Blueblood Has A Point

Another day, another checklist.

"Mane brushed, check," Spike dutifully read off as Twilight's brush was placed back down on the bedside table.

Her bedside table, but in what was now a significantly larger bedroom. Celestia's old room was much larger than an ordinary pony truly needed, but she'd been assured that she'd grow into it, as the years went by. Admittedly, the words had been accompanied by Luna giving Celestia a Tartarus of a glare and muttering something under her breath about flanks and cake, but Twilight had decided to file whatever that had been about under not her business and not ask.

"Crown and regalia all in place and accounted for, check," Spike chimed as Twilight dressed herself, checking in the mirror that each of the pieces were sitting correctly.

She was going to need to get used to that, too, being fully dressed in royal attire before she went anywhere near the public. Though, one upside to the coronation being a disaster was that any following public appearance could only be an improvement.

It was a strange thing to be reassured by, but Twilight Sparkle lived in strange times. Times when griffons, dragons, hippogriffs, yaks, and changelings went to school with ponies, times when a chaos spirit had tea and cakes with a pegasus, and times when immortal rulers gave up the reins of power to enter a quiet retirement.

She hadn't expected to be in this position, when she'd first earned the wings. In fact, she remembered the time when she'd been feeling frustrated that it didn't seem like being part of the royal family had meant anything. She'd done some things, been hoofed over a spell book, shenanigans had ensued, she'd grown wings, everypony had had a party, and then everything had gone back to normal.

For a given value of normal.

She'd done her best to define for herself what being Princess Twilight Sparkle should be mean, and the school had been part of that. Now, however, the foal horsehoes had been taken off. She, like Cadance and the Crystal Empire, had been given a throne to rule from. She had been made responsible for Equestria, and the role came with over a thousand years' worth of expectations.

She was going to be expected to be Princess Celestia. To some extent, she would also be expected to be Princess Luna. But what she needed to be was Princess Twilight Sparkle, and the first step of that would be to make sure that she didn't do this alone, but with the help of her friends.

She already had tons of plans. She'd been considering new places to go and new friends for Equestria to make. Ornithia, Abyssinia, Caninia, Farasi... The world was so vast and so full of all kinds of creatures, and she couldn't wait meet them all.

She'd have time to. While the thought of living so much longer than other ponies, as an alicorn, frightened her, it also presented so many opportunities. She'd been trying to adjust to taking the long view of things, and looking forward to how many friends she'd make over the years helped. Friends all over the world, including species they may not even know about yet, not even in legend.

Not even just all over the world. The land beyond the mirror had its own potential, and there could be so many more worlds just waiting for the pathways to them to be found. It was enough to make a mare's head spin.

Right now, however, there was important business close to home, involving her very closest friends.

"And the last thing on the list is 'gather the girls,'" Spike said, right before he started to re-roll the checklist.

"Hopefully they're all ready, too," Twilight said as she adjusted her crown for the third time. "I made sure Pinkie knew that everypony should be prepared about a half-hour before."

Princess Twilight Sparkle, monarch of Equestria, took one last glance at herself in the mirror, and went to face one of her greatest challenges yet.

The nobility.

Equestria's nobility was mostly symbolic. Mostly. The laws could be a confusing mess at the best of times, agreements originally made during the founding of Equestria undergoing revision after reform after amendment. The number of positions that required a noble title had shrunk over the centuries, leaving the only a few local laws in different cities where certain families had grabbed their traditions in a jaw grip that they refused to let go... and the throne itself requiring the ruler be royalty.

Thankfully, adopted royalty counted.

Still, the noble families had a certain amount of social and economic power, even if the status conferred little actual political might. Some were celebrities who chased the spotlight, others had invested their wealth in businesses across Equestria, and plenty dabbled in both. While there were plenty of ponies who could hear the latest news about Lady Such-and-Such and respond with "who?"--given that Lady Such-and-Such had put her stage career on hold in recent years, it was even more understandable, though as a foal who had loved her in the starring role of Villainous, Twilight couldn't help but wince every time--everypony's image of a ruling princess had her court of fellow nobles surrounding her.

For some things, announcing it to the nobility before the larger populous was just... how it was done.

Twilight had met most of the ponies packed in the throne room at least once. That didn't mean that she could remember even half of their names, but the faces at least rang bells. A few of the pegasi had taken to the air to better be seen, but many more stayed grounded among the unicorns and earth ponies so to best preserve their expensive manestyles and feather-grooming. She could recognize ponies from across the nation, and as her gaze swept across the crowd, she imagined what it may look like in the future. Not just ponies, but creatures of every walk of life standing before her as she made her royal decrees.

She looked to her left, seeing Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash, and Rarity. Pinkie was vibrating in place with excitement, Rainbow Dash's wings were twitching with a desire to hover, and Rarity seemed to be holding back the urge to prance in place. She looked to her right, seeing Applejack and Fluttershy. Applejack had her head held high, smiling, and Fluttershy, while the most reserved, still looked prepared for anything. Then she looked down, to where Spike was standing in front of her, right by her front hooves. He grinned and gave her a thumbs up.

Bolstered by the presence of her friends, she took a breath and projected her voice across the throne room. "Fillies, gentlecolts, and assorted others, I am Princess Twilight Sparkle, and I'm here to make an important announcement..."

She'd practiced the speech, knew it all by heart, and so she launched into without delay, a grand friendship speech to be proud of.

She spoke bonds she'd formed in Ponyville, recounting an abridged version of that first ever Summer Sun Celebration. She spoke of the times, again and again, that those bonds had saved both her and Equestria, from the more local problems to the large-scale threats. She spoke of Nightmare Moon, of Discord, of close calls and redemption stories. She talked about rekindling connections in Canterlot, and in making more friends both in Equestria itself and beyond its borders, about the villain-turned-student that she was so incredibly proud of.

Then she capped it off with a somewhat abbreviated version of her concerns leading up to her coronation, worrying about losing contact with the ponies who had made her the ruler she was today.

"...And so, from this point on, my friends and I will meet once a moon, as the Council of Friendship!" she announced at the end of her speech, holding her head high.

There was a bit of murmuring among the assembled crowd, and a few polite hoof-stomps of applause. It was about an enthusiastic a reaction as she had come to expect from ponies who were expected to keep their emotions in check on a daily basis. However, the voice that rose above the light applause was not expected at all.

"You can't be serious."

Twilight recognized the voice, and her eyes found the stallion in the near exact center of the crowd. His blinding white coat, nearly the exact same shade as Celestia's, made him extraordinarily hard to miss, and he was wearing the kind of expression that implied that Twilight had just insulted Celestia, alongside every other pony on his family tree.

Twilight took a deep breath, and used her best diplomatic royalty voice. "What seems to be problem, Prince Blueblood?"

The acknowledgement only made Blueblood look more indignant, the other nobleponies in the room shifting to give him space to stomp his hooves in muted, but very much present, anger. "The problem is that you've barely been on the throne a few short days and you're already making a mockery of the position."

Twilight could feel her friends tensing up, behaving the way any small herd would in response to a threat. "What makes you say that?" she asked, keeping her voice as level as possible. Meanwhile, it was hard to say whether Rainbow, Applejack, or Rarity looked more inclined to commit murder right here in the throne room, though Rainbow would certainly be the first to reach him if they all acted at once.

"Because your 'Council of Friendship'--" Blueblood didn't lift his hooves for actual air quotes, but anypony listening could hear their presence regardless. "--Consists of an apple farmer, a party planner, an animal rehabilitator, a Wonderbolt, and a fashion designer."

Rarity now clearly was ahead of the herd in terms of potential for equicide. Pinkie had carefully moved over to grab her tail in her teeth, in order to help give the posturing prince a longer head start. Twilight, meanwhile, did her best to adopt a gentle lecturing tone. "Prince Blueblood, I was a librarian before I became a princess. If your only objection is that they're not royal blood--"

He immediately scoffed. "Royal blood? Come now. This isn't about breeding. The nobility adopt all of the time. My own great-grandfather Warmblood was adopted into the royal family after he was orphaned. The backward idea that the circumstances of one's birth should be beginning and end of it has no place in Equestria." He tossed his head as if trying to fling away the very concept. "What makes this a farce is that you're putting governing power in the hooves of a herd of part-timers who only come together once a moon. Have you considered any of the logistics about how that would work?"

Fluttershy was now helping Pinkie hold Rarity back. Twilight felt her eye starting to twitch. "They aren't a governing body. I'll be handling the royal duties that Celestia and Luna used to, and they'll be more... advisors, for friendship matters."

Blueblood looked at her flatly. "Friendship matters."

"You know... diplomacy," Twilight supplied.

"So your diplomats are all going to be part-timers who only meet once a moon. That is so much more reassuring." Blueblood voice dripped with sarcasm. "So this is what's going to become of the Chief Ambassador position when I'm gone?"

The eye twitches were getting stronger. "Excuse me?"

"I was set to retire from the position long before my dear many-greats aunts announced their plans. I've served dutifully since I was barely out of adolescence. And I had assumed that I would be training a successor, but I can see now that you intend to abolish it entirely and put your trust in your friends to find time in their busy schedules to do what was once the full-time job of--"

"I'm going to be the next Chief Ambassador."

The announcement was firm, determined, and left Twilight staring down at the young dragon puffing out his chest from in front of her. All of her friends turned to look at Spike as well, even Rarity, and he kept up his defiant pose as Blueblood seemed to be sizing him up. His front legs bent, allowing him to look Spike directly in the face, and murmurs started up among the nobleponies again, this new information making a number of them momentarily forget their manners in the face of it.

Then Blueblood smiled. "Clever."

Spike blinked, deflating somewhat from surprise. "What?"

"A dragon as Chief Ambassador. It'll be something unexpected. Creatures will be caught off-balance, and more than likely intrigued." Blueblood straightened his legs out again, and punctuated his words with a nod. "I approve."

"Thank you?" was the only thing Spike seemed to be able to offer in response.

Blueblood almost seemed to be thinking aloud now. "Of course, starting so young... you will most definitely require that training. I will see to that, so that you're prepared by the time I step down."

"You'll... what?" Blueblood didn't seem to even hear Spike's continued sputtering.

"I'll get to work on a training plan, taking your youth into account," he said with another firm nod, before giving Twilight his brightest smile. She watched the proud stallion bow his head respectfully, as if his outburst had never happened. "My objection is withdrawn. I should have realized that you had everything well in hoof, princess."

"...Thank you." Twilight just barely managed to edit the question mark off of it.

He turned to leave the throne room, and the other nobles were filing out not long after, discussing the events with each other, and leaving six mares and one drake standing here processing the series of events.

All things considered, given that nopony had ended up screaming or covered in food, it'd gone much better than it could've. And best of all, nopony would ever know that she had been spending so much time working out the logistics of the Council of Friendship that she'd completely forgotten about the role of Chief Ambassador.