Selections From the Canterlot Royal Academic Archives

by Third Wave

Chapters

Cultural Effects of the Pre-Alicorn Period
Switching Horses Midstream, Chapter I
Switching Horses Midstream, Chapter II
Switching Horses Midstream, Chapter III
Switching Horses Midstream, Chapter IV
Switching Horses Midstream, Chapter V
Switching Horses Midstream, Chapter VI

Cultural Effects of the Pre-Alicorn Period

Author's Note

This essay was one of my first piece of MLP fan writing back in 2012, and is unedited from the original state.

Cultural Effects of the Pre-Alicorn Period

Cultural Effects of the Pre-Alicorn Period on Modern Equine Society

by Lyra Heartstrings
Journal of Equinology, Vol. 4, No. 2
Canterlot University Press

The pre-alicorn period is a time that has almost been lost to memory. Eons ago, before the arrival of the Princesses, pony society was divided. As we all learn in the tale of Hearth’s Warming Eve, the three races were forced to overcome their hatred for each other and learn to live together to forge Equestria from the virgin soil. Since then we have thrown away the past grievances the unicorns, pegasi, and earth ponies had with each other and have learned to embrace all equines as a whole. One might think that the cultures of the pre-alicornic civilizations are a relic of the distant past. However, the cultures and customs of the individual pre-alicornic societies still have many ramifications on the present day Equestrian culture.

Pegasi

The race of ponies that has remained the closest to their pre-alicornic roots over the millennia is undoubtedly the pegasi. There are two main reasons that pegasus ponies have kept much of their older customs into the modern day. The first is that the pegasi have been the most isolated groups of ponies. As the vast majority of pegasi live in cloud cities such as Cloudsdale, for much of equine history few pegasi ever traveled far beyond the cloud cities or interacted with unicorn or earth pony settlements. Similarly, unicorns and earth ponies were unable to reach cloud cities without the use of spells which have only come into common unicorn knowledge in the past thousand years. As such, unicorns and earth ponies never came into regular contact with pegasi beyond diplomatic or trade delegations. With so little relative contact, pegasi traditions remained untouched while earth pony and unicorn customs were changed via regular cultural intermingling. The isolation of the pegasi even continued well into the establishment of Celestia’s rule, as the Equestrian royal guard was only established after the Nightmare Rebellion. Even now, there are few places outside of cloud cities that have significant populations of pegasi.

The other reason for the maintenance of pre-alicornic culture in pegasus societies is the very nature of the society in pegasi settlements. Pegasus societies in the pre-alicornic period were often very militaristic and were based upon a strict social hierarchy. As the controllers of the weather even prior to the founding of Equestria, pegasus tribes were very specialized. Foals were divided by skills such as speed, cloud-handling, and water-gathering at a very early age through rigorous testing and competition. Today, some remnants of these competitions still survive, such as the annual Best Young Flier event in Cloudsdale. Additionally as pegasi of the pre-alicornic era completely relied on earth ponies for food, the pegasi often lived a very austere lifestyle. One solace of these societies came in the form of the military, as the pegasi were also responsible for protecting the pony tribes from outside threats. For a young pegasus, joining the military often meant a chance to climb the social ladder and a life of honorable service to the tribe. Because of this, the pegasi are very proud of their militaristic heritage, and every pegasus born in a cloud city is required to attend flight school. Pegasus ponies living in the cloud cities who are not good fliers are often treated as social outcasts and ostracized by their peers.

Remnants of pre-alicornic pegasus culture can be seen throughout modern day Equestria. The architectural style inherent in most cloud cities today stems from the pre-alicornic and early Equestrian periods, with columns dominating the facades of most cloud buildings. The predominance of white buildings is a result of this being the most common and easy to produce form of cloud material, but the older constructions have more in common with pre-alicornic architecture and are more stark and angular. Newer cloud buildings tend to move away from this and are more ornate and colorful, recently incorporating rainbow inlays into the cloud materials. The military organization of pegasi society also has had a great impact on the role of pegasi in modern Equestria. To appease many of the ruling pegasi commanders during the early rule of Celestia and Luna, several elements of the pegasi military structure were incorporated into the overall structure of the Equestrian army. It is for this reason that the pegasi contingent of the royal guard was created, though today the royal guard mostly serves a ceremonial purpose. Undoubtedly the most lasting impact of pegasi society has been the love for sport. The Cloudiseum in Cloudsdale and other coliseums first originated as venues for the pegasus tribes to hold regular competitions featuring pony combat, or tests of agility and speed. The military and sporting tradition of the early pegasus tribes is also reflected in the creation of the Wonderbolts, which serves as the elite Equestrian air force. While pegasi are required to learn basic air combat in foalhood, only the greatest fliers in Equestria are allowed to join the Wonderbolts. The Wonderbolts arose as a memorial to the great fighting forces led by ponies such as Commander Hurricane, and the annual Wonderbolts Derby in Canterlot shows how revered they are even by non-pegasi. The Wonderbolts and the pegasi royal guard are a strong link between the modern Equestrian military and the pegasi military predating Celestia and Luna, and continue to carry on many of the traditions of the pre-alicornic pegasi tribes in their practices.

Unicorns

The unicorns of the pre-alicornic period were, unlike the earth pony and pegasi tribes, the most advanced society of the pre-alicornic period. As they controlled the motions of the sun and the moon before the arrival of the Princesses, they had a very important task. However, using their unicorn magic only required a collective use of the simple telekinesis spell to move the heavenly bodies. However, the mass of the sun and moon and their distance from the Earth meant that the collective magical power needed to move them was more vast than any single unicorn could conjure up. This requirement is largely what led to the unification of the unicorn tribes into a single society. The frequent coming together of the unicorns as a single race to preserve the natural cycle of day and night created a bond that overcame the more tribal affiliations felt in pegasi or earth pony societies. As the movements were only required twice a day, this left the unicorns with much time for leisure and to pursue the arts and other activities. These pursuits led to a large educated class and a strong aristocratic tradition compared to the other pony races. It is for this reason that much of the written records of the pre-alicornic period come from the ancient unicorn libraries. From these records, we have also found that it was the pre-alicornic era when much of the documented spells were first created. After the mastery of the telekinesis spells that required, many unicorns spent their free time experimenting with new spells. Some of these unicorn sorcerers have been immortalized as the founders of modern magical theory. Star Swirl the Bearded is probably the most well known. He was the most prolific sorcerer before the pre-Classical era, creating over two hundred new spells alone. Star Swirl and his student Clover the Clever, like many revered sorcerers, were often patrons of the upper nobility of the unicorn kingdom, and these two even received royal appointments at the court of the ruling unicorn kings of the time as advisers. These sorcerers penned many treatises on basic magical theory, but only a few survived the Great Migration.

Because of the pressing nature of the Great Migration, only the high nobility survived the journey to Equestria. When the society of Classical Equestria was settled, the unicorns formed much of the aristocracy of the early nation as they still performed the raising of the sun and moon before the Princesses took over that duty. This aristocratic legacy of the ancient unicorn kingdom and early Equestria survives today largely in Canterlot, of which unicorns make up the majority of the population. It is posited that the founding of Canterlot by the Princesses was a concession to the ruling unicorn nobility in exchange for relinquishing control of the sun and moon. However, others suspect that Canterlot was constructed as a means of reining in the powers of the unicorn nobility and centralizing the Princesses as the supreme authority in Equestria. Historians are divided on this issue and neither Celestia nor Luna have revealed their true motives behind the construction of Canterlot, but over the millennia it has become the center of Equestrian politics and government. Whatever the true purpose was, the construction of Canterlot on a mountainside and its high towers is certainly reminiscent of depictions of the old castles that housed the unicorn nobility before the Great Migration.

Extending from this legacy of unicorns in Canterlot, unicorns make up a large part of high society in modern Equestria. One notable position in government held by unicorns is the captain of the royal guard. While most officer levels of the Equestrian military are held by pegasi as they are naturally more attuned to military matters, the position of captain of the royal guard has traditionally been given to a unicorn. Another high ranking position that is traditionally filled by a unicorn is that of governor of Canterlot, which is currently led by Fancy Pants. Additionally, Blueblood received the honorary title of prince after it was discovered that his direct ancestry traced back to Princess Platinum and the pre-alicornic royalty. This dominance of unicorns in the Equestrian upper class, while it has been mitigated somewhat by the rising social mobility of earth ponies, has led to the higher levels of government being dominated by unicorns even now. This inequality is probably the greatest remnant of the pre-alicornic unicorn society in Equestria today.

Earth Ponies

Unlike the other two pony races, the society of earth ponies has undergone the most drastic changes since the Great Migration and the founding of Equestria. While many earth pony settlements are still primarily engaged in agricultural production, many settlements have developed into bustling cities with their own industries. These cities also demonstrate how industrious the earth pony race has become. Much of the technological advancement in recent centuries has been because of earth pony inventors. As earth ponies are not blessed with such magical ability as is possessed by the unicorns, they have resorted to advancing industrial production through the natural sciences. These advances created the railroad network that is snaking its way across Equestria and several other inventions that have allowed for bustling cities such as Manehattan to thrive.

The prosperity experienced by modern earth ponies is nothing like what the balance of wealth was in the pre-alicornic period. For their part of the tribal agreements, the earth pony tribes were required to grant a certain amount of their yearly harvests to the unicorns and pegasi. This feudal system tied the earth ponies to tilling their fields day in and day out, and left little time for advancement in the sciences. However, the earth ponies also had the most representative forms of government of all three races. Each tribe was free to elect its own chancellor through a democratic process. Each chancellor acted as a representative of their tribe in foreign negotiations, but was still accountable to the tribe. This local participation in government still exists in modern Equestria. Princess Celestia has permitted the earth pony towns to elect their own mayors rather than having them be royally appointed, though of course the candidates must still be approved by the Princesses.

The greater freedoms possessed by modern earth ponies as opposed to their pre-alicornic society is not limited to the political process. In modern times, earth ponies have also achieved greater social and class mobility as well. This is due in part to the technological advancement allowing earth ponies efficiency in producing finished goods that is on par and sometimes greater than the efficiency that can be achieved with unicorn magic. Additionally, the farming and subsistence tradition has also lent itself to modern earth ponies in the development of strong business acumen. In fact, many of the most prominent businessponies today are earth ponies. Filthy Rich, CEO and owner of the department store chain Barnyard Bargains, is one such earth pony. This success of earth ponies in business has led to extraordinary recent growth in several earth pony cities including Manehattan and Fillydelphia. As they have become hubs of commercial activity, these cities are attracting ponies from all over Equestria and contributing to the rising numbers of urbanized and wealthy earth ponies.

However, the agricultural tradition of earth ponies still remains throughout Equestria. Even today, a majority of earth ponies are engaged in farming or other activities related to food production. As earth ponies are known to have a special relationship with the land, most earth ponies will likely remain tied to the land and agricultural production for the foreseeable future. Just as pegasi are in charge of the weather, the earth pony race is uniquely gifted among all the races to the agricultural sector, which somewhat locks in their chosen profession. But recent developments have shown that earth ponies are not as locked into their role in society as pegasi, and do possess some societal flexibility.

Switching Horses Midstream, Chapter I

Author's Note

Contains spoilers for the movie and season 8.

Switching Horses Midstream, Chapter I

The History and Structure of the Equestrian Parliament

by Errata
Equestrian Political Theory, Vol. 138, No. 1
Canterlot University Press

The structure of the Equestrian Parliament was, both in a figurative and a material sense, greatly different from how it is today. After the founding of a united Equestria and during the first years of the reigns of Celestia and Luna, the traditions of the pre-Equestrian pony races were still strong. As such, when the first representative body of the ponies of Equestria was set up, it borrowed heavily from those customs. The Parliamentary chamber itself in the Castle of the Two Sisters was similar to the meeting house where the Earth Pony, Unicorn, and Pegasus tribes met to discuss the arrangements between the three. As such, the original Parliamentary cahmber was square with rows of benches on three sides. One side for each pony race, with the fourth side for the thrones where Celestia and Luna sat while presiding over the chamber.

Over the centuries, Equestria grew and the organization of the Parliament changed to accomodate. As tribal affiliations lessened and gave way to ideological and political affiliations, the importance of maintaining separate seating for the three pony races waned. As the Parliamentary chamber was expanded, the far side of the chamber was removed to provide new space, and the three sides became two rows of benches facing each other, but still angled to face the thrones. It was natural for the ponies in Parliament to coordinate and sit with their ideological brethren, especially once formalized political parties were formed. A custom grew for the more open-minded and supportive of the diarchy's policies to sit on the right side of the chamber closer to Celestia's ear - Celestia sat on the right or "Dawn" throne while Luna sat on the left or "Dusk" throne - while those more protective of their tribal traditions sat on the left side of the chamber. It also become custom for either Princess to gesture to either side using their wings rather than a hoof to retain the alicorns height and straightened posture. As such, the more liberal political positions became the "Dawn Wing" of the parliamentary court, while the more conservative politics became known as the "Dusk Wing." Following the Nightmare Rebellion, the reference to the Dusk Wing fell out of favor so it would not be construed as sedition. Those on the Dusk Wing may have disagreed with Celestia more often but everypony knew the consequences of outright rebellion potentially setting windigoes, or worse, the petrified Discord, upon Equestria once again. The Dawn and Dusk terms were replaced by the more generic "right wing" and "left wing" that has become part of political terminology to this day.

The aftermath of the Nightmare Rebellion was a momentous period for Equestria. The corruption of Princess Luna into Nightmare Moon took a great toll on Princess Celestia. Celestia felt she was solely responsible for the alienation of her sister and her banishment. She fell into a stupor and went into seclusion for several days, neglecting her duties of raising the sun, and now also the moon, to grieve; a period during which the sun was motionless low in the eastern sky. This left Equestria in a brief perpetual dawn and became known as the Long Mourning. The Long Mourning was marked by instability and in effect a brief interregnum for the first few days. However, the robustness of the court remained, and a regent was nominated by the parliamentary court to maintain order in the realm. This position will eventually morph into what is now known as the Cheval Regent. Following Celestia's return to the public eye from the Long Mourning and with Equestria now only possessing one Princess, she kept the position of Cheval Regent as a functionary for the day to day parliamentary proceedings and a de jure voice for Celestia in her absence. Additionally, with the Castle of the Two Sisters in ruins, Celestia officially moved her residence and the meeting of the parliamentary court to Canterlot. While this had been planned for some time, and the court frequently met in Canterlot already, the move was not made official until now. It was thus that Canterlot became the de jure as well as de facto capital of Equestria.

The move to Canterlot and the creation of a permanent seat of legislative business in the aftermath of the Nightmare Rebellion also led to a number of other reforms, some brought about by Celestia or the parliament and some occurring organically. Celestia, seeing the neglect that her common subjects had for Luna and how the Castle of the Two Sisters led to isolation of the government from the ponies, sought a remedy for create more interaction between them. She went to the Cheval Regent, then an Earth Pony, for suggestions. After a discussion that included an investigation of the pre-Equestrian historical archives, Celestia and the Cheval Regent discovered that the Earth Pony tribes had a directly elected chancellor right up until Chancellor Puddinghead and the Great Migration. With the assent of the Cheval Regent and of parliament, Celestia decreed that from then on a majority of parliamentary seats would be directly elected by the ponies. This proved to be a stable method and continues to be in use with minor modifications to this day. The most notable refinement of the parliamentary system has been the addition of overlapping reserved seats for each of the Earth Ponies, Unicorns, and Pegasi in addition to the general seats. This was adopted in year 624 of the Celestial Era on a recommendation made by Tuque Twill in his comprehensive treatise On Hippocracy, which noted the growing imbalance of pony types in Parliament. In part because of this transition to directly elected members of parliament, and also with the increased communication among members and their constituencies, the early Celestial Era also saw the formalization of political parties throughout Equestria.

Many of the parties, especially after the adoption of the reserved districts, were based on local or traditional internal divisions within each of the three races of ponies. For instance, the Pegasus seats generally fell along the lines of the original meetings of the Pegasus weather councils with the division of the cloud workers among the spring, summer, autumn, and winter seasonal shifts. Thus, the Pegasi, especially in the Cloudsdale city council, originally had four parties: the Vernal Party, the Estival Party, the Autumnal Party, and the Hibernal Party. The Autumnal Party has since disappeared with the dissociation of the parties from their respective seasons, and today's Pegasi politics have stabilized into a two and a half party system with the Estival and Hibernal parties dominant and the Vernal Party reduced to a smaller, more local-oriented party. However, these only saw a resurgence in national politics in recent years. By far the dominant party ever since the move to Canterlot has been the Triple Crown Party. The Tricrowners were formed shortly after the unification of Equestria and were originally representative of the new unified principality under Celestia and Luna. Indeed, their name and symbol arose from the archaic Triple Crown of Equestria: the Grand Helm of Pegasopolis, the Platinum Crown of Unicornia, and the Puddingian Cap of the Earth Ponies. Throughout Equestria's history the Triple Crown Party has remained a generally pro-Celestia party. The Triple Crown Party supports a continuation of the status quo and the division of government between the three levels of Celestial and now Diarchical decree, Parliamentary government, and the local and regional governments such as the Council of Cloudsdale and Ponyville's Mayorship. This harmonic balance, coupled with the relatively agrarian and closeness of most party leaders as Cheval Regents to Celestia, has kept the Triple Crown Party in power for most of the governments since the Long Mourning, with rare exception.

The structure of the parliament itself also changed radically during the move to Canterlot. In an effort to bring ponies together and forge an even closer united Equestria as Princess Celestia envisioned, the two opposing aisles were gotten rid of and the new parliamentary chamber was replaced by a horseshoe shape around the central dais where Celestia (now joined by Luna and the Cheval Regent) would sit when presiding over parliament. This was an especially significant change in the early centuries as it and the directly elected members came with the abolition of the race-reserved seats before their reintroduction 120 years ago. The general prosperity of Equestria throughout the centuries and the dominance of the Triple Crown Party has given rise to a prevailing theory of politics called the Horseshoe Theory after the shape of the Parliamentary chamber. With their status quo stance and electoral dominance, the Triple Crown Party often sits squarely at the center of the Parliamentary chamber facing the dual thrones, while the more extremist left-wing and right-wing parties tend to sit on the fringes of the chamber, incidentally closer to the diarchs. The Horseshoe Theory, credited to the political scholar Common Sense the Hoovesier for its creation, states that the centrist and prgamatic aspects of the Triple Crown Party and their support for Celestia has allowed Celestia to keep the reins of government steady, and that a deviation too far to the extremes would lead to a reversion to either a Nightmare scenario or to Discordian chaos. While some scholars and naturally the more redical parties disagree with it, the prevalence and acceptance of the Horseshoe Theory is commonly thought to have been a major factor in the stability of the Equestrian realm, especially when compared to her neighbors and particularly with the collapse of Griffonstone into a near anarchic state.

Lately, while the Parliament has normally towed the Celestial and Diarchical line since Princess Luna's return and restoration, there have been a few marked divisions during recent Parliamentary sessions, especially in breaking with the opinion of the diarchy. Almost all of the recent controversies have dealt with the treatment of non-pony citizens of Equestria into the realm. While cross-cultural exchange such as the longstanding allowance of Griffons into the Cloudsdale Flight Camp had garnered occasionally grumbling acceptance among the rest of Equestria due to respect for Pegasus traditions and Equestria's pseudo-federal system of strong local governments, the increasing population of griffons, donkeys, buffalo, and other creatures within Equestria and a call for increased representation of non-ponies ruffled some feathers (though ironically due to longstanding interactions between Pegasi and Griffon populations the ruffling came from those ponies wihout feathers, the Unicorns and Earth Ponies).

The first real test of the relationship between the Equestrian Parliament and Princess Celestia in addition to broader pony attitudes toward other creatures arose in the 970s of the Celestial Era. In the 973 CE election, the seat of Cirrusbad-North San Palomino was won by Equestria's first ever non-pony Member of Parliament, a donkey named Rucio. Rucio's entrance into Parliament caused a great commotion, especially as that very act of being the lone non-pony in the legislative body highlighted the lack of representation of other creatures in Parliament. When Princess Celestia saw this in the first session she presided over where Rucio was present, she discussed the matter with Rucio afterward, and then representatives of the other creatures such as griffons living in Equestria. She sought a way to resolve this. The issue with general seats is that ponies so outnumber other creatures that more non-ponies standing and get elected in the near future was unlikely, especially as Rucio's election was largely due to the rapid Pegasus urbanization into Las Pegasus at the time, leaving the San Palomino area with a higher than usual percentage of the donkey population. Celestia's proposal to increase representation harked back once again to Tuque Twill, and she formally proposed the establishment of reserved seats for non-pony creatures just as they had been established for Earth Ponies, Unicorns, and Pegasi centuries before.

This caused a fracas within the Parliament, politicos, and even among Canterlot high society. A few of the more conservative left wing members of the Triple Crown Party voiced their displeasure, claiming that Celestia was overstepping her bounds as monarch. Truly, this was a difficult thing to parse, as Equestria does not have a written constitution, and the rules on the boundary between the royal decree of a Princess and parliamentary authority had never been strictly defined. Despite this legal grey area becoming even more muddled after the return of Princess Luna and the coronations of Princess Twilight Sparkle, it was still a long dormant issue during the Celestial Era. In an attempt to not create even more ire among the Members of Parliament and especially among those Unicorn nobility so fond of social gossip in Canterlot, the Princess consulted with Cheval Regent Gallant Fox. Gallant Fox was a Pegasus and a bit of a radical. He was generally in agreement with Celestia's agenda, but it was an opportune moment in Equestria's history that he happened to be Cheval Regent when Rucio was elected and the issue of full creature representation first arose. This made him the right pony at the right time, and after Celestia conferred with Gallant Fox, she scaled down her royal decree to an official recommendation and Parliamentary proposal, and Gallant Fox through the full weight of his political power behind it. After much butting of heads over the issue, the motion barely passed Parliament. While it was successful and led to the five non-pony reserved districts the Equestrian Parliament possesses today, it led to one of the greatest splits in the Triple Crown Party and the formation of the Corona Party. This party, whose small membership is composed mainly of Unicorns and Earth Ponies, ironically supports a more centralized structure of government, but one with clearer limitations on Celestia's authority.

While the Triple Crown Party has faced many defections from its ranks over the centuries, the Corona Party has been one of the worst the party had ever seen. The Coronists, led by the Unicorn Parabellum, have only grown since their official defection from the Tricrowners. With the return of Princess Luna and especially after the First Changeling Invasion and the reappearance of the Crystal Empire, the Corona Party has even surged during the last two general elections to become the second largest party in the Equestrian Parliament. To an extent, this is entirely understandable. Ironically, while initially supporting isolationism, after those two incidents the Coronists adopted a more outward looking and interventionist foreign policy. According to some sources close to the royal advisory, the recent diplomatic missions to the dragon lands, Yakyakistan, and Griffonstone and the attempt to steer events in those regions has been a gambit by Celestia to sop to some of the Coronists interventionist bent while advancing her commitment to better relations with non-pony creatures both foreign and domestic. Unfortunately for the Princess' agenda, the two invasions by the Changelings and the Storm King's occupation of Canterlot has certainly eroded public trust in other creatures, especially among the Unicorn nobility with its connections to Canterlot. These worrisome events have led to the Corona Party becoming even more suspicious of non-pony creatures, even after such successes in spreading Equestrian values as the deposition of Chrysalis and the reforming of the Changeling Kingdom.

While normally, the Corona Party was small enough to hold any real legislative power, the diplomatic adventures and especially the aftermath of the Storm King's occupation have led to even more support for the Coronists with the high profile defection of Canterlot MP Man O'War from the Tricrowners to the Coronists, complete with resounding return to parliament in the resulting Fort Trotten by-election, and the disgraceful resignation of War Admiral as Minister of Defense. With the recent setbacks for the Triple Crown Party, it appears another parliamentary crisis similar to the Creature Representation Crisis may be brewing. While the unwritten constitutional traditions have made Principal authority often murky, one clear cut case has always been in education. Shortly after the creation of Celestia's School For Gifted Unicorns, in order to prevent a bias toward Unicorns at the objection of the Pegasi and Earth Ponies in Parliament, Celestia recused herself from any formal role in the appointment of the chancellor of the Equestrian Education Association. Usually, Celestia's informal support or lack thereof and her judgement on the candidates would be enough to sway the Members of Parliament on the fence. With the latest appointment, however, it seems this was not the case with the latest appointment.

The Coronist Party pulled a clever gambit in urging for the selection of a new head of the Equestrian Education Association in the first meeting of Parliament following the liberation of Canterlot from the Storm King's occupation. While it was a time of great jubilation and relief for many of Equestria's citizens, the brief period after the nearly unprecedented attack on Equestria's capital saw tempers running hot and suspicion of outsiders, especially non-ponies, at its height. It was then that the Coronist Party put forward the Unicorn Neighsay for the Equestrian Education Association chancellorship. After the nomination hearings were held, Celestia reommended strongly against Neighsay's candidacy for the post on the point that Neighsay's beliefs went against everything Equestrian values since unification stood for. Despite this, in a rare rebuke of both the Princess and of Fancy Pants's leadership of his party and as Cheval Regent, several members of the Triple Crown Party including a majority of the Canterlot members voted against the party line to confirm Neighsay. Neighsay's selection by Parliament as the head of the Equestrian Education Association has been by far the most successful political move by the Corona Party and other more conservative parties.

The appointment of Neighsay has perhaps only been the beginning of controversy surrounding the Equestrian Education Association and the role of the Princesses. Since then, Princess Twilight Sparkle opened her new School of Friendship and appeared to flaunt her rejection of the EEA's renowned accreditation system with her personally drawn up curriculum for the school catering to all creatures. Celestia has only escalated the controversy, having seemingly gone against Parliament in her support for the young and somewhat brash Twilight in her public opposition to Neighsay's policies. While Princess Luna has remained quiet on the issue, it remains to be seen how this standoff between the Princesses and the Equestrian Education Association unfolds. Cheval Regent Fancy Pants has attempted to mediate on the issue, but neither Twilight nor Neighsay are willing to back down, and Celestia remains supportive of her former protege. The most explosive measure would be for either Celestia or Twilight Sparkle to make an official royal recommendation that Chancellor Neighsay be removed from his position. While it is within the purview of royal duties to do so, it would undoubtedly fracture the increasingly fragile Parliamentary coalition and almost certainly threaten Fancy Pants' now precarious position as Cheval Regent.

Switching Horses Midstream, Chapter II

Switching Horses Midstream: The Political Fallout of the Cozy Glow Incident

by Nara and Pine Needle

Initially published in Congressional Quarterhorse, No. 3228

Public Release Version Ed. by Nara

Royal Canterlot Publications

[Ed. Note: Portions of this publication were originally compiled from advisory notes to the Royal Sisters and has been revised for public consumption to remove any sensitive material - Nara]

The opening of the School of Friendship by Princess Twilight Sparkle had without a doubt strained political matters as of late. Neighsay’s opposition to the school and the refusal of accreditation was heavily supported by the opposition parties, most notably the Coronist Party and the Party to Uphold Hippocracy. While the Cheval Regent was initially skeptical of throwing the weight of the government behind the School of Friendship, both Celestia and Luna were committed to supporting Twilight Sparkle in her endeavor as a message of diplomacy and openness to Equestria’s neighboring governments. The hope was that with non-pony students, especially students from outside Equestria, a greater cross-cultural understanding between Equestria and the other states could be fostered. While the initial opposition created a rocky start for the School of Friendship, it appeared to be going well. Reports from both Twilight Sparkle herself and the heads of state sponsoring the first cadre of non-pony students seemed to demonstrate how effective the diplomatic outreach program spearheaded by Twilight Sparkle’s “friendship missions” had become. While the Coronists and the minor parties of the opposition at times could rile up enough of a fervor to stall or shoot down proposed legislation in parliament, Cheval Regent Fancy Pants was able to rein in the most unruly members of the Triple Crown Party enough to ensure the government would last through the next few years until the next general election.

However, the Cozy Glow Incident has clearly altered the political situation. At first we thought there would be a rally around the flag effect from the incident. Indeed, the threat posed by the brief Equestria-wide loss of magic was a humbling account for many ponies across Equestria, unicorn, pegasus, and earth pony alike. Reports from Canterlot and Cloudsdale indicated the quick mobilization of the guard was received very well by those highly affected by the disaster. The relief efforts during those harrowing days in providing fresh food were lauded in many rural farming communities. The speedy restoration of magical abilities across Equestria as well saw a strong swell of support for the Princesses and the Triple Crown Party. Tracking polls conducted by Gallop even showed a brief but significant spike in ponies’ favor of non-pony creatures. The question “Are relations between ponies and griffons currently positive or negative?” saw a ten percent swing toward positive with a four percent swing toward very positive. The same question regarding dragons saw a very surprising sixteen percent swing away from negative, though this was not reflected in ponies considering dragon-pony relations to be positive. The percentage of ponies viewing dragon-pony relations as positive only increased by three percent. This trend during and shortly following the Cozy Glow Incident has been attributed to the aid that the griffons sent to some of the border regions between Equestria and Griffonstone during the crisis and Dragon Lord Ember personally leading a dragon expeditionary force to aid ponies stuck in the mountainous regions on the edge of the Macintosh Hills. Things had been looking up for Equestrian internal and external relations with non-pony creatures.

In retrospect, we may have been too optimistic in how much the short term support would turn into long term acceptance. Certainly, many both in parliament and throughout the Canterlot-Ponyville corridor thought Chancellor Neighsay’s reversal of his position and the public announcement of the School of Friendship’s accreditation was a triumph of Celestial and Tricrowner policy. However, the reaction of the Coronists caught many political pundit ponies off guard. With Celestia, Luna, Twilight Sparkle, parliament, and now Neighsay and the Equestrian Education Association all in favor of exploring educating other creatures in the School of Friendship, we believed the issue was settled and the government could move on to other matters of state. Unfortunately, both the Coronists and, even more worryingly the Party to Uphold Hippocracy, spun the Cozy Glow Incident as exposing a threat to Equestria’s security. Even worse, the Hippocrats and even some of the more radical Coronists spread conspiracy theories about the identity of Cozy Glow or that the non-pony students were behind the loss of Equestria’s magic. They made outrageous claims of Cozy Glow actually being a rogue changeling, or even Queen Chrysalis herself.

[Ed. note: For the sake of affirming facts and to uphold journalistic and academic integrity, Cozy Glow is not Queen Chrysalis or any sort of changeling or other shapeshifting creature. She is simply a pegasus filly. - Nara]

Even when the opposition parties accepted that Cozy Glow was just a pony, they still decried the incident as a reason to be more strict with Equestria’s relations with other creatures. Coronist parliamentary leader Parabellum called the incident a “grave lapse in Equestria’s national security” in an address to parliament a week after magic was restored. She posited that if a “mere foal can endanger the very magic that forms the underpinning of Equestrian society, then what is to stop one of our enemies from doing so,” evoking memories of the Storm King and Tirek in an attempt to stir up ponies’ emotions when the address was distributed publicly.

The evolution of Neighsay’s view on allowing non-pony creatures to be educated in Equestrian accredited institutions only increased the tumultuous political situation created by his initial appointment. The governing Triple Crown Party and the opposition Coronist Party were both forced to issue clumsy reversals of their previous positions on Neighsay’s appointment. Fancy Pants, in his capacity as Cheval Regent and Tricrowner leader, issued a statement to the press welcoming Neighsay’s change of face and calling for a stay on the effort in parliament to remove him as head of the Equestrian Education Association. The opposition coalition of the Coronists and the Party to Uphold Hippocracy were livid, calling Neighsay’s action “a gross betrayal” of their trust and confidence, and now called for his removal. Adding to the confusion, many moderate Coronists still supported Neighsay based on personal relationships the members of parliament had forged with the EEA Chancellor. Likewise, there were many Triple Crowners who viewed Neighsay’s change of position with a skeptical eye and questioned the sincerity of his declaration. After Man O’War’s jump to the Coronists, the spectre of even more parliamentarians defecting from their parties added a significant factor to the already shaky Triple Crown government, and knocked yet another leg out of the foundation of Fancy Pants’ continuing leadership of the government.

As such, Fancy Pants sought the advice of the Princesses Celestia and Luna to discuss the matter of Neighsay’s continuing position in the EEA and the looming spectre of lassoing the potential rogue members of parliament to prevent them from bolting from the party. The Princesses agreed that with the population of Equestria and many in government already on edge following the Cozy Glow Incident, a sudden defection of one or more MPs causing the downfall of the current government would be a disaster not just for the Triple Crown Party, but for the legitimacy and stability of the diarchy as a whole. The Cheval Regent admitted to the Princesses that his hold on the mustang members of the Tricrowner parliamentary contingent was growing more and more strained with each passing day, and he was unsure how much longer he could hold the current government together. Neither Celestia nor Luna could come forth in full public support of the Cheval Regent and Neighsay, though it was clear to all in Canterlot that the Princesses privately backed Fancy Pants to the hilt, and that they as well as Princess Twilight Sparkle had forged a new rapport with the EEA Chancellor. It is still unknown which of the two Princesses first voiced the ultimate suggestion at that meeting, but Cheval Regent Fancy Pants came away from the meeting with a rather unconventional decision. One moon before the Summer Sun Celebration, Fancy Pants made the official request to Princess Celestia.

“Having taken into consideration the abrupt and impactful change in the state of affairs both foreign and domestic in Equestria as of late,” began the missive sent from the Horseshoe to Canterlot Castle. It ended with one of the most unusual and shocking political developments of recent Equestrian history. “In order to fully gauge and acquiesce to the will of the Equestrian creatures, I humbly request to Your Majesties that, pursuant to your power as royal sovereigns of Equestria, this current parliament be dissolved and a new election called.”

Princess Celestia formally answered the request from the Cheval Regent and dissolved the parliament that day, pending a snap election six weeks hence.

It was a dangerous gambit. Not surprisingly, there was uproar from the opposition parties straight away when the election was called. The Coronists and the Hippocrats called foul on the timing of the dissolution of parliament so close to the Summer Sun Celebration. Naturally, it was assumed that creatures going to the polls so soon after Equestria’s most renowned celebration, and indeed the Summer Sun Celebration occurring during the campaign period, would benefit the sitting government and the incumbent coalition. While the Coronists and most in opposition simply grumbled about the timing while campaigning as they normally would, others took more extreme measures. The republican parties on both wings of the political spectrum decried the timing of the election as a mockery to hippocratic institutions. An extreme Unicornian restoration faction of the already far left wing Party To Uphold Hippocracy held protests outside Summer Sun Celebration locations. Meanwhile, the far right Nightmare Party peddled the additional claim that the Summer Sun Celebration itself was a desecration of Nightmare Moon and a symbol of the Celestial tyranny and the day’s oppression of the night. Despite the vehement objections of Princess Luna herself, the Nightmare Party continues to call for the so-called “corruption” to be removed from Luna and Nightmare Moon’s “rightful form” to be restored.

[Ed. note: Again, to assert the factual integrity of this document, the allegations that Nightmare Moon is the true visage of Princess Luna and that Luna is supposedly under a spell cast by Celestia is preposterous as affirmed many times by Luna herself. - Nara]

The campaign quickly resolved itself mainly around the two most obvious issues: national security with the government’s handling of the Cozy Glow Incident, and Equestria’s foreign and domestic relations with non-pony creatures as the debate on Neighsay’s reversal of opinion and his continuation as Chancellor of the EEA continued. On both issues, Fancy Pants and the Triple Crown Party government began the campaign on the backpedal. The loss of magic was traumatic, and the disaster was felt in every region of Equestria. Additionally, the disaster impacted not just unicorns and other magic using creatures but all ponies. While unicorn magic is the most outwardly visible, it is important to remember that pegasi weather manipulation and earth pony agrarian magic were also affected. Additionally, magically imbued items and enchantments also failed during that fateful three days. Coming during the spring planting season, it is likely that all of Equestria will feel the brunt of the Cozy Glow Incident for at least the next year as potential crop yields are assessed and weather patterns have to be rescheduled to accommodate for the interruption.

The Corona Party lambasted the Triple Crown Party and Fancy Pants for the disaster occurring not just on their watch, but as only the latest in a string of crises over the past years to face Equestria. The jubilation and good will the government received after the reformation of Princess Luna had now been frittered away on slow response after slow response. Throughout the election campaign, the Coronists particularly latched onto the “lack of proper military security and proactive response” to the Second Changeling Invasion and the Storm King’s Invasion in this tack.

However, the focus remained primarily on the slow government response to the Cozy Glow Incident. In a somewhat contradictory attack on the Tricrowners, the Coronists both praised their own appointment of Neighsay by campaigning on Neighsay’s quick response in getting the information on Cozy Glow to Canterlot and aiding Celestia and Luna in mobilizing the royal guard, while at the same time lambasting Neighsay’s newfound sympathy for other creatures and calling for his resignation or removal as Chancellor of the EEA. Triple Crowners rebuked the supposed flip-flopping by the Coronist Party’s stance on Neighsay. One Tricrowner MP, Winter Wheat, notably quipped in a widely circulated interview with the Whinnyapolis Star-Journal, “the Cororists both attacking and defending Neighsay at the same time shows another thing they share with their fellow opposition party. Not only do the Coronists share a distressing disdain for our fellow creatures like their brethren the Party to Uphold Hippocracy, but they have also become fond of just that: hypocrisy.”

Neighsay was not the only target of criticism during the election following the Cozy Glow Incident. Other ponies and even non-ponies were targets as well. Man O’War continued to use his position as a prominent defector from the Tricrowners to the Coronists to raise his personal profile in a run for reelection and a call for Equestria to return to a more isolationist if not adversarial relationship with the outside world. He chided other world leaders for not coming to Equestria’s aid when the Storm King attacked, and claimed that the Storm King’s occupation had weakened Equestria enough that the international effects of the Cozy Glow Incident lay at the hooves of the other nations just as much as Equestria’s. It was speculated that Man O’War was planning for a challenge to Parabellum’s leadership of the Coronist Party should the Coronists gain a majority in parliament or be in a position to form a coalition following the election. Some of the most brazen attacks regarding magical aid, however, were on others in power in Equestria. While Celestia and Luna are traditionally seen as immune from scrutiny on policy matters except for those of the fringe republican parties, it seems that Princess Twilight Sparkle has not reached that status yet in her young princesshood. Man O’War and former Special Envoy to Yakyakistan Tuilerand, both high profile Coronist members of parliament, lambasted Equestria’s newest princess on her diplomatic initiatives.

Tuilerand in particular decried her appointment as “princess of friendship” and the diplomatic missions Twilight has been sent on. “The shifting of diplomatic policy to be so heavily focused on Princess Sparkle’s role reeks of nepotism and rewarding a favorite over a focus on achieving policy goals. Twilight Sparkle’s diplomatic ability, especially as seen with the disastrous handling of the first Yakyakistan state visit to Equestria, displays Princess Sparkle’s clear unpreparedness for her role. The clear preference toward Princess Sparkle and her colleagues in handling state visits and summits shows not only a lack of seriousness in how our current government takes the threats to Equestria from outside our border, but also displays a gross disregard for the diplomatic staff we have on hoof.”

The tactic of going after Princess Twilight shows a clear dissatisfaction among the opposition with how close the Triple Crown led government has gotten with adhering strictly to the will of the diarchy, and that both Man O’War and Tuilerand were running as members of the Corona Party in Canterlot ridings and drawing large crowds of ponies certainly demonstrated some element of disloyalty among even some branches of the Equestrian government itself. Faced with this clear message of missteps by Fancy Pants as Cheval Regent and an underlying current of worry at the direction Celestia and Luna were taking Equestria, it became clear to the Princesses that something needed to be done to reassure the public that their message of forging greater and lasting friendships with non-ponies was a boon to Equestria as a whole, even to those in the halls of Canterlot. To that effect, the Cheval Regent invited Princess Twilight to Canterlot to give a general address at the year’s Summer Sun Celebration event in the capitol. The fact that the location of the speech was in Fancy Pants’ own Epson Ashdown riding was pure coincidence.

Much of Princess Twilight’s address on the surface was apolitical and a celebration of Celestia in her role as Twilight’s mentor. Direct insertion of the Princess into a political sphere, especially at the height of a general election campaign, would have looked rather unprofessional for the Princess of Friendship and likely would have caused a scandal in itself. A closer analysis by savvy eyes, however, could point out several instances in the setup and the content of the address where it could certainly have been deliberately constructed as a subtle political message before the election to sway a last minute voting populace. The most blatant message sent was simply Princess Twilight’s support for the increasing diversity in Equestria and the benefits of building and maintaining strong ties with non-pony nations both inside and outside Equestria’s borders. While Twilight took center stage during what has since been dubbed the Friendship Address, she was flanked on the stage by six of the students of her School of Friendship. While the majority of the school’s student body are ponies, only one of the students seated beside Twilight at the address was a pony. Additionally, Twilight frequently made mention of and pointed out the students beside her, notably praising them for the resolution of the Cozy Glow Incident.

“I cannot rightfully stand here today without thanking these six exceptional students for their bravery and the pivotal role they played in discovering and stopping Cozy Glow during the crisis. While I was blind to the machinations of that pegasus until it was too late, these six bright young minds - Gallus the Griffon, Smolder the Dragon, Sandbar the Earth Pony, Yona the Yak, Ocellus the Changeling, and Silverstream the Hippogriff - these six creatures were the true heroes who stood against the forces of evil and saved Equestria. Not only that, in a time of crisis they set aside that which divides us and showed the true spirit of Equestrian values in freeing Chancellor Neighsay, despite his animosity toward other creatures at the time. That spirit of coming together despite our differences, of showing kindness and friendship in the face of enmity, that is the foundation that Equestria is built on. The courage and true kinship that brought Private Pansy, Clover the Clever, and Smart Cookie together to beat back the windigoes and that brought Princess Luna back from the brink of darkness and defeated Nightmare Moon is the same kinship that embodies these six creatures, and should embody all of us in Equestria and beyond. I am proud to have them as my students. I am proud to be able to learn from them just as much as they learn from me and my school.”

While a few journalists and opposition candidates decried the use of Princess Twilight’s students as “political pawns” in the press, the princess’s Friendship Address was generally very well received.

As election day neared, the polls varied significantly, putting the outcome in a state of uncertainty. The final poll from Gallop, released two days before the election, showed the Triple Crown Party leading at 38.2%, the Coronist Party second at 34.7%, and the Party to Uphold Hippocracy at 13.3%. In past elections, Gallop had usually been the closest polling firm to the result with the other polls generally in agreement with Gallop’s. However, during this snap election so soon after a major crisis it seemed the opinions of all creatures varied widely, and the other two major polling firms’ predictions differed greatly from Gallop, leading some political analysts to cast some doubt on the esteemed pollster’s predictions. The Mareist poll was much more favorable to the Coronists, with a shock poll a day before the election showing the Coronists at 40.1% and the Tricrowners falling far behind at 35.8%. Mariest also had the Party To Uphold Hippocracy at just 10.8%, and the Everfree Party at a surprisingly strong 6.6%. With that result, the models showed the Everfree Party winning a number of ridings and potentially becoming the deciding coalition party in the parliament. The Equinnipiac University poll, meanwhile, predicted an even larger defection from the Coronists to the Party To Uphold Hippocracy than the other two polls appeared to show. Equinnipiac’s final poll saw the Tricrowners only gaining 36.5% of the vote, but had the Coronists falling to just 27.5% and the Hippocrats climbing all the way to 19.2%.

The Election Results

[Ed. Note: The electoral analysis is largely made possible by Pine Needle, Forecast, and the other fine ponies over at Horse Race Analysis. Thanks Pine Needle! - Nara]

As the dust cleared from election day, the pollsters at Gallop proved their reliability as they came closest to the election results where the two major parties were concerned. In the vote count for the 135 general ridings, the Triple Crown Party receive 37.5% of the vote while the Coronists received 33.1%. However, in a curious development for data jockeys, the Mareist poll came the closest for the largest of the minor parties. The Hippocrats, while they did gain ground from the previous election, only came in at 11.5% of the vote, and the Everfree Party indeed saw a surge in popularity rising to an even 7 percent of the general vote.

Before we get barrel-deep into the analysis of the seats that changed hooves for the Tricrowners and the Coronists, the Hippocrats and the Everfree do deserve a quick mention. It seems that while the Party to Uphold Hippocracy did see a large gain in the polls, their vote share is rather evenly distributed across Equestria, and they were greatly hurt by Equestria’s first past the post voting system. For all their surge in popularity with their harsh rhetoric during the Cozy Glow Crisis, the Hippocrats have but two general seats in parliament to show for it (it should be noted that they also won two unicorn reserved ridings). The Everfreers have a much more concentrated base and along with their five earth pony reserved seats, they were able to capitalize on their rise in the general vote and go from three to five in the general ridings as well. Cases such as these are a perfect demonstration of why the concentration of a party’s votes are very important in the Equestrian first past the post electoral system. Other reforms to the system have been discussed off and on, such as the steeplechase system where candidates without majorities are eliminated one by one and their votes transferred to the voter’s next choice of candidate until somepony gets a majority, or the Saint-Leger system used in local elections in Donkaster where each party nominates a list of candidates and the winners are distributed proportionally, but none has gained much traction so far nationally, partly due to the dominance of the Triple Crown Party quashing nearly any discussion of broader electoral reform.

To begin the analysis of the post-Cozy Glow election, it is best to look at the results in Canterlot. As Equestria’s capital and the location of the modern court of the Two Sisters, Canterlot has long been a bastion of the governmental party with opposition parties historically making little inroads in the city’s ridings. In recent elections, however, the Coronists made unprecedented gains in several Canterlot ridings in large part owing to the large political base the Coronist Party has built among Equestria’s unicorn population. Many government spokesponies expressed worries during the campaign that the capital’s control by the Tricrowners would continue to slip. With the growth of the Coronists and other parties elsewhere in Equestria, the hold on Canterlot is becoming increasingly vital to the Triple Crown majority.

While things had been looking bad for the Triple Crown Party in Canterlot, it appears that Princess Twilight’s last minute “Friendship Address” did have a boosting effect for Fancy Pants’ government going into election day. It did not prevent the Tricrowners from incurring losses in Canterlot. In the Farriergut Square riding, a working class riding in central Canterlot, the shift toward the Coronists was especially pronounced. Two elections prior in a rare instance for Canterlot, an earth pony was elected as an MP. After narrowly winning the Tricrowner nomination, Manger Hay, served for ten years as member of parliament for Farriergut Square and was once again seeking reelection. Going into the snap election, the Canterlot Chronicle exit poll in the marginal riding was optimistic for the Tricrowners with a slim lead, but in the final count Hay underperformed significantly against her main opponent, Coronist unicorn Full Speed. The Coronists made a strong play for the unicorn workers of Farriergut Square, leaving Full Speed ahead at the end of the vote count. The Triple Crown Party lost a total of four of Canterlot’s thirteen general ridings, including Farriergut Square and Neighpean-Rockhoof Park. However, they gained two seats from the Coronists, including one of the biggest shocks in the election. Man O’War was now standing in his Fort Trotten riding for the first time as a Coronist in a general election after defecting from the Tricrowners and winning the by-election. Man O’War, a formidable candidate even as an opposition figure, had been favored to hold the seat in a continuing damper on the Triple Crown Party. In a shocking result, Man O’War was defeated for reelection by Upset, restoring the seat to the Triple Crown Party. Man O’War’s defection ultimately did not sit well with the voters of Fort Trotten in a higher turnout election, and a strong Party to Uphold Hippocracy candidate in Golden Broom leeched some of the traditional Coronist support in the riding. Upset’s victory and another Triple Crown gain in another east Canterlot riding, Bucksley, kept the Triple Crown Party with a comfortable hold on Canterlot with eight ridings, while the Coronists came away with four and the Everfree Party held Twhickerham as their lone Canterlot seat.

Outside of Canterlot, it was a much more worrying story for the Triple Crown Party. In the rural areas of the Equestrian heartland the Coronists found fertile ground for expanding their electorate in the wake of the Cozy Glow Crisis. Winter Wheat, the Tricrowner MP from Whinnyapolis who had written the widely circulated opinion piece attacking the Corona Party’s reversal of position on Chancellor Neighsay ultimately lost her seat to the Coronists. Her neighboring parliamentarian Rainy River also lost her seat to Iron Range in the Thunder Lake riding in what was thought to be a comfortable seat for the Tricrowners on the border with the Crystal Empire. The losses for the Triple Crown Party were felt the most in the seats along the Unicorn Range however, where they lost both general ridings and unicorn reserved ridings. In the riding of Bridleveil-Dapple Creek Coronist Gangue unseated Telluria, and in Bitterroot riding, Hippocrat candidate Ruby Ridge unseated Sharpheart. Both seats were poorer, more rural, and most notably, both ridings had largely unicorn populations with the economy in both centered around mining. The losses were almost certainly caused by the loss of magic and the shock it caused to the local economy and to the local ponies’ trust in the government in Canterlot. Ultimately, it cost the Triple Crown Party two general and two unicorn seats in that region of Equestria, and with Ruby Ridge’s win in Bitterroot, gave the Party to Uphold Hippocracy a rare and important victory.

A further key victory for the Coronists came to the southwest in Salt Lick City as Tricrowner MP Delicate Arch was defeated by Pegasus MP Arctic Circle after she won a long shot campaign for the Coronist nomination. Arctic Circle was in her sixth year serving in the Pegasus riding of San Palomino-Neighvada for the Vernal Party, but it seems her ambitions took her to make the jump from pegasus politics to broader pony politics, a rare occurrence for southwestern Equestria outside of Las Pegasus. Arctic Circle transitioned from a pegasus campaign to a general riding campaign quite well. While she was a Coronist nominee, Arctic Circle eschewed the fight over national security to focus on more local issues, especially surrounding the weather. Arctic Circle claimed Delicate Arch had done little for the weather in the often drought-stricken region around Salt Lick City compared to her own parliamentary record in weather appropriations bills and was able to outflank Everfree candidate Salt Flat on the traditional Everfree plank of more localized cloudsourcing. She still paid lip service to the larger Coronist issues raging closer to Canterlot - coming from the Vernal Party rather than the Hibernal or Estival parties this came more easily than for most pegasi - and was able to draw from both traditionally Everfree and Tricrowner voters to defeat Delicate Arch in the riding.

The Triple Crown Party did have a few bright spots, however, particularly on Equestria’s eastern coast. In Manehattan the Tricrowners won narrow defensive races in Bucklyn and Flushing-Corona, and even gained the Stable Island riding, usually one the safest part of the Manehattan urban ridings for the Coronists. With the Tricrowner losses elsewhere, Stable Island wound up as one of two key victories for the Tricrowners on the east coast. The other was in Cinque Teague riding. The string of five smaller coastal towns south of Baltimare that form the riding had swung to the Coronists in the previous election, but it flipped back after a hard fought campaign from Tricrowner earth pony candidate Phantom Mist. The frequent campaign stop featuring not just Phantom Mist but also popular longtime Baltimare MP Old Bay, whose safe riding permitted her to aid candidates elsewhere during the election campaign, no doubt helped the Tricrowners win back the riding this time.

Further north, the Tricrowners also held onto a crucial marginal riding in the area between Manehattan and Neighagra Falls and in the Griffish Isles. While the government lost Canteraugus to the Coronists, they were able to hold on to Ponyonta riding despite the retirement of longtime MP Flash Stakes. Many election watchers believed that without Flash and with a newcomer to the political field Ponyonta would flip to the Coronists with the Cozy Glow Crisis on everypony’s minds. However, Tricrowner candidate Fillybrand, a local rancher with family connections in both the Ponyonta region and in Manehattan, managed to narrowly hold on to the seat. Even in the Griffish Isles in Equestria’s furthest northeastern reaches, the seats were unpredictable as all three Griffish ridings are marginal between not just the Coronists and Triple Crown Party but the Everfree Party as well. Additionally, with the large donkey and griffon populations on the Isles, minor local parties can often take significant sections of the vote. However, it seems the Griffish Isles wanted a safer set of hooves after the Cozy Glow Crisis. The Triple Crown Party not only held on in Donkaster and Orkneigh-Shetland but increased their margins as well, even with Orkneigh-Shetland still seeing a substantial break for the Everfree Party in what had been one of their first breakthrough ridings as a party. Even in Trottingham, where the Coronists have found a hoofhold in the border region, the Tricrowners managed to capture the riding back. The increased ties between Equestria and Griffonstone and the more local ties in the border region, combined with the more recent aid from nearby griffon towns during and after the loss of magic hurt the Coronists across the Griffish Isles and boosted the Tricrowners to give them the full slate of ridings in the region.

While the Coronists picked up most of the gains from the voter disillusionment with the Triple Crown Party, in some parts of Equestria the Cozy Glow Crisis and the brief loss of magic fomented a complete disdain for the entire political establishment. This is most clearly seen in northwest Equestria where in two ridings, the free rein Discordian Party made significant gains. The Discordians saw their strongest surge in the riding of Pugallop-Seaddle-Vanhoover Island where their candidate, local earth pony farmer Twisted Hemp, ran a strong second place. While Twisted Hemp did not win - that goes to MP-Elect Salt Spring as an Everfree gain - the anti-establishment feeling pushed the Triple Crown Party and the Coronists down to a shocking third and fourth in the riding! Neither party coming in the top two in a general riding is practically unheard of in recent Equestrian politics. The Discordians’ greatest gain percentage-wise was in Pugallop, but they pulled off an even greater achievement by actually winning a seat in parliament in the neighboring Equinemalt-Naneighmo riding. The Discordians snagged a coup in the riding after convincing Frank Neigh to run for parliament on their party line. Neigh gained local celebrity status after single-hoofedly pushing a Cadborosaurus that had wandered ashore and was threatening a local coastal village during the magic loss.

As Northwestern Equestria saw the most notable rise overall for minor parties, then it would be expected that concentrated bases of support elsewhere in Equestria would also see increased support. This is indeed borne out by the electoral analysis as pockets of anti-establishment or outright republican ideologies also gained support in the election as a backlash against the traditional party system. The village of New Harmony in Hoovesierland has long been the center of Equalist ideology, but has not seen any political success beyond local offices due to the inevitable splitting of the Equalists on strict denominational lines. That has now changed with an Equalist candidate winning the New Harmony-Hoovesier riding for the first time. While New Harmony-Hooversier will now have an Equalist Party (Marksist-Glimmerist) member of parliament, not all Equalists in the riding will be happy about it. The splintering of the Equalists is still very much present in the riding. Both Trot Sky of the Equalist Party (Trotskyite) and Carta Blanca of the Blankist Equality Party still pulled a substantial number of votes in the riding, but the Equalists (M-G), the first and most widespread Equalist party, successfully pulled enough unified support in New Harmony to top the Tricrowner support in the rest of Hoovesierland to win the overall riding. Carta Blanca and the Blankists are a curious note here, as while they lost, they actually saw the largest vote gain on the last election. Unlike the other Equalist parties, the Blankists advocate eliminating cutie marks altogether rather than giving every pony the same cutie mark. That may have helped the Blankists gain appeal among a growing non-pony population in Hooversierland, seeing as creatures such as griffons lack cutie marks of their own and may be turned off by the more cutie mark-centric parties and mainstream Equalist thought.

The Nightmare Party also gained a seat, bringing them to three seats in parliament. The party gained some notoriety among Canterlot circles in recent years for picking verbal fights with Princess Luna and being perhaps the most vocal outright republican party in their calls for the abolition of the diarchy and the establishment of a “New Lunar Republic” with Nightmare Moon at its head. While the Nightmare Party’s allegations of Princess Luna being a version of Nightmare Moon that has been corrupted by Celestia are patently false, they have nonetheless gained hoofholds in two small areas of Equestria. Prior to the election, the Nightmare Party was represented in parliament by Nachtmusik in the Hollow Shades riding and Solar Nadir in Whinnypeg-University. With this election though, the Nightmare Party has increased its support in Flim Flam, gaining a second riding in the far northern Whinnypeg region, likely owing to the long winter nights on Equestria’s border with the Crystal Empire. Nachtmusik and Solar Nadir will be joined in parliament by Flim Flam MP-elect Sanctuary Sky.

In southeastern Equestria, the turn of many voters against the establishment had an odd, opposite effect in boosting rather than diminishing the Triple Crown and Coronist Party vote and flipping a seat to the Tricrowners. That seat would be the riding of Lipizziana in the Hayseed Swamps region. For the past few decades, Lipizziana had been ruled by the political machine built by the pony who sat as its general member of parliament, Kingfish. Kingfish was one of the few independents serving in Canterlot, and over the decades he gained enough popularity and subordinates back in Lipizziana to withstand many attempts by the Tricrowners and Coronists to unseat him and the fellow members of his local political organization. However strong Kingfish’s political organization may have been in Lipizziana, it seems the Cozy Glow Crisis even reached this remote corner of Equestria that previously seemed untouchable by the major parties. Kingfish’s vote share fell by nearly 15 percentage points in the riding during the snap election, which was enough. About a third of the vote Kingfish lost went to Coronist candidate Rage Cavalle nearly pushing them to 20% in the riding, but the real beneficiaries were the Tricrowners. Andalou saw an increase of nearly 10 points in the riding, pushing her to 41% for the Tricrowners topping Kingfish’s 37%. The loss of magic finally broke the back of the Kingfish political machine and made Lipizziana’s voters turn toward what to them was an outsider party and a voice for change, even though for most creatures in Equestria it is the voice of the parliamentary government.

The defeat of Kingfish was a welcome surprise for the Tricrowners, adding another gain to make up for the seats lost to the Coronists and others across Equestria. After all the votes came in, Fancy Pants’ regency and the Triple Crown majority government held on, but only barely. For the first time in the history of the Equestrian parliament, the Triple Crown Party dipped below the majority thresthold in the general ridings with just 95 of the 135 general seats in parliament. Luckily for the Tricrowners, they were still able to prop up a majority government thanks to the unicorn and non-pony reserved ridings, which pushed the Tricrowners to 111 of the 200 total seats in the Horseshoe. Fancy Pants would still have his government, but pushing the government below 100 general seats was a major victory for the Coronists, capping off their continuing rise. Parabellum, the Coronist Party’s leader, gave what could only be interpreted as a victory speech the day following the election. “With the six seats we have gained, the Coronist Party now wields more influence in Equestrian politics than ever before, and we will use it to right the ship of state after the mess the Tricrowners have made of Equestrian policy over the last several years.”

Additionally, the new Triple Crown government will likely want to shore up its support by approaching some of the more friendly minor parties to be included in government. The Tricrowners can usually find at least one ally in the pegasus and earth pony reserved ridings, owing to the separate political systems, but that always comes with strings attached in the coalition negotiation process. In the pegasi ridings, the Estival Party is the most natural fit. The Estival Party is the most supportive of the diarchy’s friendlier foreign policy and greater acceptance of non-ponies, and with 10 of the 20 pegasi ridings they would lend the government strong support in the Horseshoe. On the other hoof, the Hibernal Party did gain two seats in this snap election and now hold 7 ridings, and with the delay in cloud production caused by the Cozy Glow Crisis their calls for greater cloud production and precipitation are likely to resonate more in parliament and especially among Equestria’s farmers. Add in the very strong independent streak among all areas of pegasi politics and any arrangement between the Tricrowners and any of the three pegasus parties will likely come with many Tricrowner concessions and could be easily rescinded.

With earth pony politics, there is always the Everfree Party, which has the benefit of their crossover into general ridings and which have been supportive of some of the more recent policies put forth by the Triple Crown Party. The Everfreers also gained ridings in both earth pony ridings and general ridings in the election, and now tie the Estival Party for the third largest party in parliament at 10 seats each. However, with the Everfree Party continuing to call for devolution of weather management to regional or local authorities as part of giving earth ponies a greater say in the weather, and their recent clamoring for voting reform, the Everfreers could be at odds with any of the pegasus parties over one thing or another and during the recovery from the Cozy Glow Crisis an alliance with the Everfreers and a pegasus party would be quite fragile. The Country Party’s eight seats could be a useful way to reach out to some of the rural ridings which swung toward the Coronists in the general seats, but with some in the Triple Crown Party still calling for Neighsay’s resignation as EEA chancellor, that could embolden some of the more isolationist and hippocratic elements within the Triple Crown Party to try and increase their influence. It could also be seen as a small cession of the debate over non-pony representation to Parabellum and the Coronists if Fancy Pants were to bring the more Coronist-aligned Country Party into the government.

However, for now all the talk of partnerships with minor parties is still somewhat irrelevant. The Triple Crown Party has its overall majority in parliament and Fancy Pants has won a firm continuation as Cheval Regent, despite the setbacks and losses for the Tricrowners. For now, what the government needs most is peace and stability as Equestria recovers from the Cozy Glow Crisis. With a relative calm and no major threats or shifts in power, the Triple Crown Party should be able to right itself and restore the confidence in what has long been the natural governing party in Equestria to regain its usual sizable majority in the next scheduled election.

Seat Count and Changes
General Ridings
Triple Crown Party - 95 (-10)
Coronists - 26 (+5)
Everfree Party - 5 (+2)
Nightmare Party - 3 (+1)
Party to Uphold Hippocracy - 2 (+1)
Independents - 2 (-1)
Discordian Party - 1 (+1)
Equality Party (Marksist-Glimmerist) - 1 (+1)

Pegasus Ridings
Estival Party - 10 (-2)
Hibernal Party - 7 (+2)
Vernal Party - 3

Unicorn Ridings
Triple Crown Party - 12 (-2)
Coronist Party - 6 (+1)
Party to Uphold Hippocracy - 2 (+1)

Earth Pony Ridings
Country Party - 8
Everfree Party - 5 (+2)
Municipal Development Party - 4 (-1)
Free Soil Party - 3 (-1)

Non-Pony Ridings
Triple Crown Party - 4
Black Angus Party - 1

Total Seat Count
Triple Crown Party - 111 (-12)
Coronist Party - 32 (+6)
Everfree Party - 10 (+2)
Estival Party - 10 (-2)
Country Party - 8 (+1)
Hibernal Party - 7 (+2)
Party to Uphold Hippocracy - 4 (+2)
Municipal Development Party - 4
Free Soil Party - 3 (-1)
Nightmare Party - 3 (+1)
Vernal Party - 3
Independents - 2 (-1)
Discordian Party - 1 (+1)
Equality Party - 1 (+1)
Black Angus Party - 1

Switching Horses Midstream, Chapter III

Black Stone and Dragon Hoards: The Dumb Rocks That Nearly Destroyed Equestria

excerpt from Salt To Sapphire, the Role of Gems and Minerals In History
by Frangiopane
Baltimare: Pimlico Books, 1032

As Equestria returned to normal in the months after the Cozy Glow Crisis, the announcement that Princesses Celestia and Luna were due to retire gave the nation yet another shock. The two ponies had led Equestria for millennia since its founding The Triple Crown Party had long relied on the sisters for guidance on policy, and their steady hooves gave the Tricrowners their legitimacy. Suddenly, Equestria and the Triple Crown Party learned that Celestia and Luna now planned to step down and leave Equestria in the hooves of the neophyte Princess Twilight Sparkle.

The announcement shook not just the halls of politics in Canterlot, but quickly became the talk of all Equestria and even beyond. With the decree coming so soon after Equestria faced one of its deepest crises, speculation and rumor buzzed about why the Princesses decided then to retire. There was talk of imminent royal scandal, insolvency of the treasury, or other ominous rumos that if true would threaten to bring down the government. Some of the seedier tabloids even tried to connect the retirement to Twilight, claiming the Princess of Friendship had somehow forced Celestia and Luna to abdicate or even going so far as to claim the reason was that Princess Cadence and Twilight Sparkle were actually Celestia’s foals and the abdication was a way to avoid the scandal leaking. These were part of the many attempts by a public that frequently was indifferent to the doings of the royal sisters to explain such a rapid rise in the ranks by Princess Twilight and the timing of the transfer of power. Of course, such ridiculous rumors are far more exciting than the rather mundane truth, both to the timing of the Two Sisters’ abdication and to Twilight’s rise to power. The answers to these questions can now be found in detail in the documents from the late Celestial Era that have been opened to public access as a result of the Open Historical Records Act of 1026. Contrary to those who say the decision was abrupt, the Two Sisters’ decision to retire had actually been considered for years before the official announcement. After Princess Luna’s return, Celestia wanted to connect with her long lost sister, but the royal duties of both princesses kept getting in the way. The two realized they were only drifting apart as they had been a millennium before. Inferring from the royal correspondence between Celestia and Luna, the decision to retire was not one they took lightly. The Two Sisters decided that they would wait until the planned succession could be undertaken swiftly and with confidence. As for the rise of Princess Twilight Sparkle, Celestia’s personal records and the original plans for the Two Sisters’ retirement indicate that Twilight was not the original choice for their successor as ruler of Equestria. Per Celestia’s original succession plans, Twilight was only being groomed as a chief advisor to the originally intended successor, Princess Cadence. However, after the return of the Crystal Empire and the ascension of Cadence to that throne, the original planned succession was scrapped due to the complication of uniting the Equestrian and Crystalline realms and Twilight was elevated to the planned heir to the Two Sisters. Twilight’s education on foreign policy matters began following this change, and the succession plans were only made known when Celestia and Luna had confidence that Twilight could faithfully manage Equestria. According to Twilight’s own records, not even she was aware of the intention of her erstwhile mentor. This is often considered by historians as one of the causes of what would happen to Equestria over the next year.

While Celestia and Luna were preparing for the succession of the throne, parliament was still reeling from the Cozy Glow Crisis. The reality that a single pony, and a mere foal at that, was able to nearly destroy all magic in Equestria revealed a severe liability in the country’s defenses and national security. The Coronists began shouting up a storm about the need for more defense spending almost as soon as magic returned to Equestria. The gains the Corona Party made during the following snap election only emboldened them. It appeared that Parabellum had the population of Equestria behind her when she made a call for doubling the size of the military and “creating a dedicated special force to protect the integrity of Equestria at home and abroad'' separate from the royal guard. However, Fancy Pants and the Tricrowners hit back with their own aggression tactic. Fancy Pants as Cheval Regent was cognizant of the ongoing plans for the diarchs’ retirement and of the plight facing ponies across Equestria. For the moment according to the Tricrowners, what Equestria needed was economic stability and reassurance, not an untested new agency independent of the diarchy. The three day magic loss might not seem like much, but it had cascading effects on nearly every sector of the economy. Several days spent without even levitation spells led unicorn productivity to plummet and created a financial crash not seen in decades. Cloudsdale’s weather production facility faced logistical and workflow bottlenecks for months after the crisis as cloud production stalled and backlogged the storm schedule for weeks. Food reliant on earth pony magic to stay fresh went stale. The delay in cloud distribution and the lapse in steady supply of earth pony magic disrupted the regular crop season as both planting and harvesting times had to be shifted. Some crops withered entirely. One of the hardest hits was to Whinnysota’s winter wheat crop. The grain was in its prime growing season and nearly to harvesting time, and despite the efforts of both pegasi and earth ponies, the delay in vernalization led to nearly half the region’s seasonal crop being lost.

Fancy Pants made it clear the Tricrowner position was an increase in public spending on security was the last thing that Equestria needed at that moment. Not only were ponies still uneasy on their hooves months after the crisis, but putting a greater burden on the treasury would be a very dangerous move at a time when Equestria needed confidence in its government finances. The Triple Crown Party had often been a budget hawk, especially when it came to defense spending, and that attitude was in full force during the initial national security discussions. Security appropriations bills began debate not as a whole but as individual items as the Triple Crown Party sought to divide legislation and counter each proposal in turn to maintain current levels of defense spending. With the 1008 snap election reducing the Tricrowner majority to a mere 11 seats, they won some battles but lost on others. One particular point of contention that arose during these discussions was the possibility of using anti-magic mechanisms to bolster Equestria’s own defenses. It was a sore point for many in parliament, having been in Canterlot when magic failed across Equestria and seeing the effect it had on the unicorn-dominant city. However, the idea that it would at least level the playing field in certain circumstances was a compelling one. During these debates, one of the geomages noted a recently discovered source of a magic dispersion field. The shards from Queen Chrysalis’s throne were known to block all magic except changeling magic. The properties of what had been named chrysalid stone were being studied by a group of geomages under Star Swirl the Bearded. The stone could be a useful deterrent in the case of facing a magical opponent, especially now that most of the changelings were friendly to Equestria. In fact, by the time of the Cozy Glow Crisis, chrysalid stones were already in use in Equestria’s defense as part of the defense installations in Tartarus to depower Tirek.

The debate over what overall role the chrysalid stone should play in Equestira’s national security system began. How could Equestria acquire more of it, where else could it be used, and, in the most important question that the Tricrowners bitterly contested with the Coronists, should Equestria acquire more of it at all. To many on Parabellum’s side, the answer to the last question was an obvious yes. A foal had the ability to mass dispel magic across Equestria. Chrysalid stone now seemed vital to routinely incorporate into Equestrian defense placements to even the field if it happened again. The Tricrowners disagreed. The stone could just as well be a hindrance to Equestria’s unicorn forces, and mining more chrysalid stone meant more opportunity for it to fall into the wrong hooves. Iron Curtain, one of the geomages testifying at the appropriations hearings, warned that proliferation of the chrysalid stone increased the chance of the stone being acquired by other countries or by villains like Tirek for their own use not just against Equestria but against each other. She even proposed that Chrysalis herself might be able to get her hooves on some of the stone and rebuild her army if Equestria was not careful with it. More practically, Iron Curtain noted that research into where the stone came from and how to find more had made little headway. The most reliable method of finding anti-magic sources at the time was Leyline Field Emission Detection. By measuring the level of distortion in naturally occurring leyline fields, geomages can detect and map out local sources of anti-magic such as dispelling fields or dimensional rifts. However, when it came to chrysalid stone deposits, all known deposits were too small to present any detectable distortion. Even joint research expeditions between Equestrian artificers and geomages and changelings bore little fruit, as no changelings in Thorax’s kingdom knew how Chrysalis had gotten her throne and there appeared to be no trace of any veins or deposits anywhere close to the new Changeling Kingdom.

The hearings revisiting the Cozy Glow Crisis and possibly spreading the ability to dispel pony magic rattled more than a few members of parliament. The Coronists were left on the backtrot as they began facing opposition to the security measures from both sides of the horseshoe. However, one salient point struck true; protecting the princesses and Canterlot Castle. Fancy Pants agreed that some chrysalid stone would be useful for protecting against magical intrusions against the castle. With no way to acquire more, however, the stone had to come from somewhere else. Most of the existing chrysalid stone was currently being used in the anti-magic field at Tartarus, so parliament decided they could take some shards there and use it for the castle defenses. While this weakened Tartarus's field, analysts determined the remaining field would still be strong enough to render the depowered Tirek's magic inert. On the passage of this portion of the security appropriations bill through parliament and the authorization by Celestia and Luna, chrysalid shards began to be moved from Tartarus to Canterlot. As the shards were still exerting a small dispelling force, they had to be transported in small amounts by earth pony and pegasus. This delayed their transit time to that of several days instead of the few hours at most a unicorn team’s short-range teleportation could do. Given the circumstances it was decided for the best that no unicorn be left without their magic for the time being.

Three days into the shards’ transit, Sombra returned. Sombra’s short-lived regime in the Crystal Empire already left scars in the memories of the crystal ponies, and those stories were embellished over the years in the popular imagination in Equestria after his defeat. The events of his second return shook Equestria even more. The Crystal Empire’s reappearance and even Sombra’s brief second takeover of the Crystal Empire, while worrying, were still taken by many ponies in Equestria as an event in a far off foreign land. Sombra’s insurrection and attempted coup in Canterlot itself, however, was a precision strike at the core of Equestrian power. Unlike the Storm King’s invasion, Sombra’s action was perpetrated by a small force and was made up of Equestria’s own citizenry bent under Sombra’s control. Even worse, the ponies under Sombra’s spell during the coup included many prominent and well known citizens of Ponyville and Canterlot, right up to Cheval Regent Fancy Pants! That such a breach of Equestrian security was not just possible but could subsume the Cheval Regent instantly validated nearly everything the Coronists were arguing about the weakness of Equestria’s military and national defense apparatus. Piling on the humiliation for the Triple Crown Party was the revelation that the Tree of Harmony, a previously classified but apparently powerful magical artifact that protected Equestria for millennia, not only existed but had been destroyed by Sombra during the insurrection. The almost immediate course reversal of Celestia and Luna’s abdication following Sombra’s ultimate defeat, while done in the name of ensuring stability in the transition, also dealt a blow to the perception of steadfast power of the diarchy.

While the chrysalid shards ultimately made it to Canterlot without incident, Sombra’s assault on Canterlot Castle demonstrated clearly that it would not be enough to provide adequate defense of the capital. Coronist deputy leader Crystal Clear called the Tricrowners “coming to their senses” when the party conceded support to a number of Coronist proposed bills to boost defense. Among the provisions passed, the government doubled the military presence in Canterlot and increased the number of pegasi guard patrols along Equestria’s borders. Due to the attacks on both Equestria and the Crystal Empire, Equestria also coordinated its national security efforts with its northern neighbor. Prince Consort Shining Armor, being former Equestrian royal guard captain and thus familiar with the armed forces of both the Crystal Empire and Equestria, led joint military exercises between the two nations and was brought on by the princesses to supervise the renovation of security measures around Canterlot Castle including the installation of the chrysalid shards around the castle grounds.

It seemed the Coronists had won the day in the national security policy fight, but the Triple Crown Party and Fancy Pants’ government still sought a way to claim at least a small victory. As Cheval Regent, Fancy Pants still had one trick up his sleeve: the royal treasury and the national budget. All the new security measures, despite being deemed necessary, were very expensive, and budgetary matters were one aspect of government where the Tricrowners still held a lot of sway among the Equestrian voting public. The Triple Crown Party had been in power for so long that a vast majority of ponies trusted only them on treasury matters. So when Fancy Pants claimed that while he supported the national defense improvements proposed by the Coronists in principle but the solvency of the treasury made implementing them difficult, the populace listened. The need to keep the treasury stable during the transitionary period of the royal succession and not make any drastic shifts that could jeopardize the principality further during a time of instability only added to the Tricrowners’ argument for reining in any reckless spending the Coronists might propose, even if those proposals seemed sensible. This on the whole was not a big shift in policy for the Tricrowners. Being the long-term stewards of the national budget, the party was frequently reluctant to lavishly dole out money from the royal treasury, sometimes even clashing with the Princesses on spending matters despite broadly adopting the royal sisters’ policy otherwise.

The Tricrowners and Coronists clashed heavily in parliament during the drawing up of the defense appropriations bill. What began as a unified desire to react to the aftermath of a national crisis quickly devolved into bickering over where to take bits from to fund the new security efforts. The Tricrowners again put the Coronists on the backtrot days into the debate when one Tricrowner backbencher got the idea of raising a tax to pay for the new measures. The Coronists, thinking they had a bill that had the support of a number of Tricrowner defecters, pushed for it, only to be caught out by Fancy Pants when all but a few Tricrowners voted down the amendment and the news of the day became Fancy Pants lambasting Parabellum, the Corona Party, and the sacrificial Tricrowner backbencher for wanting to raise everycreature’s taxes during such a delicate financial time for Equestria when many hard-working ponies were still recovering economically from the Cozy Glow Crisis.

While Fancy Pants was opposed to raising taxes to pay for additional defense spending, he had come around to the idea that the new measures were a necessity. The ordeal of being controlled as part of Sombra’s army had shaken the Cheval Regent, and archival records indicate that while he publicly made a show of fighting some of the more extreme security proposals and funding measures made by the Coronists, privately in meetings with Celestia and Luna he worked with the Princesses to find a way to fund an overall bill without putting the burden on working ponies. After some time of going over different appropriations procedures, Princess Celestia and Fancy Pants came up with a feasible plan of action. Around the time of Sombra’s attack and especially in the weeks after, Celestia and Luna were attempting to solidify Equestria’s trading ties with her foreign neighbors, many of which had only just begun normal state relationships with Equestria. Of particular interest was Equestria’s relations with the Dragonlands.

Dragons had long refused to recognize Equestrian sovereignty with some elder dragons keeping individual hoards on Equestrian lands or migrations crossing over Equestrian territory that were only tolerated by equine authorities so as to not invite any reproach or conflict from a succession of aggressive Dragon Lords. Formalizing relations and recognition between the two nations was a veritable diplomatic coup for Equestria. Indeed, according to some creatures’ interpretations it was an actual coup given the circumstances surrounding the rise of Princess Ember to the role of Dragon Lord. One of the points of contention between the Dragonlands and Equestria in these early years was over the gemstone trade and control of Equestrian mining lands. As regular import and export between the two nations began to settle, it became clear to both nations that Equestria had one tremendous trading advantage when dealing with the Dragonlands. Equestria’s wealth of gem and mineral deposits meant that over 90 percent of the gemstones being imported into the Dragonlands were coming from Equestria. Dragons formally recognizing Equestrian sovereignty also meant the cessation of unlimited mining rights by force, which drastically raised the price of gemstones in the Dragonlands. As gems served not merely as currency but as a staple food crop to the dragons, the rise in prices and fall in imports made Ember’s initial reign tenuous. However, while Equestria’s gem monopoly posed a threat to Dragonland stability, it created an ideal opportunity for Equestria and for Fancy Pants.

The Royal Sisters were looking for a way to help stabilize the Dragonland economy and improve relations. Traditional foreign aid offers were rejected out of hoof due to the individualistic and competitive nature of many dragons. Given the circumstances Dragon Lord Ember could not afford much further questioning of her legitimacy in her role, and to accept aid from another nation, especially from Equestria, would have given the appearance of weakness. What Equestria needed was a way to give aid while creating the appearance of a concession to the dragons. This was where Fancy Pants stepped in. As part of recognizing Equestrian sovereignty, the Dragonlands had agreed to cease raids on Equestrian mines and mineral deposits and to only engage in regulated trade for Equestrian gems. The Cheval Regent and the Royal Sisters developed the idea with Princess Ember, offering to expand mineral rights for citizens of the Dragonlands in Equestria. They highlighted the migratory pattern of the dragons and the common deposit sites they would usually congregate around in their migration for potential areas of mining concessions. However, in order to fund the new security measures, the mineral rights would be sold to either individual dragons or to cooperative groups of Dragonland citizens or of combination dragon-pony owned endeavors, in exchange for recognizing a more favorable export tariff for gems extracted under the mining grants.

Princess Celestia and Triple Crown Party officials unveiled the proposal a week after the tax hike was neighsayed. The amended national security appropriations bill now had the support of not just Fancy Pants but the full backing of Celestia and Luna. Parabellum and the Coronists still made an attempt to oppose the new funding method, attacking Fancy Pants for selling Equestria out to the dragons who had until recently been terrorizing ponies for the gems. However, the Coronists’ “yes, but” responses to Tricrowners questioning on whether they supported the security changes poured cold water on their opposition, and the bill was soon passed with a strong majority, even getting some of the Coronists in favor of the bill so they would not look weak on a national security issue that they were the ones to raise. It was a great turnaround and victory for the government. Shining Armor and the royal guard began planning the joint exercises and implementing the new security measures in Canterlot Castle soon after the bill passed, starting with the installation of the chrysalid shards around the castle.

Things were looking up for the Triple Crown Party in the short term after the scare of the 1008 election. They had helped Celestia secure a strong trade relationship with the Dragonlands and at the same time delivered a political blow to the Corona Party and their major opposition. However, the short term wave of support belied a longer term shift in Equestrian political thinking. The shift was further obscured by being most prevalent at first in the Unicorn Range and the Macintosh Hills, two major gemstone mining areas and already areas with some conservative undercurrents. The Unicorn Range in particular was already an existing hotbed of nativist sentiment, as it sent two of the four Hippocratic MPs to the Horseshoe, one general riding and one unicorn riding. The opening of mining rights with dragons only accelerated the growing discontent in the region and in other mining-centered regions. While pegasi were primarily only affected by the occasional grounding during dragon migrations before Ember’s reign, mining towns with mostly unicorn and earth pony populations had been subject to dragon raids and harbored that resentment even as the opening of trade between the two nations normalized. To many earth ponies and unicorns in those parts of Equestria, the opening of mining rights to dragons was an affront not only to ponies’ work in gem extraction but to the suffering the towns and ponies underwent for years prior. Here, the Coronist attacks on the counterproposal found the most traction.

The clashes between dragons and ponies in the early stages of liberalized mining rights did not help matters either. Blacktip, a dragon historian who served as the first Dragonlands ambassador to Equestria, recorded that he spent most of his early diplomatic career mediating in contract disputes between dragons and ponies. “Many of both dragons and ponies did not see each other as equals,” Blacktip wrote in a report to Dragon Lord Ember. “Dragons have long stereotyped ponies as being weak pushovers and easy to exploit to get more gems than they had a legal right to, and ponies have long portrayed dragons as uncultured, aggressive and brutish. Sadly, the stereotypes the ponies have given us are proving to be the more correct.” Blacktip’s reports show a number of instances where a dragon tried to make off with more than their agreed share of a mining claim, or dug for gems outside of their staked land grant, that kept his claws full in court dealings. However, the blanket perceptions also bred overreactions, as was the case when a group of earth ponies and unicorns in Dapple Creek arranged a mining claim with a dragon named Atar. The ponies used their gem finding spells and experience with the region to locate sapphires and emeralds in the claim, but directed Atar to dig near but not at the location of the stones. When several weeks of work yielded nothing, Atar gave up and ceded her right to the claim, after which the unicorns used Atar’s previous labor to more easily get to the gems and claim all the finds for themselves. Atar found out and sued but the local court ruled in favor of the ponies, and she only received the gems she was owed after Blacktip was able to step in and appeal the case to a Canterlot court. There were more records of dragons being at fault in fraudulent or breach of contract cases, but Atar’s case demonstrates that the mistrust and attempts to exploit each other was present among both groups early on. The frequent intervention of Blacktip and of Canterlot courts settling cases also helped spread distrust in the Tricrowners and of Equestrian institutions in general.

While the loosening of mining grant laws sowed distrust at home in Equestria, in the Dragonlands it was more beneficial. The goal of the new policy was to present Dragon Lord Ember as achieving a concession from Equestria, and to that end it achieved the desired effect. Following the implementation of the policy, Ember saw boosts to both her public support and to the economy of the Dragonlands as currency and food supplies became more readily available. However, some dragons still questioned her legitimacy and disapproved of her formal dealings with other national leaders such as Celestia and King Thorax of the changelings. That all changed though when a new crisis struck the Dragonlands a few months into 1009. While older dragons are traditionally more solitary creatures, they use communal hatching grounds, and the latest brood became endangered when the eggs were late to hatch. After some investigation with the help of representatives sent from Equestria, it was discovered that the lava pool keeping the hatching grounds warm had been depleted. Luckily for Ember and all of dragonkind, dragon fire was able to supplant the lava as a short term fix and the brood hatched with only minimal losses. The quick thinking in the face of a severe crisis fully cemented Ember’s legitimacy as Dragon Lord. That alone would have made it a success, but it also did more. The aid of Equestrian representatives in discovering the issue with the hatching grounds helped to soften public attitudes to working with other nations and participating formally in the international community. Ember had already forged a close personal relationship with King Thorax, so now the Dragon Lands established closer ties to both Equestria and the Changeling Kingdom. This would accelerate the Dragonlands’ path to greater formal participation in the international community, which would soon show its strength. Ember would need to call on all the political capital she had gained to convince the Dragonlands to go along with a dragonfyrd meant not to plunder Equestria, but to save it.

Switching Horses Midstream, Chapter IV

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Switching Horses Midstream, Chapter V

The Summer Sun Abdication

by Midnight Judge
Congressional Quarterhorse No. 3629
Royal Canterlot Publications

While the news items published in these quarterly issues are usually intended to keep the reader up to date on the goings-on of the ministries and parliament, events in Canterlot Castle do on occasion merit the coverage of a publication such as this one. The recent events surrounding Princesses Celestia and Luna and the royal succession are without a doubt one such instance, as they have already made a significant impact on the stability of the Fancy Pants regency and on the path of Equestria’s government going forward.

To chart a proper course of the events leading up to the fateful decision, we need to go back a few months to shortly after the Sombric Insurrection. Since Sombra’s attempted coup and the destruction and public reveal of the Tree of Harmony, the diarchy has been seeing a steady decrease in approval ratings from the Equestrian public. While polling shortly after Sombra’s attack gave Celestia and Luna a bump from their timely intervention in the Everfree Forest, the bump quickly faded as the ramifications of the Tree of Harmony’s existence, and what that meant for the role of the princesses and the diarchy in protecting Equestria, made themselves clear. Questions over what the diarchs actually did for national guardianship soon circulated, undermining public support for the diarchy. How much of the protection and relative peace in which Equestria had prospered for the past decades was thanks to the Princesses, and how much of it had been from this Tree of Harmony? And if the Tree was so pivotal in the protection of Equestria, then what actual role had Celestia and Luna played in the country’s protection? And how did that factor into the several attacks Equestria had suffered over the past decade? These and other questions were soon circulating by word of mouth and in the newspapers around the country, dampening the national security bump to Celestia’s and Luna’s approval ratings. In the month following the Sombric Insurrection, the Princesses’ approvals went from a height of 92% for Celestia and 86% for Luna to an average of 65% for Celestia and 69% for Luna. The drop in the polls, especially as Celestia prepared for a royal succession, presented a grave danger to the diarchy. The mood in Canterlot Castle quickly resolved that something had to be done.

Yet, even alicorn princesses have their faults and the Two Sisters were no different. While the drop in the polls due to events was of the utmost concern, another quirk of the polling stuck out for Celestia in particular. For the first time since her return, Princess Luna had a higher approval rating than her older sister. This could be chalked up to a few reasons, but after an analysis of the polling, one aspect of the difference between the sisters’ royal duties seems the likely cause. As the guardian of ponies’ dreams, Princess Luna’s job brings her into regular, more personal contact with the average ponies of Equestria. That personal connection and the more direct assistance most ponies see from Luna than from Celestia, in addition to the tale of redemption and atonement surrounding Luna’s return a decade ago, likely endeared her to ponies. Meanwhile, the more formal royal court, while also important to the day to day management of Equestria, can come across as aloof and distant according to an Equinnipiac survey of ponies’ attitudes toward the government. The royal court proceedings and more glamorous events that Celestia performs in her royal duties also only allow her regular interactions with the upper classes and nobility. These matters and the foreign policy business that Celestia conducts, while important, has led to most Equestrians only ever seeing the elder princess in photo opportunities, with the Canterlot and Manehattan aristocracy or with foreign dignitaries. That could make Celestia seem less approachable than her younger sister. So, when the polls showed that Celestia was now less popular than Luna - something which the gossip papers took great delight in reporting - the sisterly rivalry between our princesses resurfaced. Luckily for all involved, it was in a much more friendly manner than a thousand years ago, and to a much smaller degree. Despite Princess Celestia’s twinge of jealousy, our gracious elder diarch agreed that the more pressing issue at hoof was the declining approval numbers for both leaders of the principality. Canterlot Castle resolved that something must be done to reverse the decline.

The remedy that was settled on by the diarchs and the castle staff was for Celestia and Luna to take direct action and be more presently involved in solving the smaller, more immediate problems facing ordinary citizens. For Celestia, it was believed that this would get the public more acquainted with the Princess of the Sun and endear her to average ponies by showing she cared enough about her subjects to humble herself to their more basic concerns, just as Luna did when patrolling the dream realm helping ponies with their everyday anxieties and bad dreams. For Luna, meanwhile, the belief was that the strategy would give her the opportunity to take action in the physical, waking world. For as much of Luna’s royal duties had her meeting average ponies and addressing their concerns, since it was in the dream realm few ponies had the opportunity to witness the younger Princess in the flesh. This way, Luna could act the hero in helping to address ponies’ physical, material needs just as she did their mental and emotional needs as the guardian of their dreams.

With this in mind, Celestia and Luna set on a goodwill tour of Equestria. The first stop on their itinerary was Cloudsdale. Progress on weather restoration was still behind, and with a recent outbreak of the feather flu in the city, many of the weather factory workers and storm circulation teams were still out of commission. During their stay in Cloudsdale, the Princesses stepped in where the pegasi were short staffed, primarily on some of the more physically demanding labor to help speed up cloud production and in storm distribution. The Cloudsdale trip was probably the most successful leg of the tour. It did help Cloudsdale push through some of the weather backlog and reports did show ponies appreciated the help from the Princesses. However, to many citizens it still came across as more of a photo opportunity than a sincere effort to help the average pony. In following trips, the itinerary for the Princesses was left more up to their whims, as more impromptu, individual pony-level acts of kindness would seem more sincere than a greater planned intervention like the weather factory work. The Princesses started in the northeastern Equestrian mainland in the Mareitimes. In Shadowfax, they helped dredge out the city’s harbor, helped a family of earth ponies rotate the rocks on their farm, and helped the local librarian translate an archived pre-Nightmare Moon ledger from some of the first griffon traders to the town from Imperial Peregrin to Equestrian. The sisters were preparing to move south to Manehattan when reports of a monster attack from further up the coast caught their attention. The Princesses ventured north to Mareitime Bay to find the town’s lighthouse being attacked by a large sea serpent. They were able to save the lighthouse keeper and fend off the serpent, but unfortunately the cliffside had taken too much erosion from the lashing of the serpent and the lighthouse toppled into the bay. The Princesses spent the next week helping the townsponies of Mareitime Bay rebuild the lighthouse, but the extra time spent in the Mareitimes forced them to skip the Manehattan leg of the tour.

The Princesses’ more exciting adventure in the Mareitimes guided them to their next destination. Since it seemed like they had gained genuine support after fending off the Mareitime Bay serpent, the reasoning followed that their next stop should be somewhere with likely potential for similar encounters. While Equestria has no shortage of such places, one in particular comes to mind: Ponyville. The town being situated on the edge of the Everfree Forest makes it a quite likely place for a wild creature encounter. It also could serve as a booster for all of Equestria and not just Ponyville, as the Princesses’ activity there would remind creatures across the country of the Princesses’ decisive action in beating back the Everfree Forest during the Sombirc Insurrection. In addition, Celestia and Luna would be able to act alongside Princess Twilight, which the diarchs hoped would boost her public image across Equestria as well in preparation for the royal succession. The plan seemed to go well at first, as the Princesses arrived just in time to aid Twilight Sparkle with the removal of an enormous tortoise-like creature that was devouring a local orchard. Aside from the tortoise though, Ponyville was unusually calm during the time the Princesses were there. They still helped out with more mundane tasks - replacing bridges, leading Filly Guide camp outings, and helping old mares cross the street - but there was little in the way of more spectacular noteworthy efforts by the Princesses. Even worse, polls conducted since the start of the tour showed little lasting national effect since the initial bump from the Cloudsdale events, and by the time of the Ponyville outing they’d sunk back nearly to where they were before the Princesses set out. The goodwill effort had run its course.

After the Ponyville stay wrapped up, Celestia and Luna shifted to a new tack. While it was known to royal staff that the diarchs intended to pass the Equestrian throne on to Princess Twilight Sparkle at some point in the near future, preparations for the process were still ongoing, and little had been done of presenting Princess Twilight to the public in a governing capacity. Princess Twilight had her School of Friendship of course, and had become known for her speech on the eve of the 1008 snap election, but Equestria’s youngest alicorn had not garnered much public attention in her years as Princess. Her duties managing diplomatic missions and running her school in Ponyville usually kept Twilight either in a low profile in Ponyville or saw her making herself known outside of Equestria with little in terms of domestic policy outreach toward the citizens of Equestria itself. So, in order to give Princess Twilight some exposure to the homefront duties of ruling Equestria and to give the broader public a chance to see their next royal sovereign in action, the Princesses stepped away from the throne briefly on a royal vacation of sorts. They left Princess Twilight in charge of the Royal Swanifying, a small, mostly ceremonial Canterlot social event that would put her in regular contact with Cheval Regent Fancy Pants who chaired the Royal Swanifying Committee, reacquaint her with Canterlot court procedure after being in Ponyville for so long, and would let Twilight demonstrate her leadership skills with enough national media coverage of the event to give creatures a solid impression of the Princess.

The Swanifying did not go well. Princess Twilight and her assistants entered with a controlling attitude and tried to manage the preparations entirely by themselves, and when the Cheval Regent and the planning committee offered to help or tried to make suggestions, Twilight shooed them away. It was only after the lack of adequate preparation threatened to delay the Swanifying or worse, cancel it, that Twilight relented and let the Cheval Regent and the planning committee step in and help with the organizing. One thing was made clear by the near derailment of the Swanifying. Despite her extensive foreign policy experience and managing a school for multiple years, Princess Twilight was still ill prepared to succeed Celestia and Luna in a full capacity as head of state of Equestria. The Cheval Regent’s comments about the Swanifying are a resounding testament to that. Twilight’s micromanagement and need to be involved in all steps of the process were of particular note from Fancy Pants in his reports to the diarchs after their return. It was clear that even if Celestia had mentored her desired successor from fillyhood, Twilight Sparkle had been away from Canterlot for too long and had lost what grasp she’d had of Canterlot Castle decorum and procedure and of the proper level of involvement in affairs a royal sovereign should have. Luckily, the practice run of the Royal Swanifying was only a minor ceremonial event and nothing of any real substance or consequence on Equestrian policy. However, Twilight’s mismanagement of the Swanifying did have an impact on her public image. The Swanifying debacle was a smorgasbord to the tabloids and editorial columnists looking to stir up controversy. Most ponies had no opinion or had not heard of Princess Twilight Sparkle prior to the Swanifying, but leaks of details of the planning for the event and of the Cheval Regent’s comments about Princess Twilight caused a significant shift from no opinion to disapproval of Twilight. Many more ponies also felt that Twilight was still “unready” to assume the throne than “ready” according to polls. The impact of the Swanifying was particularly felt in Canterlot, where an outright majority of ponies in multiple polls felt Twilight was unready to fill the horseshoes of the diarchs.

While Twilight did not do the transition any favors during the diarchs’ absence, Celestia and Luna taking their leave from running the country’s affairs and saddling the unprepared Twilight with such a responsibility did nothing to raise confidence either. Once again, the hardest hit to confidence in the diarchs and in the government was felt in Canterlot, particularly among the unicorn nobility and those closest to the Castle. Many in Canterlot, including a prevailing mood in parliament, saw Celestia and Luna leaving Twilight in charge more as the diarchs taking a vacation than giving their likely successor a test run in governance. Even the ponies in government started to question the true purpose of the trip. Noblesse Oblige, Deputy Leader of the Triple Crown Party and head of its unicorn reserved affiliate the Platina Party, called out the Princesses for leaving a student in charge of the country and leaving their post when Equestria had faced so many grave challenges in recent years. The Cheval Regent was more quiet in public about his feelings regarding the actions of the Princesses, particularly after the leak of some of his private statements, but his Deputy Leader was more vocal. The botched public service tour, the “vacation,” and Twilight’s behavior during the Swanifying clearly demonstrated to Noblesse Oblige that all three Princesses - Celestia, Luna, and Twilight - were perhaps taking Equestria in a dangerous direction and there should be a question of whether the current division of power and duties between the Princesses and parliament was proper given the state of things in Canterlot Castle.

The continued dip in approval ratings sent the castle into damage control mode ahead of the 1009 Summer Sun Celebration. Since Princess Luna was still the most popular of the Princesses, she took a larger role in the day-to-day affairs of the royal court and public appearances in Canterlot. Luna seemed to enjoy the more mundane affairs of hearing department reports and doing tours of government offices, and her demeanor and interest improved both employee morale in the departments and the general approval of the government. Celestia meanwhile devoted more energy to the School of Magic and raising the profile of the role of royal sovereign as head of the school to try to repair the flagging approvals among unicorns. One effort as part of this was an exhibition tour of the School of Magic’s buckball team. At first several of those involved were skeptical of whether it was the right tack so soon after the failure of the public aid tour, but soon both the buckball teams and the townsponies where the School of Magic team visited as well as Celestia herself got caught up in the hype of the sport. It helped that the focus of the exhibition matches was not on Celestia but on the School of Magic team. Princess Celestia sitting in the crowd rooting for her school struck ponies as more authentic and relatable than the swooping in to save the day from the goodwill tour had. The wing spell and magical dampeners that allowed two unicorns on the School of Magic team to play the positions of defensive wing and point bucker on a level playing field was also well received among the non-unicorn crowds where the team toured. To begin the buckball tour, Celestia finally visited Manehattan since she had been forced to skip it previously. The School of Magic triumphed 3 to 2 over a Stable Island school team, but lost to a Manehattan team 5 to 3 and a Bucklyn team 4 to 1. In the rest of the east coast cities featured on the tour, a Fillydelphia school team drew the School of Magic with 3 points each, while a Baltimare dock workers team heavily beat the School of Magic 7 to 2. Celestia was gracious in each of the School of Magic’s defeats, making sure to give the opposing players and coach her presence and congratulate them.

The highlight of the buckball tour was the Ponyville leg. This was the home of buckball and a chance for the School of Magic to make a real mark on their skill at the sport. Even after the defeats on the east coast, the team had high hopes. In Ponyville, the School of Magic played two matches, one against a team of Ponyville locals and one against the team from Princess Twilight’s School of Friendship. The first match was expected to be a rout for the School of Magic, playing against the home team that originated the sport. However, the School of Magic surprised after the east coast defeats and only lost 4 to 2 by a late brace from star Ponyville point bucker Pinkie Pie. The second match against the School of Friendship became much more anticipated after the Ponyville crowd saw how well the School of Magic held their ground. The match against the School of Friendship was even more intense with both teams trading goals back and forth, and was close right up to the final whistle. A straight and low shot from School of Magic point kicker Asteria sped past Friendship wing Summer Breeze and put the School of Magic up over the School of Friendship 5 to 4. The post-game exchange of hoof shakes and pleasantries from both Celestia and Twilight toward the players appeared in papers across Equestria over the next few days as the School of Magic moved on to matches in Appleloosa and Las Pegasus. The other two matches saw a defeat in Appleloose and a win in Las Pegasus, but the School of Friendship match was the highlight of the tour and gave both Celestia and Twilight some much needed positive media coverage along with their respective schools. As later events unfolded, it turned out the impact of the buckball tour could not have come soon enough.

The Summer Sun Celebration had always been one of the most important of Equestria’s holidays. Ponies revered Princess Celestia during the monarchical reign of the Celestial Era and then the shared reign of the Two Sisters following Luna’s return. More practically, the fact the holiday occurred in the middle of the year and marked the beginning of summer made it one of the most welcome days off of the year and an excuse for ponies to stay up late and party in anticipation of the sunrise. Even if the tradition of a town hosting the celebration had fallen by the wayside after Celestia’s brief disappearance and Nightmare Moon’s return in Ponyville nearly a decade ago, this year’s event in Canterlot still drew massive crowds awaiting the start of another glorious summer and the beauty of Celestia raising the sun. This year, however, the citizens of Equestria would receive a shock just as if not greater than the return of Princess Luna nine years ago.

As part of the preparations for Twilight Sparkle to succeed the diarchs, she was placed in charge of the organizing and planning for the celebration. Even after the difficulty handling the Royal Swanifying, Celestia and Luna placed their trust in the young princess to handle one of the biggest yearly Canterlot events. The preparations for the Summer Sun Celebration went surprisingly well, given Princess Twilight and her aides arranged the festivities. The Appleloosan catering lent a down home air to the event which, while perhaps not what the Canterlot elite attending the celebration may have been used to, gave a sense of Equestria-wide authenticity. It also played well with the wider public, which had only in the past few years been allowed to attend the Summer Sun Celebration in the castle grounds as a compensation for the event no longer being held in a different city every year. A grand fireworks show accentuated by a cloudscaping display capped off the celebration’s nightly events before the traditional raising of the sun. As the attendees looked on in anticipation, Celestia and Luna joined Princess Twilight on the center stage. With the ceremonial coronet framing the moon, it was not the Two Sisters lowering the heavenly body, but Twilight herself, flanked by the two Princesses acting merely as guides. The sun rose to replace the moon. As the crowd cheered, Princess Celestia quieted them for the now famous announcement. It was here and then that Celestia broke the news to Equestria publicly that she and her sister would be abdicating the throne of Equestria, and Princess Twilight Sparkle would be replacing them after a year long transition period. Twilight Sparkle further announced that this would be the last Summer Sun Celebration. In what some have charitably described as Princess Twilight’s first decree as monarch of Equestria, the day of the summer solstice will now be known as the Festival of the Two Sisters, honoring Celestia and Luna for their reigns.

The Summer Sun Abdication as it has become known was a shock to the entire country. As news of the impending succession traveled across Equestria, the reaction to it was swift. Twilight Sparkle was and still remains a relatively unknown quantity for many Equestrians, despite the efforts of the Princesses over the past several months to raise her recognition. And, as with the Swanifying, those attempts have met with mixed results. Twilight Sparkle may be beloved in Ponyville, but her diplomatic overtures have not gone over well in places like the Unicorn Range or parts of Manehattan. Her reputation in Canterlot took a swan dive among both the rich and poor after the trouble with the Swanifying Ceremony coupled with breaking the sanitation worker strike, but it has bounced back some among the working class and actually risen among the middle class, particularly among the civil service. The reasoning according to interviews with royal and government departmental staff has been a sense that Twilight has a similar thought process to the Canterlot bureaucrats and that she will be easy to work with on policy matters. Twilight’s shrewd decision to dedicate the Summer Sun Celebration to a new purpose and not cancel the national holiday outright also scored points in many ponies’ books as well.

However, it’s become clear that it has not been enough for some ponies. Almost immediately after the announcement of the royal succession, the Coronists threw accusations in parliament at Cheval Regent Fancy Pants asking when he knew the abdication was happening and what role he played in “encouraging” the diarchs to retire. The Coronists and Nightmarists also raised questions of what sway if any he held with Princess Twilight Sparkle. Fancy Pants plainly shared that he had become acquainted with Twilight from some of the castle gala events and the diplomatic summits she hosted or attended in Canterlot in years past, but he had no working relationship on planning or policy matters with Princess Twilight until the Swanifying. He did disclose that he had made a personal acquaintance with one of Twilight’s assistants, a fashion designer named Rarity, again from social events in Canterlot and that her boutique tailored his suits. The response, while sufficient to clear the Cheval Regent of any undue influence over the decision, did not mollify the opposition to the overall situation. Arctic Circle, the former Vernal Party pegasus MP who joined the Coronists and flipped a general riding in last year’s election, introduced a resolution of parliamentary dissent in the ensuing days objecting to Celestia’s and Luna’s decision to retire and place Twilight as their successor. While purely symbolic, a resolution of parliamentary dissent is still a powerful message that parliament can send to Canterlot Castle whenever the parliament strongly disagrees with a decision the Princesses have made that is entirely under royal purview. A dissent resolution has not passed parliament in centuries and has rarely been introduced in modern times, so its introduction is usually seen as a last gasp measure in expressing displeasure at a royal policy for matters where parliament has no jurisdiction. The mere formal introduction of the resolution is often enough to deliver the message and get a Princess to at least consult with the Cheval Regent on an issue, but this time it had to go further. Fancy Pants reluctantly allowed the resolution to go to a full vote after some key Tricrowner MPs were adamant about having a vote to express their displeasure at the abdication. The resolution of parliamentary dissent failed with 54 votes in favor and 146 votes against. It was a loud voice of support for the Princesses’ decision and for Princess Twilight, but it hid a continuation of the underlying split within the Triple Crown Party. Only 4 Tricrowners in general ridings broke ranks and voted with the Coronist and Hippocratic opposition in favor of the resolution. However, in the unicorn ridings, 9 of the 12 Platina Party members broke with the overall Tricrowner line.

The past months had put significant stress on the unified stance of the Tricornwers and its relationship with the Platina Party, but the Summer Sun Abdication would see it reach its breaking point. The full vote on the resolution of parliamentary dissent was held the week after the vote that removed Neighsay from the EEA Chancellorship, and the votes one after the other stirred the opposition from both outside and within the Triple Crown Party into a fervor. Fancy Pants throwing his and the party’s full support behind Princess Twilight’s succession to the throne turned out to be the straw that broke the workhorse’s back for the Tricornwer unicorns. Just weeks into the royal transition period, Noblesse Oblige announced that she no longer had confidence in Fancy Pants’ ability to govern as Cheval Regent. Noblesse took the declaration further, resigned as deputy party leader, and officially dissolved the affiliation of the Platina Party with the Triple Crown Party. The move shook the halls of the Horseshoe for several reasons. First and most obvious, the deputy leader of the government party with a slim majority was leaving and taking who knew how many members with her as she left. The circumstances also sent Equestrian politics as a whole into uncharted territory as far as recent partisan systems went. The Triple Crown Party and its typical support of the Princesses’ policies had its origins in unicorn politics through its development out of the early royal court. For the unicorn side of the party to disaffiliate and the Tricrowners to potentially no longer have a unicorn riding presence or affiliated party meant the party lost a large part of its founding identity. The unicorn ridings also hadn’t had an independent unaffiliated party holding seats in over a century. The pegasi and earth pony ridings had always had independent parties due to their history of being folded into Equestrian parliamentary politics and the party system. But unicorn political organizations had originated the party system and had always had little reason to view themselves as being independent of the general partisan apparatus. For a major unicorn party, and that of the Triple Crown Party no less, to be striking off on its own was a seismic shift in how politics would be perceived and conducted, as well as a heavy boost to the unicorns’ independent identity.

At first, nopony knew how the dust would settle with the Platina Party’s disaffiliation. Fancy Pants and key government figures made the rounds to the individual Platina Party MPs to try and convince as many as possible to stay in the Tricrowner fold. However, even if the unicorn members were more sympathetic to Triple Crowner policies in the Horseshoe and supported the recent decisions out of Canterlot Castle, the idea of joining the general party completely like one of the non-pony members was still a hard sell. Just two ex-Platina Party members would join the Triple Crown Party in full capacity and one would sit as an independent. Nine Platina Party members including Noblesse Oblige now sit in the unicorn ridings. It is not quite enough for Noblesse to claim support from a majority of the unicorn ridings, but combined with the Coronists and Hippocrats, the unicorn reserved contingent as a whole have become overwhelmingly anti-government. It also cut the governing majority of the Tricrowners down even further to the narrowest it has been in centuries. The Tricornwers now have just 102 members in total out of the 200 seats in the Horseshoe. As we look to the remainder of this year’s parliamentary session, Fancy Pants’ hold on the Regency seems to be slipping further and further. It is now a real question of whether the majority can hold out for the rest of the year, or if Twilight will be entering Canterlot Castle as a new monarch greeting an equally new Cheval Regent.

Switching Horses Midstream, Chapter VI

For Want of a Nail the Horseshoe Was Lost

by Writ Drop
The Dark Horse Candidate Vol. 27, Issue 5
Whinnypeg University Press

The Platina Party’s decision to break from the Tricrowners nearly took down Fancy Pants’s government right then and there. It certainly had the means to. The Tricrowners in total had 111 seats in parliament at the time, and the Platina Party made up 12 of those seats in the unicorn reserved ridings. If every member of the Platinards had gone along with Noblesse’s break, the Triple Crown Party would have lost its majority straight away. Fortunately for Fancy Pants, however, he was able to convince three Unicorn MPs to stick with the party. Quondam from Ponyville-Everfree, Amicus Brief from Canterlot Castle, and Verbatim from Canterlot-University stuck with the Tricrowners through the split. While this kept the Tricrowner majority intact, remaining with the governing party isolated the three from the rest of the Unicorn MPs. Now the unicorn riding contingent of the Horseshoe was nearly universally against Fancy Pants and the Triple Crown government except for those three. Despite this, it did allow Fancy Pants’s regency to hold on for some time longer and derailed Noblesse Oblige’s attempt to immediately and dramatically bring down Fancy Pants’ government.

The Triple Crown government managed to limp along in its bare majority for a couple more months. As Princess Twilight Sparkle officially began the royal transition of power, Fancy Pants was still able to pass a few bills to help the succession along in its early stages. But by August, the knives were out for the Fancy Pants government. With only three defections or no confidence votes from the Tricornwers needed to take down the government, every party, whether in parliament or not, was wheeling and dealing in the Horseshoe to try and peel off a member of the Tricrowners for themselves. Any defection at this point would be high profile and give a boost to the gaining party’s recognition. The first success at whittling down the majority came from southern Equestria in the scrubland between the Ghastly Gorge and the San Palomino Desert. Caprock, MP for Grulla-Palomino Canyon, flipped from the Triple Crown Party to the Coronists after he claimed the Tricrowners in Canterlot were failing to uphold the government’s support for the region. It was a fairly general complaint about Fancy Pants’s governance, citing a number of different grievances from earth ponies of the area about the lack of promised rain and the increased dragon migrations through southern Equestria creating animosity between rock farmers and dragons in the region. The defection could have been a quick second buck to the Tricrowner’s hopes of prolonging their majority, but it was in the early days of their decline. Caprock, perhaps out of a sense of cockiness or from a remaining sense of dedication to Equestrian political norms, opted to stand in a by-election as the politeness and decorum among elected officials called for after a defection. The Triple Crown Party stood local rancher Amaretto to replace Caprock. A straight two-horse race would have likely seen Caprock gallop to re-election given the popularity of the Coronists in neighboring Salt Lick City and Arimaspia, but the Hippocrats also entered the by-election seeking any chance they could find of gaining a further hoofhold in parliament. The Grulla-Palomino Canyon by-election then became a tight three-horse race. The presence of both the Coronists and Hippocrats divided the opposition vote and the Hippocrats peeled off some of the more hardline voters who would have otherwise gone to the Coronists. Floydalia pulled off about 16 percent of the vote for the Hippocrats, but Amaretto ultimately unseated Caprock by a margin of just 3 percent, winning with under 45 percent in a riding that the year before gave Caprock a comfortable majority as a Tricrowner. Amaretto’s win saved the seat for the Tricrowners and kept them at their bare majority of 102 seats. However, the close race indicated that the downturn in Tricrowner support was not just a phenomenon among unicorns or among the haughty Canterlot elite, but was happening across Equestria and among every type of pony. Even if southwestern Equestria was already one of the stronger areas for the Coronists and the Party to Uphold Hippocracy, the trickle of support away from the government had evidently not been satiated by the Platina Party jumping ship.

The Grulla-Palomino Canyon by-election was a sigh of relief for the Tricrowners after the Platina Party’s disaffiliation, but it was short-lived. Soon after, two opportunities arose in quick succession to continue chipping away at their majority. The Cloudsdale local elections had a few notable faces running including a fair number of members of parliament. Perhaps seeing which way the wind was blowing, some Tricrowners decided to make a move to Cloudsdale politics rather than settling for being in the opposition in Canterlot or trying to fly for reelection facing a headwind. Three Triple Crown MPs tried to make the jump. Brazen Sunset ran for mayor of Cloudsdale, and Barnstorm and Chequered Sky ran for city council. Chequered Sky lost the council race and stayed on as an MP, but both Brazen Sunset and Barnstorm won their races, triggering by-elections for their parliamentary ridings. In Cloudsdale East & Moazagotl, the Triple Crown Party ran water rights attorney Hadley Cell and was able to hold on to Brazen Sunset’s seat thanks to a divide among the opposition candidates and the recently founded New Pegasopolis Party coming in second over the Coronists. They were not so lucky in Barnstorm’s former riding of Cirral and Firkinhead. Cirral and Firkinhead encompasses much of Cloudsdale’s reservoir district so naturally the impact of the southern droughts and water supply issues were of utmost importance to by-election voters. Unfortunately for Fancy Pants, the government’s attempts to increase cloud production to alleviate the drought had not gone over well on the supply side of the equation. Pegasi weather workers, particularly in the distillation and condensation factories, had heard the news of Princess Twilight breaking the streetsweeper strike in Canterlot before the Swanifying and were worried attempts to increase production would mean similar action against any similar behavior by Cloudsdale workers. Additionally, a resolution in parliament to petition Celestia and Luna to seek foreign aid or temporary workers from Griffonstone as what government officials called “emergency measures” as a short term cloud production boost angered many in the cloud manufacturing-heavy riding. Despite Cloudsdale’s tendency to be more friendly to other creatures and foreign relations than elsewhere in Equestria, one area the pegasi can be quite protective about is the cloudmaking industry. The idea of seeking aid or more workers to help out with cloud production, especially the idea of asking a relatively poorer country like Griffonstone for help in such matters, was a direct affront to Cloudsdalians’ pride in their main industry. So from the start, Foggy Bottom was facing a galeforce headwind in her campaign to replace Barnstorm and keep the seat in Triple Crown hooves. Adding to the government’s woes, the New Pegasopolis Party found a very strong candidate of their own in Laserjet, a retired Wonderbolt. Laserjet used her prior career and her party capitalizing on the Griffonstone aid issue to promote its idea of restoring pegasi self-governance and influence in government and doomed the Triple Crown Party’s attempt to keep the seat. The government was now down to 101 seats in parliament, and pegasus politics suddenly had a new player, the New Pegasopolis Party.

The New Pegasopolis Party was one of a hoofful of fringe political parties that had been created or which had shifted their platforms in the previous year. These new parties developed primarily out of the increasing tensions between unicorns, earth ponies, and pegasi in the aftermath of the Cozy Glow Crisis and the Sombric Insurrection. The NPP, headed by Laserjet and Bonnie Blue, called for the separation of pegasi into their own sovereign country outside of Equestria and a “return to the proud, independent pegasi culture of Pegasopolis” before the days of the Two Sisters. While they became the main focus of the pegasi nationalist movement after Laserjet won the by-election, they were not the only ones. The Cloudsdale Independence Party also promoted pegasus separatism, but in a more limited scope of independence for just Cloudsdale. While the two parties agreed on the broader scope of seeking independence for Cloudsdale, they differed greatly in other areas of policy. The CIP in fact aligned more with the Everfree Party than the NPP in terms of policy, calling a broader coalition of pegasi, bat ponies, griffons, and other flying folk united under the banner of an independent Cloudsdalian identity. The NPP, on the other hoof, ran with the undercurrent of xenophobia and distrust that seemed to be slowly building in Equestria. The NPP’s call for a broader pegasi identity and not one based on modern Cloudsdale tapped into the Equestria-wide frustration among pegasi and not just in Cloudsdale around the weather production issues and the perceived unfair demands being made by earth ponies and the Horseshoe in Canterlot on weatherponies. That sentiment helped the party expand beyond just local Cloudsdale politics to gain a hoofhold with pegasi across Equestria and propelled the party’s support that led to its first member of parliament being from a general riding, even if it was still a Cloudsdale riding.

Laserjet and the NPP may have been the first, but they weren’t the only nationalist party gaining clout. Just as political thought among pegasi was edging toward nationalism, so too were earth ponies and unicorns. The Earth First Coalition, also formed in the past two years, was a group even more radical than the Free Soil Party in calling for earth ponies to have a greater say over cloud distribution and weather policy. While the Free Soilers merely adopted thermalism in their weather policy platform, the Earth First Coalition went so far as to spread a false conspiracy theory that pegasi were deliberately stalling cloud distribution in order to weaken the influence of earth ponies, and called for pegasi to be completely removed from weather management altogether. Earth Firsters called for the separation of earth ponies from Equestria to “take back the land” from the pegasi. Of course, this put them at odds with the New Pegasopolitans and the Cloudsdale Independence Party, even moreso than they were with the other more mainstream parties.

Unicorns were not without their own branding of a nationalist political party on the rise, but in the unicorns’ case it was a shift in platform of an already existing party. The Party to Uphold Hippocracy ostensibly claimed to be a voice for ponies of all types in its platform and in speeches, but it frequently performed best and gained seats in largely unicorn populated districts or in unicorn reserved ridings. The party had tried to broaden its appeal, but as the Corona Party shifted to become more extreme on a number of issues as Equestria leapt from crisis to crisis, the Coronists encroached more and more on the Hippocrats’ voter base. To make themselves stand out from the Coronists then, Jacobalt and the Hippocrats embraced even more extremist ideas including unicorn supremacy. To a certain extent, the idea had already been present in the party. The Hippocrats’ unicorn affiliate party, the Unicorn Restorationist Bloc, had already embraced much of the more radical wing of the party with its advocacy for reclaiming control of the movements of the sun and moon to the unicorn population from Celestia and Luna and the belief that unicorn magic gave them inherent superiority over pegasi and earth ponies as the pre-Equestrian unicorn aristocracy supposedly demonstrated. Jacobalt and other Hippocrats previously always claimed that while they would not forbid the URB from affiliating with the Hippocrats, the party as a whole did not stand for such policies and stood for the defense of all ponies. Meanwhile, the URB took this stance as a quiet endorsement of their selection of unicorn reserved candidates. Since winning two more unicorn-heavy ridings in the 1008 election, and with the Sombric Insurrection and the increased attacks on Fancy Pants, however, the Hippocrats have more openly embraced its affiliation to the Unicorn Restorationist Bloc.

The increased number and visibility of nationalist parties was certainly a sign of growing extremism in Equestrian politics, but it was now the only one. Not all the more extremist new parties are nationalists or associated with any one group of ponies. The Golden Dawn Party began in a similar way to the New Pegasopolis Party in Cloudsdale politics before branching out into contesting general ridings. In fact, it did so before the NPP, though it failed to win any ridings at first unlike the New Pegasopolitans. The Golden Dawn Party though only began as part of pegasus politics thanks to its founder, Burning Bright, being a pegasus. It was not a separatist or autonomist party. It was quite the opposite, indeed harkening more along the lines of Whinnypeg’s very own Nightmare Party. The Golden Dawn Party saw the conspiratorial accusations that Fancy Pants was a willing participant in the Sombric Insurrection and, instead of dismissing them out of hoof as ridiculous as any reasonable pony would do, embraced them wholeheartedly. They desire the disbanding of parliament as an institution and a return to absolute Celestial monarchical rule, as if Princess Luna was still stuck in her prison on the moon.

The foundation and relative rise of these extremist parties was a troubling sign for Equestria, not just for their potential threat to the Triple Crown majority but for what they embodied for Equestrian ideological movements. As much as anypony can disagree with the Tricrowners or the Coronists or the Everfree Party, at least they were mostly in support of maintaining a unified Equestria and royal sovereigns whose excesses are held in check by a representative, elected body. The rise of separatist and authoritarian parties signaled a drastic change in social and political norms that was sliding toward dangerous territory for the country.

After Laserjet won the Cirral & Firkinhead by-election, it seemed only a matter of time before the next domino fell. When Weather and Cloud Services Minister Ice Crystal resigned after another consecutive month of poor cloud production numbers, there was some speculation among political insiders that she would resign from parliament altogether and trigger yet another by-election. The rumors passed as Ice Crystal chose to continue representing Tall Tale-Crescent Moon Bay, and a potential Tricrowner loss was avoided there. The next loss for the Tricrowners would instead come a month later. Potatoskr, an earth pony who sat in the northwest Equestrian general riding of Ponytello-Craters of the Moon, was in a traditionally safe seat for the Triple Crown Party. The rural seat was a rather remote area even for that part of Equestria, with little soil and primarily basalt terrain pocked with scrub making it not a lively area for trade or agriculture. What settlements there were were primarily earth ponies, making what living they could off farming the rarer obsidian that was to be found in the caves and rock. However, those factors did make it an attractive location for batponies looking for a quieter place to move after Hollow Shades and Whinnypeg became more developed. The Craters of the Moon area, so called because from a pegasus eye view the jagged, grey landscape brought to mind the pocked surface of the moon during Nightmare Moon’s imprisonment, saw an influx of batpony migration to the region, quickly altering the demographics of the area. Potatoskr survived the 1008 snap election by a decent margin over the Coronists and the Nightmare Party, but the Triple Crown Party saw a drop of support in the region of over ten percent from the previous election. Potatoskr apparently concluded the problem was the growing dislike of the Tricrowners in the area and, even though he was still likely to lose in the next election, decided he would fare better without the party label dragging him down. Potatoskr switched to an independent, bringing the Tricrowners down to an even 100 seats. In a notable break from normal decorum, Potatoskr did not resign his seat to stand in a by-electoin. None of the Platina Party members had before him, but they claimed they were merely disaffiliating the party as a whole from the Tricrowners and not actually switching political parties. Potatoskr did not even offer that as an excuse, even though he could have since he was becoming an independent and not switching to another party. The only response from Potatoskr on whether he would stand in a by-election was simple: “I’m sure there will be an election for me to stand in soon enough.”

The Tricrowners now had an even half of the Horseshoe, but it still counted as a majority thanks to the centuries old precedent of ties being broken in the government’s favor. The established rule had been that ties would be broken by Princess Celestia, but with the Tricornwers having controlled government for so long and being in step with Celestia on nearly all issues, the precedent eventually developed so the formal assent from Celestia was not needed and a tied vote was de facto sufficient to be in favor of the Cheval Regent’s opinion. However, with a hair-thin majority, the murmurs of a no confidence vote in the government had gained so much speed they were nearing a full gallop. If all the opposition parties joined together to try and force an election with a confidence vote, they would only need one Tricrowner MP to buck the governing party and join them. Parties on both sides of the Horseshoe were eager for an election. Before a vote could be held though, the final nail in the current Tricrowner majority was driven in; or rather, Nail was driven out. Rusty Nail, MP for Neighbraska-Oatmaha West and an earth pony who had lobbied hard in parliament for a more thermalist approach to weather management by the government, spoke out against the replacement of Ice Crystal with Black Sun as Weather Minister after Ice Crystal’s resignation. The replacement of a unicorn with a pegasus during an irrigation cloud shortage was a slap in the face to many earth ponies, even if Fancy Pants did have the best of intentions.

The reasoning for moving Black Sun to Weather in the minor cabinet shuffle was that Black Sun was from Las Pegasus Center at the heart of southwestern Equestria closer to where some of the worst of the dry conditions were. More importantly, Black Sun was a productivist when it came to cloud management. While the most common arguments over weather management are between the competing philosophies of precipitism or top-down peagsi management and thermalism or bottom-up earth pony management, the pegasi still have competing views on cloud production and weather distribution among themselves, even if on a broad platform they are mostly precipitists. The cloudservationist versus productivist debate in weather management dates from when pegasi were still in full seasonal councils and remains one of the major issues within pegasus politics. The summer council and now Estival Party promote cloudservationism for a drier climate with less cloud production to conserve water resources, meaning weather factory workers have less workload and less rainwater is needed and reservoir stockpiles can be kept at higher levels. Productivism, in contrast pushed by the winter council and now the Hibernal Party, adopts a philosophy of using all resources at Equestria’s disposal for weather production, pushing for wetter summers and snowier winters with denser cloud production to build up the natural snowpack in the high mountains. Most pegasi with ties outside of strictly pegasus politics, especially those in Cloudsdale working directly in the weather industry, tend to be cloudservationists. Black Sun, however, is an exception, which is why Fancy Pants chose her to replace Ice Crystal. A productivist with ties to the southwest and who knew firsthoof the effects of the post-Cozy Glow drought conditions could hopefully talk some sense into the Cloudsdale holdouts and ramp up cloud production for the coming winter and build the snowpack so at least the next spring and summer would not be so harsh.

Despite the government’s intentions, many earth ponies, particularly those in the middle of Equestria far from Las Pegasus, did not appreciate what Black Sun might be able to bring to the negotiating table and only saw the appointment of a pegasus at a time when thermalism was clearly needed in directing Cloudsdale’s production facilities. Several earth ponies MPs were upset with Fancy Pants’ decision, but Rusty Nail was the first to bolt from the party entirely. Rusty Nail joined the Coronists with a warm welcome from Parabellum.

Ninety-nine. Fancy Pants, who had commanded a majority of 23 seats just a year and a few months ago, now saw his regency without a majority in parliament and now presided over the first time the Tricrowners had lost a majority in anycreature’s living memory, the Two Sisters notwithstanding. The collapse of the Tricrowners under Fancy Pants was nothing short of tragic when it seemed to be going harmoniously after the return of Princess Luna and the restoration of the diarchy a decade ago. Even with most of the invasions of Equestria that followed, while they chipped away at ponies’ trust in the Triple Crown Party, Fancy Pants and the Tricrowners had been able to maintain the high level of support the Tricrowners had received for so long and looked like they might be able to recover. Now though, all that was in shambles, and a further trial was looming with a new election highly likely if they could not scramble to put some sort of coalition together.

A coalition to actually build a majority in the Horseshoe was unprecedented, but it should have been easy to pull off. After all, how hard should it be to get a party with at least two members to join them. The Everfree Party had been partial to the Tricrowners and had expressed interest in a coalition during the snap election the year before. It turned out that Portwine’s coalition offer was only made because it could be an empty gesture. The Everfree Party may have had leverage now, but Fancy Pants and Portwine were unable to find an agreement. The attempt to thread the needle between the earth pony and pegasus demands on weather management only served to alienate the parties of both to the point that even the appointment of Black Sun was not enough to convince the Hibernal Party to join the Tricrowners in forming a government. Every opposition party in the Horseshoe saw the writing on the wall and was eager to grab as much of the pie that they could. Even the Black Angus Party was hoping for an election now, eyeing a second non-pony reserved riding now that the Triple Crown Party was vulnerable. As Rusty Nail settled in with the Coronists in the Horseshoe, a motion of no confidence was brought to the floor. For the first time in years, the Triple Crown Party stood entirely alone in its vote. A no confidence vote against Fancy Pants passed the Horseshoe 101 votes to 99. For the second time in two years, election season was on.

The initial polling to kick off the campaign period showed just how far the Triple Crown Party and trust in the government slid. Already the Tricrowners had hit a net disapproval rating, with 45% disapproving of the government’s recent performance to 43% approval. Their polls continued to slide during the first weeks of the election campaign. Parties on both wings took advantage of the message that a no confidence vote sent in order to peel off ex-Tricrowner voters in their respective directions. Parabellum and the Coronist candidates spoke constantly about how Fancy Pants’s regency over the past two decades had only led to Equestria growing weaker “from its borders to its heart,” and that Equestria had faced unprecedented levels of crisis and instability under Fancy Pants. Where the Coronists did admit Fancy Pants had made positive decisions in government, namely in the initial appointment of Neighsay “before he went soft” and on increasing national security measures following the Sombric Insurrection, the Coronists claimed full credit for those decisions. The Party to Uphold Hippocracy took the rhetoric even further. During the 1009 election, the Unicorn Restorationist Bloc began wielding its increasing sway over the Hippocrats. They blamed Equestria’s recent perceived weakness not just on Equestria opening her borders to foreign trade and to other creatures. The Hippocrats also began lambasting the infighting between the earth ponies and pegasi over the weather. Jacobalt claimed the earth ponies were hoarding food to make pegasi look like they were deliberately shortening the cloud supply but at the same time claimed pegasi were halting production so they could shirk their duty to society and to Equestria.

At the other end of the Horseshoe, the Everfree Party was equally blaming Tricrowners for centralizing production and not creating enough distributed cloud storage in regional centers so local and regional areas could handle local weather shocks themselves. The Estival Party, while they were a more liberal party, even jumped into the stampede of attacks on the Tricrowners despite the Estival Party only running in pegasus reserved ridings and so not directly running against any Triple Crown Party candidates. Estival leader Lemon Shandy blamed the delay in weather management and looming drought on the previous years of cloud overproduction and overuse and a lack of cloudservation in recent years. The Hibernal Party’s victories in Cloudsdale weather board positions in recent years had led to more productivist influence in weather management decisions at both the local and national levels, but meteorological estimates had not shown any supply shock this bad in the forecasts and certainly had not predicted the Cozy Glow Crisis and the magic outage. The Tricrowners were beset on all sides by their opponents, and they slipped badly in the polls through the end of the month when they hit as low as 23 percent. Analysis of the polling showed that many different parties were sapping the strength from the Tricornwers, but being the largest opposition party, the biggest benefactor of the government’s polling freefall was the Coronists who saw the most steady climb in polling during this time.

The Coronists were improving so much in the polls that they even briefly ran ahead of the Tricrowners. In the 1008 election, the Coronists had led one Mareist poll right before election day, but this was the first time that all three major pollsters had the Coronists ahead for a consistent period. Equinnipiac even had the Coronists polling at over ten points ahead of the Tricrowners in two successive polls.. The Coronists' rhetoric on a need for stability and national security resonated with many ponies after the revelation of the Tree of Harmony and its destruction during the Sombric Insurrection. However, that rhetoric would prove to be their undoing in the campaign. Many ponies were concerned about a drastic change in leadership during a time when a new crisis seemed likely and a royal succession was imminent. A change in Cheval Regent right as Princess Twilight was ascending the throne, plus swapping control of parliament from the party that had led the Horseshoe for over a millennium for one that had never held control of parliament during its centuries of existence, struck ponies as inviting an unnecessary level of instability to Equestria. As soon as polling showed that the Coronists had the support to potentially win control of parliament, many ponies got skittish about the change in leadership and backed off their support for the Coronists.

Although they backed off from the Coronists, voters didn't just swing back to the Triple Crown Party. The Coronists’ lead in the polls showed that the Tricrowners were even more vulnerable than they initially seemed and were in fact beatable by an opposition party. Ponies who perhaps did not prefer either the Coronists or the Tricrowners but had tactically chosen either party now saw their options of viable parties to support greatly increase. With the government party shown to be beatable, it turned out many ponies wanted their preferred opposition party to be the one to topple the Tricrowners instead of settling for the Coronists. These voters began coalescing around other minor parties instead of either major party. Two weeks after the Coronists broke through into the lead, their numbers had tumbled again with the Tricrowners taking back the top spot. The overall polling for the Tricrowners saw a bounce for a day or two, but afterward slid further compared to where they had been before.

For all the noise about the no confidence vote and the barbs traded by parties on all sides, the end of the campaign was relatively quiet. There was no last minute gamble by the Triple Crown Party trotting out Twilight Sparkle or the Princesses this time in order to save their flagging poll numbers. There was no surprise crisis to upend all the issues on ponies’ muzzles. Polling in the last days of the election was all over the place for who would be the second and third place parties, and with ridings elected by first past the post it was a complete tossup on which party would end up leading in dozens of ridings. Creatures across Equestria were too rapt with the question of what exactly would happen to the partisan system now that the Triple Crown Party had fallen this far. It was a rather unremarkable end to the campaign period, but preceded a historic result in the election.

Despite the disastrous turn for the Triple Crown Party’s support throughout Equestria, the party still ended up in first in both seats and in the popular vote. It was still a precarious drop from the previous election and was a display of just how fractured Equestrian political views had become. In the previous year’s snap election the Tricrowners won over 30% of the total votes across all general and reserved ridings, but in this year’s election they carried just over 22% of the total popular vote. This was largely due to their collapse in the unicorn reserved ridings from 1.3 million votes to barely 200,000 with the Platina Party taking most of the ex-Tricrowner vote. Even in the general ridings though, the Triple Crown Party vote fell by over six percent to just 31.4%.

The collapse of the Tricrowners led to most other parties seeing significant bumps in their vote share. The split between the Tricrowners and Platina Party spurred the Coronists to become the leading party in the unicorn ridings in terms of the popular vote. Even so, the Coronists still saw their overall vote share fall to below 20 percent as other parties made larger gains. Both the Everfree Party and the Party to Uphold Hippocracy rose to over 10 percent of the overall popular vote. The now unaffiliated Platina Party and the New Pegasopolis Party both upset the carts in the unicorn and pegasus reserved ridings as the Platina Party won over 1 million votes while the Pegasopolitans received over half a million votes combined from their general and pegasus reserved candidates. In the pegasus ridings the Vernal Party took off as well, displacing the Hibernal Party for the second place spot in the pegasus ridings. The earth pony and non-pony ridings did not see too much movement compared to the others. The Free Soil Party did jump to over 20 percent of the earth pony vote and the Everfree Party actually lost votes compared to 1008 in the earth pony ridings, though mainly that was due to the relative success of the more extremist Earth First Party. The non-pony ridings did see a marked increase in votes going to the Black Angus Party and the Blankists as trust in the Tricrowners to maintain the level of rights and protections for non-ponies fell after increased tensions among griffons, dragons, and changelings following the Sombric Insurrection and the pony backlash to the foreign trade agreements. The Tricrowner share of the non-pony vote fell by over 10 percent from 1008, while the Black Angus Party reached over 20 percent of the vote for the first time in its history. The Blankist Equalist Party received a sizable number of votes as well, especially among griffons, though with only five non-pony ridings they were spread too thin to make a dent in any of the individual ridings.

Leading in the popular vote was little consolation for Fancy Pants and the Tricrowners, as they suffered by far the most losses of any party. The Tricornwers lost a whopping 28 seats from their standings going into the election campaign. All but one of those losses were in general ridings; Verbatim, the Unicorn MP for Canterlot-University, was unseated by Brass Buckle, the Coronist candidate. The worst losses for the Tricrowners were in northeastern Equestria and in the Unicorn Range. In the northeast the Tricrowners lost half their seats, collapsing from 20 of the region’s 33 ridings to just 10, leaving them with less than a third of the ridings in the region.The Coronists taking back Stable Island after just a year was not too much of a surprise, but the Tricrowners were also swept out of the Griffish Isles seats by the Everfree Party. Fillybrand was swept up in the wave against the Tricrowners in Ponyonta, and to add insult to injury both there and in Ceffyldigion, another Everfree gain, the Tricornwers fell from first place in 1008 to third! The Everfreers and Coronists both took the top two finishes in those ridings.

In the Unicorn Range, the damage done to the Tricrowners was perhaps even worse than the northeast even though it was a smaller number of ridings at stake. The Unicorn Range had already been one of the growing hotbeds of Coronist and Hippocrat support in recent years. The Tricrowners only held half of the region’s eight ridings after the 1008 election. In 1008 it was where the Hippocrats made their second breakthrough in the general ridings with Ruby Ridge’s victory in Bitterroot. But in 1009, resentment against the government and its trade policies continued to escalate as local pushback against the dragon immigration to the region caused by the mineral rights agreement with the Dragonlands. The tensions between the largely unicorn and earth pony miners and the incoming dragon prospectors frequently boiled over into both physical and legal fights. By the time of the election, the ponies in the Unicorn Range had had enough. The Triple Crown Party was completely wiped out of the Unicorn Range and, next to the Canterlot suburbs, it was where the Party to Uphold Hippocracy made its biggest gains. The Hippocrats not only held onto Bitterroot by a double digit margin, they also defeated the Tricrowners in the Rocin Mountain Range riding and even picked a seat off the Coronists in Equusferrous. The win in Equusferrous was particularly noteworthy with Sterling Price as the Hippocratic candidate there. Sterling was one of the more notably Unicorn Restorationist leaning Hippocratic nominees in the general ridings, and had been a top adviser to Carbuncle in Unicornia Centre for years before running on his own. During the campaign Sterling gained notoriety for playing up a limp at speeches, alleging he had lost it during a skirmish with the dragon that briefly settled in the caves of the Smokey Mountains in 1001. Sterling’s victory over Algoma in Equusferrous was one example of how far the Hippocrats had risen. More than just a fringe spoiler party for the Coronists, they were now both willing and capable of defeating the Coronists on their own turf.

While the losses were not as bad for the Tricrowners in the rest of Equestria, they still came out of the 1009 election practically in freefall. They plummeted to just 65 of the 135 general ridings, less than half of the general seats and far below what they needed to even start reasonably building a coalition government. Counting the reserved ridings, the Tricrowners came out of the election with only 71 out of 200 seats in the Horseshoe. Still, they were in the best position to form a coalition since the Coronists only had 43 seats in total. However, the political shocks over the past year had made any party aligning with the Tricornwers a shaky proposition. Even the single seat held by the Black Angus Party, which would have previously jumped at the chance to have a say in a governing coalition, was now an uncertainty in formation talks thanks to being represented by the firebrand young calf Arizona. The first and most important step though was going to be convincing the Everfree Party. With its rise to 17 ridings, the party now held a crucial amount of power and would have been a vital part of any Tricrowner coalition government. And there was initial hope by many both in the government and in the media for the Everfree Party to be open to a coalition. In the previous year’s campaign, Portwine had said the Everfree Party would be open to entering a coalition with the Tricrowners if the Tricrowners did not retain a majority. Furthermore, some Everfreers both in the Horseshoe and public supporters voiced support for a Triple Crown-Everfree joint effort as a foundational base for a wider coalition. Even if the Everfree Party did join, a coalition would still need at least 12 and preferably 13 or more seats to form a government. Equestria had just seen how easily a majority of a few votes in the Horseshoe could slip away, and that was with a single party holding the majority. A coalition government would be even weaker.

Still, at minimum a potential Tricrowner-Everfree coalition would need just a dozen more votes to form a government. How hard could finding a dozen more parliamentary votes be? As it turned out, it was a lot harder than most Equestrians expected. The competitiveness of the 1009 election on all sides and the eagerness to lure votes away from the Triple Crown Party led to a lot of burning bridges and personal ill will between members of parliament and party leaders of several parties. The continuing heated debate over weather management and the resulting strained relations between earth ponies and pegasi also marred attempts to bring a more unified coalition together. With the government’s recent shift toward precipitism and productivist weather management, the Hibernal Party was the best candidate of the pegasus parties, but it had fallen to a paltry four seats in the pegasus reserved ridings. The Estival Party’s eight ridings would be a much greater boon to the Tricrowners, but even with them, the Everfree Party, and the Black Angus Party, the coalition seat count would only reach 97, three short. After days of trying to convince any of the earth pony parties to join the coalition, the talks fell apart as none of the earth pony parties, not even the Municipal Development League which was typically least influenced by agricultural concerns, were willing to work with the Estival Party. Another more controversial option soon presented itself after the Estival Party coalition was ruled unworkable. It would be dubbed by the media as the “Puddingian Option”, or more derisively in pegasus papers, the “Dirty Coalition.” With pegasus parties a non-starter, the Puddingian Option called for a broad coalition of earth pony parties with the Tricrowners and Everfree Party. On paper, it would have been able to form a government. The Tricrowners’ 71 seats, the Everfree Party’s 17, and the combined 17 seats from the Country Party, Municipal Development League, and Free Soil Party would give a governing coalition 104 total seats. It was only a four seat majority and with the Municipal Development League’s four seats as the smallest party, any single party could end the coalition by walking out. As it turned out, the Puddingian coalition ended before it could even begin. During the negotiations, the issue of ministerial appointments came up and naturally the conversation turned to the Weather Ministry. Fancy Pants pushed hard to keep Black Sun on as Weather Minister as a pony who, while she was a pegasus, could empathize and speak to earth pony concerns. Some of the Earth Pony MPs were convinced and relented on the issue. The Free Soilers, however, were still adamant about having an earth pony appointed as Weather Minister if they were to participate in a coalition government. That was apparently one hoofstep too far for Fancy Pants, and the Free Soilers walked out of negotiations. While this would have left the rump Puddingian coalition with 99 seats and only needing a single MP, whether Arizona or an independent, to create a tentative government, the negotiations with the other earth pony parties quickly fell apart after the Free Soilers walked out. That was the closest Fancy Pants and the Tricrowners came to forming a government in the immediate post-election negotiation period.

After the Puddingian coalition talks fell apart, Fancy Pants went to Celestia. As the Tricrowners were unable to form a government, the Coronists were given a chance at forming one themselves. This put Equestria even further into unprecedented political territory. For the first time in the modern party system, a party other than the Tricrowners now had the opportunity to try to take control of parliament. However, if the road to a Triple Crown-led coalition was rough, the Coronist path to a governing coalition was already near impossible from the moment they were given the reins. They had made gains in parliament, but even with that the Coronists only had 43 total seats. Parabellum would need to find another 57 members willing to be junior partners in a Coronist-led coalition. A broad coalition of the more conservative parties, led primarily by the Coronists and Hippocrats, could have theoretically amounted to 90 seats, but that would require the Country Party, MDL, and Free Soilers working not just with the Coronists but with the Vernal Party and New Pegasopolitans, something that was untenable from the start. Parabellum thus entered formal talks with the Everfree Party and the Hippocrats to see if the two parties could find a way to work together. This was by far the best chance for the Coronists to build a coalition. On paper, it seemed like it might work. The base opposition bloc of the Coronists, Hippocrats, Vernal Party, and Platina Party together held 66 seats in parliament. If they could bring the Evrefree Party into an agreement, that would bump them up to 83. Then they would only need 18 seats to command a full majority, still a tall order but one that would only need perhaps another three parties, much more feasible than trying to bring together a dozen squabbling minor parties. The talks were promising at first as both Jacobalt and Portwine expressed an interest in a governing coalition. Portwine, perhaps regretting a missed opportunity with the Tricrowners, still wanted a way into a governing position, and offered a way to bring in a block of earth pony ridings while not alienating the more Coronist aligned pegasi in the Vernal Party.

The snag in the talks then came not from the Everfreers but from the Hippocrats. The recent shift in the Party to Uphold Hippocracy that led to the more reactionary and on occasion even outright republican Unicorn Restorationists wielding more and more power in the party positions created disagreement among the party at the idea of the broader coalition. While the Coronists were still acceptable ideologically to many in the Hippocrats, some now leading voices in the party publicly chastised Jacobalt for being willing to form a coalition if it included the Everfree Party. Onyx Glow, the Hippocratic member from the Southwest Equestria unicorn riding, finally issued an ultimatum to Jacobalt on the eve of Nightmare Night. If Jacobalt agreed to enter a coalition with what Onyx called the “foreign sympathizers” in the Everfree Party, she would file an internal party motion to challenge Jacobalt for the Hippocratic leadership. This was an even greater challenge to a party leader than Noblesse Oblige’s threat to leave the Tricrowners. Jacobalt may have led the Hippocrats to a gain of eight seats over the last two elections, but three of the party’s ten MPs were Unicorn MPs, and many of their general MPs were from areas sympathetic to the Unicorn Restorationists or overlapping with the party’s unicorn ridings. If the Unicorn Restorationist Bloc was unified in wanting Jacobalt out as leader, it would be tough for the Neighvada MP to survive a leadership challenge and he could find himself facing a tough nomination challenge in his riding at the next election. So, in the beginning of November, Jacobalt backed out of coalition talks with the Coronists as long as the Everfreers were involved. After all that, Parabellum and the Coronists were back to square one and Equestria was, after months, no closer to forming a government than it had been right after the election.

The negotiations would continue for a time but would soon be cut short by the emergency. The past year hearkens back to an old saying that can be updated to the present .

For want of a nail the horseshoe was lost.
For want of the Horseshoe the government was lost.
For want of the government Canterlot was lost.
For want of Canterlot harmony has been lost.
For want of harmony Equestria may be lost.
All for the want of Rusty Nail.