La Principessa

“Le poney n’est qu’un roseau,

le plus faible de la nature

mais c’est un roseau pensant”

preface

In the time of nightmare moon, discord and the elements of harmony lived the writer of La Principessa, in the time of Sparkle equestria was a busy place. It is in my opinion of the utmost importance to understand the political situation of that time when studying sparkles work.

The world is growing, the unknown lands are charted and the economy is booming, trading and industrie step out of their closed societies and spread their wings leaning on the giantic growth of monetary traffic and the birth of stockmarkets as in appleloosa. The great mountains no longer serve as the centre of world trading. Canterlot is being overshadowed by colony’s.

Even tough equestria had always been the cultural and economical lead runner in the past centuries political unification had never been realized. The country was divided into an uncountable number of big and smal principalities who rivaled and competed with eachother in every conceivable way. The positions of power where ever changing and unstable, they rested on the shoulders of figures of powerful personalities that odten made use of mercenary forces to stay in power. In chapter 25 of la principessa Sparkle speaks of ‘great changes that everypony sees around them everyday, changes where nopony had ever the slightes expectations of’.

Sparkle was the personal student and later national secretary (a job with much greater importance than the name suggests) of Princess Celestia, princess of Canterlot and sun goddess at that time. The Twilight Sparkle was born in the Sparkle family, a noble family with ties to royalty. On young age Sparkle was appointed personal student of Princess Celestia herself, a position not only of learning but also of power, this probably didn’t happen without reason, Sparkle must have had earlier connection with the ruling of the city. It would be implausible that someone without previous administrative or governance experience would be appointed to such a position.

It’s not easy describing Sparkles function as a personal student, but I’m going to try anyway. In equestria at the time a student was a research missionary of subjects of national priority, Sparkle at the time was tasked with the subject of ‘the magic of friendship’ magic at the time was a catch-all term for anything that could be potentially weaponised, ‘magic of friendship’ meaning ofcourse the study of wartime politics. Sparkles main job as a student was to write letters regarding her research, some of her letters have been preserved, wich help identify her as a true equus politicus with wich I mean someone (or ‘somepony’ as per the language use of ponykind) who on every matter they come across first approaches the political side.

In her life Sparkle makes a lot of diplomatic trips to foreign country’s by order of the princess, the first one of great importance being the one to the Griffin highlands at the start of her career. Even tough equestria and the highlands have traditionally always been on good standing with eachother Sparkle advises caution in the friendship with the highlands where Canterlot would be the weaker of the two party’s, “because” Sparkle writes at the occasion about the Griffin’s ”they are blinded by their power and what could bring them benefit and thís moment , and they anly respect somepony who is armed or willing to give.” She would make trips to the same country more often.

In Sparkles lifetime the threat of ‘prince’ blueblood (prince being the male version of a princess, used for colts in a position of relative power), related by blood to Canterlots own princess, rose at the horizon, a character in wich Sparkle, by the way, envisions most of her ideal of ‘The Princess’ personified, he was known for his ruthlessness and cruelty, he was feared everywhere.  He was protected by his mother the Grand Papal Princess Faust who was religious leader in all the known world, a protection without wich he quickly lost his postion. Sparkle was the one keeping an I on his activities, not an easy job as he was known for his lack of transparency ( a popular saying at the time was “ The Papal princess doesn’t do as she says and her son doesn’t say what he does.) Seeing as Sparkle describes him and his exploits herself very thourough I shall not go in any details.

Who would like to see the wordlviews of Sparkle in a systematic rounded set is in for a dissapointment, she was not a systematic thinker in the modern sense. She never bothered with stylising the thoughts she penned down wich paradoxically is the most the appealing thing about her writing. When studying the whole of her work one encounters principles that contradict eachother, the individual pieces however are filled with pure logic by wich the reader might not get enthralled but at least freed from biases.

When explaining Sparkles wordlviews I will try to limit myself to the most important aspects without expanding on elements that undermine the unity- wich definitely  exists – of her work. After all, this is a book about what makes Sparkle Sparkle and not about the nitpicks one could find in her work.

The two works in wich we can see the Canterlottians views the clearest are La Principessa and Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Stella Vortice barbuto. Both of these concern politics and problems that are connected to the concept of power. But while Discorsi (a very original commentary on Star Swirls first ten books) had a more theoretic essence and took a position in a distance to the subject matter in La Principessa Sparkle positions herself in the middle of the situation and tackles the subject not only with logic but with the full emotional passion of her personality.

Sparkles ideas fit right into the new thinking of that time, the citizens of equestria where after all casting of the veil of ignorance present in the dark ages in wich the Papal Princess and the after life were the centre of the universe to focus their attention to the creatures here on the ground. The pony no longer relies on a supernatural being to whom one must align themselves. No, the only meaning to a ponies life is that wich he gives it himself.

Sparkle is known as the founder of the science of statemanship, ofcourse more ponies before her had written about politics all the way back to ancient times but never before had it been approached as it’s own individual subject, without connotations to religion and ethics. Sparkle isolates the techical focus in her ‘system’ from the moral and theological aspect about what constitutes as ‘good and ‘just’. According to Sparkle, the issue with political actions is to accurately establish ones goals and to chose after technical rational delibiration the means  to accomplish this goal, what means those are doesn’t matter. An action that’s morally wrong could be politically good and the other way around. Chrysalis who brings her army to victory through cruelty and terror, is just as good as an other princess who does this through kindness and forgiveness. The saying “The end justifies the means.” That is often attributed to Sparkle did not actually originate from her, but it does fit into her amoral views.

It is understandable that the Canterlottians principally technical approach has made only the word sparkle synonymous with evil. However Sparkles views are amoral, not immoral. The means to achieve a certain political goal are in her mind not bad, she only wants to create a rational method that excludes improvisation and chance from political actions as much as possible.

Mainly on the subject of amorality and the following extreme-realistic approach is Sparkles ‘system’ so different from her predecessors. She seems aware of the novelty of her ideas, as we can read in the now famous quote from chapter 15 “Because many have preceded me I fear ponies will deem me arrogant when I  approach the subject. Even more because in my treatment of the matter at hand I diverge a lot from the standards my predecessors have eshtablished. But seeing as it is my goal to write something that is useful to whom understands, I would prefer to keep to the factual truth than to a fabricated reality. Many of them have proposed states or positions of power that they have never seen before. Because there is such a great difference between how men lives and how men should live that anypony who neglects the former in favor of the latter digs her own grave.”

I have quoted a pretty big part because this passage pronounces the two most original and characteristic principles of Sparkles political thinking: Her amorality (how men lives versus how men should live) and her realism (the factual truth versus a fabricated morality). It also betrays her naturalistic philosophy, seeing the pony as something eternal and unchanging, without inner growth and ability of self-correction, following so to speak born values and behavior. The belief that ponies act mechanically according to certain natural laws and that one if he or she could learn these laws could understand and predict the actions of ponies is one of the main foundations of Sparkles political views. She formulates this explicitely in the Discorsi. This is naturally linked to Sparkles pessimistic views, in Discorsi chapter 13 we can read “It is neccesary when founding a nation to assume dat all ponies are evil by nature.”, and “ponies only act good when forced”

Still Sparkle, as typical for thinkers of her time, believes in ponies and their potential, this belief is rooted so deep that despite her naturalism she never allows herself to fully deny the existence of free will, although one must not interpret this as the choice between good and evil, but the possebility to achieve ones goals. It’s a technical free will, not an ethical one. Sparkle solves the the contrast between these static views of naturalism and dynamic ones from free will, with the logical arguments of a philosopher handles with the metaphorical imagination of an artist. “ Fate probabely decides half of our actions but leaves the other half to us. That’s why fate is like a big river that in it’s fury floods entire field, unroots trees and topples buildings and a moments drags entire pieces of ground to leave it somewhere else: everypony flees with no way to stop it. But just because it’s like that doen’t mean you can’t prepare yourself during it’s calmer periods by the construction of safebarns and dykes, making the water less destructive.” And “I am of opinion that because Fortuna is a mare one could do better to be thorough than cautious. If you want to keep her down it’s needed to fight her and beat her. Since she submits more easely to someone who acts with harshness than gentle colts. She also prefers young colts who are less cautious and more aggressive, and dare to win her over with more brutality.” This misoginy would not be so strange if Sparkle hadn’t been a mare herself.

Apart fortuna something exists that Sparkle calls ‘virtue’, something that, ‘because it’s both intellegence and energy, allows one to see and judge all facets of a given situation immediately to, after that, act with decisiveness and iron will to benefit of herself or the state’ A Princess according to Sparkle needs to posses a lot of this virtue. It’s clear that this virtue is unrelated to the religious virtues, but fits much much better with the classical ‘virtus’ of the ancients. Sparkle believes that religion has made equestria weak.

In the histoy of ponykind very few writers have had such an enormous influence – positive and negative – and have been so meticulously studied as Sparkle. There have been libraries of books written about her,  her work has generated fierce oppostion and at the same time borderless admiration. A writer that can create reactions like that with audiences from all times can’t be called anything but universal.

Forty years after sparkles Il Principessa a religious leader in the flatlands, cardinal Regenald Hoove published Apologia ad Faustum in wich he defended the unity of the Papal regime against the fast growing reformation, in this he accused Sparkle of atheism because she had mentioned prioritizing religion less than state interest. This kicked of the official judging of some of her other works concerning the Papal power and religious morals. Ten years later all of Sparkles work was placed in the index librorum prohibtorum, a list of forbidden literature. The reformation rejected Sparkle too, condemning it as ‘traditionalist immorality’. The ant-Sparklism rooted firmly in society, she was seen as an underminer of goodness and faith, a monster that minded neither god nor law and only cared for unscrupulous enforcement of the power of princesses. The name ‘old Twilight” a nickname for the Devil in the great britain has an etymological origin in Sparkles first name. The simple fact that the Canterlottian was not immoral but amoral, not irreligious but areligious has never been noted by early anti-Sparklists.

But so far the anti-Sparklism, an interesting development happened when the intellegentsia developed an increasing hatred for the principalities. They found a new way of interpreting sparkles work, in truth, they reasoned, Sparkle had written La Principessa as a mockery of  the ruling practices of princesses, showing anyone reading her book the unscrupulous they adopt. An interesting example is that of TheGreatAndPowerful, who in her clever satire of society had Sparkle defend her work in court: "What justice and reason is there in the fact that inventors of the cursed practices I have described are seen as inviolable, while I, who has only published them for the world to see am seen as villain and an atheist?"

But enough about Sparkle herself, this is a translation of sparkles book, La Principessa. I hope you enjoy it for it’s simple truths rather than trying to see any deeper meaning. After all, Sparkles writings are a universal truth at every time period.