COREspondence

It's been a long time since we had a real leader. Celestia and Luna were the last princesses left, but what became of them no pony knows. Some say that they gave their lives fighting some unknown threat. Some say that they set out to find distant lands, and never returned. Some say they went out on their own terms, not wanting to see their friends die before them time after time.

We don't exactly know what happened anymore, thousands of years ago, but one thing is for sure.

They aren't coming back to save us now.

Let me explain how it all started.

After Celestia and Luna were gone, whatever the cause for that was, we were left leaderless. A family which was distantly related to the royal sisters claimed the throne, on basis that they were "family". I don't know if there is such a thing as royal blood, but if there is, they didn't have any of it.

The ponies of Equestria didn't object to this claim of the throne. After all, someone needed to rule. Might as well be the family related to the royal sisters.

Now what a surprise it was, when that family wasn't any good at ruling. They abused their positions to get special treatment, and they did what they pleased. After just three short months, the ponies of Equestria started protesting. It started with a small group of young foals, who had heard how bad the royal family was from their parents at home. Their parents did nothing about the problem, like most ponies of Equestria. The royal family had to know what was best, right?

But the foals didn't care about royalty, so they went to the palace, and started protesting. The ponies on the streets saw what they did, and joined them. They finally realized that they didn't have to just blindly do what the royals said. "Get down from that throne!" they chanted, "Let us choose who rules Equestria!"

Of course, the royal family wasn't too happy with this. The royal guard quickly beat down the protests, but the damage had already been done. The word of the protest had already spread, and protests sprouted up all over Equestria. Entire cities declared that the royal family didn't have any power over them anymore.

As fast as the "royal" family had risen to power, they fell down again. Their rule was no more.

This left another problem. There was, once again, no pony to rule over Equestria.

An emergency meeting was organised in Canterlot, a meeting to determine the next ruler of Equestria. To see if anypony had any bright ideas.

At this meeting about a hundred of the most influential ponies of Equestria came together to figure something out. It was then that Star Shine, a wise mare, suggested that they made a council, a council with twelve wise and influential ponies, four of each race, to rule over Equestria. The other ponies at the meeting agreed, knowing that now no pony could take advantage without the other eleven taking action.

The twelve would be determined through voting, making sure that not the wealthy, but the wise got to rule.

This council was named the "Tri-Star Council", after the mare who invented it.

The system worked, peace returned to Equestria, and everypony was more or less happy.

Years passed, hundreds of years passed, and slowly the original purpose of the voting was forgotten, and eventually there were only rich ponies in the council. They voted for each other, and made other ponies vote for themselves. In the end it was all about money.

The system didn't really work anymore. Well, it worked, but it wasn't the best system out there anymore. The rich weren't automatically good at ruling, you see? The relations with the surrounding countries slowly deteriorated, and eventually Equestria even had to start defending the borders. And that was just the beginning of the end.