Blueblood Household : The Darkest Dungeon

It was an excruciating week for the solar princess of Equestria. While the upcoming grand galla had quelled down the nobles constant need to pester her with selfish needs, the preparation for the event always took all of her energy. Besides, this year has been particularly eventful to say the least. The first major event being sending away her dear student and pupil Twilight Sparkle in Ponyville, so she could start learning about friendship, stopping Nightmare Moon by gaining ownership over the elements of harmony and bring her beloved sister back to her.

To this day, Celestia bare guilt for informing Twilight of her hidden agenda concerning her, or that sending her pupil to this town when Nightmare Moon would return was not a coincidence. But she had no choice, for Sparkle and her friends had to face this challenge alone or the elements may not have accepted them. Besides, she had a few backup plans if the situation was to go south. She was far from careless, and as Vladimir responded her when she had explained him her plan via writing him a letter :

"Putting all of your faith into unprepared individuals and ancient artefacts even you can't fully understand, is no more than pure foolishness and an irresponsible gamble. One which in case of failure would results in five meaningless sacrifices at best, and the end of this kingdom at worst."

Words could not describe all the joy she felt when her faithful student and her friends came out victorious of this endeavor, even more when Luna returned to her. When she had finally joined the fray, she explained to the new five bearers how her sister Luna and Nightmare Moon were connected, how they had fulfill the prophecy told in the history books by defeating the terrible Nightmare moon and freed Equestria's lost princess of the night. This was also a lie she had invented to forever save Luna's reputation and accept her own past failure in the matter.

After that, she had send them away to finally embrace her beloved sister once more, to give her the apologies she rightfully deserve. They took a few minutes to put their feelings and hearts out, promising each other than never again they would be separated by repeating the same mistakes. The hours following their victory over Nightmare Moon, both the new element bearers and the return of Luna were celebrated throughout the kingdom, and the princess of the moon was reintroduced to her ruling place with promises to never be ignored again.

The return of her sister had also greatly put weight out of Celestia's shoulders. Since her nephew had to depart to bury his recently deceased father and inherit the title of duke, taking over the Blueblood's legacy she had to take care of the nobles alone once again. She would never have been able to take it for an entire millennia without the assistance of the Blueblood family. In fact, it is only thanks to Vladimir's otherworldly ability to dominate those "parasitic leeches" in their own game, as well as the councils he provided that she made it out alone those last years without murdering one of them.

It was only two weeks later that the changeling invasion happened, and what a terrible mess it was. Cadence's wedding with Shining Armor as been used by queen Chrysalis to infiltrate the castle, allowing her hive to feast on the love of her beloved ponies. The worst of it was that she had been partially to blame for this mess, a thousand years of undisputed peace had soften her to the point of keeping the event going despite the obvious threat looming over their head. Her sister had almost killed her for that, and Vladimir's letter after the event made it clear that he would had finished her off had he been present.

But again, her biggest guilt and regret was towards her dearest pupil. When Twilight had declared time and time again that there was something truly wrong with "Cadence" which she had knew since she was a filly, none of her friends had believed her. They all told her that she was over reacting, and while her brother had the excuse of being mind controlled by Chrysalis disguised as his fiancé, she did not. The truth is that she was so exhausted by everything and on edge with the changeling threat, that she denied her student's warning in the faint hope that there would be no problem. She even refused to see the obvious uncharacteristic horrible personality of the fake Cadence, something that her nephew didn't take well.

"Your exhaustion and desperation for normalcy, had rendered you blind to the shadows lurking in your own home. Have I not told you, that evil and death waits for the slightest lapse of concentration ?"

Finally there was the return of the crystal empire and it's tyrant. This was the last major event that happened this year, and this time Celestia had learned from the two last events. She send Cadence, Shining Armor and Luna in advance to reach the empire and assess the situation of the crystal ponies. Once they had a clear picture of what state the empire and its citizens were left in, she joined them with Twilight and the other element bearers equipped with their most powerful weapon. From there it was only a question of buying her student enough time to find about the crystal heart, take it back from Sombra and using its power to take him down.

At first, she had expected Blueblood to not be happy about sending his sister like that on the front lines, especially so soon after what happened with Chrysalis. She was expecting him to be even less thrilled with the decision to give her the position of new monarch of the crystal empire afterwords, as she was clearly not ready for such a job nor would she want to have it in the first place. But to her astonishment, her nephew was surprisingly lenient with all of this and very understanding with the fact that Cadence's power over love was giving them no choice in that matter. In fact, there was something in Vladimir's letters that unsettled her quite a bit.

He wished to have their encounters with Sombra and their battle against his dark magic told to him. He wanted to have as much info about him as possible, telling her that the more details he had about it the better it would be. He even asked her to be informed if they could find knowledge or artefacts kept secret by the dark king, all that under the pretext that many rumors about dark arts usage has been spread on his family's lands, that the Blueblood's household was involved and he wished to verify those claims.

She really didn't like her nephew's new found interest for dark magic, even if it was for verifying simple rumors. At least she will be able to interrogate him about this directly during the upcoming galla. She just received his latest letter informing her that he would actually be present, since he had made enough progress on his family's estate to get a few days of vacation. She was glad that he would be there, her and Cadence really miss him and many new faces would be thrilled to finally meet her nephew. Luna will loved him for sure, they are quite the kindred spirits after all.