Masquerade

The story began, as many others do, with war. War was, after all, a fascinating concept. Or perhaps it was the effects that war had that were so fascinating to behold. Regardless, war was, in the nature of nature, one that serves to put violent, primal urges in all beings, rather unavoidable. It could be viewed as both a good thing and bad, and please let us not forget that good things did come from wars, and that there were reasons that wars were fought.

Wars were times of great motion and improvement. Some of the greatest inventions were founded with war as their backdrop. Some of the greatest novels ever written, were written about wars and their heroes. Kings rose to power through wars, new lands were made through wars. Wars could be good things.

Yet wars were taxing—it was a simple fact, as unavoidable as wars themselves. To have wars, there had to be troops, which were made up of the common folk which were trained in the ways of battle—which, in turn, took funds, often in the form of taxes. And, of course, an army had to be fed and supplied.

And this is where our story is born.

The land of Equestria—ever peaceful and ever sunlit, a happy place above all—was at war and had been for some time. The fact was simple, a part of life. Nations did not get developed; lands did not get established, without war. This fact was born of personalities and opinions—which all intelligent beings were blessed with—and, sadly, oftentimes, caused arguments which in turn caused wars.

But as a general legendary common practice, the pony race was a peaceful one. They did not want to be at war, and this story is not a petty war story of which there are as many as there are stars in the sky. The war is simply a backdrop—the origin of the chain of events that will transpire in this story.

Life, as it is, is made up of interconnected events. Things that seem unrelated sometimes cannot exist without each other. One action sets in motion a chain of reactions; the choices somepony makes determines the path taken, defines what happens next. The possibilities are endless: if I had done that, this wouldn’t have happened; if I had decided on something else, all of this would have ended differently.

But perhaps I am rambling. Actually, I’m quite certain I am rambling, and I must ask your forgiveness if you still read this. I find myself in a contemplative mood, and as such am forced to analyze things down to their core.

You see, if Equestria hadn’t been at war for such an extended amount of time, this story wouldn’t have existed—and so, in the general rules of my chosen writing style, I wanted to paint a clear backdrop for the events of this story.

The war that Equestria found herself in had lasted one less than a quarter of a hundred years; that is to say, twenty-four years. And as such, when a war lasts beyond ten, and even twenty years, it was the talk and anxiety of many.

At the time, Equestria was in an anxious state of uncertainty. In a way, everypony was walking on eggshells around even themselves. There were nobles, who made wars against each other (but that was nothing particular to this time. The nobles were always making wars with each other.) and collected the benefits that their blood gave them. For the nobles, the war was a distant thing. Something that hardly affected them at all, and so was not worth their minutes.

There was the King; nopony particularly cared much for him, and everypony liked to blame him for everything. But that’s neither here nor there. The King was not important, and he was not powerful. After the death of the two great monarchs on the battle field, the power truly fell from the title of King, Queen, Prince, or Princess.

Then, of course, in addition to these concealed or public, open or secret wars, there were robbers and scoundrels and a whole slew of other unseeming professions, who made war upon everypony.

And through it all, stuck between the common scum of the streets, and the high nobles in their high towers in their high city, were the peasants.

And again I say, that is where our story begins.

Perhaps fate has a sense of humor, or perhaps chance does, or perhaps it was neither of them, but regardless, the situation was funny.

During this time, there were many rebellions. This was part of the grand upheaval that came after twenty-four years of war.

Out of all of these rebellions, some of which had interesting names and interesting leaders, none was more interesting or more eye-widening or more legendary than the one that had its base in Ponyville. It was not because of what it accomplished; rebellions historically didn't accomplish much, besides being nuisances that costed their country losses of life when they were inadvertently put down.

No, no, what made this rebellion special and legendary was that it was entangled with one of the greatest love stories of all time, and had memorable, prominent characters as its base.

And perhaps it is cliche to say, but, this is the story of that rebellion.