My name is Diamond Tiara, and I am not a nice pony. I never have been, and have known it for almost as long. Over the last few years, though, what that’s meant to me has changed. What about you? What do you think you know?
I was born to the richest ponies in Ponyville. Not just rich by their rural standards either, but properly rich, as my father was a business tycoon with bits to settle just about anywhere.
He chose simple, humble Ponyville. Thought that the ‘rustic values’ might raise me a better mare than the big towns, full of different ponies as they were. The irony, to this day, is so funny I forget to laugh.
He chose Ponyville, and I was raised a princess amongst bumpkins. Nothing was denied me, because he made the terrible mistake of thinking giving me everything I wanted was the same as everything I needed. Neither of us knew better.
I still love the doddering idiot; but that’s just what he is. A doddering idiot. Outside of bits, any semblance of expertise just falls away. Despite everything he thinks, money really doesn’t make the world go round.
If you’re looking for me to say there was some special, magical time to my foalhood - there wasn’t. The idea that I was just better than other ponies got into me before I could stand, and has been with me ever since. That one idea has, in so many ways, been as much my father as the stallion that sired me.
I had no compunctions on flaunting everything I was; at least, everything I thought I was. The foals at the backwater school I ended up having to go to backed away and reviled me almost instantly. In another life, I might have learned what most ponies would learn about niceness, and kindness, and fitting in.
Not me. I took at as all the proof I needed, and if they didn’t dare match up to me, that left me as the best. Even if they seemed happy, I didn’t need to be. I was better than that. Even if they had friends, I didn’t need those either.
I was better than them, you see.
I did have one pony my age, Silver Spoon. She never disagreed with a thing I said, no matter how pointless it might have been. Again, that might have been a clue to any other pony about the state of our friendship, but not me. Why should she ever disagree with me? I was always right anyway.
Of course I was.
I was a rather stupid foal, you see.
Something I have learned though is that a good way - maybe the best way - to figure out who you are is to figure out who you aren’t.
With Silver Spoon in tow, I waged my own little, stupid war on the fillies and colts nearly as stupid as I was. The blank flanks, the lazy, the shy. Anypony. Everypony, eventually. They weren’t as good as me and I’d make them eat dirt for it.
I had my own cutie mark by this point, as did the majority of my classmates. I was among the first, naturally. Then half the class had theirs, then five, four, three...
Three blank flanks. I poured into them all the determination and menace I’d spread out before. To me, they became everything I was not: simple. Stupid. I didn’t even have words for it, the way I hated them.
A year became two, then three. Of all the ways to save themselves from my vendetta, the one they choose, the one that I would never have thought of...it struck me the deepest.
They ignored me. If that doesn’t seem like anything much, then you’re as much a foal as the rest. They. Ignored. Me. Me. Diamond Tiara. Heiress to literal riches, the best mare in the pitiful one horse town.
Obviously it was their fault, they were just so stupid. In my own head at least, I was the most popular, the most adored. My clique of two was rapidly becoming one as Silver Spoon, at long last, saw me for the spoiled bitch I was. It was easily another clue, but I am nothing if not stubborn.
Even if it took her so damn long to work it up, Silver had courage when she broke off from me. That shook me to the core. It was probably the best thing she’d ever done with her life up to that point.
I turned a brief, furious hatred on her, all the stronger for how long and how close I’d thought she’d been my friend. Somehow she weathered through it, and taking a page from my enemies’ own book, I turned to shunning her entirely.
That’s probably the nicest thing I ever did for her.
This was when all of us foals had grown enough to start seeing each other in a new light, and I took to coltfriends with a vengeance.
Money and beauty can get a mare a lot of things. It’s a shame they're not nearly enough. What colts that would be seen with me hardly wanted me for my personality. Some backed out in their meekness, others I simply broke up with when they proved they weren’t worth me. I left a minefield of spite, distrust and heartbreak in my wake.
If it’s possible for a foal to get even more stupid as they grow older, I did. Just once though, my vicious pride protected from making a terrible mistake with my life. Of all the painful, hateful and most of all true things they said about me as I broke them, never, never did I compromise my self-respect.
In short, for entirely selfish reasons, I never took the risk of motherhood. I would be the nastiest mother you have seen, all the aloofness of my father distilled through my own ever dissatisfied standards and icy spite. May I never inflict that situation on myself, or on some hapless foal.
I don’t remember his name, but one of those useless colts does come to mind. Not for who he was, but what he said. Of all the angry tirades I’d faced already and built a wall against, he was the only one that gave his pain to me, not with an angry shout, but a sad whisper.
He said: For the richest mare in town, Diamond Tiara, you are the poorest, emptiest pony around. It’s like life was throwing all these clues at me, trying to spare me from myself, and each and every time I managed to ignore it entirely.
It was graduation that the first hints of something other than utter stupidity caught in my mind. Funny, how at the end of my education I finally started learning something.
It was a memorable day. Once in a lifetime. I won’t say it was good. Even I, stupid, spiteful Diamond Tiara managed to catch the hint this time.
My teacher of all those years of boring, oh so boring class. She looked me up and down when my turn came, and it was as if not only she, but the smiles of her cutie mark grimaced.
She said: Good luck. But she didn’t just say it, she said it like the words were useless and she shouldn’t even bother, because there wasn’t enough luck in the world to help poor, rich, stupid Diamond Tiara.
When all the others whooped for joy and danced about like idiots with friends and family, there I was with my father and something or other expensive. I don’t recall what, exactly. All the meaningless things he’s brought me over the years just blur together in one big streak of uselessness now.
A pony like me doesn’t succumb to depression. I don’t get morose, I get angry. And I’ve lived a life of chronic, even terminal anger. With nopony around left to distract me from it or field it against, it turned to the only pony I had left: myself.
Oh, how it burned. How I had everything and nothing. Rich and poor. So brilliant, so stupid. So popular, so alone. The only thing that dared match my all consuming anger was my unbreakable pride, and the two fought inside me like wolves.
If there’s one thing that’s never changed about me, it is that I get what I want. If you think this is just because I had the richest daddy, it is a waste of my time and yours to bother any more with this.
No, I get what I want because of who I am, not what I was given. I made a stupid school paper into the most talked about paper in all of that hick town, I’ve back-talked the business elite and guards ponies alike into backing off, and brought more colts than I bother trying to remember to tears.
But even my indomitable will couldn’t take that struggle forever; nothing can. The year that followed my graduation I was the single nastiest bitch the world has ever seen or will likely see since. In a lot of ways, I see it as the death-throes of the poor, stupid Diamond Tiara of my worthless childhood and the birthing pains of the one I actually have some respect for. Me.
The turning point didn’t come with a great realization like they talk about in stories. Oh no, I was much too stupid for that. I simply upped and walked out the door, so full of hatred that windigoes would fear to tread in my wake.
I just walked away, spurning every useless, stupid, expensive thing I owned, because the most valuable, most worthless, most exquisite, most broken thing I had was myself.
Filthy. Stinking. These are the names of my forefathers, and again, it was life throwing desperate clues at us, screaming please oh please see, you blind, blind idiots!
In a way, walking out on it all washed myself of the filth and the stink in a cold, merciless torrent. I walked out on everything, looking for anything. With everything I’d been nothing, and with nothing I was less than nothing.
I wasn’t thinking at all - probably the smartest thing I could have done back then - when I marched into the recruitment office and demanded they take me into their fold.
I was refused on so many grounds you might as well say it was all of them. Apparently they still tell stories about what happened next, though they’re a little more entertaining than what actually happened. Either way, the story puts icy dread into the privates new to my command, one of the few things that makes me smile. That only makes my freshest foals all the more terrified, and if only here I will admit that I relish every second of it.
Funny, that for some reason they’re considered the bravest bunch of soldiers around. They’re just the most useless bunch of colts and fillies I have the immense displeasure of dealing with. When I break them to my will, I can almost make them worth something. Almost.
I spent a year in training. My soft and supple body burned away in agony, and in its place was left something hard and strong and beautiful.
Two years more I spent in officer training. My commander was the biggest asshole ever to be seen, pushing me ever farther, ever harder. He was a glutton for my hatred, until he was the whole summation of everything I despised. And oh, how he basked in it. It is a testament to my willpower and pride that I never murdered that son of a bitch.
And yet, for all of it, I loved him. He bled the hatred out of me, gave me the strength and the tools to break it - make it mine to use, to extend and withhold as I see fit. I loved to hate him, and hated that I loved him for it. I loved that I hated that I loved that I hated - until the two ran together into something that was both meaningless and the entire purpose of my life.
I was the youngest captain they’ve ever had, but by the thrones I wasn’t the softest. And all this time of my new life, not a single bit from the estate rolled under my name.
I saw fit to change that, at long last. It was unrealistic, they said. It was impossible, they said. It was downright madness, they said. I never doubted they’d agree, because I knew they never had a chance. Not against me.
One immense purchase, and everything subsequent to fit it properly, enough to dent even my family’s far deep coffers.
I named her Jewel Cutter. She is a sky-yacht only in name. In her heart, she is a tempest of wood and iron. She is the proud fortress of useless ponies and the rugged hutch of the finest sons of bitches I’ve ever served with.
Diamondback Dragoons. That’s what my contingent is called, and we roam the far corners of Equestria. When a hydra threatens the buffalo stampeding grounds under the burning noon, there we are, asking the locals for an extra coat. Where windigoes shiver, we go skinny dipping.
I am Diamond Tiara, and I’ve already vanquished the greatest monster of my life. After that, everything is easy. What about you?
