Royal Rewrite - The winner wrote the history

The Everfree forest was considered the centre of Equestria. Inside the Everfree forest was a Castle. Inside the castle was a throne room. Inside the throne room was a Queen. Together with the Queen were several ponies. Those ponies dearly wished they were someplace else. Anywhere except in the throne room, or the castle, or even the forest. You didn’t need to ask them what they wished. The visible anger displayed by the Queen made it obvious they all shared the same wish.

Queen Celestia looked at the assembled royal guards with her burning eyes. Her anger didn’t originate from the prisoner’s attempt to escape, but from the fact the prisoner had outside help, and the only pony who could possibly have helped him, must be a guard.

That’s why the Queen was furious. It meant a servant of the court was guilty of treason. Treason within the court was the worst thing that could happen. To deceive the court, is to deceive every pony in the land.

Even worse – she couldn’t figure out who the perpetrator was. Half of all the royal guards had been gathered for a first round of questions, but they all seemed to be telling the truth, even if it could be hard to tell with ponies so nervous they barely remembered to breath.

So the Royal Court, the single most powerful entity in the Kingdom of Equestria, was tainted with treachery, but lacked the knowledge to cure itself.

Celestia’s flaming eyes glanced at the officers and soldiers gathered. It wasn’t the entire royal guard, but everyone that in any shape or form could have been involved in the prisoner’s escape.

The prisoner had been convicted of murder, and the murderer was scheduled to be executed at the scene of the crime. This punishment ensured that a most violent criminal would never, ever repeat the crime. It also served to remind those left behind that no crime went unpunished.

But the prisoner had managed to escape. The convict was fleeing through the Everfree forest when they found him but the desperate prisoner was killed during the capture. It all happened so fast – was the poor excuse from the guards.

Celestia was happy her sister wasn’t there. To figure out how the pony managed to escape was difficult, and Celestia could do well without her irresponsible sister arguing that with the prisoner dead, the final result was achieved, and royalty had better things to do than waste energy on concluded matters.

Her little sister was so clueless. She had no idea how difficult it is to maintain order and make sure that everypony in Equestria heeded the Royal wisdom. Ponies needed to follow the rules laid out, not just when she or her sister were there to watch them, but also when neither of them had been seen in that area for many years.

Total respect could only be accomplished by a massive reputation rooted deep into everypony’s memory. A memory delivered as a matter of fact on a boring scroll is quickly forgotten. A memory delivered together with massive emotions would be remembered forever. If she had to be harsh to a violent criminal in order to accomplish the perfect reminder for society, it was the price that must be paid.

Draconian measures versus a single criminal would entail that ten ponies in fear of repercussions never became criminals, and along that path followed that a hundred ponies would never have to become victims of criminals. Such wisdom wasn’t for a flower-sniffing garden pony to understand. Doing what must be done, was a burden that only the ruler could bear.

It was different in the early days, when ponies were about to go extinct. Celestia and Luna had showed themselves for the first time, to aid the ponies and to guide them. During the early centuries they could be patient and repetitive.

Generations of old ponies were replaced with young ones, who repeated the mistakes of the previous generation. Young ponies always failed to heed the warnings from the elders, believing the current situation were different, and refused to see how previous experience applied to the current generation.

Every pony was thrilled to learn something new. No pony was excited to confirm something old. It was thus in the nature of everypony to disregard old wisdom, and to explore and make ‘new’ discoveries.

Ponies in general seemed oblivious to these shortcomings. Older ponies tended to shrug it off. It was all part of growing up. But mortal ponies never had to see tragic mistakes repeated over and over again. They didn’t have to see ten mistakes per year, turn into a hundred mistakes per year, and thousand mistakes per year, as the population in Equestria increased by the century. Inflating a simple saddle-sore to a painful harrowing experience for Celestia.

They didn’t have to worry about the ripples of mistakes going back and forth across the kingdom amplifying each other; turning calm water into a treacherous sea. Turning small-scale feuds into full-fledged wars. Queen Celestia on the other side, had to worry about all of that – and she did.

Many centuries ago she had intervened in the world to rescue them, because she didn’t bear to see the few remaining ponies suffer an agonizing death. She didn’t save them so they could multiply by the thousands and have her watch a multitude of agonizing deaths.

In the old days she could repeat the do’s and don’t for every new pony born. Nowadays, ponies were spread out all over Equestria and she can’t be everywhere. Some ponies could go their entire life without meeting the queen or the princess. It’s difficult to influence someone who’s never met you. It requires a different approach than someone you face.

Luna always believed everything to be simple. Give a pony anarchy and it will eventually invent order. Teach a pony about justice, and it can tinker something that suits their community. Well, Celestia’s way of teaching may be different from what Luna had in mind, but it worked. Celestia did what had to be done, because she knew from experience that Luna’s philosophy didn’t.

Today the failure had been in the very heart of kingdom. Someone had given the prisoner special tools to help him escape. If the same problem had been in some goddess-forsaken cave dwelling outside the borders she wouldn’t care. If it had been within Equestria’s borders the ponies would be ordered to take actions to prevent it from repeating.

Now it had happened at the royal castle, the role model of Equestrian society; the beacon of light the entire kingdom was supposed to follow, and that was high treason.

She looked over the assembled ponies as they stood lined up in front of her. None were excluded unless proven innocent. It was from experience. Mistakes could happen. Even ponies with great intentions could screw up. She looked at Captain Quicksmite. She was almost a favorite of Celestia. The Queen didn’t play favorites, but if she did, it would certainly be Captain Quicksmite. She started with addressing her.

"Do you have any explanation as to how the prisoner got the tools to escape?"

"Our Divine Queen Goddess, I have not, and I’m truly sorry for my failure," Captain Quicksmite said. Her answer was quick and her voice was steady.

Quicksmite’s thoughts in the presence of the Queen always aligned with hers, but who knows what she had been thinking at the time the prisoner got his tools? Celestia’s influence waned when she wasn’t around. She knew that from experience.

The Queen turned to Captain Steady Pike, "Can you explain how the prisoner acquired the tools?"

"Our Divine Queen Goddess, I believe somepony must have helped him," the Captain said, but his voice was weak and not as adamant as that of Captain Quicksmite.

Celestia’s fiery mane caught additional flames as her already heated temper flared, "Of course he had help you imbecile. The initial investigation already concluded that."

Captain Steady Pike responded by throwing himself flat on the floor, in the traditional submissive pose of apology.

Celestia wasn’t really annoyed with Steady Pike. It was just so typical of a stallion to provide stupid answers to simple questions. In general, mares could use their words and vocabulary properly while stallions could not.

Mares were great to send out to lead a mission when creativity, imagination and improvisation were required. Stallions were amazing at following simple orders demanding focus on the goal. Tell a stallion to stare at a wall and make sure it doesn’t topple over, and the stallion would stare at the wall, no questions asked, hour after hour. A mare on the other hoof would soon find herself attaching bells to the wall and run away to do something else, convinced the bells would alert her if she were needed.

From experience Celestia suspected a mare to be the traitor. Somepony who had been thinking too much, and come up with some genius idea, that ended up going horribly wrong. Perhaps believing she could reveal the prisoner to have tools in his cell, and get rewarded for her perception? Ideas similar to that one weren’t uncommon and faked heroic deeds happened a few times every century, but without as serious repercussion as this one.

Whatever the original plan, the tools were used by the pony to perform a violent escape, and start a mad dash through the Everfree forest. What puzzled Celestia was that the pony didn’t gallop down along the road to get away, but actually went deeper, through the dense part of the forest. That’s not how a pony had ever made their escape before.

If it wasn’t for Celestia helping to pinpoint his direction he may have gotten away. Usually it would fall on the princess to play chase, as her abilities were better suited to it, but Celestia had managed to awaken her divining abilities and make good use of them. Something she rarely managed these years. The aura of a regular pony was tiny. The last centuries she had found it increasingly difficult scrying for one.

She silently looked at the assembled ponies. To shake up a gathering of possible suspects usually caused a few pieces of the puzzle to appear, or lies to unravel, but so far she had nothing. That was highly unusual.

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