New World, New History

"The image which the puzzle bore was wiped clean," Celestia puts it, "yet the pieces remained unmoved." The Standard of the prime Empirical force still stood high upon the gate-posts in front of the capitol building. Ambassadors, though acting more as newsmen to the neighboring nations than as anything else, remained in their assign embassies. The king's throne, though empty, remained without the stains of blood or marks of battle. In front of the great temples, and the capitol itself, the empire's former guards still bowed their heads in respect. Were you deaf, that you might evade the deafening sounds of silence, and had you missed the Attican sacrifice, you would have seen nary a single difference. Sadness reigned, yet a hopefulness and excited wondering filled the hearts of all of the remnants of the empire - curious of what was to come next.

For the first years of not formally existing, the empire was still referred to abroad as the Alicorn empire, despite the lacking of Alicorns. Those inside the empire's former shell, however, faced a large challenge. Many of the younger generation wished to restart the empire. A goal filled with good and venerable intention - though with a rebellious undertone. The Atticus had no such intention, and rather wished solely to find a permanent solution to the issue of the solar and lunar cycles. Yes, renewing the king and queen system of before would work for a short time, but there were so few Alicorns remaining in the empire, that no chances of Alicorn bloodlines becoming corrupt (and then having their powers stripped by the punishments) could be allowed. What the Atticus intended to find (and aided greatly in finding), as we have seen enacted in Celestia, a method to minimize the effort required to move the celestial bodies, allowing it to be done by simply one Alicorn. Due to the issue of possible 'blueblood' corruption of morals before this could be completed, the Atticus was extremely worried about the king and queen system becoming remade in the empire. So began this war of attrition between the younger and more anxious bunch, and the wise Atticus.

No battle with the sword was held between the two figurative camps, but just like most civil wars, it was with the use of propaganda and childish insults. The foremost of these were accusations of him wishing to remain the makeshift king of the populace and him being jealous of the power of the kings, superior to his own power. The Atticus, despite the accusations, stayed to his research and teachings of unison and respect - to those who would listen. The more patriotic and docile the empire remnant, the more likely they were to want to rebel against the Atticus and reform their once-great home. In the words of the Lunar princess, "What else could be expected of them?" Quite the paradise had their forefathers constructed, and though none of it was physically ruined, it felt empty to all who saw it - as though it were merely a phantom of what it was before. Waiting, of course, to be put to use again.

So impressive was this emptiness, that those who remained near great landmarks with the Standard of the Alicorn empire decorating them, fell into the camp against the Atticus almost unanimously. As more saw again and again the wonders of the great nation now past, more and more wished to recreate it. Those who could write or give speeches, did so for the rebuilding of the great empire. This propaganda spread, not only abroad to the Natives in neighboring regions, but to those who were trusted of the Atticus. One friend of the Atticus, Scribere tells us, went so far as to spit upon the Atticus' hooves in disgust, as though he had been personally wronged by the poor leader.

The one thing holding these fools back from damning the Alicorn race to a removal of their powers, was a stark lack of Alicorns in their cause! Each Alicorn remaining in existence had been recruited into the Attican system. Without at least one Alicorn stallion and one Alicorn mare, no king and queen could move the cosmos - the largest reason so many surrounding nations paid such great respect to the empire. As fate would seem to have it, two Alicorns who were partnered up as one of the shifts to move the celestial bodies in the Attican system, a stallion and a mare, seem to have fallen in love with each other, and similarly with greed. They abandoned the Atticus and blatantly walked into the former palace of the king and queen. As the Alicorns declared their roles, enabling the actual initiation of the restarted empire, I would imagine that the cheers of the crowds of supporters were deafening.

Though the first two had certainly cared more for the sudden glory than for the lasting effects, the other Alicorns under Attican influence knew of the backlash of opening themselves up to the blueblood corruption, for it killed their nation, and even made them an endangered variation of Natives. For a taste of this publicity which the king and queen stole, though, slowly but surely, nearly all of the remaining Alicorns abandoned the Atticus and his honourable solution, in preference to being popular and beloved in the ruling class. Two Alicorns remained, however, a stallion and mare. They remained as fate would duly seem to have it, to keep one last line of the perfect type of Native, and for them to remain loyally alongside the Atticus. All this, while the Atticus and his followers mourned in sad silence at the loss of those ponies, not only due their eventual punishment for selfishness being nearly completely assured by their choice to leave, but for the similar assuredness of their moral degradation.

With the reestablishment of the ruling class, came the reestablishment of the militant class to guard them. Though many of the military and guard class was in full support of the new empire, many opted out of their formal roles in the political society, and remained guarding their families. Since many still alive could recall freshly the end of the previous empire, I would likely have remained similarly guarding my family, that I would not be enslaved again by those whom I was forced to protect! Those that did choose to serve their new-found royalty, were nearly doubly more likely to be power-hungry, though, since those that cared more for justice remained with their families. In this way, we see just why the once-pure fighting force, once willing to slaughter their own commanders to save their innocent enemies, became the dissolute and abusive bunch that it is known for being in the years following the re-establishment. That any ponies at all even allowed such dissolute and obviously power-hungry thieves to sit on the venerated chair is a mystery, but I suppose it speaks to the foolishness of the majority in those days.

Many have called it karma. The divine judgment and exaction of justice which haunts or blesses us all. That the evil ruler, so loved and rewarded by his fellow victimizers, falls to horrible parasitic infection rotting his flesh as he breathes, is no coincidence. No coincidence is it that the rich man, cursing the poor beggar to his face, is a beggar himself within the month. As the years progressed, the most corrupt of those Alicorns fell to their respective punishments by how they handled their power, and those who kept up in their ways afterwards were banished. The king and queen of their new empire were both eventually made Unicorns, humiliated, and banished from the very empire they simply walked up to and claimed. Before all of this took place, "The Fates" as Virgil would refer to it, gave these petty thieves a chance to show how they would rule if given the chance. Those Fates, in their leniency in delaying the damnation, only made the punishments of the royals all the worse, and my job all the more entertaining.