I haven’t disclosed any of this publicly, I don’t want to. But that's self sabotage, I need to release it now, rip the bandaid off early so to speak, let infamy give way to apathy and then love. Mortals are a forgetful lot, they hardly comprehend that the past is real, it's all just dates and names, facts and figures with no faces. I should know, even now with the centuries under my wings I still look into history with a hazy abandonment, like reading a good book. None of it seems real unless you’ve been there, perhaps none of it is real. I know the siege of Dracoska is real, I was there. But Canterlot? Gods know if I will ever believe that such a thing was constructed by mere mortal hooves. What a joke, even us ‘immortals’ wallow in the shadow of past greatness.
That's what killed my Aunt, kept everything hidden, bottled up, wiped out history to save face. She was always so worried that somepony would call her bluff, would look her in the eyes and say murderer. It never came, no one who figured it out cared about the past. Not me, not Sparkler, not in the wake of everything else. My Auntie’s lies dragged her down like a weight, they pulled her beneath the waves, I will not suffer the same indignity. Honesty is one of the elements for good reason, it is usually the best policy. So some stallions will raise banners in revolt, some houses will cry havoc and scream themselves hoarse. Pun notwithstanding, it's all quite easily swept away, kill the leaders, bribe or threaten their successors to agree for terms, then go back on my word slowly over the course of a few generations. Just a ride along bill here and a well placed state of emergency there, regain the people's trust by simply existing, helping them and protecting them from the darkness that lurks beyond the borders.
Raise a few loyalists up to the aristocracy, prune their family trees towards necessity. I used to breed hunting dogs, ponies are far easier. Given time all will forget that those sons and daughters of my machinations ever came from the peasantry at all. They will forget as they always do, forget my own sins, forget their own, forget the nation’s, forget Sparkler’s. Not that it will be hard, they adore her, Princess of magic and friendship, she’s the one they turn to in times of personal hardship. The masses will not give that privilege up for anything, they will not relent in their adoration for more than a generation at most.
She still hates how I call her Sparkler, a childhood nickname, it stuck. No one ever calls us by our real names anymore, not me or Twilight or my darling niece and sister. They rule up north, a diarchy similar to my own. Twilight once suggested merging the states, but ‘personal’ issues still remain between me and my sister dearest. Perhaps in another thousand years, once a proper successor line to my own is blooded sufficiently to breed with that pretty crystal stock she keeps.
I hate the new names the most, it feels like I’m wearing a mask for nightmare night, all dressed up and swathed in shadow. Hiding. I hate hiding, I hate running, I hate cowering, I will do no such thing, not anymore. So I will rip this mask off, and from the scars and wounds beneath sow a new world to suit my own preferences. It’s better for everyone this way, in the long run. Dear Luna never took off her mask, that's what killed her. She lied to herself most of all, about what she was, about who she was, what she wanted, whom she loved. Then it all came tumbling down in great torrential torrents. Wind and water destroyed her fragile building as a foal kicking in her sister's sandcastle during a temper tantrum. She lied to me. I still don’t know her real name, her birth name, the name she carried when she was but mortal. I know Celestia’s. She whispered it in her death rattle. I cannot pronounce it properly.
Will my future subjects stumble over my own? Will they slur the L’s? Will they lisp the D? I do not know, I do not wish to know. The language has already changed without my consent, new turns of phrase or words borrowed from foreign tongues, it's sickening. I watch as a family member decays, falls into dementia and death before my own eyes, and I stand helpless to stop it, the maggots eat out their eyes and swarm about their mouth and I cannot scream.
But I wax poetic and my writings are overcome by morbidity of a sort I did not intend. I am sure that my dearest companion will tear it out during editing, just as surely as she will cross out the words written here. Yes I know you’re going to edit this sparkler, and just because it annoys you I am not going to capitalize your name for the rest of the work, or for as long as I remember at least, you’re welcome. I send my love via passive aggressive literary error, I hope you embrace it in stride, or would it be in canter?
Now that I think about it, these papers are a memoir of sorts, a rather poor memoir to be frank, but hiring a ghostwriter would ruin the spirit of the exercise so I hope my seasoned and well learned readers will forgive any great sins against the Equestrian language contained within my own script. Celestia knows I do so every solar damned day. ‘Y'all’ was never meant to become a national contraction, it's just improper to hear a hoofington socialite refer to a singular lover as y’all during an intimate moment in which they believed themselves unobserved. Set my coat all on end for nearly a week via the sheer visceral wrongness of the whole affair. Might phase out that cultural accent over the coming centuries, it is wearing thin being referred to as ‘governor’ at seemingly random intervals. I mean I do govern, but the ponies call everypony that, so it's clearly not a literal description. Just torturous. That entire region's dialect is like a blight on the land.
Once more I meander, such an easy thing to do when your pen moves along to your thoughts, I miss quills, you had to think about what you wanted to write with a quill, each line was a deliberate action. Dip in the ink, tap out the runoff, carefully place down the tip, make sure your writing is legible and straight, then you may begin. Now everyone writes so fast and sloppily at at glance it looks like griffonian scratch, but that language is supposed to look like someone scribbled across the page. I have on more than one occasion needed the assistance of one of my aids to read a missive sent to me via letter. I dread the day writing machines become affordable, and am doing my utmost to delay their adoption. Nopony will even be able to write their own Celestia damned name. I grow so irate that I return to the swearing anachronisms of my own youth, that's rather concerning, not a pony has invoked the name of the sun for casual distaste in over two centuries. They use my and sparkler’s (I haven’t forgotten my promise yet dear) fake names, which is actually rather adorable with how flustered they become when recognizing my presence.
On an unrelated note, it took my Aunt (should aunt be capitalized in this context? Probably not but sparkler will make sure all the formalities are sorted, thanks for that by the way) four years before she introduced me and sparkler. Seriously, my aunt (just going to go with my gut and leave it lowercase from here on out) had Twilight as a student for four years before the thought occurred to her. Not even a letter that read:
‘Hey Bluey, I know I haven’t been spending time with you and you’ve been left all alone in that big mansion with no friends or family, and I haven’t even thought to take you to Canterlot with me, but look at this adorable little filly who I promise to definitely not love more than you my own blood relative, and most certainly won’t treat as a surrogate child while she still has perfectly alive parents and a big brother, oh and by the way said big brother is dating your big sister, and said big sister is also not at home with you because she is babysitting my adorable not surrogate daughter despite the fact I easily could hire literally any other babysitter or maybe even send the filly and your sister over to you so you could make a new friend or something, but I will of course not do that because I am Princess Celestia and I am scheming for something ten years from now and you’re not important enough to be mentioned in my scheme except as a background character or something, I sure hope you never develop anysort of inferiority complex or something, love and kisses!
-Princess Celestia
P.S. Your great great great… grandmother is on the moon where I banished her, and I will make no attempt to introduce you to your last living direct family when she returns, in fact I won’t even clue you in on the fact you have any living family at all, so that you have to be blindsided with the news at a very inopportune time, and don’t worry I won’t even mention you to her until months later, and I will never debase myself enough to help you work up the courage to introduce yourself, I’m sure she’ll get a great impression about you from gossip magazines and all those servants you mistreated, or will mistreat or something, next time I see you so maybe your birthday if you’re lucky, I’ll give you a hug as compensation!’
(I refuse to grace this rant in imaginary letter form with any sort of stoppage, periods are for those thoughts which deserve them.)
I know running the whole nation is difficult, but seriously, four years? One or two I can understand, getting her ward settled in and all that, but three’s pushing it, and four's downright unacceptable. I freely admit I still hold more than a little grudge for that incident and am probably being horribly unfair to the myriad of perfectly understandable and logical reasons to avoid our meeting. But I choose to ignore such trite things as empathy in this regard, as with retrospect my social isolation as a foal and young stallion directly contributed to an untold myriad of absolutely abysmal life choices that would come to define my mortal existence. Plus it's been literal centuries and I have never forgotten my niece's birthday even once, so I refuse to entertain forgetfulness as a valid excuse for any actions related to alicorns and neglect, near perfect memory comes with the territory of proto godhood.
This topic of foalhood brings up a good question dear readers, should I begin weaving this tale from the beginning of my own life, or from a pivotal point therein? Should I choose to start with my own consciousness it would be easy to follow, but might lack a certain how you say, punch. Whereas, dear readers, I could drop you into the very worst night of my young life, certainly entertaining, but the Grand Galloping Gala (yes we still use the name, no this does not mean it is the same event in any sense of the word) requires certain context to properly impart its true weight.
I think perhaps I shall flip a bit, or dollar, or whatever it is we call our money nowadays. Gold and silver coins worked fine, we even centralized their minting. I don’t know why we had to go around and change things just for the sake of it, now every time I pay for something in disguise it's like having to stare at a rather embarrassing yearbook picture. The money people said I looked great in my portrait but I think they were lying. Sparkler doesn’t like hers either, which makes me happy and somewhat relieves the pit of dread I that forms when buying churros.
Where was I? Oh yes lady luck. I’ve sent a servant to fetch something flippable so my decision should be made shortly. I’m thinking heads for foalhood tails for gala. I am more excited for this silly little game than most would consider appropriate for any adult stallion much less a peerless and faultless monarch, but that kind of narrowmindedness is exactly why I am the fearless leader and they have to do my bidding. That and some very convoluted events, and luck, and sparkler, and her friends, and my aunt, and Luna, and my sister a little bit, and her idiot, rest his soul, husband.
Shining Armor wasn’t that bad a stallion when you came down to it, but I made it a personal point of pride to openly disdain the soldier whenever and however possible. I am rather regretful now, it seems… petty in a way, mistreating him like that, I shouldn’t have done the things I did, said the things I said.
…I am sorry Twilight. I am so very sorry. You have forgiven me thrice over, but that does not make it right. I don’t think anything will make it right.
I wish I could speak to them, all of them, the ones I hurt, the ones I hurt so very selfishly. But I cannot. I can only look into the faces of their descendents, see the muddy water mirror of my own past and hurt reflected back at me in stark contrast.
I miss my friends. I miss seeing Twilight with her friends, I miss my sister smiling at her husband. I miss my auntie holding me when I cried, I miss Luna sitting in silence across from me at breakfast. I even miss my cold stallions, my mercenaries and gougers, my criminals and renegades. I miss when the Company of the Golden Hoof was a real band of soldiers and not overgrown royal guards. I miss when we used to take contracts for a pittance and a pint, when we charged the foe and fled before him in turn. I miss the battle and the blood, I miss the singing and drinking afterwards. I miss my bleached coat and dyed mane. What a laugh it would be were I to don the old colors so to speak, I do believe the royal guards would be alerted to a giant white chicken in the royal palace.
Sometimes when I am alone, and there is nopony else around, I even miss the voices in my head, the ones that kept me company whilst I wandered. The ones that kept me sane whilst I floundered in insanity, the nice ones who made sure I slept and ate, and the mean ones who made sure I was the one doing the killing, even the mad ones who told me to eat corpses and dance to music only I could hear. I miss them all so very greatly it makes me weep pitiful tears of an old stallion gone off the deep end only to be forcefully returned to land, left coughing up water and wishing he were still drowning.
But I do not wish to bore you with the poor self centered lamentations of a regretful old thing such as I am now, my coin has arrived and I do believe a promise was made. Lucky heads or tails will decide my words and my work from henceforth, let nopony claim I was cavalier about the affair, there is no force more pure than chance, for good or ill…
Author's Note
First Fic, be gentle, whipped this up in like two hours. I know the narration needs some work, so probably going to focus on that in future, any suggestions and corrections are much appreciated.
Wanted to start off with some mild character introduction and setting fluff, but TLDR: Blueblood narrates his very interesting (in my opinion) life story. Be awed by the coming brain damage, poor decision making, gratuitous violence, and out of character moments soon to grace your computer screens!
