It was a good morning for Princess Celestia. She had awoken, shared breakfast with her sister, then raised the sun before Princess Luna had gone off to bed. Now, with some of her morning paperwork dealt with, she was able to kick back and have some tea during her break. Two guards stood at the doorway, simultaneously keeping an eye for anypony coming, and making certain of Celestia’s continued presence and safety.
Her magical senses suddenly registered that somepony, or possibly somedragon, was attempting to send a letter to her through the arcane mail system. Celestia let the mail through, and smiled as she recognised the aura of the green flame that appeared before depositing a scroll on the table in front of her. Most likely it was her former student and now fellow ruler sending a letter. A lesser possibility was that Spike the dragon was sending his own letter to her.
Using her magic, Celestia unfurled the scroll, and quickly glanced at it. There wasn’t much there.
Dear Princess Celestia,
Are you busy today? I have discovered something of incredible importance, and wish to discuss it with you at your earliest possible convenience.
Yours Truly,
Twilight Sparkle
Celestia rolled her eyes with good humour at the difference between the appellation Twilight had assigned to the recipient and the lack of title she had given herself. Summoning a scroll, she wrote back.
Dear Princess Twilight, (and here, she underlined the word ‘Princess’ three times).
I am free this afternoon. I will give the guards notice that you are coming in.
Yours Truly,
Celestia
With a mischievous glint in her eye at the strong reminder to Twilight that they were both Princesses now, Celestia sent the new letter off to Spike, and by proxy, Princess Twilight Sparkle.
She looked up to the two guards, both who had made note of the development but otherwise stayed in their position. “Could one of you please go inform my attendants that Princess Twilight Sparkle may be showing up later today? My agenda is mostly empty, so it should not be inconvenient.”
The two guards traded looks, before one of them, the junior of the two, turned and saluted her. “As you wish, Princess,” he said, before walking off to deliver the message.
Celestia took a sip of tea, wondering what her former-student and now fellow Princess had discovered. She would find out later, it seemed.
Celestia heard more than she saw Princess Twilight Sparkle coming in. Celestia had become familiar with the excited pitter-patter of the former unicorn’s hooves throughout the years, as Twilight would always rush to her mentor with some new discovery she had found or spell that she had mastered. The sound had changed slightly over time, as Twilight reined in her worst impulses and went for a steadier trot, and her hooves resounded with a duller clop-clop as she grew up and out.
However, it was still recognisably the trot of Twilight Sparkle, and it sounded like she was really excited, given how quickly her hooves smacked against the floor.
At last, Twilight rounded the corner, and her eyes were alight with mad energy as she saw her former teacher. “Princess Celestia, Princess Celestia!” Twilight said, as Celestia’s observations were proven correct. There was no lack of enthusiasm in the smaller alicorn today. Seeing the saddlebags Twilight wore, Celestia could only guess what the other Princess had found.
“Princess Twilight, what can I help you with, Princess Twilight?” Celestia asked, bemused. She gave a wave of her hoof to one of her guards to go fetch them some pastries, tea and coffee. Depending on what Twilight had found out, this could be a long talk.
The guard left, leaving just one remaining guard with her and Twilight. Twilight barely took notice of this, as she dumped the contents of her saddlebags out onto the table, which happened to just be a couple of scrolls. “Well, a few weeks back I was curious about my ancestry after the Cutie Mark Crusaders expressed an interest in getting their Cutie Marks in genealogy. Ah, they’re three fillies who formed their own club with the intent of trying nearly anything and everything to get their Cutie Mark,” Twilight explained. “I found it a little cute and helped them trace back their family lines. One of them is Applejack’s sister, and you know how extensive that family is.”
“Mmm-hmm,” was Celestia’s response. Over a century and change before, the Apple family had already spread well afar across Equestria, which was why Celestia had granted them the permit to settle what was now Ponyville. Even now, they were continuing to pioneer the edges of Equestria, pressing up against buffalo territory down south in Appleloosa. Needless to say, the Apples had a reputation.
“Yes, and that was more practice for them, since the Apples already keep an extensively-researched family tree. Well, the Crusaders grew bored after a couple of days, which was actually a long amount of time for them, and then they moved on. It got me curious though, and I began to poke at my own ancestry. Then I discovered this!”
Twilight unfurled the first of the two scrolls, turning it around so it faced Celestia. “Here’s me and my brother, right at the bottom,” Twilight, pointing her hoof down. Celestia looked to see ‘Twilight Sparkle’ marked down there, next to ‘Shining Armor’, with a dotted line between his name and ‘Mi Amore Cadenza’. That was where the line terminated, though Celestia suspected for the Crystal Royals, their branch would expand another generation in the near-future. “Well, I started tracing my family line, but then I discovered something really neat!”
Twilight continued to point her hoof, first at her father’s name, ‘Night Light’. “My father Night Light, his mother Stellar Starfall, then her father Moonlight Raven, then his father Moonlight Radiance,” And she continued to go up the family tree, a generation at a time, until she hit Solar Eclipse at the top of the scroll.
Then she unrolled the next scroll, and showed Solar Eclipse at the bottom of the scroll. “Then if you trace Solar Eclipse back through the ages,” Twilight started, before going through the names of still more unicorns.
By this time, Celestia was pretty certain she knew where this was going. She kept herself composed, even though she sorely wanted to grin. When she felt like her face was going to slip, Celestia either took a sip of tea or a piece of cake from the refreshments the guard had brought back.
“And Nightfall was her father, but as you can see, Nightfall was the son of Starry Skies and Star Swirl the Bearded! So in effect, I am descended from Star Swirl the Bearded!” Twilight said proudly, puffing her chest out for effect.
“That does sound impressive,” Celestia said. “Well, not just you, but you and Shining Armor both.”
“W-well, yeah, that was implied,” Twilight said, blushing at how easily she had forgotten her brother.
“I’m amazed at the amount of work you did to trace your family tree back,” Celestia mused. “It’s just a shame you only seemed to go through a single line of ancestors, instead of the full family tree all the way back.”
“W-well, it nearly doubles in size with every generation,” Twilight said, shuddering at the sheer amount of work that was being suggested. “After enough time you get overlap where a pony is your ancestor through multiple branches, but I start at two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, after sixty generations it’s nearly impossible to keep it all straight.”
“I suppose,” said Princess Celestia. “Isn’t it lucky how you found out Star Swirl was your ancestor on, what, was this the first line you traced through?”
“The third line, actually, splitting off at Gemini Glitter forty-five generations in,” Twilight said. “But it’s just so amazing, oh-my-gosh!” Twilight squealed in excitement.
Princess Celestia had to hide her amusement behind her cup of tea. Taking a sip, she turned to her guards again. “Can you go to the archives and fetch the Star Swirl family tree, please?” She asked, motioning to the guard who had stayed earlier. Celestia looked out for even the small details, and she didn’t want to have the same guardspony go out two times in a row to fetch items.
The second guard saluted, immediately leaving after.
“Oh my Celes—um, oh my gosh, you have a family tree for Star Swirl?” Twilight asked, her eyes practically sparkling. “I don’t believe it!”
“We do, in a manner of speaking. I have told you before you are no longer my student, Princess Twilight, but consider this one last lesson. What does it mean, now that you know Star Swirl is your ancestor?”
Twilight immediately clammed up. “I-I-I...uh…” It was clear she hadn’t really thought it over that much. “Well, it’s still amazing, isn’t it? I’m descended from my idol, Star Swirl the Bearded, one of the greatest and most powerful unicorns of the Classical era!”
Celestia pressed harder. “Yes, and I suppose that feeling must be nice. But do you actually inherit anything from it?”
Twilight looked hesitant. “I...um, I guess I might have gotten some of the magical strength he was renowned for?”
The older alicorn shook her head. “Try again, Twilight Sparkle. Tell me, if you were to predict how magically powerful a newborn unicorn filly would be, how would you go about your prediction? Say you’re doing it on yourself, even.”
There was a distinct frown now on Twilight’s face. “Well, about half comes from how strong your parents are. Both my mother and father are in the thirty-third percentile for unicorns, so me and Shiny would have been likely to be strong ourselves. One-third comes from the amount of training you do in your magic to increase your natural strength throughout your lifetime, and then the rest is variance, depending on luck, Cutie Mark talent, and other tiny variables.”
“And how much of your strength do you think comes from Star Swirl, your grandsire sixy generations displaced?” Celestia asked.
Twilight visibly deflated this time. “Barely any. After sixty generations, there isn’t really going to be anything left of Star Swirl’s physical or magical traits recognisably in his descendants.” She looked up, her eyes slightly tearful. “But why, Princess? The way you’re saying this, you make it sound like it’s not really special to be descended from Star Swirl!”
Celestia took a deep breath. How to break the delicate truth to her student? Then her guard walked back in, carrying a large scroll on his back. “Ah, good timing, soldier,” Celestia said. “I’ll take it from here, thank you.” So saying, she levitated the scroll off his back.
Twilight recognised what Celestia wanted to do right away, and took her own scrolls off the table, packing them up and putting them back in her saddlebags. Her eyes were wide at the immense size of the scroll Celestia had. “This is Star Swirl’s family line, all the way to the present?” Twilight asked in trepidation, eager to expand her knowledge of Star Swirl’s family tree, and ergo, her own.
“Not quite,” Celestia said. “You think this scroll goes down sixty generations or so?” Then Celestia unfurled the scroll out, turned around so the scroll was displayed horizontally, instead of vertically.
“Actually, it’s Star Swirl and his first generation of descendants.”
Twilight’s jaw hung open as she saw the many, many mares that Star Swirl had sired at least one offspring with.
Celestia took a sip of her tea, giving Twilight Sparkle a few seconds to pick her mouth back up. Then she set her cup back down. “Even back then, we were already well aware that much of a unicorn’s strength comes from his or her sire and dam. At the same time, ponykind had just gotten out of the great freeze and vanquished the Windigos. However, the Hearth’s Warming Eve tail is a thoroughly sanitised version of the era. In truth, many ponies died during that time, but it took a significantly larger toll on the stallion population than it did on the mares.”
She could see the gears turning in Twilight’s head, but Celestia continued anyways to confirm Twilight’s thoughts. Celestia liked lecturing on history, and she could tell her guards were also interested, though they looked a little queasy as well. “With so many mares and so few stallions, a popular idea rose in the unicorn tribe: those mares who had little chance of finding a long-term monogamous partner should fornicate with the most magically-strong stallions in an attempt to produce a powerful new generation of unicorns. There were a few such stallions, of course. Clover the Clever was an eager lad who formed his own herd and was a loving father to many foals. Star Swirl the Bearded, however, was by far the most promiscuous of the lot.”
“H-how many?” Twilight asked, stuttering as she tried looking across the scroll. The scroll hadn’t even been a tenth unfurled, and yet there were already so many names, of the mares Star Swirl had slept with, and the offspring he had sired. “H-how m-m-many did he—” Twilight stopped, letting out an ‘eep’. Judging by her flaming cheeks, it was obvious she found the subject matter too mortifying to ask her mentor.
Princess Celestia smirked, amused at both Twilight and her two guards’ reactions, all fidgeting and looking down at the floor. “We may have missed a foal or two, or counted one or two that was actually the child of another stallion, but the genealogists believe Star Swirl slept with more than eight hundred mares, and had over fourteen hundred offspring. One particularly prodigious mare, one Sunshine Skies, had thirteen foals with Star Swirl. This, in a population that had dwindled down to about fifty thousand when they were forced to abandon old Unicornia.”
It was like Celestia had cast a silence spell, as nopony else in the room even spoke for several minutes. It didn’t surprise her. This fact about Star Swirl had been omitted from most history texts and biographies for the last several hundred years. It wasn’t that there had ever been an attempt to obfuscate the facts. Ponies simply didn’t like to hear about the less pleasant parts of the Classical Era, when many had died in an attempt to defeat the Windigos and settle Equestria, taming a wild land and making it safe for the future. Even Twilight Sparkle, renowned for researching history and lore, would have had to go through a lot of books to find out about this.
“By now, I think about ninety nine point five percent of all unicorns in Equestria are descended from Star Swirl through one line or another,” Celestia added. “There are a few small villages in distant redoubts that are the lone exceptions. Since very few ponies ever move in, the unicorns there tend to intermarry among themselves, and continue to stay unrelated to Star Swirl.”
“W-well,” Twilight mustered up enough willpower to start speaking again. “At least the unicorns were magically stronger for it.”
“Not quite,” Celestia said, shaking her head.
“Wh-what?”
“Magic is a sentient force unto itself, Twilight. It’s not intelligent like we ponies are or gryphons or minotaurs are, but it can still think and recognise patterns, and it can both corrode and purify,” Celestia said, explaining more for the benefits of her less-educated guards. “When we tried to use the genetics of magical strength inheritance to our advantage, however, it seemed like magic itself took notice of this, and punished us for our cleverness.”
Twilight sagged, not liking where this was going.
Celestia took a sip of her tea. “It took us a few centuries to realise it, but the strength of magical inheritance appeared to skip that generation altogether. Unicorns born of strong unicorns were only as powerful as unicorns born of weak unicorns. We were biased towards thinking they were stronger, since they had more resources and were more inclined to train thinking they already had a strong heritage, but once those factors were taken out, the strength of the father made no difference.”
“That’s...uh...something,” Twilight weakly remarked. Suddenly, her enthusiasm for being Star Swirl’s descendant had waned.
Celestia shrugged. “Well, I would like to say the unicorns learned their lesson. They didn’t, actually. The Earth ponies and the pegasi noticed what they were doing and pressured the unicorn tribe not to try playing eugenics again. More importantly, the next generation actually had an even ratio between mares and stallions, so the great polygamy experiment only lasted that first generation.”
“This is depressing,” Twilight declared.
“So it is. Oh, you might not find this amusing, Twilight, but I do. In a sense, you are special for being Star Swirl’s descendant.”
Twilight’s face was painted with confusion. “What do you mean?”
“Well, remember that I said there was a tiny percent of the unicorn population with no relation to Star Swirl?” Celestia asked. “Most of the powerful unicorns over the last several hundred years seem to come from that small subset. You may even recognise some of them. Both Trixie Lulamoon the Great and Powerful and Sunset Shimmer both came out of a small town nestled in the mountains.”
“What?!” Twilight screeched, before awkwardly covering her mouth with her hooves. “Neither of them are descended from Star Swirl?”
“Oh yes. Then there’s a neighboring village right across from there. I was hoping I would get at least a few powerful students out of there this generation,” Celestia mused, cutting up a piece of cake for herself. “There was one student from there, a young colt named Sunburst I believe. He was a genius with theory, but his magic often fizzled out when he attempted to apply it practically. I was a little disappointed, only to find out that his mother was from Manehatten and so he was actually a descendant of Star Swirl. The rest of the town still has isolated bloodlines, so who knows? Maybe one or two ponies from there slipped through the applications to my School and will pop up in the future as a magician of some renown. Many unicorns do self-study, after all.”
“Then what do you mean that I was special for being Star Swirl’s descendant?”
“Well...how to put it? Most unicorns with Star Swirl in their family tree never go on to become magical prodigies. You were one of the exceptions in that regard, as you finished one of his spells, and became an alicorn and Princess in the process,” Celestia said.
That, more than anything, seemed to hit Twilight hard. It was one thing to find out that being related to your hero wasn’t anything really special. It was still another to find out it actually made you less likely to succeed. “I-I think I have to go, Princess,” Twilight said, looking ill. “I have a lot to think about.”
“I’m sorry, Twilight Sparkle,” Celestia apologised. “I know you were so eager to find out about this, but you would have found out the truth eventually anyways. I did what I could to break it to you gently.”
“Y-yeah. Thanks, Princess Celestia,” said Twilight. She put her saddlebags back over her back, and then she was off.
Well, at least she still calls me Princess Celestia. I was worried she would detest me for telling her the truth.
As Celestia used her magic to furl up the scroll detailing Star Swirl’s family tree, one of her guards suddenly spoke up. “Princess Celestia, was that really what happened? Ah, I’m not saying you’re lying, Princess, just that it, well, it—”
“Sounded so fantastical?” Celestia interrupted. “It did happen. Both Luna and I were alive at the time, looking to cobble together a nation. It wasn’t something we hid, it was just something that...disappeared out of history. I suppose I should ask the Historical Society to make these details more widely known. It may be uncomfortable, but ponies should know more about where we came from. Oh, could you please take this scroll back to the Archives?”
The guard looked a little put-out, though whether it was by the confirmation of his ancestors being in polygamous relationship or having to carry the scroll back, Celestia wasn’t certain. More likely it was hearing that some stallions a millenium and a half ago had sired several dozen or even hundreds of foals. Compared to today, with monogamous relationships, that was certainly an uncomfortable subject.
However, he took the scroll in good grace, leaving the parlour area. The other guard stood alone. Though Celestia could tell he was brimming with curiosity, he kept his mouth shut.
Celestia put a piece of cake in her mouth, savoring the many flavours of chocolate, cream and cherry filling. Though Twilight’s discovery hadn’t been as interesting as Celestia thought it would be, it had brought up nostalgic memories of the past.
Hmm, perhaps I should have a chat with Luna tonight, Celestia thought. Star Swirl was rough around the edges in many ways, and the less about him the better. Clover the Clever, though, now there was a stallion we both loved to know.
Perhaps after she had a sisterly chat, it was time for a trip together with Luna down to the royal cemetery. Celestia at least owed it to her own descendants, the one who had helped to build Equestria with naught but horns and their own four hooves, to remember them from time to time.
Author's Note
If you liked, then please remember to upvote!
This isn't really my headcanon, so it's not really a headcanon dump on my part. It is however meant to be a riff on the whole "I have a super-special ancestor" trope (Heroic Lineage/Famous Ancestor). Instead of just Twilight Sparkle or whoever being descended from the Grand Poobah of the setting, practically every unicorn is, then turn it around by having those who aren't in general the more powerful unicorns.
That darned ending, though. Those of you who have read some of my fics this month for my self-imposed story-a-day challenge may have noticed I have some issues with endings. In part this is because I'm taking ideas I have and fleshing them out, and while this makes middle parts of fics easy to write, doing the set-up is sometimes difficult, and satisfying endings are getting tougher to land. Plus I'm running out of my more detailed plot outlines for these stories.
