Published by Equestrian Educational Authority
Limited edition primer
Authorized by royal request of H.R.H Princess Celestia year 1984 Celestial era

Alicorn & Quillen

Despite their widely different appearance, we are assured by her royal highness herself that alicorns and quillen are in point of fact a single tribe, one that simply displays extreme case of sexual dimorphism, which would go a long way in explaining why every single alicorn in recorded history has been a mare, and likewise for the all-male quillen. Of course, with the pool of members being so minuscule
it is no wonder that the connection had been missed.

As there had been so very few of them - by her highnesses testimony only four alicorns, counting herself, and two quillen in her lifetime - the majority of information we have now had been, per necessity, provided by her highness.

The peculiar nature of this tribe stems from the fact that all of its members started as members of one of the regular tribes, that through acts of great power and enlightenment - or through agency of extreme outside forces - pushed past the thresholds of their own magic and ascended to a higher plane of existence as beings of pure magic, wherefore they experienced metamorphosis and grew out to encompass not only the magic they started with but magics of three other tribes as fit their nature. Finally they would return back to the regular plane physically transformed. The transformation would usually be incomplete due to the immaturity of their newly expanded magic and it would take time and personal dedication for the newly ascended to finish the process and fully transform - a process that per her highnesses personal testimony takes between three and five centuries. Most either never bothered, or were never given the chance to finish their magical maturation.

While they take physical appearance of lampae, pegasai and the earth tribes in the case of alicorns and water tribes, aethon and testrals in the case of quillen, it should be noted that the magics they hold do not follow their physical traits. Her highness recounted how one of the lost alicorns ascended from a hipocampi and gained the powers of a kelpie, an earth pony and a lampa. Thus wile possessing pegasus wings, the best she could do in the air was awkwardly glide since she completely lacked any magic as pertained to air.

When asked if she had any idea why the physical characteristics of her tribe were so distributed across gender lines, her highness admitted that she was as perplexed as any other pony, though she did mention that the strongest theory she had encountered so far indicated that it had something to do with progenitor races.

Author's Note

Yes, it is painfully short.
I sat upon it for two days trying to figure out a way to expand it into something more, but I always came back to the fact that this is supposed to be an entry in a short general information booklet, and about a subject on which sources basically boiled down to Celestia.
I dunno, I could have written it in more words, but felt that that would actually diminish the... entry, let's go with entry.