Sovereign Objection

by hahatimeforponies

Rating: everyone
Tags: Princess Celestia, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Alternate Universe, Princess Luna, Drama
Length: 24129

Luna learns what she missed on the moon, and what that means for the resumption of her Princess duties.

A thousand year absence from the world would be disorienting for anyone, but when your job is Head of State, understanding how society has changed during your interregnum is vital. Princess Luna, banished in the age of the longboat and the longbow, has returned just in time for the launch of the tablet computer. With the help of her sister, she undertakes to understand the history she's missed and the people she finds herself among, in order to resume the duties of her title.

This story takes the form of a series of conversations between Celestia and Luna that take place months and years apart. It is openly concerned with political ideas and how societies are organised, and not at all concerned with monsters and magic beyond the conceit of immortal monarchs. The Alternate Universe tag is there because I will be ignoring every single one of the thousand year catastrophes that occur in the show after the Nightmare Moon crisis, the retirement of the Princesses, probably the presence of any other Princesses, and anything else in the show I feel like ignoring, because I find them irrelevant to the themes I want to cover.

In short, if you wanted The Audience with ponies, I got you covered.

This story can be considered canon to my comic works such as The Sunjackers, and my other associated worldbuilding projects, and uses the same date system as them (ie. roughly matching our own, with the return of Nightmare Moon happening the same year as the episode aired, 2010). May also be your jam if you like Equestria At War, but not affiliated at all.

Published 2023-04-09 21:50:02 UTC
Last updated 2024-09-01 19:13:28 UTC

May 11th, 2011

"Luna! Good morning. Care to join me for a little breakfast, or are you heading to bed?"

"We believe the scent of this so-called coffee is already enough to prolong the royal rest for another hour."

Celestia giggled. "Sit down. Have some juice. Share with me, your company."

"We suppose it is worth spending some sisterly bonding time."

"Now, Luna, dear sister, I don't mean to nitpick…"

Luna's eyebrows leapt.

"It's the we-I thing. I know you're still adjusting to how language has changed in the time you've been away, but that feels like a relatively important one. For clarity, you see."

"We… I must wonder about this particular development of the tongue."

"It's fairly straightforward, over time there became a need to distinguish between the singular and the collective first person. I, and we."

"Of course, dear sister, but… I, have questions about the consequences of such a shift."

"The shift was hardly intentional."

"I am aware, but just because the great Ursa does not intend to cause harm by its passage close to town, does not mean that the behaviour of the people is unaffected."

"A fair point."

"So then does language set the boundaries of our thought. It is incredibly difficult to grasp concepts for which there is no name."

"Up to 20th century philosophers already, I see?"

Luna snorted. "Hardly. They may return to us when they can explain their thoughts without the use of the ten bit words. Perhaps then they can demonstrate that they understand them themselves."

"A bold accusation from one pontificating about the psychological ramifications of a finite vocabulary."

Luna scowled, then a smirk crept into the side of her face, and both Princesses laughed.

"Anyway. Such an observation is blindingly obvious to one in ou- my unique position, encountering a…" She smirked again. "... cavalcade of new expressions in quick succession. Words like 'microwave' and 'assembly line' and 'superglue'. Prior to my banishment I would hardly have believed that these things were possible, and yet today they are ordinary."

"I'm confident that the name 'superglue' followed the invention, not the other way around."

"But…" Luna clicked her horseshoes together rapidly. "The assembly line! There was no reason that in the tenth century we could not have arranged our production capacities in such a way. All we would have needed to switch from the artisanal mode of production to one where workers pass baskets and pots and carts along line to increase efficiency is to have thought of it. Whether they would have benefited from such a change is another matter, but it could have been tried!"

"I still think you're reaching a little bit, but continue. Let's see where you're going with this."

The presence of a plural first person in Celestia's reply did not evade Luna's notice. "When one thinks in terms of 'we' and 'our' and 'us', we bind ourselves to the collective. We are constrained to considering the group as a whole. Thinking in terms of 'me' and 'I' and 'mine' creates… an individualistic perspective. You separate yourself from the group and allow your conception of your needs to diverge."

"That is… interesting to think about, but I'm fairly sure that selfish ponies existed in our childhoods as much as they exist now."

"True, we suppose."

Celestia smiled, and proceeded to her eggs before they got cold. "So. Have you had any thoughts about returning to civic life yet?"

"The subject has been gathering increasing amounts of my attention lately, though we are aware there is… hesitation among the population around a restoration."

"That we are. Don't worry, I'm sure they'll come around."

"After a thousand years on the moon, a few more for public opinion to change is hardly worth fretting about. Still," Luna paused, hoof in the air while her thoughts caught up. "I thought I would put any such sabbatical to good use and use this time to familiarise myself with the events that transpired during my exile. Study the context of the current political moment."

Celestia's eggs briefly went down the wrong way. "You've got a lot to catch up on there, sister."

Luna chuckled. "I can imagine."

"The palace libraries are of course completely open to you, and if you like, I can request a tutor for you. I'm sure there would be many who would be eager for such a position."

"Actually, before I commence any such studies by myself, I wished to ask for your perspective, my beloved sister whom I trust the most in the whole wide world."

Celestia giggled bashfully. "I… how to put this without being rude. I am of course, dear sister, eager to spend the time with you that I so neglected in the past. But for such a large span of history, wouldn't you benefit from the attention of a full-time scholar to get you through the basics? If you were relying entirely on me for the fundamentals, between my appointments, and court hours, and foreign visits, it could take… months!"

"Well, if you are unavailable, I suppose I could see what this supposed 'internet' can teach me. I hear it's a marvellously complete archive."

"Okay. We're doing this right now. I'm cancelling my 10 o'clock."

Luna rested on a hoof with a sly grin. "So. What happened?"

"Where would you like to start?"

"Well, I keep hearing about this 'parliament' around the palace, but I've hardly seen a single owl outside the zoological gardens. What is it?"

Celestia looked at her empty coffee mug, and considered cancelling all of her morning appointments. "The Parliament is a representative elected body. All of Equestria is divided into constituencies - areas with roughly the same number of people according to the census - and each one elects a representative to send to Parliament. Then, Parliament makes the laws that govern the land."

"Oh. So we… do not make the laws?"

"I know, I know, it's a pretty substantial change. Don't worry, it's been there for about four hundred years, and it hasn't gotten us into too much trouble. Think of it like the old Advisory Council, but with a few hundred members instead of just a half dozen."

"Then… the people have rejected us?"

"Oh, hardly. My role - and, presumably, in time, yours - is as the Head of State. We still represent Equestria, and its values of harmony and friendship. Our opinions still matter a great deal to the public, we meet foreign leaders, we generally bind society together."

"That would make us little more than performers."

"Well, we are still the two most powerful living mages on the planet. We delegate our legal power to Parliament, backed by our physical power."

Luna looked deep in thought.

"After the Nightmare Moon crisis of 1010, there was a lot of collateral damage. It was the first time I had exercised the full power of the sun to such an extreme degree. I knew that I could not exercise this power again unless it was an absolute emergency."

"So… why did it take you six hundred years to set up Parliament?"

"Because parliamentary democracy wasn't the first thing I tried. The first thing I did was delegate more legal power to the provinces. Provincial advisors gained noble titles like duke, baron, count - and under them were created knights, who held smaller amounts of land, and peasants worked on the land. Each tier of society swore fealty to the tier above, with me at the top. This was the feudal system."

"Seems sensible. Princess, then governors, then equites, then the plebeians."

The image of someone in 2011 calling the feudal system 'sensible' caught Celestia with a breathy, nervous chuckle. "That's what I thought at the time, but in hindsight, it had a lot of problems. The local lords, with a high degree of autonomy, were prone to fighting each other. And of course, I couldn't step in to stop these squabbles personally, because I didn't want to reduce wide portions of the countryside to ashes. The least worst solution was to try and lead diplomatically, and where that fails, lead the most loyal dukes and barons, and their sworn knights, to put an end to fighting that was getting out of control."

"Oh." Luna's nose wrinkled. "That's barbaric."

"Is it more barbaric than controlling a wayward province by incinerating it?"

"A difficult question."

"Anyway. Another problem, besides the constant infighting, was what I came to call le monde créé."

"The created world?"

"Even under this system of delegated power, I was still the most influential person within it. Which meant that the nobles absolutely fell over each other to try and be close to me - to promote their own interests. Within the aristocracy there condensed a circle around me of obsequious toads who… exploited my guilt. There's no other word for it. They knew that my heart was heavy with the consequences of the Nightmare Moon crisis and the bloody side-effects of the feudal system, and used that to keep me contained. Oblivious to reality. You want to talk about being a mere performer, that's how I felt in the 13th century. This alliance of landed gentry told me whatever was useful for them to keep me as la Princesse en Deuil, always in her white veil, obsessed with the past, never-"

Luna gently touched a hoof to Celestia's. She stopped. Part of the tablecloth had begun to char.

"My apologies."

"Are you alright? Do you wish to continue another time?"

"No, I'm fine. It was a long time ago. Let's carry on."

"Are you certain?"

"Yes. Thank you, Luna." Celestia smiled, and sniffed. "Le monde créé was the web of distortions that isolated me from contemporary reality and allowed the aristocracy to entrench their delegated power. This was what allowed resentment to fester among the peasantry. They had it the worst, you see. But being a starving underclass, there was very little they could do about it. This was until the rise of the merchant classes."

"But we have always had merchants."

"Yes, but with the advance of technology, there came more opportunities to accumulate wealth outside of the feudal hierarchy. Merchants gained wealth comparable to that of the aristocracy without having noble titles, but they lacked the political authority of those noble titles."

"I see where this is going."

"Indeed. By the 16th century the feudal system was crumbling. Wealthy merchants could afford armies of sellswords to compete with the sworn knights of the aristocracy, and the invention of the printing press meant the spread of literacy outside of the wealthiest and most powerful."

"A disenfranchised peasantry becoming increasingly informed, an absentee monarch, a self-absorbed patrician class, and the rise of dual power."

"This was the crucible of liberalism. All it took was a little crisis to knock it all over. A poor harvest, a plague, international troubles. Funnily enough, you might like to know that you were a symbol of some of these movements."

"Oh?"

"Yes! Being that I was the Mourning Princess, who never showed her face or seemingly did anything, one folk idea that went around was that Nightmare Moon was right. That the little sister who just wanted to be loved was right to stand up and demand it, because that's how people felt at the time. That's how the word 'republic' entered modern Equestrian. Because obviously, you weren't around to lead a state, so the liberal thinkers of the time began to devise a new form of governing, without a Princess or nobility, called the republic - the New Lunar Republic."

Luna chuckled. "A contradiction in terms, I would have thought. Did you… Let this happen?"

"It was a close thing. This was around the time that I was breaking out of my Created World. A regent can mislead their charge when they are an infant or senile, but a presumably immortal being like myself-"

"Did anyone ever find out whether or not that's the case?"

"- no. But over time, the contradictions in the Created World began to pile up, just as the contradictions in feudalism were straining that system. And very well that they were, because I shudder to think what would have happened if a revolution had progressed to the point of attempting to depose me. No, I stepped in quite early to try and prevent bloodshed. The New Lunar Republic was never more than a thought experiment."

"A shame."

"I had no choice but to call a constitutional convention. The compromise struck was that we would create the body known as Parliament with two houses, a lower house with members elected by the people, and an upper house taking the place of the Advisory Council, on which the hereditary leaders of the provinces and sovereign cities would sit. Parliament writes laws, both houses approve them by majority vote, and then they pass by my desk for approval."

"And you must approve everything they send you?"

Celestia curled her lips. "No."

"That does not sound particularly… democratic, considering that prior to your intervention these people were presumably ready to do unspeakable things to you, and the nobles."

"This was part of the compromise. See, remember that the upper house at the time was all the nobles who put me in a cage. As soon as things were beginning to unravel, I distanced myself from them as much as I could, and I was the threat of force bringing everyone to the negotiating table. If the people had an ally in the constitutional convention, it was me. So they were more than happy to grant me this veto power within the system. We call this the Right of Sovereign Objection. But that's not the best part."

"There's more?"

"Early parliament is at a deadlock. The two houses can't agree on anything. The lower house are writing liberal reforms, and the upper house are sending back conservative reactions. The lower house want freedom of speech and habeas corpus, the upper house want to go back to how it was two hundred years earlier. In four years, two bills crossed my desk."

"A year?"

"Total."

"Stars above."

"The innovation that follows is the Tyrian party - after Parliament, the nobles and the wealthy merchant class I mentioned earlier found they had a lot of things in common - they had wealth and power they wanted to protect. So in the election of 1634, with the public tired of this Parliament they'd worked so hard to build, apparently doing nothing, the Tyrians took power in the lower house."

"I thought this was supposed to be the best part. This sounds like the liberal experiment was failing at the first hurdle."

"It was - but for one thing. So. On with the story. The Tyrian parliament basically wants to dismantle the thing from the inside. They have no interest in representative democracy and start sending me all sorts of reforms that would all but abolish the lower house, election maps designed to entrench them in power, all sorts of things." Celestia paused, and licked her lips. "In its original form, the Right of Sovereign Objection had no caveats."

Luna burst out laughing.

"Every single one of these ghoulish bills went straight into the trash."

"But surely they would have spun that as autocratic?"

"Oh, they did. So then they started sending me bills to remove Sovereign Objection."

"Which went in the trash," Luna snickered.

"Then amend it."

"Which went in the trash."

"Eventually the Prime Minister had to come over and beg me to approve literally any kind of limitation on Sovereign Objection, at which point I knew I could effectively write the bill myself. Which is how we get the version we still use today. Three stages of objection - first it goes back to Parliament for reconsideration, then if I'm still not happy I can refer it to the judiciary who ensure that the law is constitutional, and then if I'm still not happy-"

"It goes in the trash?"

"No. It goes to a referendum. The general population votes on it."

"Celestia, you sly old witch.

"When you're over 1600 years old, you get very good at this sort of thing."

"I'll wager the Tyrians hated it."

"Oh, absolutely, but they knew they weren't going to get anything better, because I'd just strike it down, and the alternative was violence, which they knew would be unpopular, and probably result in some sunburned estates."

"So that is how Parliament works today, then? Elected representatives, a body of the gentry, and your approval, subject to judicial and popular assent?"

"More or less. It became quickly apparent that the lower house was the fulcrum of power, so nobles started losing interest in the upper house, especially when provinces started getting the idea of shedding their hereditary titles as well. It became very unpopular to hold bills up in the upper house, so these days it's largely a meeting body of governors and mayors where they advise on how national and local affairs intersect."

"Like an Advisory Council is supposed to do."

"Exactly. Since then there have been minor reforms to expand suffrage, amend the constitution, it was redrafted in 1878 but is substantially the same document in more modern language…"

Bells could be heard. "Is that eleven o'clock?"

Celestia snapped her hooves together. "Good heavens, it is. Luna, I should scurry on to my appointment, and you should probably sleep."

"I should… this has been enlightening, sister."

Hurriedly checking her face for crumbs, Celestia flashed a warm smile. "I look forward to next time."

February 25th, 2012

"My dear sister, I seek an explanation."

Celestia gulped as Luna strode towards the table with a sheet of paper as big as the table, and hurriedly pulled the cafetiere and condiments out of the way. "I'd offer you some coffee with it, but it looks like you've already gotten into it."

"I have done no such thing."

"You're probably the only one up all night in the archives without it, but all the more for me. What's caught your curiosity this morning, Luna?"

"It is this map."

"Yes, it's a relatively up to date map of Equestria."

"Equestria is twice the size it was when I left it! Three times, even! Equestria had two provinces when I left, now it has eleven! That and, cartographers have finally managed to capture the shape of the land accurately."

"I'll bet that was a surprise when you reached the moon."

"Truth be told, sister, I had other things on my mind at the time. I had not really considered how much guesswork had gone into ancient maps until now. Regardless, there is much I desire to know. Every border has expanded."

Celestia took a deep breath. She knew, for some reason, that a 10 o'clock appointment this morning was unwise. "Where would you like to begin?"

"Let us start with the more familiar," Luna said after a pregnant pause. "Equestria now appears to claim the north bank of the Clearwater river."

"Yes, that's where the border with Grifreich was determined in the 1388 Treaty of Griffonstone."

Luna squinted.

"Oh, forgive me. Grifreich is the current official name of the Gryphon Kingdoms of old, they consolidated into a modern nation-state with a constitutional monarchy much like our own in the 19th century, really turned around from a loose gaggle of squabbling princes to an industrious powerhouse. The name is just a modern Gryphish rendition of 'Gryphon Kingdom'. Grif, reich."

"It isn't the name, it's… what is a border?"

"Oh. A frontier, but… formalised. Policed with a dedicated border guard service rather than military forts. We haven't had any conflict with Grifreich since their unification."

"If it is peaceful, then why does it need to be policed?"

"Well, that border isn't really policed, so much as the infrastructure is still there in a formal capacity. In fact none of Equestria's borders have anything more than passport control and customs - we have free trade agreements with all our neighbours."

"A treaty that allows the free movement of people and goods between lands?"

"Exactly!"

"Then that returns to the question, why even have more than a sign to mark where the law of the land changes?"

"Well, not every journey is as simple as between neighbouring countries. Grifreich and Sylvania only con-"

"Sylvania? A… forest land?"

"Oh. Deer. To the south."

"Ah. Of course."

"They only concluded a trade agreement with each other in 1972, and they only harmonised that agreement with their deals with Equestria in 1994, so for a long time, if you were travelling from Sylvania to Grifreich through Equestria, your biggest customs delay was actually at the Equestria-Grifreich border, not the Equestria-Sylvania border."

"Hm. Perhaps I should survey these documents when I have the time."

"If you really must, I can't stop you! The old treaties are of purely historical interest now."

"I see. So… why did the border settle further north, rather than on the river, a natural boundary? Or even the mountain peaks. Griffonstone is south of the border, on our side."

Celestia released a breath she didn't know she was holding. "Ah! That's a curious one. Much of that territory was won in the War of the Lost Kingdom in the 11th Century. After the disappearance of the Crystal Empire, there was a push to reserve that territory for the Equestrian crown - but nearby gryphon kings considered it terra nullius and wanted to claim it. The treaty ceded all land between the Crystal Empire and the sea - which is where Griffonstone comes in. Griffonstone was split right down the middle by the treaty, because… well, the maps were inaccurate!"

"I can see that, the line is as straight as a broken leg."

"Eventually the Count of Griffonstone declared allegiance to Equestria. It's a sore spot that led to more than a few wars back in the day, but today Griffonstone is very firmly a part of Equestria - they speak Equestrian and have as much right to vote in Equestria as you or I."

"We can vote?"

Celestia giggled. "Yes, Luna. But only once per election."

"I must… speak to someone about that. Anyway. What about the southern border? That is much further out than it used to be. I remember the Everfree Forest and the land of Arcadia being historically deer lands."

"Well - that came a bit later. This is where we run into some… historical bad behaviour."

"And a war of conquest was saintly?"

"I- nh." Celestia paused, hoof on her mouth. "You are correct. With the benefit of hindsight, the War of the Lost Kingdom was a war of conquest with poor justification. However, it was long enough ago that if you try to tell the citizens of Griffonstone that they are being handed back to Grifreich, you will only reignite a world of problems on a barely-enforced border."

"True enough - t'is likely not worth the trouble."

"Anyway. The southern border."

"Yes."

"You will remember the clan structure of deer society?"

"Yes, they were organised in clans that rarely settled for more than a generation and built very few permanent structures larger than the occasional monument. I remember the dispute over the settlement of Dawncastle, we nearly had war with the local clans over that and the movement of clans into Equestrian estates in the south."

"Yes! Well. As Equestria's population was expanding, they were looking for more territory, so they started… well, moving into deer lands and clearing forests. Much of the late feudal period was characterised by this conflict. The back-and-forth is too complicated to go over now, but in summary, this…" Celestia hesitated. "... act of colonialism catalysed the unification of the deer into the Sylvanian nation, and there were wars."

"I see."

"One of which was the catalyst for the liberal revolution, but that… didn't stop the wars."

Luna knitted her brow. "How long did this go on for?"

"Well, the Great Everfree War in the early 18th century was the last major one, where Equestria captured Glenriven and set up a client state. That's when the border was drawn to wholly incorporate the province of Arcadia."

Luna put her hooves together, looking down at the map.

"Luna, I know. This was an act of plunder, and I was complicit in it. I count it among my deepest regrets."

"I am… unsure what I would have done in your stead. Conflict is born by the circumstances around it, and thrives in the minds of the people. Perhaps by the time that war was upon you, it was unavoidable. Though… costly as it may have been, it may have been one of the dire emergencies with which to wield the power of the sun - or even just the threat of it. Had you not done so a mere century before, in the revolution?"

Celestia nodded, solemnly.

"Could it have been that, surrounded by advisors who stood to profit from conquest, they made their very best case to you that Glenriven had to fall? That the deer high king was more of a threat than he was? Could it have been that the Created World had not yet been fully swept away?"

"Perhaps."

"The alternative is to question the purity of your heart, which I simply cannot do."

Celestia smiled, but did not look up. "You are kinder to me than many historians."

"Come, sister. I know as well as anyone that we are merely mortals thrust into the most unusual of lives, subject to the same fallibilities as anyone, our failings played out on the largest of stages. That is, after all, why we only get one vote, is it not?"

Celestia burst into a chuckle. "Yes, I suppose so. Now, let me tell you how the Sylvanian story finishes, because that isn't the end."

"Please do."

"The 17th and 18th centuries were the… well, colonial period. The imposition of 'settlement' on the deer. Deforestation, city-building. Nominally it was its own state, but Equestrian businesses treated it like a province, and they wanted to impose the Equestrian language on them too. It wasn't the end of the conflict either, there were militias in the woods, the occasional uprising. When it all accelerated was after the 1878 constitution, which formalised the process of adding new provinces. The prospect of Sylvanian provincehood was raised - and this inflamed Sylvanian nationalism."

"Oh huzzah!"

"Don't cheer against your own people too loudly, Luna, ponies might get the wrong idea."

Luna stuck out her tongue.

"The momentum led up to the 1916 revolution. Rebels took Glenriven and declared a republic, and… well, the Prime Minister at the time wanted the rebellion put down, which I considered to be an invasion - I wanted to negotiate. The 1878 constitution had a lacuna regarding the responsibility for foreign affairs. This internal fumble gave the rebels time to consolidate their position, and before we could reach a resolution, Equestrian business interests had been seized and nationalised, and going in this late would definitely be an invasion."

"The beginnings of a fair recompense for the theft of their land."

"Oh, I was pretty sore about it at the time. Not… scorch the forests sore, but it wasn't the result I was looking for either. My hope was to negotiate good terms with the new republic and keep relations easygoing, with the hope that business would be… if not unaffected, then minimally affected. Instead the new republic ended up being radically unfriendly to business. To the point of underdevelopment, even - it wasn't until - okay. For comparison, Equestria signed a free trade deal with Grifreich in 1955. One of the first in the world. We signed one with Sylvania in 1980, after they had made theirs with Grifreich in 1972."

"I do not blame them for their mistrust, given that Equestrian businesses have been seeking to profit from their lands for centuries, especially when the regime wears the same face it did under the height of their oppression."

Celestia's mouth hung open in thought for a moment. "Yes. You are correct. Though, times have changed, and more recent governments have been much more conciliatory towards them. Official apologies, returned treasures, that sort of thing."

"I see. I shall trouble you no more with this matter, since I can tell it is… painful."

"You're too kind."

"What of the expansion to the east and west? The Shetlanders now count themselves Equestrian?"

Celestia caught herself after smiling. "I feel I should be wary of thinking of something as 'a funny story' when I may be carelessly admitting to some forgotten injustice."

"Please, you are speaking to Nightmare Moon."

Celestia giggled. "The Shetland Duchy ran into debt troubles in the 1400s. The ponies of the Shetland Islands still have an independent streak, but since then they've been comfortably an Equestrian province in return for the absolution of the Duke's debts. What was fortunate for us was inheriting a powerful trading position and merchant navy."

"And… 'San Palomino'? Just looking at the names on the map reveals a tongue much closer to classical Equestrian."

"The Palominians have a good claim to being a separate people from the Equestrians - they're descended from pony settlers who moved west of the Dragonback mountains long before even your exile. We never thought much of them because they were so isolated, but they built a culture of their own on the plains there."

"And when did they decide to join Equestria?"

Celestia hesitated.

"If it was their decision."

"Oh there was a vote! They did vote to join Equestria as a province, they were the first one to join under the terms of the 1878 constitution."

"But…"

"I don't like the patterns you're finding here."

"But…"

"This was after Equestrian ranchers moved west and settled there."

Luna put her hooves up.

"I was going to say 'in my defence, I was busy with Sylvania at the time', but that doesn't make me sound any better."

"It is a somewhat poor excuse."

"San Palomino is an… interesting province. To my knowledge there were never any great wars there, but there was a technological and linguistic divide between the Equestrian settlers and the Palominian locals. It was mining that drove the expansion - it's not like the area was uncharted, ponies flew over the desert to trade with the goats in Capra to the west all the time, but they discovered gold and potash there in 1798, and from there it was-"

"An act of colonialism."

"Yes. The settlers owned the mines and reaped the rewards, and the locals were the ones hired to work in them, especially where their traditional lands had been poisoned by mine runoff, or fenced off for orchards and industrial crops."

"So why did they vote to join Equestria instead of fighting?"

"A number of reasons. The settlers and their descendants obviously felt Equestrian. Many Palominians felt that they'd have better protection as part of the whole than as an unincorporated colony. The distinction between settler and local became blurred by intermarriage. There was a time when it looked like a Palomino Republic was on the cards, but it never seriously materialised. If it makes you feel any better, they are quite proud of their heritage. It's not quite a bilingual province, but they all know a little bit of the language."

A pensive, sullen silence fell over the table.

"I suppose another reason they voted to join was to be able to leave. Seek a better life in Canterlot or Manehattan."

"And they could not do that before? There was no 'free trade'?"

"Well, no, there was a border."

"Of course. But this did not stop businessponies from bringing their gold and produce back to Equestria, did it?"

"Probably why they wanted to get rid of it in the simplest way possible."

"I must say, I am unconvinced by these 'borders'. They very much seem like one rule for the wealthiest, and another for everyone else."

Celestia said nothing, looking at her cold, half-eaten pancake.

Luna rolled up the map, and stood up from the table. "Well sister, I apologise for beginning your day in such a dismal manner, but I appreciate your time. I have been given much to study."

"Luna…"

"Yes?"

"You don't… think less of me, do you? Knowing… all of this?"

Luna licked her lips. "Even if I did, my experience has very much soured me on the taste of retributive justice. What is in the past, is in the past. It is enough for me to know that appropriate restitution is done."

Celestia closed her eyes. "Thank you, sister. I'm trying my best."

July 19th, 2012

"Celestia, I have had the most trying day!"

"I'll say, you look atrocious, Luna. Why don't you join me and tell me about it? I was just having some tea before bed."

"I have been up all day dealing with this. If I am to be of any use in the coming night… very well! Bring me… the coffee."

"I knew it wouldn't be long. Come sister, tell me what's bothering you."

"It is my vote, sister. I am tempted to give up on pursuing it already."

"Oh, now that won't do. What's been so difficult?"

"With the assistance of an aide, we attempted to pursue the process through the internet."

"It is useful for some things, it turns out."

"However, we could not complete the process as I lacked documentary evidence of my identity. A right lark! Documentary evidence. My identity has been obvious to all for centuries!"

"I suspect that people would be disinclined to believe you without it. Here, I have an ID card of my own." Produced from the air as if summoned, Celestia passed it to Luna as she hunched over the table.

"I see. Mildly perturbed as I am that all citizens are assigned a number, I am surprised that yours is not simply '1'."

"Now that is part of ensuring a measure of equal treatment. For security reasons, CID numbers are randomised with a checksum digit. The anonymity of the number ensures true random selection for things like jury duty, and protects people from discrimination in things like welfare and education assessments. And being random makes it harder to guess a valid number, which makes identity theft harder."

"Identity theft? Like a changeling?"

"Not quite. Stolen personal information can be used to make fraudulent purchases, it's a serious crime."

"What a perverse future this is where new methods of theft have been invented."

Celestia chuckled. "Anyway, I could theoretically lean on the right people to give myself a special CID number, because after all, I'm not exactly going to be selected for a jury or assessed for food assistance, but I didn't want to. I think it would send a bad message if I was to bureaucratise myself as first citizen of Equestria - and let's be honest, if that meant you got number 2, we might just have another Nightmare Moon crisis on our hooves."

Luna smirked for the first time all day. "Suppose you may be right, sister."

"Anyway. You needed a CID number and didn't have one."

"Yes. In order to complete the process, I had to obtain this number - which meant I had to see the local magistrate. How foolish I looked, arriving at the address under moonlight to find the courthouse closed!"

Celestia did her best to contain her giggle.

"Most inconvenient - and of course, this is why this issue was delayed for so long. Our conversation where you first enlightened me that I may have the capacity to vote was months ago, if you'll remember, but for much of the time since then, our schedule of performative statesmanship and my dreamwalking studies have been so dense that there simply has not been the opportunity! To stay awake so long into the day would mean the total sacrifice of the following night's work."

"Contrary to popular belief, civil servants are in fact people, and do have families to go home to."

Luna huffed. "Regardless - after all this effort, we finally find a day to attend this bureau, only to be told that we lacked documentary evidence of our citizenship! The nerve, to tell me that as far as the law was concerned I was a stateless alien!"

"That must have been the bravest civil servant in Equestria."

"It is well that my aides accompanied me on this endeavour, or else there may have been an incident."

"That is why the CINS office has reinforced glass on the counter."

"Sins office indeed."

"No, C-I-N-S. Customs, Immigration and Naturalisation Service. It's the government agency that handles citizenship matters."

"I was told that I had to provide them with either a 'birth certificate', or else prove that I had been resident in Equestria for the last five years! Even if there was a documentary certificate of my birth, it would be in a museum by now, if not crumbled to dust! Any fool with two eyes can see who I am, and yet this clerk insisted on taking me for a ride."

"Unfortunately, dear sister, this is equality under the law. They weren't playing a trick on you, they were simply doing their jobs."

"So now we have been trawling through archives and negotiating with magistrates attempting to fix a problem that could be solved by merely pressing a button on their blasted machine that forges the cards."

"There is another way - but it's… not the most convenient."

"Anything would be better than trying to make the sinners' office see sense."

"We could grant you citizenship by an Act of Parliament."

"That's… possible?"

"It's… a little bit of a legal adventure, but I regret to inform you, sister, that you are a walking constitutional crisis. Every step of your return to the role of Princess will be legally fraught."

"Huzzah."

"It will also be complicated by the Tyrian-led government in Parliament."

"The Tyrians are still around after all this time?"

"The makeup of the current Parliament is a can of worms for another time, but to keep things brief, yes - the Tyrian Party is by and large the same organisation as was founded in the 17th century, and is the oldest extant political party in the world. They're also still a conservative party led by business owners, landlords and nobles. Which means, for us now, that they don't like change."

"I see…"

"In particular, what they don't like about you returning to full Princess duties is that they still don't like the Right of Sovereign Objection. All governments have a degree of contempt for it, but the Tyrians especially don't like it, because usually when something goes to referendum, it doesn't go their way."

"If their proposals are so unpopular that they are consistently rejected, why do they get elected to the position to make those proposals in the first place?"

"That's also going to have to go with the rundown of modern Parliament. It's complicated."

"Very well."

"The point is, what they're afraid of is having two Princesses who can exercise Sovereign Objection over bills. Even if it were to be amended such that we would both need to object to send a bill back, they know that we trust each other, and we'd back each other up. It would be functionally identical to each of us having our own Objection. What's more, they…"

"What?"

Celestia chuckled quietly. "Your reputation is getting around, Luna."

"Reputation? What do you mean?"

"Your disdain for performative formalities, your obliviousness to the norms that have ossified around society in your absence. You approach every situation with the kindness of a child, and without the baggage of a millennium of difficult mistakes. They hoped you would be naive and easy to persuade - some even hoped that you'd represent some radical return to the ways of the past - but instead you are… disarmingly compassionate. And that scares them."

Luna blinked incredulously. "Why would compassion scare them? Why would they be more afraid of my perspective than yours? We are of the same."

"I've been thinking some more about what you said about The Created World. They know me - and maybe they think they can control me, the same way they did all those years ago. You never fail to surprise them, and some people fear what they cannot control."

"Put that way, it sounds like we are once again surrounded by the selfish and wicked."

"Regrettably, sister, power attracts such people. Which is exactly why we have the Right of Sovereign Objection - and why they don't want you to have it."

"I would be lying if I said this did not redouble my resolve to obtain it, then."

"Of course. It'll be a difficult road to get there - but we have time."

"Perhaps when the makeup of Parliament changes!"

"I… wouldn't count on that. All of Parliament is primarily concerned with economics, not the daily affairs of Princesses, or matters of process. But you are right, we can afford to be patient if needs be. Don't worry about it, I can set this in motion in the morning."

Luna nodded, and gazed over her coffee silently for a minute.

"Something still eating you, Luna?"

Luna took a breath, and paused to compose her words. "A few weeks ago, I encountered something while dreamwalking. Usually this does not disturb me. The realm of dreams is that of unfettered consciousness - hopes, fears, desires and biases, unfiltered. Incoherently intense. Traumatic nightmares, spirit journeys…" She smirked, looking over the rim of her coffee. "Fantasies of the flesh."

"Your open mind does not come from nowhere. I'm aware of this."

"I must say, tastes have become considerably more adventurous in the last thousand years. Anyway, the nightmare I encountered belonged to a zebra, residing in Galloway, in the Shetland Isles. He was on trial in a language he could barely comprehend, with an army of other angry zebras trying to bang down the doors to the court. He kept signing papers and handing them to the judges, only for them to burn in front of him. It is only now after being in the citizenship office that I realised what those papers were - they were the same forms being brandished at me."

"I see."

"Dreams are rarely conclusive, but that is a fairly firm indication that this unhappy fellow was also struggling to be recognised as a citizen. But curiouser and curiouser still was that this dream was occurring during the day."

"You were dreamwalking during the day?"

"My sleep was disturbed that day so I decided to put the time to good use."

"I think that may have been the Pride parade."

"What is that? A festival of the nation?"

"I'll tell you later. The zebra's nightmare."

"Right. It had come to my attention that more of Equestria's citizens… denizens, are active during the night than before my exile. Certain establishments and manufactories remain open throughout day and night, requiring workers to serve at all hours. At first I was overjoyed that my moon and stars would have the audience I desired, but upon closer inspection, it seemed these were often unhappy folk. And indeed, upon walking through their dreams, it seems that many of them are not living that way by choice."

"And you wondered where your reputation was coming from."

"I believe this unfortunate soul is struggling with the same problem that so embarrassed me. Attempting to cajole the civil service into providing him the papers he needs, against the uphill battle of a nocturnal schedule. However, he is not a Princess. He is neither the blood relative of the Head of State, nor ordained with eternal life by cosmic power. He is merely a labourer, toiling for survival in a foreign land, and he has no one he can ask for an Act of Parliament to sidestep his issues."

"Unfortunately, that is equality under the law."

"But why is the law this way? This zebra is obviously suffering! He has made it into Equestria, why must he also worry for his ability to remain here?"

Celestia sighed. "I'm not sure I can give you an answer you will accept. My heart breaks for every suffering creature in our land, it really does, but we must balance the needs of all."

"What need can possibly counterbalance this poor soul's anxiety over whether he has the right to remain on these shores?"

Celestia put a hoof to her mouth for a moment. "I have two answers for you. One is cold, the other is ugly. Which would you like first?"

"You only have cold and ugly answers? Ha. Very well. Let us begin with cold."

"Simple economics. Everything has a value controlled by its supply and demand. In times of plenty, prices fall, in times of stricture, prices rise."

"All very well and good when you talk of the price of apples and vases, but of people?"

"It's true! When there are more people seeking housing than there is supply, housing becomes more expensive. When there are more people than jobs, wages fall."

"Why would you not simply build more houses and employ the surplus labour to build them?"

"But that's not up to us, Luna. If housing becomes unprofitable to build, then they don't get built, and getting Parliament to approve more public housing… listen, this is a whole other subject, it's way too complicated for now."

"I do not appreciate being told when something is above my comprehension, sister."

"Do you want the ugly answer or not?"

Luna inhaled. "Sister. You are losing your temper, and… so am I."

Celestia also inhaled. "You're right. We're both tired."

"Satisfy my curiosity before we depart for sleep, at least."

"If you're sure."

"Very sure."

"The ugly answer is that ponies won't accept them. Many communities are scared of change. Not everyone is as open-minded as you. If we opened our borders to any and all who wanted to come and stay, I would worry for their safety."

"Ah. So this is about borders again."

"I suppose it is."

"I worry you are underestimating the heart of the Equestrian people."

"It's not me. There's a whole circus of charlatans who find an easy target in blaming all of society's ills on things that people don't understand, and top of the list of things people don't understand is creatures from strange places. I cannot say for certain whether these fear merchants are the cause or the product of this neophobia, but they do everything they can to perpetuate it."

"Why are they allowed to spread their message when it is so clearly harmful?"

"Because the ability to speak one's mind freely is one of the values modern Equestria is built on. Feudal Equestria was a place where saying the wrong thing to the wrong person could get you killed, and a precondition for society to advance was the guarantee that that could no longer happen, even if what you say is upsetting."

"Preaching fear and distrust is obviously more than upsetting. By your own admission, it is affecting policy. And heavens above, I wouldn't hold death over them, but something must be done."

"I know, Luna I just… can we pick it up another time? This conversation has… so many branches. We could be here for hours chasing down all of them."

"Alright."

"You know Luna… even if it is exhausting sometimes, your desire to understand everything is admirable. I wish I still had that boundless curiosity."

"Whyever would it leave you, sister? Such inquisitiveness is how we arrived upon our ascension, after all."

"The tree of knowledge bears much fruit that is poisoned with lies, secrets, or just… things you never wanted to know. And I have been unluckier than most in my harvest."

Wordlessly, Luna circled the table to embrace Celestia in a hug.

April 15th, 2013

"Goodness, sister, I have not been this excited in quite some time!"

"Election fever got its hooks in you this morning, Luna?"

"It is a veritable carnival! A pageant of colours and ideas! I can feel the spirited participation from the people!"

"For someone who can't vote, you sure are quite invested in this."

"But on the other side of today lies not just my vote, but joining you as in the full legal duties of Princess!"

"Not quite. It begins the process of your return to duties, but after today's referendum, that becomes a matter of bureaucratic process, not democratic uncertainty."

"I do not know how you managed it, sister. Just months ago it seemed an impossibility."

"Well… it did take some good old-fashioned hoof-greasing."

"Why is grease involved?"

"Sweet-talking. Meeting people and negotiating. Usually it's not my business to participate in the drafting of laws anymore, but that doesn't stop me from inviting certain people to dinner. Telling them a few things they want to hear, peddling rumours, strategic gossip…"

"Ah. This kind of politicking was never my strong suit."

"You have trouble withholding your honesty, sister."

"As if that is a flaw!"

"I didn't say it was a flaw! It's simply… an impediment to negotiation. Getting what you want out of people is like fencing. You need to be patient. Understand your opponent, anticipate what they want. Only instead of using that to position yourself and your sabre where they need to be, you're trying to make what you want sound like what they want."

"I could never understand such manipulative practices."

"I'd like to see you try fencing, Luna. I feel like you'd probably lunge straight in and get yourself impaled."

"There is more to life than fencing and deception."

"True enough. Just as there's more to today's election day than just the referendum."

"Indeed, we shall be performing an… interview?"

"Not if we can help it! But I will be voting this morning in about an hour, I expect you will be accompanying me, and it's normal for there to be a news crew there to take some pictures, and they may push a camera in your face and ask for some words - you are topical, after all."

"Any words?"

"Oh, heavens no. Just give them something anodyne about how you're looking forward to greater public participation and the continuation of the diarchical tradition or something. The last thing we need is for you to make a scandal of yourself on election day. If you say anything too outrageous you might even be considered to be in breach of campaign law, or at least somebody might try it. And whatever you do, don't talk about the general election."

"Why not? Is that not the civic engagement I seek? Are you not going to vote in just that?"

"Yes, but we're supposed to be officially neutral. We can't be seen to be supporting any one side."

"Officially neutral, what a lark! I hear you curse the Tyrians all the time."

"Yes, but I can't do that in public. If any party feels like we're officially supporting another, they get very upset."

Luna almost spilled her nearly-empty coffee cup, flailing it dismissively. "Bah. Very well. If they ask me about Parliament I shall deflect."

"Thank you, Luna."

"Speaking of Parliament, you must enlighten me about the participants of this election!"

Celestia stared, mouthful of waffles, before swallowing. "We have been kicking that can a bit, haven't we. Suppose I had best catch you up now, if you're going to sleep when we come back from voting, otherwise tonight's results coverage is not going to make a lot of sense at all."

"Please."

"Well. Where to start… I suppose a quick primer about the process? Equestria uses ranked choice voting. You complete your ballot by ranking the candidates in order of preference. They count everyone's first choices, and if no candidate has a majority, the one with the least votes is eliminated, and their second preferences are redistributed. Then you repeat this process, eliminating the least popular candidate and redistributing their next preference votes, until someone has a majority. With me so far?"

"I…"

Celestia patiently drizzled syrup.

"Why is it this way? I would have thought that the winner would be the candidate with the most votes."

"Oh! First past the post. We used to have that, but that produces unrepresentative results. Say you have an election with four candidates, and the winner gets 35% of the vote. The majority of voters wanted someone else."

"Oh now I see."

"Moreover, if your favourite candidate is unlikely to win, but your second favourite is in a close race with your least favourite, you hurt your own interests by voting for your favourite candidate. So under the ranked choice system you just list-"

"You list them in order of preference so your vote always goes to the most preferred possible candidate, ahhh, I see. I understand."

"Exactly. A side effect of this is that it permits a wide range of parties to contest elections without fear of hampering their compromise interests."

"Does everywhere use this system?"

"Not quite, but most places use similar systems. For example, Sylvania uses a variant of this with multiple-member constituencies, and they have a quota based on the number of seats to fill, and they have transfers based on surpassing the quota, it's… complicated. It's allegedly more democratic but it makes Sylvanian elections take days to resolve sometimes."

"Goodness."

"Grifreich uses a system called Party List Proportional Representation, where you vote for a party instead of a candidate, and then the parties fill seats based on their vote share from a list."

"That does seem somewhat sensible…"

"But it doesn't allow for independent candidates to stand, which is where some of the real fun down here begins."

"Why is that?"

"Well, we get some joke candidates. There's a proud tradition of the sitting Prime Minister having half a dozen joke candidates running against them, especially when they're unpopular."

"Ha! But surely they would make the Prime Minister lose! They would decapitate the government!"

"Oh, it's technically possible, but highly unlikely. Important ministers tend to stand in safe seats that reliably vote for the same party, to ensure continuity."

"How can they be so sure of their re-election, especially - like you said - when they are unpopular?"

"Historical precedent, mostly. Opinion polling, more recently data analysis, and also - well, demographics, frankly. Some places are just very predisposed to vote for certain parties because they represent the issues that area faces well."

"I see… I think it's about time I learned about these parties."

"We have beaten about this bush long enough."

"I already know of the Tyrian Party."

"Yes. They lead the current government, and have led most governments for the last thirty years or so. They tend to do well in places that are prospering, because your natural urge when things are going well is to not rock the boat, right?"

"I suppose that is understandable."

"It may be the wealthiest that lead the party - as indeed tend to make up most of the political leadership - but the people who vote for them are generally homeowners, generally older, and predominantly ponies. They tend to do well in places like the richer neighbourhoods of Canterlot, Manehattan, Trottingham, but also places like the garden counties of Whitetail. Places that like to think of themselves as 'classical' Equestria."

"Very traditional, I see."

"Oh, very much so. They see themselves as a party of tradition. You can bet they're proud of having been founded in the 1630s."

"And who are their opponents?"

"Well, in the last century their main opponent has been the Labour Party. They're funded by worker's unions, and they tend to represent poorer areas."

"What is a worker's union?"

Celestia wondered if maybe this coffee wasn't strong enough. "Oh, goodness. I'll have to make this quick, because we still have a lot of ground to cover besides Labour. A union is… when the workers of a factory, or a shop, or any workplace, form an organisation to negotiate with their employers collectively, instead of doing it as individuals. It's different from a guild in that…"

"A what?"

"A guild?"

"Yes, I have not encountered the term guild either."

"Oh, that's right, you weren't here for those either. Y'know what, forget I mentioned guilds, they're not relevant."

Luna simply smirked.

"Point is, from around the 1850s on, as Equestria was industrialising, and more ponies were moving into cities and working in things like factories and mines, the way ponies looked at society changed. They became much more aware of problems like inequality, and the mistreatment of workers. But also they realised that if all the workers stopped working at once, they hurt the profits of their boss, which is called a strike. So they formed these unions to organise them, and went on strike for better conditions, better hours, and so on. It was actually this movement that led to the 1878 constitution."

"Oh really?"

"I… we're on this tangent, we might as well finish it. The reason the Labour Party uses a boat in some of their iconography is a reference to the sinking of the SS Rapport in 1872. It was an ocean liner - a large steam-powered passenger ship - bound for Zebr- sorry. Kwadube, which suffered a mechanical failure at sea and sank."

"Did they have no pegasi on board? No unicorns to transport the passengers away?"

"Well, that far out to sea, even today a teleport of that distance is beyond the capabilities of all but the most accomplished mages, not to mention they'd exhaust themselves after rescuing maybe… five passengers out of hundreds, and that's assuming they were familiar with the nearest land - which they weren't. No, they had lifeboats - but not enough for everyone."

"Whyever not? That is simply foolish!"

"Lifeboats cost money. They provided enough to give the impression of safety and satisfy authorities, and theoretically in the event of a slow sinking, enough to ferry passengers back and forth to a rescuing ship."

"Now I am beginning to see what this has to do with the Labour Party."

"You're catching on quick. The reason this was such a scandal is that the limited lifeboats were filled mainly with passengers from first class - the landlords, the owners of mines and factories, the business magnates and earls and dukes. Some of the passengers from the lower decks made it out, but the overwhelming victims of the sinking were the crew. And we know this because of the accounts of the pegasus messengers who were sent out with distress calls - the radio telegraph was still twenty, twenty-five years away at this point. They saw things the passengers in the lifeboats would never have seen - stewards barring the doors to the lower decks with passengers still inside, officers beating sailors for taking unused lifejackets - and lived to tell the tale. It was a shocking tragedy regardless, but the tales of these messengers turned it into a rallying point for the labour movement."

"Celestia, you are… crying."

"I was there, Luna. Not on board, but I remember the news breaking. I was roused in the middle of the night to see if I could do anything, but it was too late. Not that I would be able to do more than lift one or two ponies from the water… I remember baptising the Rapport. The smell of the champagne as the bottle broke, cutting through the stench of oil. The faces of the passengers waving as it set off. I am… the only one left for whom it was not history, but real."

Luna frowned, but could do little as Celestia dried her face with a napkin.

"I'm fine. I'll be fine."

"You sure?"

"If I'm not, the news is going to have a field day later."

"Always on duty, I see."

"The unfairness of the Rapport mobilised huge strikes that led to widespread reforms, including the 1878 constitution. That was in the works anyway, the strikes just made it happen a few years sooner. In a way it had a role in the Sylvanian revolution as well, since unions and strikes were part of that too."

"So where does that leave the modern Labour party? Do they still fight for these reforms?"

"Sort of. They were behind huge strides forward in the early 20th century, but these days a lot of strikes are over a 2% pay rise here, a couple of hours on the schedule there. Many people are of the opinion that unions are obsolete, and I have to say… sometimes they've got a point. Strikes in the trains, the weather factories, nurses… they just cause disruption. And the leaders of the Labour Party are not so different from their opponents across the aisle - all privately educated lawyers and such."

"Clearly not everyone agrees, if they continue to be a leading political force in Equestria."

"Well yes, they continue to return reliable MPs from neighbourhoods that traditionally housed industrial workers. Cloudsdale is notoriously red. So is Las Pegasus, Seaddle.. Most cities will return at least one Labour MP."

"Good heavens, Celestia, look at the time. How many more of these parties are there?"

"Moon and stars, you're right, I need to step this up or we're going to be late."

"Quickly. Who else do I need to keep an eye on?"

"Next up is the Liberal Harmony Party."

"That is… a name."

"The Harmonists are actually descended from the philosophy of the Parliamentary revolutionaries - the current party only dates back to the 18th century, superseding a looser 'Lunar coalition'."

"I see they are already trying to charm me."

"It is why they're still nicknamed the Loonies today."

"Harumph!"

"They're a lot smaller than they were back in their heyday, these days they tend to court the votes of highly educated ponies. Their demographic is too compassionate for the Tyrians' stodgy traditionalism, and too modern for Labour's union rhetoric. Twilight Sparkle was involved with them as a student, I don't know if she still is."

"I see. But what do they believe in?"

"Well, they're more about process. They see themselves as the heirs of the architects of the Parliamentary system, and the academic and scientific tradition that came from that movement - they're big on taking policy recommendations from academic experts."

"This tells me nothing about the kind of world they want to build."

"I see they're not getting your vote."

"I already have complicated feelings about a movement that claims my legacy and appears to stand for nothing."

"Let's move on."

"Please."

"The National Party!"

"Are all of these parties going to be like this? Surrounded by a miasma of meaningless phrases that obscure their intentions?"

"Yes."

"Uggggh."

"The National Party are actually the party of farmers and rural communities. They split from the Labour party some time in the 1940s over diverging interests between urban and rural, and by now are actually quite conservative - they're regular coalition partners with the Tyrians."

"Coalition?"

"Yes, it's very rare for any one party to achieve a majority in Parliament, so normally two parties - and sometimes more - will form an agreement to vote together on a shared agenda."

"This would mean that one's vote goes to a party whose ambitions will be hamstrung by the need to compromise, would it not?"

"Yes! This usually curbs the excesses of any given government, which is good for stability."

"But would this not also mean that the promises of a candidate are, to a degree, fraudulent? If they will inevitably be tempered? Does this not undermine trust?"

"Now, if you want to talk about trust in politicians being undermined, the incentive structure of multi-party parliamentarianism is maybe not the top of the list of things that contribute to that."

"Is it though? Individual corruption is a stochastic problem. A system where policy ambitions are always watered down places a ceiling on what one can expect from government in terms of results."

"Y'know, you're probably right. A parliamentary system is not known for bold plans, or swift, decisive action, but we don't have time to unpack that. We have to go perform Princesshood for the nation in five to ten minutes and we've only covered four parties."

"How many are there?"

"Oh, dozens."

"What?"

"Well, dozens stand for election, maybe ten to twelve return MPs, and only these four return more than five."

"Who are the rest?"

"Well, you've got a couple of regionalist parties like the Palomino Republican Party and the Shetland National Party - they tend to be pretty single-issue. Maybe half to two-thirds of all parties standing are some faction that split from Labour at some point because they weren't radical enough, and they all have names like the People's Worker's Solidarity Front, or the Democratic Social Industrial Action Party, or some variant like that."

"So people think Labour is too radical, but also too moderate?"

"Oh, not the same people. And then there's…"

"What?"

"I don't know if I want to legitimise them by mentioning them to you."

"We are in private conversation, sister."

"I suppose the news is going to talk about them. They have two MPs and are poised to make gains. The Tyrians have the same problems with radical groups splitting off every so often, but instead of splitting even further, these groups coalesced into a party called the Daybreak Party."

"So what does a group that considers the Tyrians to be too soft look like?"

"They're racists, Luna. The Daybreak Party are racists."

"Oh."

"Remember those conversations we were having about borders and such? The Daybreak Party are one of the major forces feeding the idea that we should keep other creatures out, for no other reason than fear."

"I see. And you say they are standing to make gains."

"I don't fully understand it. I'm sure there will be plenty of column inches written about them in the coming weeks. There's also… I feel a little responsible for pushing them into the limelight."

"How so?"

"After they won their first seat in the last election, that was the first time they came to my attention. Naturally I found their ideas odious, and their name a little too close to the idea that they had my endorsement."

"Even now, ponies are still trying to forge your approval."

"Oh, not just that, one of their more insidious ideas is that our unique circumstances are somehow divine, and that this confers divinity on to ponykind specifically, making them superior to other creatures."

"How vile."

"I know. Anyway, my reaction to this was to launch a lawsuit over the name."

"You… pursued legal recompense."

"I wanted them to change their name."

"I see that the ability to speak one's mind freely does have its limits after all."

"Don't start. Unfortunately, it turned into a media circus, and… a whole load of free publicity for them. The case is still ongoing."

"I see."

"Anyway - we should probably set off."

"I have one last question, sister."

"Please make it brief."

"What do you think the results will be tonight?"

Celestia looked pensively to the ceiling while she cleared any stains of breakfast from herself. "I think we're probably going to have a Labour Prime Minister. The Tyrian-Harmonist coalition has been foundering. I think there may be tough coalition negotiations ahead, however, since I think the Loonies are in for a bad night, and Labour may be forced into an uneasy alliance with the Nationals, but maybe they can make it work with the Loonies and regionals or something."

"The Harmonists would prop up the leadership of consecutive arch rivals like that?"

"Oh, they've done it before, frequently. They're very coalition-friendly. Often the kingmakers of Parliament."

"How does anyone trust a word they say?"

"That isn't my business. One prediction I am confident in, however, is that Equestria will have two Princesses by tomorrow morning."

Luna chuckled. "I shall try to keep my mind on that when they seek words from me."

October 1st, 2013

"This is an outrage!"

Celestia was unmoved, even as the reverberations from the doors swinging open caused her coffee to splash and orbit her mug. "What's the outrage this time?"

"Behold." Celestia's breakfast was lucky to escape the path of the book being slapped down on the table.

"What am I looking at."

"Here!"

Celestia murmured while she read the passage that Luna was jabbing her hoof at. "...year 838… royal summer villa in what is now the Silver Coast… Princess Luna and her friend Dione…"

"See? This is libelous!"

Celestia blinked.

"My 'friend'?"

"You're going to have to jog my memory, I knew a lot of Diones back then."

"Dione was my lover."

"Oh. That Dione."

"We had a wedding. You were there. I cared for her in her old age."

Celestia took a deep breath, and a long sip of coffee.

"Why on earth would a publication claiming to be a history publish such an obvious lie?"

"Were you planning on retiring in the next hour?"

"Class in session, is it?"

"Yes. Have some coffee."

"I shouldn't, I've already had seven tonight."

"You took to it quickly."

"A necessity when researching for whom historians have decided the gift of my heart was not significant enough to be recorded. Much is written about my tryst with King Sombra, presumably because of the melodrama, but prior to that only Augustus, Lyterius and Colonnus are listed as romantically involved with me. Lutetia and Petra are described as 'handmaidens and advisors', and poor Cygna isn't even mentioned at all…"

Celestia held a grimace.

"What's that look for?"

"Have you noticed a pattern?"

Luna squinted, and looked back through the book for a second, then let it fall down again suddenly. "It's all the mares! They only erased my relationships with women!"

Celestia had progressed to a wince, but nodded.

"That is simply vile! Why would they do such a thing? And why did you not correct them?"

"This is something that goes back to the feudal period. To La Princesse en Dieul."

"You had that long?"

"Let me finish, there's lots of things in play here. You remember how things were during the first diarchy around the subject of…" Celestia circled a hoof while she searched for the word. "Coupling."

"Yes. Anyone could love as they wished because nobody could really stop them."

"You were… setting an example so to speak."

"Is that not the state of nature? That the heart go where it will?"

"Well, you see… gosh, this is difficult to explain because it's so abstract. Do you remember when Lutetia eloped with you?"

"Yes, her father wanted title in exchange for her hoof and I was insulted that he would consider her property to be bargained, she told me later that he had all but imprisoned her in their villa and she had to undertake an escape."

"Why did you think he did that?"

"Greed, pure and simple."

"Basically, yes. But he was already a landowner, and such an attitude was not… uncommon among landowners. With money to be made, everything starts to be for sale."

"Regrettably so. Such a custom was difficult to police when the equites themselves were engaging in it."

"Well, after the Nightmare Moon crisis and the birth of feudalism… who do you think was writing the laws?"

"No…"

"How do you think I feel about taking a vow of silence for 87 years?"

"Was our social order really that fragile?"

"It was something of a perfect storm. My renunciation of absolute power coincided with the peak of the perception of you as, well… a monster. Everything you represented became somewhat tainted - even today, the word 'lunacy' refers to insanity. But this included your… prolific personal life."

Luna afforded herself a brief smirk at Celestia's discretion.

"To have multiple lovers, to engage in relations with the same sex, to place the heart above the wishes of the head of the household… they became associated with a descent into violent madness. At the same time, I was becoming the image of purity. The chaste, silent, passive queen."

"This is all bullshit."

Celestia lurched, spilling her coffee into her cereal.

"Did I use that word right?"

"Yes, Luna. I just wasn't ready for such unbecoming language."

Luna seemed quite pleased with herself.

"But yes, you are correct, there was no substance to any of this - it was just a narrative that suited the interests of those who benefited from feudalism. The public figure most associated with a liberated personal life could be pointed to as a villain in a story whose moral was obedience. Marry who father says you are to marry and produce lots of heirs to carry on the title."

"The head of the house was the father?"

"That part is a little less settled. There were definitely a lot of feudal lords who would have liked to subjugate the entire female sex using my silence and passiveness as a template, but that was difficult to square with the whole…" Celestia gestured vaguely at her spectral mane. "Either I was divine, which meant ponies were superior but so were mares, or I wasn't, which meant stallions were free to order their wives around, but ponies' position on this earth wasn't privileged. You ended up with a lot of complicated regional variation on the approach. In the feudal period we had a lot of contact with Grifreich-"

"And, presumably, their wild warrior hens."

Celestia smiled. "- which could be alternately used as evidence of equality or a symptom of barbarism. In the south, the old deer tribes were frequently patriarchal, so the same trend could be reversed. The precise details of Equestria's gender politics are very complicated, especially over such a long time, but the important part is that the rise of feudalism was a powerful push towards a more restrained, reserved way of life. It planted a seed that still blossoms today."

"So why did this not change with the liberal revolution and your return to public life?"

"Well… some of it changed. It became difficult to justify the subjugation of women after that point. Male primogeniture never fully took in Equestria, and all but died out by the 17th century. Parliament has always been mixed. The last vestige of this sexism in law was the transition from householder voting to individual suffrage in the 1878 constitution. In this respect Equestria has been something of a leader in civil rights, with some countries taking until the 20th century to catch up fully."

"But my wives have still gone down in history as 'confidants'."

"Well… yes, unfortunately. Even after the institution of parliament, inheritance remained a crucial pillar of social organisation, and try as you might-"

"Oh, we did try."

"Two mares will not produce an heir."

"Surely you must have known, in your heart of hearts, that to punish such relationships was a baseless oppression."

"This was the period where we were sending armies into Sylvania every couple of years, so my moral judgement at the time is not what I'd call the most reliable. Truth be told, the issue never really made it to the top of my agenda. I was always fighting Parliament, conducting diplomacy, performing royalty, participating in the study of magic…"

Luna was quiet for a moment.

"I'm… I'm sorry, Luna."

The table was quiet enough to hear palace workers shuffling all the way down the hall, or birds alighting on the flagpoles at the gate.

"Luna?"

"In all of the things I have learned about the turns of history in my absence - all of your mistakes and compromises - I think this is the first one that is specifically to my detriment."

Celestia waited, and listened.

"The wars, the colonies, the… deference to the greediest ponies imaginable, these harms are obvious, and have impacted untold millions throughout history, but this is the first thing I've learned about where it feels like… you betrayed me, personally."

"Luna, I…"

"Don't… I don't want an apology for something you neglected hundreds of years ago. It feels selfish to ask for one from you, when this was presumably neglect and not active participation."

Celestia breathed for a moment. "Would you like to hear the rest of the story?"

"Does it get worse?"

"It gets better."

"Go on."

"I cannot, unfortunately, take credit for such progress though. It started with the scientific advances of the industrial revolution. Among the superstitions peeled away by the advance of science was the idea that homosexuality causes insanity. The idea was slow to spread, but by the 1930s, the foundations of modern medical practice around sex and sexuality were being laid - and then the Tyrians got involved."

"I thought you said it gets better."

"Well it didn't get better immediately, in fact it got rather a bit worse for a while. The Tyrians hated the Institute for Sexual Studies. They didn't want their understanding of the world upended. So they created a moral panic - they seized the zeitgeist from Labour with a reactionary platform, and when it got them elected, policing them out of existence and reaffirming the penalties on homosexuality was one of the bills that crossed my desk."

"And you did object, right?"

"My objecting quill got a lot of use in that session. The welfare state barely survived. Targeting the Institute was ruled unconstitutional by the court, but their penal laws went all the way to referendum, and… passed."

"It passed?"

"At that point Parliament had gotten quite good at dealing with the Right of Sovereign Objection. They just factored referendum campaigns into their policy calculations. I did all I could, but that doesn't mean the people were idle." Celestia paused. "Remember that Pride parade I mentioned last year?"

"Dimly."

"It's time you learned what that was about. As you will very well know, the heart wanders where it will, and no amount of legislation is going to change that."

"Indeed."

"So the penal laws didn't stop anyone from being…" The word seemed to stumble on her lips. "... gay, it just forced them to meet in secret. Well, more than they already were."

"That is the current word for this… kind of relationship? Gay?"

"Yes, they use it themselves. For decades this subculture continued underground, until eventually, in the 1960s, it… burst. The social pendulum was swinging back towards progress anyway, but it was being pushed from the bottom. A police raid against a suspected gay bar in Seaddle turned into a riot, which turned into a rallying point for demonstrations. They made allies in the unions, which made gay rights a Labour party policy, and from the 1990s on it's only become better and better to be openly gay in Equestria. Pride is the celebration of that progress, as in, the opposite of the shame of being forced to hide their love from the world."

"Wonderful. Only a millennium of shame to undo."

Celestia chuckled and groaned. "Luna, please, we're trying, okay?"

"I know, I know. Say, I have to ask about this… alliance with the unions. It seems unlikely at first blush. Perhaps I am underestimating the common factory worker."

"Well, there are two aspects to it. One is the inherent egalitarianism of the underlying philosophy of the organised labour movement. The other is the simple practicality that they found themselves a common enemy in the police."

"Huh."

"These days the police have both gay officers and a union, so maybe love really does conquer all."

Luna remained quiet, with a furrowed brow.

"Something wrong?"

"Just something I hadn't thought about until now. In the old days we would be surrounded by guardsponies; today there are police officers. Something has felt different between the two but it's been difficult to describe exactly what. They appear in places I don't expect them to be, like heralds of misfortune."

"It's a bit of a tangent, but criminal justice has evolved considerably in the last thousand years. We don't have travelling magistrates and tithings and night watches anymore - we have professional civil servants tasked with the preservation of the peace, and we call them police. They don't even carry blades around anymore - most of the time the uniform is sufficient, and failing that, sticks and tactics."

"So if the police are merely acting in preservation of the peace, and the unions and gays were able to find a common enemy in the police, that sounds rather like an accusation that they were disturbing the peace."

Celestia paused. "I suppose. There is a natural… disorder to the tactics of protest. There is a proper way to conduct demonstrations, in which an interested group expresses a desire to march on a particular day, and the city and the police know what to expect and can prepare. The same applies to a strike, it's common for striking workers to picket outside their workplace to make their dissatisfaction known, but there are laws about where and how you can do so to minimise disruption outside of the specific dispute."

"But it's more than that, isn't it? It was a police raid that ignited the…" Luna closed one eye for a moment. "... gay rights movement. Is this to imply that the gay bar was disturbing the peace?"

"Well, no, the police were just pursuing the enforcement of a law which was, in hindsight, unjust."

"Hindsight? You knew it was unjust when it was passed!"

"I know, but I was overruled by the referendum, there was nothing I could do."

"I'm not sure I fully believe that anymore."

"That there was nothing I could do?"

"Those words come from your lips very often. Every time your principles and bureaucratic process collide, the process wins, and someone suffers for it."

"Luna, I can't just override the institutions of democracy whenever I want, it's not right! Do you think I should just threaten people with the unmitigated power of the sun every time a bad actor takes advantage of parliament? Should every silver-tongued scoundrel be sent to the moon? Have you judged democracy a failure and we should just… go back to being tyrants to save people from themselves?"

Luna scrunched her muzzle up, and shrank a little in her seat. "That's… not what I'm saying."

Celestia brushed a stray hair out of her eyes, and cleared her throat. "You can't catch all the rain, Luna. If there's anything you should be taking from these conversations, it's that things that seem like good ideas at the time can come back to bite you. An alarming amount of our laws are written in blood."

Luna remained quiet for a while, before taking the book off the table. "I have historians to contact."

"I'm surprised you haven't been drowning in solicitations."

The completeness with which Celestia's frayed temper of a moment ago had vanished gave Luna a moment's pause. "A few have. I believe their conclusion was that I had little to offer that they had not already learned from you."

"It seems they were mistaken."

"Indeed." Luna stood to leave, and dithered as Celestia finished her toast. "Did you ever accept a suitor?"

"What?"

"You used to be swarmed by them. Princes, lords, dukes, all of them you turned away. You seemed more bored by them than anything else. None catch your eye in the meantime?"

"Oh." Celestia thought for a moment. "No, not really. The idea of courtship, especially with someone who I'd be guaranteed to outlive, seemed like… a waste of time. Cheap power plays from nobles trying to increase their standing. It would be improper."

"Not even a torrid affair in secret?" Luna smirked.

"I had no desire to. My favourite bedfellows have always been a warm cup of tea and a good book. In fact - speaking of the gay movement, there are some who would describe me as asexual. Probably because that would make me one of their own."

"And do you consider yourself as such?"

"Oh, interest groups try to claim my membership all the time. Remember the Daybreak Party?"

"I would prefer not to."

Celestia chuckled. "I never particularly understood your proclivity for… consorting. Didn't it break your heart? Falling in love and watching them wither, over and over?"

"I never saw it that way. All those around us are doomed to perish, whether we bring them close or keep them at a distance. T'is better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all."

"Oh dear, you've gotten into the romantic poets, have you?"

"Fitting, is it not?"

November 20th, 2014

"You clean up well, Luna. You're up early."

"Hark, the vagrant doth become a debutant. Be quiet, Celestia, it was your idea to have me represent the crown at the parliamentary banquet this evening."

"A breakfast of champions."

Luna stuck out her tongue. "But since we have a little time to kill beforehand, I did have… a couple of questions."

"Oh no, not questions."

"I was boning up on my parliamentary history ahead of the banquet so as not to look an ignorant fool - just going over the boring details, who was Prime Minister when, and so on. But I noticed a curious detail. There were no elections at all between 1931 and 1946, and the period is described as the National Executive."

Celestia froze, mid-sip.

"This is one of those stories, isn't it?"

"How much time do you have?"

"Nominally an hour, but I wouldn't mind being late to drinks, chinwagging with politicians sounds dreadful."

"I think you'd get along famously with Gingko, but very well. The story from the beginning."

Luna arched a brow.

"To explain the National Executive, we need to talk about the Fortune Islands, and to talk about that, we need to go back to the 15th century."

"Should I pour myself some coffee?"

"You will remember the accession of the Shetland Islands into Equestria?"

"Yes, they exchanged provincehood for the absolution of debts?"

"And we gained control over their fleet."

"Yes. I imagine if islands are involved in this story, that boats are likely also involved."

"With the existing fleet and nautical infrastructure of Trottingham, and the coffers of Equestria, it created the opportunity for a wave of exploration - and as it happens, the motivation was there as well. Are you much familiar with zebra history?"

"Heavens, one thing at a time, Celestia."

"I'll take that as a no. We'd first had contact with zebra kingdoms in the early feudal period. Our westward explorers in the mountains encountered their traders in the Yak city of Tartarkand, discovering the Spice Road, an enormous trade route that stretched from Angora all the way to Manalzard, bringing tea, coffee, silks and spices, and trading them for Capran metalworks. They also didn't have much interest in anything we had to trade, so these goods were very expensive."

Luna held aloft her mug. "And desirable."

"Hence, the desire to find other sources of these goods."

"Which brings us to the fleet."

"With the acquisition of the Shetland fleet, explorers could sail for the first time beyond the pirate coasts of Tambelon, and across the northeast passage to the Dragon Lands. In particular, Captain Bellwether's voyage circumnavigated the globe for the first time, sailing southwest along the Viridian coast, to what is now the south of Kwadube, north along the Cerulean coast to Kirea, and back to Equestria across the northeast passage. And with that voyage, we first encountered the heterogeneity of zebra cultures."

"I see."

"The Spice Road made Manalzard, in the desert north of the region, very wealthy. While we were in the decline of early feudalism, they were experiencing a golden age of learning, with foundations in medicine, mathematics and astronomy that we still use today. In fact Manalzard star charts were necessary for the circumnavigation in the first place!"

"I feel like this story is circumnavigating the globe."

"They also had fire rubies, which gave them some of the first cannons, so military intervention was… not advisable."

"Heaven forbid."

"The south was less developed, though - they were Manalzard's colonial periphery. Isolated tribes that spoke different languages to the north, worked in their fields and mines, and paid their tithes. But their distance from the centre of power, and the lack of a navy in Manalzard, let explorers set up a trading post in the south."

"Just a trading post?"

"This was actually the beginning of modern Equestrian foreign policy doctrine."

"It just skipped a generation in Sylvania."

"Well. Regrettable as the Great Everfree War was, the horror in its wake was instrumental in the pivot."

"We are a very long way from the National Executive by now."

"Right, yes, I'm getting there, I'm just establishing context, otherwise you'll be getting the same story in reverse."

"Go on, just watch the time."

"Where was I… Port Friendship! That's it."

"That was the name of the trading post?"

"Correct. You'll be pleased to know that it blossomed into a city in its own right, and was handed back to Kwadube in 1999 and its name changed to Bandari Salamu, the-"

"1999?"

Celestia chuckled. "Do you want this story in order or not?"

Luna sighed. "Fine."

"Anyway. Port Friendship was our window to the west. It was the beginning of a long, cold conflict with Manalzard. Waging direct warfare was too difficult, but what we could do was bypass them in trade by hitching our wagon to the southern tribes and trying to move the centre of power in the region southwards."

"A sponsored revolution."

"At the same time we were pillaging Sylvania, the irony is not lost on me."

"So I gather this effort stretched into the early liberal period?"

"Oh, yes. It was a generational project. It took on a new dimension in the 17th century when liberal thinkers began to write about the kingdoms they'd encountered around the world, turning the mission to erode Manalzard's power from a business proposition to a moral duty to bring harmony to a land under a tyrannical regime."

"And were they tyrannical?"

"Well, they were still a feudal empire. By then that looked positively backwards."

"Compared to the capitalist empire Equestria was building."

Celestia scrunched her nose a little. "Well. I will not claim that the enterprise was entirely clean, especially whenever the South Seas Company was involved…"

"South Seas Company?"

"The Equestrian South Seas Company was the body that administered Port Friendship and the Fortune Islands by appointment of the crown in the 17th century. They had a high degree of autonomy, which led to… some undesirable outcomes. Let's just say they're an entity the Daybreak Party is quite interested in laundering the reputation of."

Luna paused. "No, let's not 'just say'. What did they do?"

Celestia sighed. To add insult to injury, her tea had gotten cold. "The Fortune Islands are a group of relatively large islands off the southwest coast of Kwadube. When Captain Bellwether discovered them in 1556, it was inhabited by tribes of okapi, whom anthropologists today believe preceded zebra dominance of the southwest corner. Unlike the zebra on the mainland, who were ostensibly under the protection of a military power, the okapi of the Fortune Islands were utterly unprepared to defend themselves from Equestrian settlement. Under the administration of the South Seas Company, the okapi had their land stolen, their language forbidden, and their culture suppressed. Many were brought to Port Friendship as indentured labour." Celestia laid her hooves out. "Satisifed?"

Luna watched pensively as a servant delivered fresh tea. "Continue."

"Fortune Islands… Port Friendship… ah. So two things changed the situation dramatically in the 18th century. One was the Great Everfree War - as I mentioned, it catalysed a change in the balance of forces. The Cavaliers - the unified army that was raised after the revolution - was disbanded not long after the victory, at my request. Their butchery could not continue. The South Seas Company met the same fate."

"Good."

"This and the increasing shift away from our immediate borders and towards Levantine politics spurred the creation of the Navigators, bringing most Equestrian vessels under the direct command of the crown. Coastguard, merchant, passenger, military."

"Leading you to take direct control of the situation in the region."

"The other thing that changed the game was industrialisation. The steam engine was invented towards the end of the century, and the need to power it made Equestria fuel-hungry - and before the discovery of tellurite in Equestria, one of the early fuels was fire rubies."

"So my blossoming cynic guesses that outright war with Manalzard was on the cards, but you have been emphasising a shift in doctrine, so I'm ready to be surprised."

"Indeed. You see, Manalzard was already in decline at this point - centuries of meddling had disrupted the trade monopoly that made them wealthy, so rather than conquer them, we simply supplied the south with the means to outcompete them. Fire rubies were already mainly mined in the south, and we had the engines, so Port Friendship became an industrial hub for a new Zebraland."

"Zebraland? Really?"

"That was the name of the protectorate. Though, it wasn't a very long-lived state. It only lasted until the 1880s before the protectorate rebelled and became independent. Like in Sylvania, it was the spectre of provincehood that lit the fuse, and being an industrialised power with an organised labour movement just as incensed by the sinking of the Rapport as Equestria's, their revolution was swift and decisive."

"But Port Friendship didn't come along for the ride."

"Port Friendship was where the Navigators were stationed, and the only part of the protectorate that resisted the revolution. It was relinquished to Equestria by treaty to prevent ugliness. Union with Manalzard as the Federation of Kwadube followed before the end of the century."

"So where does that bring us to? The 1880s?"

"1882."

"Oh good, some people in the period I asked about have been born now. So what do the Fortune Islands have to do with this?"

"The Fortune Islands had tellurite, guano and pearls, and as industrialisation went on, all kinds of mineral wealth was discovered up and down the islands. They were named centuries beforehand, speculatively, but by the early 20th century this was unquestionably true. By the time the Navigators took over administration of the islands, pony and zebra settlers almost outnumbered native okapi, and when the 1878 constitution came into force, the question of provincehood was perennial - but so was the question of independence."

Luna rubbed her chin.

"The thing is that the Fortune Islands are a deeply unequal place, even today. The distance between the descendants of the wealthiest colonists that owned mines, and of the okapi and immigrants that worked in them, is staggering. But because the mineral industry made a few ponies very rich, what they wanted for the islands was difficult to go against." Celestia touched her nose. "I need to make one last tangent before this gets to the Executive."

"Well we can at least see the light at the end of the tunnel now, so go on." Luna checked the clock.

"The 20th century saw the dawn of powered flight, and it wasn't long before it became faster and able to carry more than a pegasus. Within ten years of its invention, Her Majesty's Aviators was founded."

"That's what they're called?"

"It's the formal title for all of the services. Her Majesty's Cavaliers, Her Majesty's Navigators, Her Majesty's Aviators. Wasn't my idea."

Luna smirked.

"The thing with the Aviators is that it was almost tailor-made to represent the class disparity of Equestria. If you were a poor farmer or an urban layabout looking to serve your country, learn some skills and earn some money for your family, you joined the Navigators. If you were the second child of an aristocratic family looking for glory and thrills, you could join the Navigators as an officer cadet - and historically they did - but becoming a pilot in the Aviators soon became the glamorous thing for patriotic gentry to do."

"Surely they had other staff as well."

"Oh, of course - but mechanics and ground crew were and are frequently poached from the Navigators, if not just civilians. But the byproduct of this is that the Aviators have historically been substantially more conservative than the Navigators - which brings us to the National Executive."

"At last."

"The 1920s was a turbulent period for Equestria."

"Don't think it escaped my notice that the National Executive coincides with the Tyrians destroying the Institute for Sexual Studies."

Celestia took a breath. "Economic malaise had taken hold of Equestria since Sylvanian independence in 1916. The nation lost its primary supply of lumber - which was one of the impetus behind the founding of Olympia province but we've already had too many tangents - and it had knock-on effects throughout the economy. Then there was the revolutionary contagion - in the wake of independence, there were calls for regime change. Labour swept the 1919 elections -"

"Prime Minister Fireside."

"- and even more radical elements were entering parliament, left and right. Strikes were happening all the time. One of the bloodiest incidents of the period was the Cloudsdale general strike, where workers in the weather factory took over the city for weeks, until the Aviators put the insurrection down. It felt like civil war was on the horizon."

"But… you have the power of the sun. Or, the threat of it. Your backing eased such a situation before."

"Yes, but… the revolutionaries had labelled me as one of their targets. If I were to show force, I feared… it would not avert civil war, only catalyse it."

"Then why not try to join them? Atone for your role in the construction of the industrial engine of their misery by helping them to dismantle it. Your sympathies for their plight are plain to see. Bordering on unconstitutionally so."

Celestia continued in a hushed tone. She stumbled a couple of times. "I thought about it. If there was anyone who could single-handedly effect regime change in Equestria, it would have been me. I didn't trust their solutions, though. At best, their ideas were ambitious and impractical, and at worst, an undemocratic regime of revenge."

"So what did you do?"

"I tried to work with Fireside to cool the situation. Bring in reforms, build economic mechanisms to alleviate the plight of the poorest. The situation remained dire and Fireside only narrowly held on to power in '25. The longer he was in power, the more he lost the confidence of the unions - he was seen as a collaborator. And my image wasn't particularly flourishing either, what with Her Majesty's Aviators gunning down strikers in the Cloudsdale skies."

Luna covered her mouth for a second. She had noticed Celestia's shoulders tensing over the last minute. "Pardon me for diverting once again, but how do the Fortune Islands come into this?"

"Yes. Apologies. So, towards the end of the decade there were serious concerns about the loyalty of the Navigators. Mutinies were beginning to pop up, where ships were working harder than ever. And remember it was the sinking of a ship that catalysed the labour movement in the first place. If officers were overpowered or joined the mutiny, then they held a lot of power to decide the fate of the nation. The revolutionary ideas that were taking root in Equestria came with them to the Fortune Islands, which proved an explosive mixture. The extreme inequality of the Islands had the sailors join forces with the miners and natives to stage the Providence Mutiny, an attempt at a revolution in the capital."

"An attempt."

"The Mutiny ended in a bloody mess. The repression of the Aviators was extreme. Bombardment of gathered crowds, commandeering of intentionally beached boats for use as stationary artillery… The full extent of the carnage was suppressed for decades. I didn't even know all of what went on. All Equestria knew is that a rebellion had been suppressed in a distant colony, and the commander responsible - Air Marshal Grail - was touting it as a victory for order, and ingratiating himself with the Tyrian party."

"Oh no."

"Fireside was finished. The Tyrians were guaranteed the next government. The only question was who would lead them, and Grail became very popular with the kind of Tyrian grandee who was worried about the 'reds' coming for their land, gold and heads."

Luna rubbed her face. "I could have waited until after dinner with a bunch of them to ask about this."

"Grail went from commanding a colonial squadron to Secretary of the Home Office in under two years, and before the third year was out he'd staged a mutiny of the cabinet and made himself Prime Minister. What made Grail so… slippery, is that he was extremely polite in person. Gentle, well-mannered. A well-trained aristocrat."

"Manners maketh the monster."

"It was the last thing I needed. He played by the rules. Like I said before, parliament had become adept in dodging sovereign objection, and he just had the numbers and personal popularity to do whatever he wanted."

"And what is it he wanted to do?"

"The first thing he did was gut the officer corps of the Navigators and replace them with personnel from the Aviators and Fortunian thugs. Questionable loyalty at a time of emergency, it was claimed. Cloudsdale was placed under military rule for six years. All the unions involved in the Cloudsdale general strike were outlawed and new state-sanctioned ones were set up. Much of the early 30s was a constant circus of Labour MPs being investigated for insurrection. They went after the homosexuals, the immigrants, the newspapers, the vagrants, the deer, the zebras, the diamond dogs, the dragons. Anyone could have been plotting to overthrow Equestria."

"It was a dictatorship. We had an honest to goodness dictatorship in Equestria."

"Not… de jure. I don't know what resource you were consulting, but we did have elections after a fashion during the Executive, they were just… never completed. They cited foregone conclusions, security concerns, whatever they felt like to postpone it."

"We had the 'I'm not touching you' of dictatorships."

Celestia paused, sullen. "Yes, that sounds accurate."

"And where were you during all of this?"

"Well… Grail was in power for fifteen years. I had phases."

"I see."

"At first I was in denial. I trusted that the system would work itself out. Fireside had moderated over eleven years in power, I thought Grail would too. The fact that he was refined and polite rather than a raving demagogue did a lot to mask his intentions. He was more than happy to lean into my good faith."

"Most unlike you to have your strings pulled like that, sister."

"The thing that sustained him in the eyes of many during his early rule was the return of order, or at least the appearance of it. The strikes and mutinies stopped. I'll admit it was a relief for me too. For a while I could concentrate on other things. His domestic agenda was my first cause for alarm, but order gave him the political leverage to have everything I objected to rammed through by referendum. After a while he stopped needing laws to govern, which meant he stopped needing me, at which point I realised I'd been beaten at my own game."

"What did you do then?"

"I stopped cooperating. I stopped meeting foreign dignitaries, I stopped opening parliament, I refused to talk to the government. I fled to Mt. Aris in 1938. My thinking was that having made his bed he could lie in it. It wasn't very effective, all it did was start conspiracy theories, and it spared my blushes when his government got worse."

"It got worse?"

"A tyrant always needs enemies, Luna. With the unions neutered, Labour a shell of its former self, the press dominated, and foreign powers unwilling to engage, Grail needed to invent enemies. Going into the '40s he started deputising Fortunian militias as a secret police. The Fortune Islands he left behind were created in his image, and the brutes that maintained order there were more than happy to find enemies where none existed."

"Oh, sister…"

"I knew at this point that if I was to play any role in the end of this terror, I would need to act unconstitutionally. My opponent had a better command of politics, had filled the halls of power with his allies, and my non-compliance had impacted him little. At most I had succeeded in a degree of diplomatic isolation of Equestria. The whole world absolutely knew something was wrong when they saw me leave. But…"

Luna's eyes bore a complex swirl of emotions.

"This kind of direct action is utterly alien to me. It was then as it is now. I had no idea where to start, and the risks of getting it wrong were immense. I lacked the connections to stage a palace coup. Publicly identifying with a known resistance would provoke civil war. At one point I even considered assassination."

"Goodness."

"And there was the apocalyptic option of threatening the power of the sun. I hadn't the heart for it, of course. I didn't have the heart to do anything in the end. Grail slipped in the shower and died of internal bleeding."

"Really? Such an ignoble death."

"He was approaching 80."

"Shame he didn't do it in prison."

"He lacked a clear successor, and dissent was already building due to a financial panic, so I took the opportunity to return and dissolve parliament."

"Better late than never, I suppose."

"I didn't wait for fresh elections to reverse the most obvious harms. One of the things I'd been doing in exile was preparing a shadow government to take over when the moment was right - a caretaker cabinet, judges, chiefs of the forces. Cataloguing crimes for the inevitable trials."

"How on earth did the Tyrian party survive? They should have been finished the moment their grip on power slipped!"

"That's a very good question. The party ended up as hollowed out as Labour as a result of the trials, and we had a couple of Liberal Harmonist governments, and coalitions after that. But… the Tyrians worked hard to distance themselves from Grail. Labour also wanted to distance themselves from the militancy of the 1920s, so everyone sort of converged on the Liberal platform during the healing period."

"This is going to make dinner tonight very awkward."

"Sorry."

"I would say it's not your fault, but it kind of is. It's amazing it took you this long to mention such a drastic, recent episode of history."

"You can understand why I don't like talking about it."

"Which is why it absolutely should be talked about."

"You're right. It can't be allowed to happen again."

"So what became of the Fortune Islands?"

"They declared independence, which we weren't in a position to stop. Unfortunately it was the Grailist government that was in charge, and they ran a nasty, racist little regime wherein the native okapi were legally treated as second class citizens, to the benefit of the mineral industry."

"Charming."

"Their government persisted for a couple of decades before crumbling under sanctions. In 1949 Equestria concluded a treaty with Kwadube to hand back Port Friendship after a fifty year transition period."

"Why fifty years?"

"Port Friendship had been under Equestrian administration for hundreds of years and nobody was eager for more upheaval."

"I see."

"This story really did circumnavigate the globe a few times, didn't it?"

"Fortunately I think this circuitous tale may have spared me much of the mingling, and I believe I'm seated next to the Prime Minister for dinner, so that should limit the amount of tongue biting I have to do."

"Oh, come now. Everyone involved with the Tyrians during the Grail regime is long dead by now."

"Yes, but everyone in purple today made a conscious choice to join the party of Grail."

"Sometimes ponies have shorter memories than you think."

"That's what worries me."

March 2nd, 2016

“Whatever is the matter, sister? You look positively distraught.”

Luna sighed in the doorway of the veranda, before sloping to the table to pour herself some juice. “I try to limit the stock I place in the details of dreams. Sometimes they are very literal, and sometimes they are borderline incomprehensible. I feel as if I have stumbled upon one that is both.”

“There is a standing offer for psychiatric counselling for you, Luna.”

Luna squinted for a moment, but continued. “It was a dream of end times. A personal apocalypse. A life in flames.”

“Oh.”

“It would not be the first time I have walked the dream of someone on the precipice of suicide. I have accepted this unhappy labour. You have long been familiar with this.”

“For centuries.”

“What disturbs me so is how... uniquely powerless I felt to intervene. Many of the things that drive one to end their own life are timeless. Material misery and personal heartbreak are as old as time. But...”

“The incomprehensible part.”

“I could not understand a single thing this unfortunate soul was saying. Sub-prime this, mortgage securities that.”

Celestia’s brow furrowed, and she hesitated with her coffee.

“As far as I could tell he was a successful businessman with a family of some sort. And I have been reading up on the latest theories of psychology, I know that things can plague a mind that otherwise lives a life of ease, and I’ve begun to learn the signs. This was none of those.”

“I... think I may be able to explain this one.”

Luna raised a brow from where she slumped, chin resting on the table.

“Though I will also need to schedule a call with the Prime Minister about this.”

“Is it that serious? I know I’m normally the one arguing the corner of personal empathy for a struggling individual, but surely we should be contacting physicians, not politicians.”

“Oh, well... that too? But... how about I just explain, that should clear things up.”

“If I can bear it.”

“What you witnessed may have been the early warning signs of a financial crash. Or perhaps a company is about to implode, or maybe there’s a securities fraud case about to blow wide open.”

Luna focused her eyes thoughtfully.

“Okay. Let me try again. Your unhappy man has probably realised that he is about to lose more money than most ponies ever see in their whole lives.”

“Surely if there was a robbery of that scale it would be in the news.”

“That’s the thing, it’s not... robbery, as such. Have you been reading much into how financial markets work?”

“I tried, but it was nigh impenetrable. I decided that the finer details could wait, since there were more important things to catch up on.”

“Unfortunately it just jumped up the priority list.”

Luna groaned.

“How far did you get?”

“Uh... the concept of shares?”

Celestia looked at her coffee, then refilled the cup. “Okay. So we’re going back to... the 17th, 18th centuries. It’s a bit of a hike from here to what I need to talk to the Prime Minister about, so...”

Luna gladly accepted the offer of coffee.

“Equestria’s new order is settling in with new ways of doing things, where the power of the merchants is ascendant. Now that the aristocracy isn’t standing in their way, their enterprises are growing, and with larger enterprises there’s a need for greater investment – more than one pony can contribute at once. Which is how you get shares.”

“I’m with you so far. You buy a share in the company and in return you receive a portion of the company’s profits as a dividend. This came up when I was reading more about the South Seas Company.”

“It’s that era, yes. Now, from time to time it becomes necessary to exchange these shares – when the previous holder doesn’t want it anymore. So ponies began to buy and sell them. And then a funny thing happened. The value of the shares began to diverge from the value of the dividend.”

Luna scrunched her nose.

“Think about it. If you hold a share in a company that you expect to become highly profitable in the future, you can sell it for more than you bought it.”

“But that’s obviously fraudulent. You’re trading on value that doesn’t exist.”

Celestia chuckled. “It’s not fraud, Luna. It’s speculation. It’s only fraud if the value is based on false information. If I sell you ten eggs and only five of them hatch, I haven’t defrauded you, it was just unlucky. If I sold you ten rocks and said they were eggs, then that would be fraud.”

“But you can see how this would be a magnet for fraudsters and confidence men. All they need to do is convince you to buy in, and then the company can mysteriously founder through no fault of the proprietors.”

“How is it that you can’t get your head around the language of modern finance but it takes you less than a minute to figure out how to commit basic securities fraud?”

“Something tells me those two things are not as unrelated as they seem.”

“... We’ll get there. But yes, the speculative nature of the stock market does expose it to the occasional enterprising thief. This is why we have laws and regulations around companies that issue publicly traded shares – the company’s board are legally obliged to act in the interests of the shareholders. If they are found to be acting against the interests of their investors, they can be prosecuted for fraud. Though usually they get pushed out by the shareholders themselves before that can happen.”

Luna smirked. “And was this a lesson learned the hard way?”

Celestia paused for a moment. “Okay, we’ll talk about the Tenebria Company real quick.”

“I knew it!”

“During the height of the South Seas Company’s wealth and power, investors were looking for the next big opportunity. Trading enterprises in Kirea and Viridia, for example. Nothing ever approached the South Seas Company in value or longevity, but in terms of notoriety, the Tenebria Company comes close. Tenebria – if you’ve been brushing up on your geography – is the continent at the bottom of the world.”

“The Land of Darkness, yes. So called because it was discovered during polar winter and the explorers saw not the sun for months.”

“But there is that spindly projection northwards. As best we can tell, nobody has ever lived in Tenebria, aside from a few okapi villages whose remains were discovered by archaeologists, but the land was considered a candidate for mineral prospecting, and the arcane storms there were ripe for study. So a company was set up to fund the exploration and colonisation of this newly discovered land.”

“And?”

“Well... the proprietors never delivered. They just kept raising money by selling shares. They created a bubble, a cloud of excitement around the company that was wildly disproportionate to any possible returns they could make. It turns out that Tenebria is a significantly more hostile land than they anticipated. Even today a mining operation there would be very difficult to make profitable, due to the distance and danger involved. But because it was the far side of the world, and they were practically the only people going there, they could keep this information from getting back to Equestria, and the rollercoaster could keep going up.”

“Did you buy in?”

Celestia chuckled bashfully. “I was sceptical of the whole enterprise from the start because I was kept well abreast of the latest exploration news, and them being able to turn a profit on Tenebria seemed like an unrealistic promise, but... I must concede that I did buy one. Just in case. That may even have been one of the things that precipitated the crumble of the operation, because now they were defrauding the sovereign personally.”

“Goodness. So how did the... bubble burst?”

“Slowly, and then all at once. They kept it going for a long time by paying dividends to early shareholders with the money raised from newer ones – which is its own financial crime, known as a pyramid scheme. But sooner or later, they ran out of new investors, and the jig was up. Dividends dried up, so ponies started selling, and as more ponies started looking to sell, the price they could get for those shares dropped as the market became flooded. Almost overnight, the Tenebria Company was worthless, and the proprietors were apprehended trying to flee to Grifreich with the money.”

“So the thieves were caught in the end?”

“Kind of. The physical bills of exchange they were carrying were recovered, but they left a trail of chaos in their wake. The only winners out of the whole situation were the lucky few that sold at the peak, right before it all came crashing down. Countless small investors and even ordinary people who had never bought a share before in their lives lost everything they put in because their investments went to pay the dividends of existing shareholders. Riots followed, as did a hit for the whole stock market. It was a body blow to the South Seas Company that definitely contributed to its dissolution.”

“I thought it was its brutality that prompted its closure.”

“It was! But it wasn’t the only thing. The end of the South Seas Company, the Tenebria bubble, and the Great Everfree War all happen inside the same 25 years or so, and they’re all causally related in complex ways that would extend this tangent even further.”

Luna chuffed. “Very well. So we have concluded that the merchants built themselves marketplace with which to commit fraud with impunity, held back from picking every pocket in the land only by regulations written with the ashes left behind by the time that they did.”

Celestia winced, thought about it for a moment, then nodded sagely. “Close enough. So anyway, this was unfortunately not the last stock market malfunction that Equestria has had to deal with. The rules were in place, but the impulse to greed remained. The darkest corners of the soul are hard to expunge. The nation suffered some minor crises through the 19th century in response to shocks such as the unrest after the Rapport, the Kwadube revolution, the Great Northern War, and so on.”

“The Great Northern what.”

“Oh, you missed that?”

“Somehow, apparently!”

“It’s... a misadventure. The Dragon Lord Agniskar II escalated a dispute with Kirea over Crane Island, Equestria and Grifreich got involved in a three-way alliance against the dragons, lots of nasty fighting over remote northern islands that may have had mineral wealth on them. Tremendous waste of blood and treasure. The only real winner was Grifreich because it consolidated their unity.”

“I suppose it’s not completely us against the world.”

“The knock-on effects in Kirean history are fascinating, because it led pretty directly to the colonisation of the Summer Islands, and the spiral of events that precipitated their transition from a sort-of feudal state to a modern democracy, but it’s complicated because their feudal system had republican elements, it’s a whole other thing we don’t have time to get into.”

“Yes. Staying on task. Financial shocks.”

"As you may remember from how Sylvanian independence started a chain of events that led to the Grail administration, economic problems have increasingly not respected national borders. This vulnerability has only increased since then as global markets have become more interconnected. An equipment failure in a silicon mine in Yakyakistan causes Kirean electronics plants to fall behind which causes a shortage of hire cars in Manehattan. Which is why even though financial regulations have mounted over the years, it remains just as much of a problem as ever, because the stakes have gotten higher.”

“I see.”

“Now, your unfortunate dreamer... This is something I’ve been keeping one eye on for a while. We may be about to run into a property crisis.”

Luna’s face remained blank.

“As in, a collapse in the value of property.”

Luna quizzically lifted a plate.

“No, not- okay. Housing, offices. Land.”

“Oh, I see.”

“Housing has been steadily rising in value for a long time, and we fear part of that value may be speculative.”

“Speculative trading on housing seems a like a waste, but I suppose if it causes ponies to be unable to find shelter, they can always build a new dwelling somewhere in the commons.”

Celestia paused.

“You’re giving me a look.”

“How do I break this to you... I regret to inform you that Equestria has not had any common land for over 200 years.”

“What?!”

“There was a process of land enclosure that began... sort of in tandem with the development of share markets. Piecemeal, unclaimed land was claimed by anyone who could assert that claim. It actually contributed greatly to food production, because farms could be consolidated and made more efficient. The crown even got in on the act to preserve the character of the land in some places, because usually private claims were about expanding agriculture.”

“This does change the severity of the situation considerably... and puts so many other nightmares into context. If one’s only option for shelter is to compete with merchants trading housing like shares, then it’s a miracle anyone has anywhere to live at all.”

“Well... that’s what a mortgage is for. There’s a whole class of loans specifically for houses, designed to be paid off over the course of twenty years or so.”

“That’s the solution? Not content with assigning ownership to every scrap of land and driving its value to irrational heights, the only way the common pony can obtain a dwelling is to become indebted to the same merchant class that caused the problem in the first place? Because I’m under no illusion that the same people are going to be running both sides of this show.”

“It’s hardly perfect, but the only alternatives would be letting millions go unhoused, have the majority of people rent for their whole lives, or confiscate vast amounts of private land. And this is the 21st century, we cannot just run roughshod over the law. At least with mortgages ponies have a stable investment to pass on to their children.”

“An investment. Of course everyone must become an investor just to survive, nobody can have a quiet life.”

“Now you’re just picking on my choice of words.”

“Pah, I suppose. At least if house prices fall then they should come into the reach of the average person again.”

Celestia made a noise like a creaky door.

“Oh, don’t tell me there’s more.”

“What’s so worrying about a housing crash is that it’s still likely to concentrate wealth, not distribute it.”

“Someone always has an angle, don’t they?”

“This is unfortunately not the first housing bubble, we had one in the 1970s, so we know what happens. First is that a lot of ordinary people, especially those who bought houses in the few years before the bubble bursts, get stuck with negative equity. Their house is worth less than when they bought it, which means their mortgage is more expensive than it should be. This increases the likelihood that they’ll have to default, which accelerates wider market consequences. It also means that if they sell their house, it won’t cover the whole value of the mortgage, so they’ll still have that debt. Second, the people who are in a position to buy houses during a market crash tend not to be ordinary people, they’re...”

“The already wealthy.”

“Correct. Large renting companies, or just... more speculators.”

“Why doesn’t the government buy up these houses, then? Or even the crown? We could stabilise the market. Provide affordable housing options for people who can’t afford to invest.”

“Well... I could suggest that to the Prime Minister, and it would be popular with the left of the party, but I doubt it would get a majority in parliament. A lot of ministers are landlords themselves, even in the Labour party, so it would be undermining their own investments.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“You’re obviously free to deploy your own stipend to whatever end you see fit, but the sheer scale of the national housing market is such that your efforts are unlikely to change the tide.”

“No, go back. There are landlords in the Labour party?”

Celestia blinked. “Yes? Not all landlords are greedy parasites. Sometimes you just own more than one house and allow someone to live in the one you’re not living in.”

“And they joined the party of the workers. You don’t see this as a contradiction in principles?”

“Not necessarily, there are many reasons to hold a particular party allegiance.”

“You know what, never mind. What is the government likely to do, then?”

“A stock trader having a nightmare isn’t quite substantial enough to base policy on, but I can recommend an inquiry into the state of the housing market. Then the government can make preparations to soften the blow.”

“Soften the blow... how?”

Celestia frowned. “Bail out failing banks, likely. Before you object, this is a necessary medicine. If a major financial institution is allowed to go out of business, it creates an even larger wave of chaos – people and businesses lose access to savings and banking services, which will inevitably cause jobs to be lost, businesses to close, and debts to be bought up by collectors. If we set the government buying houses ourselves, we might get a few thousand people on the property ladder. If we stop the banks from collapsing, we mitigate an economic fire that affects millions – including outside Equestria.”

“So I’m to believe that we’ve created a system where the price of basic shelter needs to keep going up forever, or the entire world’s financial system will explode?”

“It sounds crazy when you put it like that, but...”

“It is crazy! It’s ludicrous on its face! Is there infinite money in the world to pay for all this?”

“Actually, sort of?”

“I’m going to bed.”

“You know, that’s reasonable, I wouldn’t want to discuss monetary policy when I’m tired either.”

August 22nd, 2016

“There is something that still perplexes me, sister.”

“Is there, now?” As Luna approached the table, Celestia pondered switching to decaf for breakfast.

“I have been reading into advances in natural philosophy...” Celestia sighed with relief. “And many of the modern comforts I have rapidly grown accustomed to are not at all as I first estimated them to be!”

“Is that so?”

“I had initially assumed that the energy that powered the automatic carriages and flameless candles, and this –“ Luna waved a tablet in the air, open to Encyclopedia Equestria’s article on the second law of thermodynamics. “- sorcerous device, was primarily arcane in nature, but that appears to not be the case!”

Celestia chuckled. “Yes, that was something that the philosophers of the Age of Reason discovered fairly rapidly. Magic, for all its surprising properties, is still a form of energy, and there’s only so much one pony can do with their magic before they become exhausted. You could have teams of unicorns pouring energy into, say, a train, but wouldn’t be much more effective than muscle power. Magic – at least the potency of an individual mage – is remarkably difficult to industrialise.”

“Which of course begs the question of where all this energy comes from.”

“I’m sure you’ve encountered this in your reading. The majority of it comes from fossil fuels. The remains of ancient creatures, compressed into an energy dense mineral. We use a lot of fossil materials! You’d be familiar with runelime, which is a core component of anything arcanotechnical these days.”

“Hm! What’s old is new again. I imagine the process is more complicated than inscribing lines with runechalk now.”

“Indeed. Scientists now believe runelime is the result of early arcane lifeforms, piled up in shallow seas and compressed in layers of sediment. Similarly, ancient dragon remains are believed to have created the tellurite and fire rubies that powered the industrial revolution.”

“This makes sense. That our world is much older than it seems is something I have learned.”

”The real game changer, though, was lithogel.”

“Lithogel? The foul tar of Tambelon?”

“In the late 19th century engineers developed techniques to refine it into more useful liquid fuels, as well as useful by-products like plastics. Liquids can be sent in pipes, and a liquid fuel can be used in engines that use the explosive force of the combustion itself rather than boiling water to turn a generator.”

Luna looked a little lost.

“Automatic carriages – cars – can use this fuel to have very small engines, instead of needing a whole train just for propulsion.”

“I see.” She looked like she didn’t.

“In fact the efficiency of lithogel fuels is so great that even heavier machinery like trains and ships and power stations use them, and it can be refined and processed to suit the needs of a variety of different applications.”

“Hm.” Luna nodded. “Interesting.”

“It’s amazing how many of the tools of modern society are just sitting in the ground!”

“So what happens when the lithogel runs out?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Well it’s a fossil fuel, isn’t it?”

“Yes. Lithogel is... ancient slimes I believe.”

“So there is, presumably, a finite amount of it in existence.”

“Ah. Yes. Astute observation, and you are not the first to notice this. In fact the concept of “peak gel” has been mooted as early as the 1960s, a point at which gel production will start declining as reserves run out.”

“And the modern age staggers to a halt.”

“Only if you believe the doomsayers. There are actually an abundance of alternatives that use renewable energy such as windmills and water turbines to turn generators, and new technology like solar panels and large storage batteries. Some of this technology is almost as old as the lithogel revolution itself –“

“I’ll say, windmills have been around for a very long time.”

“– so one of the tasks before our society is orchestrating the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy before it starts affecting us negatively.”

“That would explain this headline.” Luna spun the tablet around to show a headline reading, ‘Truck Drivers Blockade Parliament Over Rising Fuel Prices”.

“Well, that’s the stagnant economy, peak gel isn’t expected to be for another thirty years or so.”

“So production is supposed to go up for another thirty years.”

“Ideally not, but that under current trends, yes.”

“You may have to refresh my memory a little bit, sister, but wasn’t the Tar of Tambelon famously toxic? I seem to recall tales of poison swamps in Tambelon that irreversibly tainted everything they touched. You know, the Vale of Death, where the sky burns, the earth bleeds, and no beast great or small dares to tread?”

Celestia paused for a moment. She gave a couple of false starts.

“And the modern world is built on this.”

“So it’s not as bad as it was.”

Luna’s eyebrows rose.

Celestia sighed. “Yes, lithogel is very poisonous, which is why we are not drinking it. It’s processed to be as clean-burning as it can possibly be, and these days problems like smog and acid rain are a thing of the past in Equestria.”

“Acid what?”

“Tellurite and lithogel that have been burned incompletely has harmful byproducts that get into the air and contaminate the weather system. Tellurite creates a lot of smoke and ash, and lithogel byproducts dissolve in water and turn it acidic. The occupational risk to weather workers was one of the factors behind the Cloudsdale General Strike. It was actually observed in the 1950s that rainbows had turned a different colour - more brown, less vibrant. But, all that changed with the creation of the Office of the Environment in 1970. No more melting statues and blackened spires in Canterlot.”

“So now there’s no harmful side effects of burning lithogel?”

Celestia paused just a moment too long.

“I see.”

“There are less acute effects, yes, but they can be managed. The carbon dioxide emissions from all burned fuels cause the atmosphere to retain heat, which places a greater demand on the weather service – but Equestria has the best weather service in the world, and we’re exporting our services to countries that don’t have a homegrown weather service. Lithogel also has a distorting effect on the aether and exposure to emissions are connected to cases of dysmantia and paramantia, which means we try to keep large industrial combustion away from population centres.”

“This sounds like a lot to put up with when alternatives exist.”

“It’s not that simple, though. Dropping lithogel entirely would require rebuilding the whole country’s infrastructure – the whole world’s infrastructure. Renewable energy sources aren’t portable like lithogel is. Goodness, the way cities are built would have to change. There are cars that run on electrical power, but they’re expensive, limited in range, they take a long time to charge – very inconvenient.”

“Did not Equestria have an extensive train network for decades before the personal motor vehicle?”

“Trains can be electrified much more easily, but it’s not always suitable. A lot of the rail network was built pre-Grail, when the population distribution was different. San Palomino and Mane are extremely poorly connected for their populations, never mind how more remote provinces like Olympia and Everfree are entirely car-dependent. You can’t build a train to every farm.”

Luna frowned. “That was not what I was asserting. Would it not be preferable to have some progress over none?”

Celestia caught herself, and brushed her fringe aside. “This is true. Still, this is a massive undertaking we’re talking about.”

“So the sooner we start, the better, right?”

“Yes, obviously. But there are a lot of stakeholders to consider when making any such plan. Lithogel extraction is a major industry that we’re talking about ceasing entirely. It may take decades! There are hundreds of thousands of jobs in Equestria alone tied up in the industry, never mind downstream industries like plastics and vehicle production.”

“They’re skilled workers, can they not be offered jobs in new industries?”

“Well... that’s not the government’s call. Lithogel is produced by private companies like PalOil and ELG. Many countries had state-owned gel companies, like Capra’s Kozlit, that have since been privatised. So this is something with a lot of business interest tied up in it.”

“Have I charged headlong into another unbreakable pillar of the economy?”

Celestia pulled... a face. “I wouldn’t call it unbreakable. But... if the lithogel industry had its way, we wouldn’t have any renewable projects.”

“That sounds... short-sighted. When the gel runs out, so do their profits, unless they find a new business.”

“Well, from the perspective of an investor, you want a return on your investment, which means profits now, not later.”

“Oh joy, this again.”

“Now if you want to talk about unbreakable pillars of the economy.”

Luna groaned, and shook her head. “On a slightly different subject...”

“Please.”

“How is it that it gets to here from Tambelon?”

“Oh.”

“The last I remember of Tambelon is that it was a shadowland of monsters and barbarians.”

“That is how it was characterised a thousand years ago, yes. Unfortunately its reputation has not really improved since then. For several hundred years the Storm Kingdom ruled much of the region, uniting the various tribes of creatures that lived in the area. It even held dominion over Mt. Aris for a few periods. It was one such conquest that instigated the Great Storm War in 1905, which ended in the dissolution of the Storm Kingdom into a collection of fragmentary republics, none of which have been stable since.”

“I have seen mentions of the Great Storm War as a contributing factor to Sylvanian Independence.”

“Tangent time?”

“Oh, I do love a good tangent.”

“So Mt. Aris as a city-state dates back to antiquity as you’ll know, and was in a decline period when last you remember.”

“Yes.”

“The Storm Kingdom didn’t emerge as a force in the region for a few hundred years after that, by which time Mt. Aris was more of a symbolic capital of the dispersed hippogriff people, and was a relatively easy conquest. Control of Mt. Aris flipped back and forth between the Storm Kingdom and Equestria for a while, since the island’s location meant it effectively controlled the Bay of Storms. The Treaty of Hockenberg in 1730 created the neutral state of Mt. Aris under a Sequestrian royal house to control the bay independently. This was something of a turning point for the region, because after this, trans-oceanic trade became more important, most of which went out of Trottingham, so the Bay of Storms became less strategically useful. Mt. Aris itself wasn’t the most stable either, and they spent a lot of the 19th century in a cycle of revolution and restoration-“

“Oh goodness.”

“- but in that time the Storm Kingdom was turning more towards internal matters. It also had to deal with the colonial projects of the relatively new Capran Republic.”

“Do mine ears deceive me? Colonialism undertaken by a party other than Equestria?”

“You hear correctly! There have been others. After the Great Northern War, Grifreich set out to legitimise itself with colonial projects of its own in Yakyakistan and some Levantine Islands...”

“A lot of these wars seem to be ‘Great’.”

“You should really pay a visit to the Storm War museum in Las Pegasus. Industrialised warfare is...” Celestia gazed into the syrup remnants on her plate for a long moment. “Far beyond any ancient conflict in its intensity.”

Luna looked aside with a sober glance.

“Anyway. The old kings of Capra were overthrown in a revolution in 1780, which led – after some turmoil – to the rise of an industrious republic to our west. And not unlike Grifreich, the young regime sought greatness in amassing colonies. However, Capra is mostly landlocked, so they started at their southern border, with territories at the fringes of the still-feudal and ethnically heterogenous Storm Kingdom. It could be argued that the spread of nationalist ideas from Capra is what ultimately broke the Storm Kingdom apart. But they were incentivised to do so because lithogel refining was first discovered by Capra.”

“Oh yes, we were talking about lithogel and how it’s destroying the world.”

“... The Tambelon Tar is only a part of the Tambelon gel field. Small parts of it are north of the border in parts of Capra and San Palomino.“

“I’m guessing this played a role in provincehood.”

Celestia acknowledged the observation with a nod. “But Capran industrialists saw the potential of lithogel sooner than anyone, and acted to take control of as much of the field as they could from the Storm Kingdom before they could capitalise on it themselves, which instigated its decline.”

“This also explains why you mentioned Kozlit earlier.”

“Which brings us to the Great Storm War. By 1905, lithogel was beginning to replace tellurite as the fuel of choice for the world, and the Bay of Storms was about to become more of a strategic concern. Knowing that his kingdom was in decline, the last Storm King attacked and occupied Mt. Aris, which prompted a response from Equestria to guarantee Mt. Aris’s independence. Such an occupation should have been easy work for the Navigators to deal with, especially in friendly Seaquestrian waters, but the Storm King struck a deal with Agniskar II – who was still the Dragon Lord at this point and had a score to settle from the Great Northern War a hundred years previous – to make it a war on two fronts should Equestria join. What followed was a half decade of brutal air-to-sea battles, fruitless marine invasions of Mt. Aris, trench warfare so close to Las Pegasus that they could hear the artillery, firebombing in Sylvania...” Celestia rubbed her forehead.

Luna thought carefully about what she said next. “I do not know how personally involved you were, and I understand this is likely one of your more difficult memories...”

Celestia looked up apprehensively.

Luna inhaled. “There is one link in the chain that you had the power to break.”

Celestia looked aside. “I think about the decision not to object a lot. The parliament of the time demanded war. None of them remembered the last great war, their idea of conflict was Kwadube’s independence conflict. Most of them thought the matter would be settled by the end of the year. None of us could have predicted the horrific waste of life that was to follow. The conflict didn’t stay contained either, Grifreich got involved on our side, so there was a northern front with dragon attacks on Himmelheim and Trottingham, and this catalysed revolution in Yakyakistan... The strategic importance of Mt. Aris is one thing, but – and I know this is mildly hypocritical – allowing a people to be occupied, to leave my personal friends in House Margot to their fate, is another. At least, that’s how I thought at the time.”

Luna’s hoof had found Celestia’s. “I cannot say with certainty that I would have done otherwise in your position.”

Celestia was impassive.

“So how does the war end?”

She sighed, and nodded. “The war was effectively feudalism’s last stand. It was the ideological thread that connected the Storm Kingdom and Draconia. They lacked any other serious allies, and Equestria’s colonies allowed it to weather the storm until it blew itself out. The goats initially remained neutral, with both sides making territorial offers, but they bade their time until it was clear which way the wind was blowing, and when it became clear that there was nothing to be gained, Agniskar sued for peace, and the Storm Kingdom collapsed entirely.”

“As I expected.”

“Capra made some small territorial gains, and much of the former Storm Kingdom was placed under protectorates to assist in rebuilding – though the result has not been the most successful. Lithogel interests had a significant hand in drawing the boundaries of the protectorates, which compromised any ambitions of national self-determination in the region, and since then... well it’s fairly common for there to be some conflict or crisis in Tambelon. It’s a shame, because the perception of the region from our youth was highly flawed, and there are a lot of rich cultures in the region that have been marked with the legacy of conflict and destruction.”

Luna frowned. “The gel still flows, though.”

“That it does. It plays a major role in the politics of the region. There’s something of a neo-colonial project in the way that Equestrian and Capran gel companies will try to stifle the development of an indigenous state company so as to prevent a rival from arising. To say nothing of the environmental consequences – lithogel pipelines and tankers are easy targets for attack, and when they do get hit, well... those tales of toxic swamps are hardly fantastical. ”

“The Vale of Death is hardly unusual anymore, then.”

“True, but we know more about these phenomena now. Tar spills can be cleaned up.”

“That they happen at all feels like a testament of hubris.”

“This is the way of civilisation. There are many achievements of science that could be interpreted as an offence to nature. Powered flight, for example. When an aeroplane crashes, the results are devastating, because those on board are travelling at speeds that our bodies are not made to withstand – but this is mere physics. Assigning these tragedies mystical properties does nothing but cultivate fear, and fear does not help with their mitigation or prevention.”

“This is true. However, this poetry still fills a need that bureaucratic calculation does not. When a village is rendered unliveable because it is flooded with poison, the statesponies and actuaries I have become familiar with will find ways to accept the unacceptable. To consider it the least worst option, or a cost of ‘business’.”

“Unfortunately ours is the business of deciding the fates of millions, and every decision we make has its price. We do not have the luxury of saving everyone.”

Luna hesitated, then dryly chuckled. “The realm of dreams and the realm of daylight.”

“We do indeed need to dream.”