Spotlight

Nightmare Moon had finally found the spotlight.
“And I’m never letting it go again.”

4. Chapter Nightmare Moon 3

Saturday, 26 June 1108

‘We are the masters of Equestria. We are the masters of Equestria.’

Those were the words that I whispered to Luna. Even nearing a week after our victory over the despised Celestia, she still had trouble believing it.

Having completed the subjugation of Canterlot, we were now in Manehattan. We traveled the streets in a carriage of state, and we could see the ponies outside, watching us as we passed.

Some of them were scared. More were nervous. None of them held us in contempt, like they did to Luna before she called me.

While Luna was dwelling on those memories I took over and turned to face the shadow-colored pegasus sitting uncomfortably opposite me. He was not a pony accustomed to working in anything approximating bright moonlight. His mane was black, his eyes dark blue, and his cutie mark an unlit torch dipped in bitumen.

(Portrait of Pitch, by N.M.E.)

“I appreciate what you have done for me, Pitch,” I addressed him, finally. “It would have taken a lot to have located the strikers without you.”

Pitch bowed his head as low as he could under the circumstances, spreading his wings in supplication. “Of course, Your Excellency,” he replied in his oily voice.

I wished to see him spread those wings into some mud. I laughed scornfully, causing him to tremble. “And now you expect some sort of reward, yes?”

Pitch twitched slightly but kept his head down. “I only wish to serve your cause, Your Excellency. As my father and his father did, back to the first of the Black Wings, the Black Horns and the Black Hooves.”

“Ah, you are a Noctiferian,” I said. I used my wing to lift his head. “Look upon me, Servant.” He rose to attention when he realized what the title meant. When I saw his eyes rest briefly upon my own, I lifted my left wing shoulder in the ancient signal.

Pitch noticed but failed to respond correctly.

So, yet another member of a delusional cult believing themselves to be my true Children of the Night. I sighed. “Other than hidey holes, do you know anything useful about this city?”

Pitch blinked. “The cause of the strike–”

I waved a hoof idly. “I already know that.”

“The interspecies tension—it goes beyond them.” He looked out the window, gesturing at the ponies on the streets. “Three fifths of them are pegasi and earth ponies, but unicorns own two-thirds of the businesses in the city, and the vast majority of the apartment buildings. It would be simple enough to incite rebellion.”

I laughed heartily, and within me Luna giggled.

Pitch tried to join in, and that’s when I cut him off with a glare. “We don’t want rebellion, dear Pitch. Look out that window once again, and you will see: We are in charge. We are the rule. We don’t want rebellion!” I touched his cheek with the tip of one wing, allowed him to feel a trace of my power.

He tried not to shiver in terror.

“I just gave you a measure of protection, against what is to come,” I told him. “Come to the rally tonight, and you will see. After that, you will find that my rule of this city has become neigh-absolute. You are tasked with finding those exceptions.”

“Yes, Your Excellency!”

I struck the roof of the carriage twice with one hoof, causing it to suddenly stop. “Get out,” I told him quietly, my eyes on the roof. “I have more respectable ponies to deal with tonight.”

I looked down to see that Luna and I were now alone.

“Excellent.”

My staff was waiting for me outside Maneway Station. They moved in, to crowd around us, but I held up a hoof to forestall them.

It was time to lower the Moon.

Once that task was complete, I pointed to the leader of a group of winded pegasi. “Lead Scout,” I addressed her.

She rushed forward, bowing low. “I bring news of the Dragon Lands,” she said in a low voice, her snout to the pavement.

“Rise,” I commanded.

She did so.

“Report.”

“They have fled, as you surmised. The entire kingdom is ready for occupation….Empress.”

“You see!” I declared loudly, looking around me. “Listen well, all those who thought a title of ‘Queen’ was sufficient for me. A queen merely rules a people. An empress rules the world! The day is drawing closer when all creatures of the world will acknowledge me as their mistress!”

My entourage applauded politely for me.

“Thank you, Lead Scout,” I said to the swift pegasus. “You fulfilled your orders in record time.”

“Do you have any further instructions for me?” she asked me, proud of her accomplishment.

“Not at present,” I told her. “Return to the home I have built for you. I will have need of your services in the future.”

The Lead Scout bowed once and turned, crouching low in preparation for launch.

“Wait!” I declared.

She stopped, turned back and faced me calmly.

I pointed to the medallion around her neck. “I will give you a choice: You may keep that and use it, knowing what that will mean. Or you can give it back to me and cherish your freedom.”

Without a thought she used a wing to remove the item and give it to me.

“Good choice,” I said with a nod. “You may go.”

Lead Scout turned and launched, flying swiftly to the east and out of sight.

“The rest of you, exchange your uniforms,” I said to the rest of the scouts. “You are to return to your old positions in Ponyville until I have further use for you.” I pointed at one of them at random, the one with an excessive mane. “Harry! You’re their captain now.”

Harry looked around him. “My name is not…” he tried to say.

I struck him down with lightning. (He’s a pegasus. I love striking pegasi down with lightning, because they always get up again afterwards.) “Don’t correct me.” I pointed to another of them. “Sandy!”

“Yes, Your Excellency!” She didn’t question her new name.

“You’re the captain now.” I sighed at the pitiful look on Harry’s face. “Give him something important to do. But you’re still in charge.”

“Yes, Your Excellency!”

They didn’t leave.

“Now get out of here!”

They did.

I turned to face the rest of my entourage, who desperately tried to look like they hadn’t been watching the show. With a roll of my eyes I pointed at my Steward, who rushed forward, bowing low. She was a white unicorn with brown mane and eyes, a pen-and-inkwell cutie mark, wearing a white collar and red cravat, and of course one of the special Moon Medallions that I had gifted to all of my functionaries. She had once been Celestia’s secretary, and now she had a similar position under me. This was because, regardless of her feelings for Celestia, she was a professional before all else. Whatever I asked of her, she delivered…eventually. Which was more than I could expect from some ponies in my administration. She stifled a yawn.

“Aw, am I keeping you up past your former mistress’ bedtime?” I teased. I began to walk down the abandoned street, and she was forced to do her best to keep up with Luna’s longer stride.

Just like Lead Scout, I knew my Steward’s name, but I chose not to use it. I felt that by giving my staff new names, that encouraged them to think only of me, instead of their former identity and loyalties.

“You’ve kept me up for the past three days,” she said curtly. “But if you won’t sleep, neither will I.”

I smiled with admiration. “That’s the spirit!” I exclaimed, bowling her over with a hearty slap of the back. “You may sleep after the rally. Now, do you have both of my speeches?”

The Steward rolled her eyes. “It wasn’t easy, summoning up two texts so incredibly at odds with each other.” Reaching back in her saddlebags, she produced the two staple-bound piles of paper.

I held the two items aloft with my magic, allowing Luna to read the rally speech while I read the strikers speech. The displeasure increased the further I read. Luna didn’t seem much happier.

“You’re missing my prompts, Steward,” I warned her with a growl.

“They were rather hard to get in. Not to mention nonsensical.”

Now I should note that the Steward and I were out of the earshot of any other pony during this conversation. She would not still be standing with her snide attitude otherwise. “I know,” I said with a smirk. “But that doesn’t change the fact that I need them.”

“Who was that?” the Steward said suddenly, looking over her shoulder. She removed a couple more packets of paper from her saddlebags. “Who put these here?”

I had in fact seen a figure slipping the packets in place, a pony I had noticed skulking around the edge of my entourage for a few days now. I took the packets out of the Steward’s grip to examine myself.

They were replacement speeches. And they precisely met our needs for this night.

The Steward walked around to look them over, and I held them low enough for her to see. “You can’t use those!” she exclaimed after a few moments of perusal.

“Why not?” I challenged her lightly. “They’re brilliant.”

“Exactly,” she said. “Too brilliant.”

“Which is exactly what I asked for. They needed to attract attention in precisely the way I instructed you. I’m using them.” Luna eagerly agreed with me for the speech she had reviewed. I flipped both packets to the last pages, which each bore the same illegible signature. I raised my voice. “Thank you, Smudge, for these excellent speeches. You may consider yourself my official speechwriter from now on.” I winged over Lead Steward’s former Moon Medallion. “Get this to her at your earliest convenience.”

The Steward pinched her lips shut, biting back an almost-certainly offensive remark.

“There, there,” I said, patting her withers patronizingly.

“This is payback for not having your victory speech ready on time, isn’t it?” she asked.

I nodded. “That, and I realized that our mystery Smudge needed a job. Now you’ll have more time to water the lavender in the palace.”

The Steward bowed her head in defeat. “Yes, Your Excellency.”

I dismissed her and summoned a hoofkerchief to clear my sinuses. The weather of this city did not agree with us.

I then summoned up my Vizier, another unicorn. She could best be described as perpetually nervous. I lifted up her Medallion with my hoof. “You’ve used this today,” I said. I then cast the spell to read the Medallion and had a brief vision of her using it to convince a trouble-making young earth pony to leave the area just before I arrived. “This is acceptable,” I said, causing the glow to disappear. “Now the Lead Scout—I saw you staring at her out of the corner of my eye. Do you know her?”

The Vizier thought for a moment. “No,” she said in complete sincerity. “I heard you speaking of her a couple of days ago, and I was curious what she looked like. That was all. Should I have recognized her?”

“No,” I said. “Now let’s get this over with.”

The Vizier merely nodded. She produced a wooden box from her saddlebags but stopped before she opened it. “Are you sure about this?” she asked. Nervously.

“Don’t make me lose my patience,” I warned her as I removed our regalia. “The strikers hate all unicorns. They will never listen to me unless I do this. I promise I won’t smite you…tonight.”

The Vizier opened the foil-lined box, and we both had to blink back tears from the sudden effect.

For a moment I saw her foolishly try to lift the thing inside with her magic, before using a mouth grabber to pick up the ring. It was the same color as Pitch’s mane, with a jagged outer circumference pierced through with small holes that nevertheless did nothing to diminish the object’s imperviousness.

I bowed down before her, presenting my horn, and giving her a bemused look.

Quickly, she shoved the ring down my horn, stopping a third of the way down. I felt the magic of my horn flicker and die out.

I looked my Vizier in the eye, my neck outstretched before her. At that moment, with the spells I knew that she knew, she could have ended my reign in an instant, and we both knew it.

She trembled and turned away. Coward.

I stood up as she started to walk away. “Halt,” I ordered her.

“Yes?” she asked, turning her head.

I gestured to Smudge’s strike speech on the ground. “Hold that up,” I told her. “I still need to memorize it.”

With a resigned sigh, she took up her new job as my book stand.

We—Luna and I—made our way through the empty maneway station and down a level to the boarding platform for the F line to Bronklyn. We then hopped straight down onto the tracks. The level of desertion was due to the strikers turning off the magical charge to the third rail. (That was how the Vizier explained it to us.) We followed Pitch’s directions, walking a couple of kilostrides down the tracks, before entering a service tunnel.

We nearly fell over on one of the turns. The horn ring, perhaps? But no, our health has been steadily declining ever since our triumph in Canterlot, and neither of us know the reason why. The Steward has heard of a healer zebra living in the Everfree…perhaps we should seek her out.

Luna entertained me with some singing in our head. She is quite good…a pity that she never sang in public.

We were being watched the whole way, of course.

As soon as we turned into the service tunnel, our trackers suddenly showed themselves.

“I am unarmed,” I told them simply.

One of the earth ponies scoffed. “No pony with a horn is unarmed,” Scoffer told me.

“Do you feel any magic?” I asked them. “This deep underground, surrounded only by fellow earth ponies, pegasi…” My eye caught a scurrying shape. “…And rats, you’d be able to feel any unicorn’s resting magic. Yet you feel nothing.” I pointed at the ring. “Do you know what this is?”

A pegasus with glasses leaned forward to take a look, touching it gingerly with a wingtip and recoiling at the sudden drain he felt. “Meteoric iron,” he told the others. “They use them on Rycken’s Island to keep the unicorns from breaking out. Once you’ve got one of those on, there’s no way you can use your magic to take it off.”

“You know who I am,” I told them. “I want to help you settle with Management.”

Scoffer barked out a laugh. “Whose side are you on?”

“If I was with Management,” I told them coldly, “I would have tossed down enough smoke bombs to force you out, then sent you all to Ryckens.”

They could not refute my logic.

After allowing myself to be blindfolded (for all the good it would do), I allowed the scouting party to lead me straight to their headquarters, the abandoned station in Whinnyamsburg.

The blindfold was removed, and I found myself facing the entire crowd of strikers, all two hundred of them.

“The Empress! In our power!”

It was One-Eyed Pete, the leader of the Underground Strike.

“She says she wants to settle with Management!” Scoffer cried.

“Settle?” Pete exclaimed incredulously. “After what they did to us?”

“Indeed!” I exclaimed, segueing into the speech. “After what they did to you! They gave their word to look after you all and then held back your pay unless you agreed to a lower salary.”

“Yeah!” the strikers cried in unison, already falling under a spell that had nothing to do with my horn.

“You know what the ponies are saying on the surface?” I asked them. “Nothing! Because the pony who was truly in charge told the papers to keep this story buried. And do you know who that pony was?”

“Who?” the strikers replied.

“Celestia! Celestia loved nothing more than bits and would do anything to make the rich pony richer, and the poor pony poorer. Celestia owns the world, but she doesn’t own us!

Celestia may crack the whip, but she won’t whip us!
And the world will know
And the world will learn
And the world will wonder how we made the tables turn.
And the world will see
That we had to choose
That the things we do today will be tomorrow’s news.”

The strikers took up the song, as if they already knew the words.

“Who is our enemy?” I asked after a couple more verses.

“Celestia!” they cried.

“And who have I vanquished?”

“Celestia!”

“So now you are free! Return to your work, and your raises will follow!”

“Hurrah!” they all cried. They rushed around me, removed the ring, and led me laughing and singing all the way back to Maneway Station.

The Steward watched incredulously as the strikers emerged from the double doors, making their way to the nearest bar.

They would gather at the spot I told them of, in a half-hour’s time.

“The strike is over,” I told her.

“That speech worked?” she asked in bewilderment.

“Of course,” I told her. “It was written by a genius.”

“Yes,” she said absently. “It belongs on Bridleway. Both of them.”

My Vizier helped me into a smart business suit as the carriage crossed town, to Madison Mare Garden. There was the venue for my second speech, and my audience for this one was made up of every single fat-cat unicorn business pony that the strikers hated with a passion.

I stood in the wings, dabbing at my running nose with my hoofkerchief. Eventually I saw blood upon it and had to cast a spell upon myself to staunch the flow of blood.

What was happening to me?

“Mares and Gentlestallions,” the owner of the Garden said as she introduced me, “when the new ruler of Equestria asked for the opportunity to address the ruling class of Manehattan, how was I to say no? So here she is to inform us of our place in her new Equestrian order: the one, the only, Empress Nightmare Moon!”

Having gathered myself and put on a mask of utmost poise, I stepped up the stage with Smudge’s next speech prepared. After using my wings to fade the sycophantic applause, I began. “Madame Cromulent, I appreciate the opportunity to address the better class of ponies in this fine city. You may all call me Nightmare. Empress Nightmare. Now, I could speak of an airy future, but I won’t pull the wool over your eyes.” I began to stride back and forth on the stage, punctuating my points with wing points. “I am not here to indulge in fantasy but in political and economic reality. You all know that I am a pony of the past. And I have to say that, compared to the Equestria I remember, the Equestria of today is a second-rate power!”

“Yeah!” the crowd of executives cried, as my spell once again began to take hold.

“In my day, Equestria didn’t bow down to some lousy dragon lord because one of his dragons set fire to one of our buildings! Equestria used to be a top military power. And a top economic power. The other nations bought our goods, at premium prices, because if they didn’t they would get a visit from our elite royal guard! What are the royal guard today? A bunch of ceremonial ornaments! Celestia had run this country into the ground, following the law of survival of the unfittest. Well in my book you either do it right or you get eliminated!”

“Yeah!” Talk of firings. That always roused Management up.

“The ponies out there,” and I pointed down, at the Underground, “they all think that I’m here to gobble them up, like the lies Celestia spread about me through Nightmare Night.” I put a hoof humbly to my chest. “I am not a gobbler of ponies,” I told them. “I am a liberator of them!

“The point is, mares and gentlestallions, that greed, for lack of a better term, is good.”

The businessponies nearly fell over themselves in delight at hearing their deepest sin raised up as a virtue.

“Greed is right, greed works. Greed, in all its forms: greed for life, for money, for love, for knowledge has marked the upward surge of ponykind. Not the miserable ‘friendship’ of Celestia. There is no gain in friendship, no profit. No greed. And greed, you mark my words, will not only save Manehattan from the strikers, but that other malfunctioning corporation called Equestria. Thank you.”

“Hail Empress Nightmare! Hail Empress Nightmare!”

With a humble bow, I walked down from the stage and down the aisle, ponies applauding me on either side.

Seeing the owner of the Underground Maneway sitting in the back row, I gestured for him to join me in the mezzanine. “Mister Pullet.”

“Yes, Empress?” he asked as he reached my side.

“This strike really needs to end now, Mister Pullet,” I told him. “It’s interfering with intercivic commerce, and as you know that gives me the legal authority to take Manehattan Maneway away from you, with no compensation required.”

“No!”

“Do not worry. I’ve been speaking with the strikers, and I got them to agree to a five percent pay increase. They are waiting outside the doors right now, Mister Pullet. Go out there and give them this concession, and in one month’s time I will provide you with enough magical artifacts to put them out on the street.”

“You…you’d do that for me?”

“I’m a fellow businesspony, Mister Pullet. Plus, it will be good for my magical contractors. My Steward over there will be supplying you with all of the necessary paperwork.”

“Thank you, thank you Empress Nightmare. Both for this, and for delivering us from that awful Celestia.”

“You’re welcome,” I told him graciously. And then directed him towards the doors, where my Steward was waiting. And where the mob might just tear him limb from limb if he failed to placate him.

Either way, it was no longer my problem.

What was our problem, however, was Prince Blueblood. He was blocking our way out of the arena, practically vibrating in place with excitement. “Aunty Nightmare! Your speech was so good! Yet another triumph of persuasion!”

We stood there, saying nothing and hoping he would take the hint and leave.

He didn’t. “I wanted to show you something. Look!” He turned aside to reveal the jumpsuit he was wearing, decorated with large loops of reinforced fabric running from shoulders to haunches, and a parachute on his back. Huge versions of his cutie mark were across his chest and on the back of the parachute pack.

“Have you taken up skydiving, Nephew?” we asked.

“No, better. I’m an air commando!”

“…A what?”

“It’s something I’ve always dreamed about. But Aunt Celestia kept standing in my way. Blabbering on about endangering pony lives. Like that matters compared to the call to adventure!” He gestured dramatically into the air with one hoof.

Then he looked around him in annoyance and gestured to two muscular white pegasi royal guards that were standing behind him. “Bruno! Kirby!” he hissed, arm still outstretched. “That’s your cue!”

With matching bored expressions, the two pegasi stepped forwards and spread their wings, completing the dramatic tableau. “That’s not our names,” the one on the left told him.

“I don’t care!” he said in a sing-song voice.

How rude.

We sighed deeply. “That’s nice, Dear. Now could you go off and be heroic somewhere else? Aunty’s still got work to do.”

“Will do,” Blueblood said enthusiastically. Pointing upwards, he cried, “Carriers, to the skies!”

The two pegasi looked up and saw the skylight. They grabbed ahold of his two straps, and launched themselves right through that skylight, causing glass to fall down everywhere.

With a bored expression, we used a shield spell to keep anypony from getting hurt.

“Don’t worry, everypony! I’m perfectly fine!” the distant voice of Blueblood could be heard, before he was whisked out of sight.

On exiting Madison Mare Garden, I saw Pitch waiting for me in a nearby alley. So, I cast a Don’t Notice Me spell upon myself and joined him.

“I’m sorry if you saw that business with my nephew. He’s an idiot,” I explained. I took off my tacky business suit and donned my regalia.

“He’s nobility,” Pitch remarked. “Of course he’s an idiot.”

“So, did you see the show?”

“Yeah, I saw it and let me say this: That was insane. It didn’t even look like a spell. Did you brainwash them?”

“I merely re-wrote their memories to make them hate Celestia.”

“So, they’re not your slaves now?”

“Oh, I wish!” I exclaimed. “No, I can only do that with individuals. And even then, it has some unpleasant side effects.”

“Like what?” Pitch asked.

“Like Prince Blueblood. He was the first time I cast the spell in the modern era, and in breaking his will I apparently also removed his inhibitions. There…there was a perfect version of the spell, but unfortunately its creator was driven mad before I could get it out of her.”

“Still…Making everypony hate the ex-Princess will be enough to get you everything you want, right?”

“Life is but a dream,” I told him with a smile. “It’s good to be the dreamer. Now tell me: what do you think of my rule so far?”

“Well,” said Pitch, thinking. “Most ponies are wary of you.”

“I will accept that,” I said, conveying Luna’s thought. She would have preferred to be loved, but she could accept wariness.

“And you use that memory-altering power of yours on the movers and shakers during your rallies. Like the rally in Canterlot. You plan to do those for every city?”

I nodded indulgently. “And some of the more influential towns as well.”

“And then there’s those medallions your inner circle wears.”

I smiled, seeing that Pitch was clearly interested. “The Moon Medallion,” I said. “Do you know what they do?”

“Well, I kept my distance when I saw one of your ponies using it, but it seemed to change ponies' minds.”

“Exactly,” I said with a sinister smile. “My followers can use them to make any pony in earshot think whatever they want them to think.” I didn’t tell him of the limitations: that the implanted thoughts couldn’t lead to physical harm of either the victim or anypony else. And that those thoughts only last as long as the victim is in earshot of the wearer of the medallion, afterwards fading away so the victim doesn’t realize that she was manipulated.

Pitch stroked his chin appreciatively. “Can I get one of those?” he asked cautiously.

“I don’t know,” I said with a smirk. “Each Medallion stores a complete record of every time it is used. A record that I can then review. Do you think you could stop yourself from using it for your own personal gain?”

Pitch blanched. His entire lifestyle revolved around getting away with any- and everything.

I laughed. “I didn’t think so. No Moon Medallion for you.”

“That…that’s alright. So…the rallies. The Medallions. The ‘personal treatment’. It’s an entire government based on brainwashing.” He shook his head incredulously.

“Do you have a problem with that?” I asked.

I knew that Luna didn’t have a problem. Her misery had come from ponies turning against her, siding with her sister. If she could not convince ponies to love her, then she was fine with manipulatingthem into loving her.

“No, it’s brilliant,” said Pitch. And then he had a new thought, one that read my own mind. “And picking that one lie to put into their heads at the rally, that Celestia was an awful pony. It’s perfect. Everypony already thought of her as all-powerful. So she could easily be responsible for every single misery in their lives. You don’t have to force ponies to love you after they buy that lie, because it comes automatically: You toppled the evil Celestia. Therefore, you are their messiah.”

“You left out one last part,” I prompted him.

“Ah yes, the ‘personal touch’. The only tool where you can force your victim to do absolutely anything, no matter how abhorrent. You save that for the ponies who fall through the net: the ones who aren’t happy letting things be, who aren’t affected by the rallies, and who catch the lies told by your followers. They have a strong will, perhaps? Would…if I wasn’t under your protection, would I…?”

“You’d believe my lies instantly,” I told him coldly. Then comforted him with some wisdom: “I can’t allow any strong-willed ponies in my administration, Pitch. There is only one pony running Equestria. There can be no question of this. I value you for many qualities, Pitch. But that is not among them.

“Having divined my master plan, where do you think you are best able to serve me?”

“Oh!” he exclaimed, pulling out a notepad. “Right now, my job is to help you identify which ponies fell through the net. At the rally just now, I noticed that there were some ponies who weren’t affected.”

“I counted five,” I replied.

“Yes, five,” Pitch said, consulting his notes before winging them over to me. “Here are their coloration and cutie marks. Except for the one blank flank. A yellow earth pony filly who was there with her aunt and uncle. But she’s got a distinctive pink bow in her mane, so she shouldn’t be any trouble to track down.”

“Don’t bother with the filly,” I told him. “There’s always at least one at each of my rallies who’s immune. Nopony listens to foals—not in my time, and not now.” I looked over the list. “Very good!” I exclaimed, both for this and his earlier analysis. “I think I’ll convince a couple of executives that they owe their lives to you. Do with them as you will.”

“Really? Thank you, Your Excellency.”

Pitch had a really good abject bow. We found it to be one of his best traits.

Then I took a look at those notes and saw something I really didn’t like.

A few minutes later I was showing Pitch’s list to my Vizier. “You see these two marks?”

“The gray equals signs?” she asked.

“Both ponies had the same mark, and they were identical. Do you recognize it?”

“No. Should I?”

I shook my head in disappointment, causing her to wilt. Typical.

“That mark is illegal,” I told her.

“What are you going to do?”

“Let’s just say that these two ponies are going to be graced by a personal appearance by the Empress.”