?  Why is it that Princess Celestia makes so many wrong decisions?  She keeps telling Twilight to fight alone, like in The Crystal Empire Parts I and II, but in the end it was Spike -- and Twilight's faith in the purple dragon -- that saved the Crystal Empire from King Sombra.  And that goes for Equestria Girls; Twilight was told that she couldn't bring her friends into the human world without "disrupting the balance of the other world", and yet she turned to her friends' alternate human selves as a temporary alternative when doing battle with Sunset Shimmer.

[Banul 3,831]

I know a lot of people don't consider the comic canon, but the the Friends Forever comic with her and Spike, she mentions that she sometimes lets Twilight handle things that see could have easily done herself so that Twilight could learn something from the experience.

 

For example, during the Crystal Empire thing she learned that letting Spike save the day without her was more important than passing her test.

[Pastel 7,630]

Celestia's idea was very smart in my opinion, if they had removed that stupid window painting, Tirek would have never found Twilight and the alicorns magic.

Edited May 23, 2014 by Blobulle

[Commander_PonyShep 349]

Celestia's idea was very smart in my opinion, if they had removed that stupid window painting, Tirek would have never found Twilight and the alicorns magic.

But at the same time, it also removed Twilight's friends out of the equation.  The whole point of the show is Twilight's friendship with her friends, which eventually explained the Rainbow Power re-imprisoning Tirek, restoring everypony's magic, and even building a new castle-tree in the middle of Ponyville, complete with thrones for all of the Mane Six plus Spike.  The alicorn magic was designed to show how every other magic is futile compared to the magic of friendship.

 

Plus, Discord was with Tirek at the time, so he would've explained to him that there was a fourth princess anyway, even without the window painting.

Edited May 23, 2014 by Commander_PonyShep

[LZRD WZRD 1,929]

Celestia didnt have much of a choice in Twilight's Kingdom. They couldn't stop Tirek, so the best thing to do was to hide it with the one princess Tirek was least likely to be aware of. Also, The Crystal Empire was meant to be a test, that's why she said that because she wanted to see if Twilight could handle a tough situation by any means necessary.

 

Also, Celestia is not perfect. I don't get the impression that she's a Goddess and even then that still wouldn't make her perfect. Celestia may make questionable choices, and I think that makes her a better character than just someone who always has the answer to everything

[TwilightDreamer 69]

Celestia knew that she is just as fallible as everypony else and knew that any kind of power and magic is nothing compared to the Magic of Friendship considering it's complexity since she doesn't know anything more about it herself.

 

So, in that sense, but I would say she pretty much is good at making decisions; she just either doesn't have a choice or just makes things for Twilight to see if she is worthy of her destiny, knowing that she is destined for greatness since her entry exam when she was a filly.

[pony.colin 156]

Celestia is absolutely terrible at making decisions - it's amazing that Equestria hasn't fallen under her leadership.  Okay, she's probably better at administration for other things rather than the defense of Equestria, she really does need a military council or committee of some sort to do that strategy and planning for her.  

 

If we need to go over the terrible planning of Celestia in Twilight's Kingdom again, then i will recopy my initial post on Celestia's reasoning and planning skills:

 

- Now afterall this, Tirek is going for the last real power source: alicorn magic. And what's Celestia's plan? Get rid of our alicorn magic and hide it somewhere else. Oh plot, you were doing so well, guess we have to have Celestia act as moron to set up the whole 2^nd half of this two parter episode. Giant evil villain, taking over your Equestria kingdom/or city states, whatever. All Equestrian citizens are being robbed of their magic, getting captured and falling prey to Tirek, essentially getting ready to be enslaved. And the great leader of this entire kingdom, instead of coming up with a defence plan to save the kingdom and it's citizens ... decides to hide any real force of offense in Twilight. Really??

 

I once made the joke that if Equestria was truly invaded by some real threat that wanted to dominate Equestria and take them over, it would be a fairly easy campaign to do so. Thanks Celestia for confirming that for me. Whole kingdom in peril, pony citizens being robbed of magic and being captured – abandon kingdom and save thy royal flanks ... thanks Celestia. And of course this plan isn't well thought out – which painfully shows in the 2^nd half. Nope, definitely not putting up a fight to defend thy kingdom, this plan will surely not fail. (sarcasm) Yep, ponies being steam-rolled here.

 

So Twilight (on top of her base power) gets the power of three alicorn princess, the logic for hiding it in Twilight is the belief that Tirek is unaware of a fourth Alicorn princess (GEE, if that was supposed to be a secret – THEN WE REALLY SHOULDN'T HAVE A GLASS MURAL DEDICATED TO HER HONOUR, OUT ON DISPLAY AT THE CANTERLOT ROYAL CASTLE, FOR EVERYPONY TO SEE ..... really? Didn't anypony think it would have been a good idea to have removed that BEFORE you toss all your magic away? Celestia ....   ) Honestly if Tirek didn't know about Twilight – then he could have started ruling Equestria right there and then (and we could have set up the viva le resistance scenario against your new tyrannical ruler)

 

Celestia's plan was plain bad from the beginning and sets up everything for the end game.

Poor Shining Armour as well, you got abandoned by your leader and your sister kind of accidentally forgot about you – would have expect a bit more for Twilight to have kept her family a little more closer to safety, but guess duty calls. (end rant bit)

 

 

 

Celestia has never been great at defence of the Kingdom, leaving her subjects to untold amounts of peril; we could perhaps just chalk that up to Equestria never being under attack all that often, maybe. But after this fiasco, you figure they would bother to introduce some changes to this system.

 

To also call into question some of Celestia's other moments of questionable decision making.

 

- Why couldn't she have reformed her sister Luna, the instant that she used the element of harmony?  She chose the banishment option.  The two parter that kicks off this whole series, we just see Twilight and soon to be mane 6 recognize their element of harmony and blast Nightmare moon back to Luna's old younger self.  What was different compared to Twilight and mane 6 compared to Celestia that resulted in "reform" option versus "banishment" option.  Was it a decision based on an emotional response? That you were so angry with your sister that you sent her away? Not usually good to make decisions based on emotional impulse - better to do them on logic and reasoning.

 

- Why did Celestia completely 100% doubt Twilight's claim that Princess Cadence was evil (the first time, around 18:34, just before the end of episode 25 of the two parter).  Twilight was right in her suspicions of fake Cadance (Chrysalis).  You'd figure that Celestia and Twilight would have built a reasonable close teacher to student bond (or surrogate motherly like bond) to not completely doubt Twilight's suspicion.   Even if Celestia didn't believe her #1 honourable student, you'd figure she would have had at least tried to organize an investigation team to check things out to either completely refute Twilight's claim or investigate based on her own self doubt (if she had any).   But she just completely throws Twilight's claim away, not even bothering to give it a second thought - and she doesn't have the dignity to say sorry for the doubt at the end of the two parter either (at least AJ had the decency to say sorry).  Does she even know Twilight well enough that she wouldn't lie to her mentor?

 

- When Crystal empire suddenly appears - what do? Write letter to Twilight asking her to come and go and secure the crystal empire's safety.  Yeah, yeah it's supposed to be a test for Twilight but honestly Celestia, you're kind of gambling with the crystal ponies lives here - was there a back up plan if Twilight had failed ? Just wondering.  You know, because you would have lost an empire/city state to Sombre again if your trump card didn't pull out.  Then again, me expecting Celestia to not gamble with other ponies' lives is apparently too high of an expectation.

 

She apparently likes doing that anyways, given the Tirek situation, whole Equestria fails apart and does not bother to muster up any sort of defence plan or at least plan some evacuation for ponies safety - well done.  I bet she enjoys playing Risk (Equestria edition).  (Note, I have never played Risk, i'm only using that as a joke. ) 

 

Seriously, she's terrible at defense/offense planning.  But Celestia might be much better at administration duties (if we are to take comics into consideration, and that will be based off of how much consider them canon, which they are really loose at best, and completely off at times).

Edited May 24, 2014 by pony.colin

[Ianpiersonjdavis 513]

Normally I would say no, and that was just an oversight on her part considering the pressure they were under while trying to deal with Tirek but,

given her behavior in the current arc in the IDW comics

-that wouldn't surprise me.

 

Still, one would have assumed that a backstabbing traitor like Discord would have rat them out immediately, since he loves causing chaos so much-so they probably felt that it would be pointless at the time to try and hide something they thought Tirek already knew.

 

But, yes-it was unwise to trust someone like Discord with such an important task-especially when such a character hates their guts for the way they have treated him in the past...

[Oblivion 20,277]

And what do you wanna bet that Celestia (Trollestia?) actually planned for all of that to happen, as sort of a test type of thing. Maybe she wanted to see what Twilight would do and was 100 percent certain that Twilight would make the right decision in the end.

 

And even if she didn't then you can't go as far as to overthink everything. It is still a kids show remember? So it is always possible that   this could have just been used as an easy way to further the plot in those two episodes as well.

[Kel_Grym 1,917]

Celestia planned everything and had secret back up plans to her back up plans. She's a tactical genius. She only behaves like a fool now to lull a future enemy into a sense of false security, so he can get cocky and make a mistake.

 

That's when she will pounce. Also the same reason she threw the fight with Chrysalis. Gotta look at the big picture.

[Whofch 128]

I really dislike the whole 'she's planned it all' excuse people throw around. That only works if the show actually shows that she has done so. It never has. Things just appear to work themselves out. That's not the same. It's just a cheap explanation people latch on to. Celestia is bad and the princesses need better writing! She's a peacetime ruler.

[Kel_Grym 1,917]

Bronys getting tired of Princess Celestia having every thing planned excuse?

 

[Sunny Fox 5,952]

 

- Why couldn't she have reformed her sister Luna, the instant that she used the element of harmony?  She chose the banishment option.  The two parter that kicks off this whole series, we just see Twilight and soon to be mane 6 recognize their element of harmony and blast Nightmare moon back to Luna's old younger self.  What was different compared to Twilight and mane 6 compared to Celestia that resulted in "reform" option versus "banishment" option.  Was it a decision based on an emotional response? That you were so angry with your sister that you sent her away? Not usually good to make decisions based on emotional impulse - better to do them on logic and reasoning.

 

- Why did Celestia completely 100% doubt Twilight's claim that Princess Cadence was evil (the first time, around 18:34, just before the end of episode 25 of the two parter).  Twilight was right in her suspicions of fake Cadance (Chrysalis).  You'd figure that Celestia and Twilight would have built a reasonable close teacher to student bond (or surrogate motherly like bond) to not completely doubt Twilight's suspicion.   Even if Celestia didn't believe her #1 honourable student, you'd figure she would have had at least tried to organize an investigation team to check things out to either completely refute Twilight's claim or investigate based on her own self doubt (if she had any).   But she just completely throws Twilight's claim away, not even bothering to give it a second thought - and she doesn't have the dignity to say sorry for the doubt at the end of the two parter either (at least AJ had the decency to say sorry).  Does she even know Twilight well enough that she wouldn't lie to her mentor?

 

I totally agree with you that Celestia's plans in the Season 4 finale were really stupid.

 

As for the banishing rather than restoring Luna as Nightmare Moon, I get the impression that she didn't have that option. First of all, she wasn't angry at Luna, she was crying over the fact that she was being forced to banish her. Secondly, Celestia once mentioned that she and Luna were once connected to the Elements. As we've seen, the Elements are less powerful or useless when their wielders are not in harmony with each other. In the comic as well, half of the Nightmare Force's reason for taking one of the Mane Six was that it prevented the Elements being used. So it's quite possible that reforming Luna was not possible.

 

For "A Canterlot Wedding," that is one of its many, many problems, but I think the writers were trying something: to make Twilight hit rock bottom, so that the hope spot where it seems like Cadance will make up with her and then doesn't will have more of an effect. 

[Everleaf 541]

It was not a bad idea but could be better so I can't really say anything to be honest...

[Gary S. 102]

Yeah, the decisions were risky and maybe even stupid, but before we start to build a bonfire i say...uh...in Celestia's defence, Luna and Cadance didn't make the impression they disagreed with her. Actually they were totally okay with these two decisions. Luna was only like "Are you nuts?" in the Crystal Empire episode, when Twilight was supposed to do everything.

[ghostfacekiller39 23,860]

I don't think that she's bad when she has time to think - however, she struggles when it came to thinking on the fly about how to handle things, it appears. 

"Let's just give all of our powers to a n00b princess so Tirek can't have them." There HAD to be a better solution than that, and, given that Celestia is pretty much the most powerful being in Equestria, you'd expect her to be more wise when handling that situation - it could've brought harm to Twilight. While it worked out in the end, it was still a risk that ultimately shouldn't have been taking, given it was gambling the whole fate of Equestria on something that had a low chance of succeeding. So, perhaps thinking on the fly isn't her strong suit, but she is wise and she is a good leader who has proven she's not afraid to make the tough choices and personal sacrifices for the betterment of her people
 

[hawkflame 3,310]

Actually I think she's shown to have incredible foresight- look at how she handled Nightmare Moon in season 1- she knew NMM was going to return, and more or less manipulated Twilight into finding the other elements by making friends. Same for Return of Harmony- she knew what it took to get Twilight back into the game, and all it needed was reminding her of the friendship lessons she learned.

 

Regarding the Alicorn Power, there is logic to hiding it and then using it on him when he least expects it.

[Sunny Fox 5,952]

Regarding the Alicorn Power, there is logic to hiding it and then using it on him when he least expects it.

There would be, but Princess Celestia gave absolutely zero indication that she wanted Twilight to confront Tirek. Her plan was for Twilight to hide, not to use the combined power of the 4 alicorn princesses in one to defeat him. Otherwise, she would have had Twilight simply smash him magically when he entered. He actually would have been weaker, having neither the Mane Six or Discord's magic at that point.

Edited May 27, 2014 by SolarFox

[Darker 1,352]

She's a good leader, but horrible at leading.

[Pastel 7,630]

She's a good leader, but horrible at leading.

I'm not sure to understand what you mean.

[Darker 1,352]

I'm not sure to understand what you mean.

I just wanted to say something different from what the title says. She's seriously horrible making decisions, but has indeed the potential to be a good leader, because she's strong and very intelligent(sometimes).

[Zoraxe 546]

I really dislike the whole 'she's planned it all' excuse people throw around. That only works if the show actually shows that she has done so. It never has. Things just appear to work themselves out. That's not the same. It's just a cheap explanation people latch on to. Celestia is bad and the princesses need better writing! She's a peacetime ruler.

 

She did cause everything to happen in Magical Mystery Cure, so it has happened!