A Canterlot Unicorn in Princess Platinum's Court

A CANTERLOT UNICORN IN PRINCESS PLATINUM'S COURT

PREFACE

Having been a student myself, I hold no illusions as to the likelihood that a given pony will read what I am about to write, rather than skipping ahead to the more exciting events that follow. I was, in fact, a student at the time that this story takes place. For that matter I still am, in the sense that a student is one who studies, and I have yet to stop studying even as I have run out of teachers capable of teaching me. However, leaving aside that more fanciful definition, and in the interests of providing context to the events that follow, I will say that I was a student in the traditional sense, and moreover the personal student of my country's eternal monarch Princess Celestia.

Learning is and always will be my one great passion. Under Celestia's tutelage I learned history, etiquette, thaumaturgy, astronomy, and otherwise all the hallowed and dignified subjects that make up a true classical education. It cannot be overstated how priceless the instruction she gave me was, from the secrets whispered in her ear by Starswirl the Bearded himself to the anecdotes she never shared about her visits to Ancient Anugypt, about which all records have been lost, so many hundreds of years ago.

And so, with the greatest of respect offered to my teacher and mentor, I must confess I learned more when we were apart. Although I was ostensibly enrolled in Princess Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns, I stopped attending early on for the sake of my poor teachers, who in no way deserved the struggle to fit me into their curriculum. Instead, and owing to the fact that Princess Celestia had many more duties than my instruction, I spent much of my time at the library. There I learned chemistry, mathematics, physics, dark magic, formal logic, architecture, sociology, economics, and otherwise all that is not part of a true classical education. And, furthermore, I redouble my insistence that immortals make the best teachers, in that books are all it takes to truly make a pony immortal. Let it be no offense to Professor Cobalt that I preferred to learn my sciences straight from the horse's mouth, so to speak.

It should come as no surprise to those reading that these events took place in the rather distant future from where I myself am writing them. The tense structure of this book reflects my own personal timeline, which suffers from a rather large discontinuity, and it should therefore be remembered always that I will not be born for several millennia, assuming I am ever born at all. I will not speak now of what led to my being displaced several thousand years, lest I distract from the narrative of what happened after I arrived.

Suffice it to say that it was entirely my fault.