Princesses in MLP: FiM

[Lady Frostbite]

This is a talking point in Summer Sun Setback, but I didn't want to derail the thread.

So, Princesses in Equestria. The show started out with the idea that there would only be one Queen, Celestia, with no parents to outrank her (according to Faust), and Hasbro asked that it was changed to Princess. I'm not sure where Luna - who might have been named Selena if legal didn't get in the way of it - fit into that, but it's kinda obvious that Celestia is pretty much the major ruler. No wonder Luna feels shafted and did so again when she came back from the moon. Not helping is the fact that she is still smaller than Celestia, even when restored to proper power.

So far, we have Princess Celestia and Princess Luna, the Royal Pony Sisters, rulers of all Equestia, with the special talents of raising the sun and moon and having dominion, figuratively, over day and night respectively (Celestia rules when Luna sleeps and vice-versa). I THINK it was Faust who confirmed directly that Celestia and Luna were born alicorns (or pegacorns, whichever you prefer).
Then came Prince Blueblood at the Grand Galloping Gala, said to be a 'nephew' of Celestia, and is a unicorn. He was pretty much forgotten for huge portions of FiM storytelling after the Season 1 finale. There is also a similar-looking foal appearing in a French comic, which we can surmise is simply an error.

Then Season 2 came, and Princess Cadance is introduced as Shining Armour's fiancé, who is also Twilight's foalsitter. She is shown as an alicorn fairly young, pretty much as a teenager, though how or why she was an alicorn wasn't explained at the them, simply written off as a 'niece of Celestia. Her appearance caused a lot of contention in the fandom, as suddenly the Royal Sisters weren't unique, and Faust revealed she wasn't intended to be an alicorn (though I THINK she was intended to simply be a pegasus?).
It's later revealed in a children's book, Twilight Sparkle and the Crystal Heart Spell, that Cadance ascended to Princessdom from being a pegasus, but this wasn't known at the time.

Then Twilicorn happened, and ascension to Princessdom became possible. Again, there was a large amount of lashback from fans, but this petered out over the seasons. Twilight ascended from a unicorn, and Cadance from a pegasus, but so far no Earth ponies have ever ascended.

Flurry Heart was born an alicorn, with oversized wings and a notably different appearance from other babies. Celestia and Luna seemed surprised to see her, noting that alicorns haven't been born before, throwing the question of Celestia and Luna's race up for debate. Were they born, as originally stated, or ascended? Or was it simply the first time one had been born since themselves? Or within Equestia as a Princessdom?

But it's not just ALicorns who have a title. Two unicorn rulers have existed; King Somba, who ruled with dark magic and force, and Princess Amore, the ruler before Cadance and Sombra. The latter was only shown in IDW comics and hasn't made an in-show appearance, and is mentioned in the Crystal Heart book. Neither were alicorns, and both ruled their lands outside the Royal Pony Sisters.

And of course, other creatures can have titles. The one worth bringing up is Queen Chrysalis, who is outright called a pegacorn in the script, having both insectoid wings and a magic-wielding horn.

[Side note; three antagonist rulers have higher titles, King/Queen. Interesting]

So, that leaves us with:

Princesses:
Alicorns 'ready made' or born: Celestia, Luna, Flurry Heart
Alicorns from pegasus: Cadance
Alicorns from unicorns: Twilight
Alicorns from earth: None
Non-Alicorn Princesses: Amour (Unicorn), Skystar (seapony/hippogryff)
Princes: Blueblood (Unicorn), Shining Armor (Unicorn)
Kings: Sombra (Unicorn), Storm King (Satyr creature, magic wielder via artifacts)
Queens: Chrysalis (changing, alicorn), Novo (seapony/hippogryff)
Unknown: Rain Shine (kirin, arguably earth)

[I'll add more when reminded of various characters]

It just seems impossible for an Earth pony to be granted Princessdom. I think it was a mistake to tie being an alicorn to the title inherently, or make being a Princess outside Celestia and Luna possible. If you wanted to go for marketing/because making characters a Princess is fun for kids, keep to their original races; keep Celestia and Luna alicorns - since I'm reminded of the Friendship is Witchcraft line about 'the two biggest horses' ruling, which is funny and accurate to how kids would decide their toys hierarchy - and simply make Princesses of different races. Twilight a Unicorn, Cadance a Pegasus, etc.

I'm rambling. What are your thoughts?

[Leave a Whisper]

And don't forget Skylar, Gold Lily and Sterling.

[Zapper]

FiM had speciest undertones from season one. Zecora and the buffalos were othered.
Earth ponies were mostly shown as working class, mostly farmers, builders and crafters and the show pretended they were equal to the other races of pony.
It was said they were physically stronger and nobody else would be able to grow food but them because they "knew the earth" or whatever.

But then in-show Earthlings were not shown to be as important as unicorns or even pegasi. Pegasi control the weather and without rain or mild temperatures no crops would grow. So pegasi have some power over Earthlings but they help them because they want to eat.
Now unicorns have been shown to be crazy powerful. So much so some of them can manipulate even time and reality.

So that made it pretty obvious who's got to be powerful royalty.

I guess out-of-show a horn and wings are just a better gimmick. It makes a colorful fantasy horse even more fantasy and we can't forget that this show was used to sell toys. But in-show there was no excuse not to show an Earth princess. I guess they simply didn't care to question their own canon enough.

[tailrustedtealeaf]

Reminds me of this old image.
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There's a reason we saw so few earth pony ocs and saw mostly Pegasi and unicorns when the show started getting popular.  It would've been great to see some episodes focusing on earth pony magic, and I've read a few good stories/theories on it (one was like, drawing power from the Earth to live longer?), but show confirmation would be great. I know Faust said something about growing and strength on Da or something but I'd love more show confirmed stuff.

[Dragonflitter]

[Side note; three antagonist rulers have higher titles, King/Queen. Interesting]

This goes back to the old "Disney slash fairy tale" trope. Princesses are good and wholesome (Cinderella, Snow White, Aurora), while queens and kings are evil (Snow White's mother, Maleficent, etc.). I believe I remember that was the specific reason Faust gave for why the studio changed her idea of Celestia being a queen to being a princess.

It just seems impossible for an Earth pony to be granted Princessdom.

I don't know where you're getting that from? So far we've only seen Twilight ascend from unicorn to alicorn, and that's a very specific instance. (Namely, she has main character status.) We never even saw Cadance ascend, although a lot of the stuff in the books did turn out to be canon in line with the show (like Scootaloo's aunts). But it's entirely possible the show could do something to contradict it, if that was ever a storyline they chose to do.

Becoming an alicorn is a very rare and often unheard of occurrence in this world. Just because we haven't seen an earth ponies ascend doesn't mean it's impossible. We see a lot of unicorn characters congregate in Canterlot, so it's not that surprising some of them end up in some sort of ruling role. (I anticipate that we will be seeing a lot more earth ponies in prominent roles in G5, since the main character will supposedly be one.)

Not counting the already established Celestia and Luna, you can't see just two instances of ponies becoming rulers and say "Well there's no earth ponies so they just can't become princesses." It just doesn't happen enough for us to draw any conclusions.

[Leave a Whisper]

On the flipside of that you have  G1 and G2 princesses who are mostly  earth ponies, and very few pegasus and unicorns, so in a way, I guess it kinda evens out.

[Al-1701]

Earth and pegasus ponies seem to be two sides of the same food producing coin.  The earth ponies grow the crops with the pegasi ensuring the weather is conducive for the crops growing.  The two could be seen as the relationship between agriculture and industry.  Agriculture needs industry to supply the materials and equipment to run their farms and industry obviously needs agriculture to supply food.

The unicorns are really the odd ones out, especially since Celestia and Luna took over their moving the sun and moon.  Yet, they dominate the capital and do have magic that just seems to be more reality warping as time goes by.  I guess you could say they represent the service sector which provides non-material support.

The thing about the "Queens are evil" being a Disney thing is there have been a grand total of two evil queens in the Disney canon, none in almost 70 years, one of them is more insane than evil, and both are from their respective source material.  Elsa was going to be evil in Frozen, but they thought better of it to the benefit of the movie.

As for the princesses in FiM.  It's all marketing, and Hasbro and the staff have never cared about making the lore of this show cohesive.

[MJNSEIFER]

Regarding Blueblood; the silly thing about him is that he was not meant to be a prince, or Princess Celestia's nephew.  He was meant to have some other title (like a duke or something) and he was meant to be a more distant relation to Princess Celestia.

I have my own headcanons about how royalty and alicorns work, and if it's okay I'll post it.  It is purely headcanon/fanon, though and the show already contradicts it.

[SpacePinto]

Why would even Hasbro assume that My Little Pony shouldn't have queens because queens are evil? G1 had Queen Rosedust and Queen Majesty, plus six princesses taking turns being a queen.

[Goanna]

Hmm, now I'm trying to think if there were any Earth pony rulers shown in the comics or in flashbacks... I know there have been leaders, like the "Chancellor Puddinghead".
There is Prince Hisan (a pegasus), from the past (the one Somnambula saved).

[Leave a Whisper]

Why would even Hasbro assume that My Little Pony shouldn't have queens because queens are evil? G1 had Queen Rosedust and Queen Majesty, plus six princesses taking turns being a queen.

Because Hasbro is in a very strange place right now

[WingsOfMasquerade]

I also remember reading somewhere fairly official like an interview or a Hasbro magazine something about the whole "Princess is good queen is evil so force you to change it". You mentioned the whole 'snow white' thing too, that's also accurate to the article, we probably read the same creator interview or whatever it was, where traditionally Queens are bad in those. (Princess gets all the fun, magical title, and none of the queen responsibility, too) Maybe it's in that big hardcover / coffee table FIM book?

It was an actual thing that happened when the decision was made, it's probably something dumb too like the whole Pinklestia 'scandal' because "only PINK toys are fun, WHITE toys are no good" so they just turned Celestia pink. That's why Cadence was pink AND a princess because children only want pink princesses, and, after the outcry from the fans that "She didn't look like the show" they no longer had their precious pinklestia pink princess so along comes Cadence with wings and a horn so she could be special enough too.

The odd bit to me was that one episode that had Goodie Gryphon or something where she was good at literally everything and nice too, but she couldn't get a cutie mark because she wasn't a pony = no cutie-magic, but somehow Zecora has a mark and Zebras aren't ponies. So then why don't Donkeys get a mark?

But also what's up with the "celestia body" ponies, where unicorns like Sassy Saddles almost have her body, but aren't an Alicorn?
They're way taller and don't look like anybody else. There's more than one of this type too, not just Sassy.
I forget what ep Sassy is in...

The worst is the movie, in my opinion.
I just think Hasbro.......wasn't thinking about anything, really. At the start, where like Faust was around, probably, where there was more consistency in character and etc. but I stopped giving it thought/fandom-style theorizing once it was clear they kinda just didn't care and were throwing everything at the wall.
The movie broke the entire show.
Ok so the sun only rises because some nobody in Podunk sticksville boonies-town raises the sun, and no creature ever wonders why the moon has an evil horse face on it. And no creature ever wonders about that 'really long night that happened X-while ago', and nobody sought to find out. The movie made the princesses out to be paupers/nobodies and treated them as punching bags who are so weak. All the maps previously had also had Equestria as a continent, not just some walled-off rinky-dink valley of babies.
The show kind of made out the whole planet to be populated by animal-types, (yacks, griffins, zebra/s?, donkey, buffalo) but then the movie was like 'no theres cats and birds and trolls but they are "human" (human hands, human posture, human acting with clothing on) and view ponies as their slaves', and the mane 6 are ok with slavery because they all just go home after hearing about ponies=slaves for others/bought and sold, and proceed to do nothing about it. And no pirate air ship or high tech magic thing ever ever flew over Equestria and nobody from outside ever visited in in a billion years because reasons.*

*The movie was cut to ribbons.
There could have been an actual explanation to this stuff, but it is on the cutting room floor with Stratos Skyranger.

[SpacePinto]

Why would even Hasbro assume that My Little Pony shouldn't have queens because queens are evil? G1 had Queen Rosedust and Queen Majesty, plus six princesses taking turns being a queen.

Because Hasbro is in a very strange place right now

But didn't G4 star almost a decade ago?

[Taffeta]

As someone who isn't really into FIM I'm actually finding this discussion interesting because of all the possible permutations. I mean, the inconsistencies sounds like different writers putting in bits to the canon rather than a plan of action, but the earth pony aspect is curious...

In G1 in the UK earth ponies often had magic (as well as it being possible for them to be princesses). The most magical pony in G1 according to the pony lore of the UK was Magic Star, an Earth Pony. She's also describes as being elegant as a princess.

Spoiler

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Baby Lucky is also extensively depicted with happy-go-lucky magic, which is significantly strong enough to bring ponies to life from a drawing (in the case of the newborn twins) among other stellar acts.

So it's not that there was never a precedent for magic in G1 for earth ponies. But it seems to be entirely outside the US interpretation of MLP. Again, talking about G1, there's a more real world feel to ponyland in the US stories. You have the New York guy stealing hair, and you also have Glory in the spoken word tape feeling isolated because she's a unicorn and getting swept away to a more magical world but losing her horn...this other world is much more like the comic world in the UK.

I wonder if a similar problem exists in G4 with different perceptions of magic levels informing decisions about species. THe fact Cadence was a pegasus who ascended already seems a bit unusual, as in the older US pony stuff, you don't see pegasus ponies with powers either (I'm talking MLP & Friends animation).

Again, in the UK, pegasus ponies could have magic. And, weirdly, pegasus ponies (rather than unicorns) seemed to be more in context with wish granting. Rainbow Magic (Ringlet) granted wishes, and Princess Pearl (a pegasus princess!) cried wishing pearls when she was happy.

The UK aspect should be irrelevant except that Majesty's UK persona has such an impact for some reason in the brony fandom. No idea if it had one on the creation of Celestia or if that was all later and coincidental, but it's worth considering. In which case, an earth pony ascending to have ultimate power should be possible, even if it never happened.

[Al-1701]

In "The Magic Coins", Magic Star keeps a "good luck collection" which was apparently a bunch of magical charms.  She also seemed to have a sense about a place's magic as she said she could feel the Haunted Garden having bad luck.

But, yeah, magic was almost exclusively the realm of the unicorns or wielders of magical items like the Princesses.