To Be a Princess

by LysanderasD

Rating: everyone
Tags: Slice of Life, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Princess Cadance, Flurry Heart, Pipp Petals, My Little Pony: A New Generation
Length: 4536

Princess Pipp Petals has everything she wants (except a working pair of wings). So what is she waiting for? Cadance knows her type.

Princess Pipp Petals lives in a castle on a mountain on top of the world. She has everything she wants (except a working pair of wings). Yet as she looks down over Zephyr Heights and to the lowlands of Equestria below, she cannot help but feel dissatisfied. What is it that she is missing? She who has everything money can buy and a family that does not want for success?

Cadance has seen her type before.

Part 3 of Equestrian Scions, which began with Your Faithful Disciple; this story was preceded by The Dreamer and Me, and is followed by Hope and the Horizon.

Covert art by Cloudberry_mess, used without explicit permission; if use of the image offends, I will gladly remove it.

Published 2021-08-20 17:40:00 UTC
Last updated 2021-08-20 17:40:00 UTC

Visible and Invisible

To Be a Princess

A My Little Pony fanfic by LysanderasD

Princess Pipp Petals was a pretty pink pony princess, and there was nothing wrong with that.

A long time ago, so she’d been told, Equestria had had many princesses, and not just ones with wings like she and her mother had, but ones with horns too, and, it was said, earth pony strength besides. Alicorns, they were called, and the age of their rule was the Alicorn Age, from the earliest days of Equestria’s founding, on and on for over a thousand years; an age of magic and adventure, of heroes and villains, of artifacts and ancient prisons. At least, all of this was what her tutor had told her.

It was a long time ago. So long ago, he said, that surely the story had been distorted over time. It sounded like a thing lifted from a fantasy book. A myth, even. Something that had circled Equestria’s collective consciousness for an unspeakable length of time and resurfaced now, as so many ancient stories did, reinterpreted in the modern age as stories, propaganda, films, merchandise. An ideal for Equestria to cling to, something to strive toward in this era of decline, a decline Queen Haven had struggled against for the entirety of her reign.

Pipp didn’t care quite so much. All of this, the myth, the story—it was all so big, and besides, it was so old. What could ponies from decades—centuries?—past have to do with her? It was all too much. And besides, she much preferred to be in the here and now, with what she had. She had never cared much about where she was from.

Her tutor said that Zephyr Heights had been called something else once. That the castle she lived in had been the seat of power in that bygone age, where the alicorn princesses sat and deliberated and delivered their mighty judgments. Canterlot, he called it. Well, silly was what Pipp called it. Zephyr Heights was Zephyr Heights.

There was one thing in the myth that she believed, though. It was said that in the Age of Alicorns, pegasi had ruled the skies. They had controlled the very weather, shaped the seasons. In that age, for the pegasi at least, clouds had been as solid ground; indeed, they had built cities that roamed the skies like stormfronts, and had flown down to the ground and back again on their own two wings.

Pipp had wings, but she’d never flown with them. Her mother, Haven, had wings, and she’d never flown with them. All of the castle servants were pegasi, and she’d never seen any of them with all four hooves off the ground for so much as a moment. Her tutor said that pegasi wings were too small, too weak to allow flight the way birds flew, and that there must have been a magic to the art of flight that had been lost in this day and age.

So she looked out of her window in the castle at Zephyr Heights. She stood on her balcony and looked down at the town below and then further at the lowlands of Equestria beyond. Then she looked at herself, wings half-spread, and stepped away from the ledge. Trapped. The whole sky before her, the whole of Equestria before her, and yet so far away. She felt… trapped.

All of this was not to say that Pipp felt unhappy. Not at all. She had everything she wanted. She was a pretty pony princess in the richest and most prosperous city in Equestria. The site of the old capital (and the current capital, depending on who you asked). She had everything that money could buy. She had a happy and successful family. She had wonderful servants who treated her kindly. Sometimes she even got to play with other fillies her age.

Everything she wanted… except a working pair of wings. There was always a small part of her that added that last bit.

But Pipp didn’t like to dwell on that, and standing at the edge like this always brought it to mind. So she turned away, trotting back inside with a vague scowl on her face and crawled up into her bed, which was perfectly comfortable, very soft, and too big for her. Her eyes rested for just a moment on the folded-up letter resting on the end table—the one with the heart-shaped seal. But she didn’t feel like dwelling on that either.

So she pulled out her phone and swiped through it. No new messages. No urgent news. Her recent posts had gotten the usual flood of attention, but none of it was interesting. The sun was setting on another day, the same as it had been for as long as Pipp could remember.

She sighed and slid her phone away, rolling onto her back and spreading her wings as she stared up to the ceiling, painted in the warm colors of twilight, and wished… for more.

Princess Mi Amore Cadenza was a pretty pink pony princess, and there was nothing wrong with that.

Not, of course, that she had been born a princess. Cloudsdale was her home, and when she’d been born she’d only had a pair of wings and becoming royalty couldn’t have been further from her mind. But—and this was a mantra she would only learn and adopt later in her life, once Celestia had impressed it deeply upon her—Harmony has a will, and Harmony finds a way. And so before she’d even left her teenage years she’d grown a horn, gained several more inches of height than she’d ever expected to have, and been crowned Princess of Love. And then, of course, came the struggle.

Being a princess was fine. More than fine, of course, because it came with unquestionable luxuries. But what did it mean?

She was not the first to ask that question, and she would not be the last. But the question deserved asking, and she threw herself into discovering her purpose with an earnestness that would only later be matched by Twilight Sparkle. Her predecessors seemed so grand, wielding the Sun and Moon as easily as some other unicorn might grab a teacup. Celestia (and, later in her life, Luna) had done so much to make Equestria the very center of the world—for good and ill—and then, quite out of nowhere, there came a pegasus filly with an Istallion name and no famous ancestors to speak of (at least, none that were public knowledge), and when she gained her crown and her horn they foisted upon her the title Princess of Love.

Even for a land as drenched in Harmony, cooperation, and goodwill as Equestria, Love seemed a bit on the nose. But it was what she was good at, spotting the shoots of budding romance and nurturing them, or the threads of a fraying relationship and repairing them. Equestria was full of love, and, she found, it was her duty to direct and steer it—not as some kind of grand overlord or, as she’d feared in her younger days, some kind of evil queen—but to find and foster it. Not a dictator or an overseer, but a guide, able to gently steer without taking center stage, able to uphold without drawing attention. Her power was small and subtle, in ways that Celestia’s and Luna’s were not. For many years, most of Equestria did not even know she existed, but she had, in those years, done everything in her power to steer the nation toward a better and more prosperous future.

Even then, her purpose eluded her, until she found it in the Frozen North, until the Crystal Heart yielded the Empire to her and she turned Sombra’s shadow to crystalline dust scattered in the snow. And she had loved the Empire with all her heart, and the Empire loved her, and that love radiated outward and made Equestria shine, turned it from a rough but beautiful stone to a polished gem—one that Twilight would later take and set in its proper place, bringing Equestria and the planet itself to new heights of prosperity.

But—like those first and most passionate flames of love—these things do not last, neither in matters of the heart nor matters of the state. Her age was over. The Empire was a myth. Even she herself had been turned into a children’s story, a toy on the shelf, an icon for a holiday like Luna had before her. And as belief faded, as love faded, the color itself seemed to gradually leak from Equestria.

And as she looked on from outside, from Elsewhere, she feared that everything she and the other princesses had struggled so long to achieve would all be for naught.

And then, of course, Sunny Starscout had found the journal, and Luna had prompted Izzy Moonbow to go on a voyage to the sea. Two ponies against the tide of apathy that threatened to swallow Equestria whole. Not enough—they would need more.

And Cadance knew just the one.

Pipp sat up a few minutes later with a long, protracted, and theatrical sigh, and let out a long, sing-song, “I’m so boooooooored…”

There was no one around to hear her, of course. There were servants a bell’s ring away, but none were at hoof and so her voice bounced around the confines of her room until it escaped through the balcony doors. The sun had set just a little bit more, and the amber-orange of early twilight had shifted from painting her ceiling to painting her wall. She let out a frustrated knicker and trotted back out to the balcony, draping her forehooves over the railing and looking down again.

A familiar pattern. She had already done this twice tonight. And what she saw beneath her was the same as it had been last time. Pegasi trotting here and there, snatches of voices and laughter from the restaurant district nearby rising up to her window on the mostly still air. She shook her head.

Was this it?

Not to say that she wasn’t happy…

No. No, that was a lie. She grimaced as she finally admitted it to herself. She wasn’t happy. And that was a hard thing to say, because Queen Haven had always been very adamant that Pipp be grateful for what she had. And she was grateful. But she wasn’t happy, and she honestly wondered how many ponies in Equestria would understand the difference.

Her attention was drawn again to the letter on the table. Folded there, taunting her. Not a text message, not an email, but an honest-to-heaven letter, on parchment. Even most of the nobles didn’t bother with that anymore. Plus, it wasn’t that she didn’t get letters. In fact she got letters all the time, usually from would-be suitors. Her mother had cautioned her against taking anything the letters said seriously, and in many cases, she knew, they never made it as far as her hooves. But almost always they arrived in the early afternoon with the rest of the mail, and always they were overdecorated, fancy envelopes on fancy stationery, which wasn’t that fancy, since according to her maidservants the exact paper could be bought at the copy shop down a few blocks from the palace. This one had come in quietly, slipped under her door at some point in the night before. She hadn’t looked at it yet. She wondered if anypony else even knew it was there.

Her hopes weren’t high. But the timing of it was curious, and—well, she had to admit, there was something that immediately stirred in her. A letter arrives while she stews in her chambers, fretting over her own happiness and yearning for a greater destiny… or some such grand thing. She wasn’t totally sure how to process what she was feeling. It was like something out of a story from the Alicorn Age. It was almost, dare she say… romantic? And not even in the trite way, but genuinely romantic.

She took a deep breath and held her hoof to her chest, then slowly let it out. None of that, Pipp, she told herself. No need to get yourself worked up. It probably just got forgotten under other mail or something and it’s going to be the same as the others. No need to get worked up over nothing.

Eventually, she couldn’t take it any more, trotting back inside and crawling up onto her too-large bed one more time and pulling the parchment over, eyeing the seal.

That seal was already broken, of course. She had long ago accepted that any mail that did make it to her would already have been read and inspected. But the seal was interesting. It wasn’t just sealed shut with the way most envelopes were, but rather sealed with a particular sigil. This was something the nobles did, if rarely; indeed, she knew her mother sometimes sent letters sealed like this, emblazoned with house sigils or, more often, cutie marks of famous members, passed down from generation to generation until they themselves became house sigils. But this one was different.

The seal on the letter was a heart seemingly carved of crystal, multifaceted and shining a pale blue, like stylized glass, and beneath it two ornate and symmetrical patterns wrought of gold which seemed to cradle it. A cutie mark? She didn’t recognize it, but… even so, the sight of it seemed familiar somehow, stirring something like nostalgia in her. Try as she might, her analytical side was crumbling under the increasing enthusiasm of the romantic side. She carefully pulled out the letter and unfolded it, and then began to read.

Cadance watched the pegasus filly smile, saw the lights in her eyes, and couldn’t keep the smile off of her own face as she did. Yes—there was the bait, and there was the bite. She had her now.

Around her was a sea of stars, or things like stars. It was not a place in the same way the Empire had been a place, and she wasn’t really here, not in the way she had been in her own era. This Elsewhere, this other-place, outside of space and time, where Princesses gathered, had seen more traffic here than it had in a long—metaphorically speaking—time, at least lately. First Twilight had seen to Sunny, and then Luna to Izzy; and now it was Cadance’s turn to find a scion, a new hero for this new Equestria.

And what a catch Princess Pipp Petals had turned out to be. The political climate of Equestria had shifted along with the cultural climate; as the tribes isolated themselves, centralized power became less and less recognized. These days, it felt more like a collection of city states than a nation unto itself. But always, eternal, at the center of Equestria stood Mount Canter—not that it was called that any more, supplanted now by Zephyr Heights.

Ah, pegasi. Robbed of the clouds, of course they would take the highest possible point of Equestria for their own. More than that, they would cling stubbornly to the idea of ruling even as the rest of Equestria settled for something quieter, calmer, shying away from the reckless royalty. But recklessness was at the core of all pegasi, and pride and stubbornness too, so with no alicorn to wear the crown, of course a pegasus would take it for herself. Not that princessdom itself meant anything, per se; but ponykind had never quite learned that lesson, and it was too late now at any rate.

She pondered, pacing a bit on the path as she watched the pretty pink pony princess peruse the letter. These things—heroes, and heroic stories. Tradition told her that they came in waves. Over the course of a thousand years, first the triad at the Unification; then the Pillars; then the Royal Sisters; and then, for a while, a lull. Then there had been six and six again, with the Elements and their young prodigies, the students who had taken all their lessons to heart. And then another lull.

A long lull. Perhaps it was not as long as the thousand years between Luna’s banishment and return—or perhaps it was, because measuring time from Elsewhere was a risky practice at best—but now, she could feel it, and so could the others. A new time. A new set of heroes, something drawn straight from another age for a world so long divorced from magic.

It was romantic. In the classical sense—that is, not in her sense necessarily. Romantic like the tales of knights and princesses. Okay, maybe it was romantic in her sense.

“Mom?”

She stopped pacing, pulling her thoughts back to the here and now and her gaze away from the image of the still-reading pegasus princess. Flurry Heart was standing on the path beside her, wearing a knowing, sly grin.

“You’re not already thinking about shipping them, are you?”

Ship. That was a term that had originated somewhere in Flurry’s generation and Cadance had never quite caught on to its use. Pairs—relationships. Romance. Flurry had learned at a very young age that her mother had a knack for that sort of thing, and as she’d grown older—even into adulthood, as she was now—she had never stopped needling Cadance about her supposed shipping goggles.

“No,” Cadance said. “And for once, I mean that.” She glared.

But her daughter was almost as tall as she was, and the glares didn’t work nearly so well as they had when she was a filly. Flurry Heart had grown into something of a rambunctious, ambitious pony, taking on an action-oriented attitude divorced from the placidity of her mother and rigidity of her father. As the Princess of Hope, she had built on the foundation built by all of her predecessors, Cadance included, to bring even greater happiness and solidarity to the Empire.

A worthy successor indeed, and Cadance was proud of her daughter. It was too bad she’d never really outgrown the attitude. She had a sardonic wit that made even Twilight, heretofore honorary Princess of Snark, blush.

Flurry stuck out her tongue. “Maybe, but it’s only a matter of time.”

Cadance just shook her head. “Maybe it is, but—right now this is serious, Flurry. What we’re doing is serious. It’s for the future of Equestria.”

Flurry fluttered her wings, looking at the image of Pipp. “Sure, sure,” she said, not unkindly. “And I suppose the fact that you chose her has nothing to do with the fact that she looks like you.”

One of Cadance’s ears lay flat for a moment, and she took a deep breath, closing her eyes and bringing a hoof to her chest before letting it out.

“Sorry, Mom, I’ll stop teasing.” Flurry had the self-awareness to look abashed, at least.

“I didn’t choose her because she looks like me, or even because she’s a pegasus. I didn’t even choose her because of the crown, and it’s not my place to worry about whether she’s worthy of it. I chose her because she’s one of the few pegasi left who stands at a ledge, spreads her wings, and wishes she could fly,” Cadance said. “Whether she can articulate it or not, Pipp Petals wants something more than what she has. She was born into a noble family—like you, and like you she isn’t content to just be the daughter of royalty.”

The smile on Flurry’s face, heretofore a little sarcastic, turned more genuine. “Yeah? She wants to do something with her life, huh? Make a name for herself?”

Cadance nodded. “And I think she has what it takes to do that.”

The younger alicorn turned to look at the image head on, bringing a hoof to her chin, visibly pondering. “You think so? She seems kind of like a spoiled brat.”

“So were you, for a while.” Cadance needled her daughter gently, though her smile was still warm and Flurry’s light giggle told her she wasn’t too bothered by it. “But yes, I think so. And I’ll know so once she’s done with the letter.”

“Oh yeah?”

Cadance produced a scroll—a simulacrum of the real thing Pipp was holding—and offered it. Flurry took it, already grinning as her eyes began to trace the text.

Dear Princess Pipp,

Something about that phrasing tickled something in Pipp’s head. It sounded like something her tutor had said once, something drawn from the old stories.

You don’t know me, but I’ve looked up to you for a long time. My name is Crystal Heart, and…

...and Pipp’s eyes started to glaze over. Fan mail. Particularly elaborate fan mail, but fan mail nonetheless.

...I’m a pony that lives far away from Zephyr Heights. I’ve never been there; my aunt says we’re not allowed to go. But I got to at least write this letter. I hope it reaches you and I hope life is good for you up in the mountains.

What is it like there? Is it true that pegasi are like ponies with wings? Does that mean you can fly?

A sudden stab of irrational anger pulled Pipp out of the letter; she scowled and then caught her breath. Crystal Heart was just some foal in some faraway small town. She didn’t need to get angry. Foals really didn’t know any better.

What is it like to be a princess? Do you really live in a castle, with knights and a queen and swords and stuff? Mom tells me stories about that sort of thing all the time. I bet it’s really cool!

Pipp rolled her eyes and almost tossed the letter aside then and there. But there wasn’t that much left, and, besides, it wasn’t like she had anything better to do.

Do you think that you could teach me what it’s like? My aunt says not to expect a letter back from you, so I guess you don’t have to write back if you don’t want. But maybe if another pony shows up that doesn’t know anything about pegasi or Zephyr Heights. Could you show them? I bet they’d like it very much, since everything is so fancy and you’ve got so much of it. Maybe do it as a favor to me?

Thank you for reading my letter!

Crystal Heart

“She has love,” Cadance said. “So much love. A lot of it’s for herself, sure, but there’s so much else besides that she could give to others, to inspire them, to lead by loving, even if she doesn’t know it and can’t feel it, trapped as she is by ennui. So maybe she’s like me in that respect. Maybe that’s part of why I chose her. She needs her purpose, and I intend to give it to her.”

Twilight had given Sunny a gift, a reminder of a better past that would lead to a better future. Luna had given Izzy a dream, something to aspire to, to direct her energy. And both of these ponies had spirit and drive, but what they lacked—what had not been proven—was confidence.

“Playing up her ego, are you?” said Flurry eventually.

Cadance smiled. "I am. The difference between vanity and confidence is one part attitude and three parts context. She’s got enough confidence in herself—and nopony to share it with. Not anypony that would understand or really be interested. But now, let’s say that one day, an earth pony and a unicorn wander into town. Why, she’s just got to show them what they’ve been missing out on! And in turn, they will show her what she doesn’t even realize she’s missing.”

Cadance loved these little ponies. Really she did. But she feared that the moment they first met opposition they would crash and burn, with no way of picking themselves up again. Self-worth was the most valuable thing when one fought the odds. Cadance knew this; Twilight had taught her that on more occasions than she cared to count.

Flurry gave a thoughtful hum. “Are you… staking the future of Equestria on a mare knowing what she’s worth?”

“Why wouldn’t I?” Cadance smiled. “After all, it’s worked before.”

Flurry just shook her head and stuck out her tongue, turning to step off the path again to some other part of Elsewhere. “Well, good luck with that. There are other pegasi that wish they could fly, too, you know. I’m gonna go zip off to find somepony more my speed.”

“You mean a rebel?” Cadance asked, gently teasing.

Flurry merely opened a wing, waving with it as she stepped off the path and vanished. Well, that was just like her—rushing off headfirst. Foolish.

But courageous, yes. Cadance smiled. Courageous indeed.

She flipped the letter over, but there was no return address. Even if she did want to write back (and she didn’t, she told herself adamantly), she couldn’t. What a strange, silly letter. What a strange, silly request.

But she looked back out again onto the balcony, trotting over, letter still held in one hoof. The sun had well and truly set now, and Zephyr Heights was bathed in the gentle darkness of nighttime. She fluffed her wings up a bit as she looked down over the city, now more a collection of little lights, windows and streetlamps shining like stars.

It was a very pretty city. And she was kind of a big deal.

Princess Pipp Petals was a pretty pink pony princess, and there was nothing wrong with that.

So maybe she would honor the request of a nopony she’d never meet. Maybe if somepony came to town that had no idea who she was, well, she’d take the time to teach them. Show them around. And maybe, said a small part of her, a part of her that only rarely spoke up and that she rarely ever heard, just maybe, she’d learn about them, too.

What is it like to be a princess? What a silly question. What is it like to not be a princess? To look at somepony and not see a servant, but a… friend?

Maybe a working pair of wings wasn’t the only thing she was missing.

But she didn’t like dwelling on that. So she went back inside and closed the doors this time, and set about getting ready for bed.

Author's Note

Much of this story was written before I knew much of anything about Pipp’s character in particular, and so there is much less of an emphasis on her role as a social influencer and none at all about her musical career; but the story was getting rather larger than I’d hoped and I didn’t feel like I needed to bloat it further by making it “more canon.”

Originally, this work was going to focus much more on Cadance’s “princess of love” aspect, but I couldn’t find a way to fit it in a way that was satisfying to read, so I settled for a more general compare/contrast. Not my finest work, but I am content enough to release it and I hope you enjoyed it.

Next time: Flurry heart deals with the more reckless side of “reckless pegasus royalty.”