“Now that’s what a stallion’s supposed to look like.”
“Is that really him?”
“Who else could it be?”
“Prince Blueblood,” breathed River, only half-cognizant of what Spoiled, Pixie, and Upper Crust were saying. She was too busy trying to comprehend how big of an opportunity this was. It was one thing to bring back a few rich ponies the way Lex had wanted. It would be something else altogether to bring back royalty. This, she felt certain, was exactly the sort of thing that would motivate Lex to give her the reward she so desperately wanted!
While River knew that Canterlot was far outside of her zone of influence – something the high-society ponies there had taken great pains to remind her of when she’d attempted to break through their ranks to secure an age spell to restore her youth – she was familiar with the city’s power structure. And the royals sat at the very top of it. For that matter, they sat at the very top of the social hierarchy for all of Equestria. That was what it meant to be royalty.
Of course, that also made being royalty the ultimate goal for everypony who wanted to advance their station. But reaching that lofty level was virtually impossible. Such a status could, River knew, only be secured in one of three ways.
The first was to become an alicorn, since that status seemed to automatically confer royalty on those few who achieved it. Indeed, “alicorn fever” had briefly swept through Equestria’s collective social climbers shortly after Princess Cadance’s ascension, with everyone wanting to know how it had been done. After all, prior to that the only alicorn anyone had known (since Nightmare Moon had long since been relegated to being a mythical figure associated with Nightmare Night celebrations) was Princess Celestia, and she had been a fixture of Equestria for so long that everypony had come to take her for granted. But the excitement of realizing that alicornhood – and royalty – was theoretically possible had quickly petered out when it became apparent that not only did no one know how to turn that theory into a reality, they weren’t even sure how to start investigating the process.
When Princess Celestia gently but firmly rejected all requests to study Princess Cadance (no one had dared ask the same of Celestia herself), the entire subject had quietly been mothballed. Even Twilight Sparkle’s transformation had been insufficient to renew interest in the subject; by that point, most of Equestria had – rightly or wrongly – decided that ponies who became alicorns were, for all intents and purposes, in the right place at the right time. Like trying to figure out where and when a meteor would strike, it was simply impossible to predict.
The second way of becoming royalty was, on its face, much simpler: to declare yourself as such. But while that sounded easy, in its own way that was almost as hard as becoming an alicorn. While anypony could say that they were royalty, not just anypony could make that mean something, and without force and effect the title was just a title. A royal who had no subjects and no place to rule – or, at least, the patronage of another royal with those things – was just a pony playing pretend.
And since Equestria already had royalty who ruled over it – which included Prince Blueblood; while he might not have been an alicorn, he could directly trace his lineage back to Princess Platinum, one of the founders of Equestria; more importantly, Princess Celestia had publicly declared him to be her nephew, legitimizing his claims of royalty despite not actually sharing blood with him – that meant that anypony who wanted to claim rulership over any part of it either had to receive acknowledgment from the existing royals, or take control of part of the land and be able to stand against them when they responded to such a flagrant challenge to their authority. Insofar as most ponies knew, only King Sombra had ever attempted such a thing, and he’d paid the price for it. At least until Lex Legis had come along…
Which left only one way that an ordinary pony could ever hope to become royalty: marriage.
That particular avenue to social supremacy was one that quite a few ponies were interested in, and had been ever since Princess Cadance’s marriage nearly a year ago. Prior to that, everypony had simply assumed that the new princess would be like Celestia (and Luna, after she’d returned and reestablished herself): living a life that was austere in its celibacy. For all the jokes that ordinary ponies made about the alicorns having proclivities that they kept out of sight for the sake of their public image, no one had taken such things seriously. As such, it had shocked the social establishment when Princess Cadance made it known that she was betrothed, since it had been clear to everypony that her husband would become a prince in his own right.
After that, Equestria’s elites had taken a very keen interest in Princess Twilight and Prince Blueblood. While a few expected that a marriage between the two of them was only a matter of time – who was a better partner for royalty than royalty? – most other ponies eschewed that idea. Mostly because it would mean that they were out of the running. And if most ponies knew that they had no real chance of marrying either of the pair that were now Equestria’s most eligible bachelor and bachelorette, then they at least wanted to comfort themselves with the idea that it was still possible.
But looking at the handsome prince now, River was less concerned with his marriageability than she was with his money.
If the possibility of marrying into royalty was something that was too remote for most class-conscious ponies to seriously pin their hopes on, then access was the next best thing. Everypony who was anypony wanted to have friends in high places, and there wasn’t anyone higher than royalty. To that end, there was a constant level of jockeying that went on with regards to who could lavish the most favors on them, all in hope of buying their way closer to the pinnacle of power in Equestria.
The end result was that money simply wasn’t a concern for royalty, since there was always somepony eagerly waiting to pick up the tab. Fancy Pants was the preeminent example, there. During her all-too-brief time in Canterlot, River had found it to be an open secret that the unicorn stallion paid for everything where the princesses’ castle was concerned. Upkeep and maintenance, foodstuffs and furniture, the salaries of everypony who worked there; Fancy Pants paid for it all. It cost a fantastic amount of money, something he had in abundance thanks to his owning the city’s most lucrative airship dockyards, but it guaranteed that he had access to the princesses virtually whenever he wanted…and so was practically royalty himself.
And if Blueblood were to, say, go to Vanhoover and write a certain pony an I.O.U. for an obscenely large amount of money, Fancy Pants or some other rich pony would rush to pay it…
“You’re drooling,” giggled Pixie, elbowing River lightly and snapping her out of her thoughts.
“Can you blame her?” snorted Spoiled, taking a large sip of something that she’d snagged from a passing server. “Just look at the flank on him. Pure thoroughbred.”
“I’m sure she was just admiring his cutie mark,” snickered Upper Crust, turning her head to look at the blue-and-gold compass rose on the prince’s haunch. “Celestia knows I could stare at it for hours,” she murmured, her voice captivated.
“You’re all incorrigible,” laughed River. “You have husbands, you know.”
Out of her periphery she saw Pixie’s face fall, but didn’t have a chance to think about that as Spoiled snorted. “So does Princess Cadance, but I’ve heard that she likes to have ‘royal summits’ with the prince here whenever she’s in Canterlot.”
“You don’t think Shining Armor would have something to say about that?” asked River, despite being certain that Spoiled hadn’t heard anything of the sort.
Her question earned her a lopsided smirk from the other mare. “What makes you think she doesn’t bring him along?”
“Spoiled!” giggled Upper Crust, holding a hoof over her mouth bashfully. “That’s terrible!” Glancing around, she lowered her voice. “But if she did, you know where one of them would have to stick it!”
Spoiled and Upper Crust both tittered at that, with River joining in to be polite, but Pixie didn’t seem to find the idea funny. “You shouldn’t say things like that,” she murmured, eyes downcast.
“Oh, it’s all in good fun,” protested Upper Crust smoothly, waving a hoof as though to bat Pixie’s objection away.
“Besides, it’s not like Her Royal Flooziness is here to be upset by it,” added Spoiled. “She’s too busy playing with that weird sex cult she started up in the Crystal Empire. Who knows what they’re doing there now?”
But Pixie wouldn’t be put off, frowning as she gave Spoiled an unhappy look. “That doesn’t mean it’s okay to say all those awful things about her,” she insisted. “Rumors can take on a life of their own, and even if you don’t mean to you can really end up hurting somepony’s feelings if they find out about…about…” She choked up then, turning away as she rubbed a foreleg over her eyes, sniffling.
Their good time ruined, Spoiled and Upper Crust shared a look. “Yes, well…I really should be going,” announced the latter pony. “I’m afraid I’m just rubbish at roulette. Maybe trying my hoof at dice would be better. Spoiled, River, would you care to join me?”
“Certainly,” huffed Spoiled, giving Pixie a sour look. “Honestly, if I wanted to listen to some little girl have a tantrum, I’d have my husband bring our daughter back from that summer camp he sent her to.”
“I’m actually going to stay here,” announced River, ignoring the disapproving looks the other two sent her. “I’m doing rather well, and wouldn’t want to walk away before my luck runs out.” That was true, though in fact what she’d said had nothing to do with roulette. Rather, it had to do with location.
Gladmane’s casino was split-level in design, with the front of the place being open from the second-story ceiling down to ground level while the back half had two stories. Gladmane’s office, River knew, was right where the second floor terminated, making way for the openness of the front half of the building. With the entire back wall made out of glass, it was easy for him to look over the entrance to the place at his leisure…and let anyone down there look back up.
Being in the front half of the casino, the roulette tables were therefore perfectly suited for River’s needs, since she just had to glance upward to see when Gladmane and Blueblood would be leaving. That, she knew, would be the perfect time to make her move, bumping into them “on accident” as they were concluding their business; doing so before that would run the risk of irritating them both at the interruption, and she needed to start things off on the right hoof. That wouldn’t be possible if she was sequestered at the dice tables in the back of the building, far away from where she’d be able to see Gladmane’s office.
Of course, that meant blowing off Spoiled Rich and Upper Crust, but given that she’d just met them a few minutes ago, River honestly couldn’t have cared less about that.
“Oh, well…best of luck then,” smiled Upper Crust awkwardly, clearly surprised by the rejection. Spoiled didn’t even pretend to be happy at being rebuffed, simply lifting her nose in the air as she walked away.
For her part, River had already turned her attention back to the roulette table, placing another bet as she surreptitiously kept an eye on the glass wall of Gladmane’s office. The paunchy stallion had just settled into the chair behind his desk, which meant that Blueblood was still in the room with him…
“I’m sorry if I was a spoilsport,” murmured Pixie, turning back around at last. “I just…I couldn’t sit there and listen to those two talk like that about somepony they don’t even know. Not after everything that’s happened.”
“I can only imagine,” replied River half-heartedly, trying to pay attention to the roulette table, Gladmane’s office, and Pixie all at once. “You must have had a hard time of it.”
“Yeah…” Flagging down a server, Pixie grabbed a drink, brushing her mane back over her shoulder absentmindedly. “River, listen…I know we only met a few times when you were here before, but…do you think we could go somewhere and talk? I could really use a friend right now.” She raised her glass to her lips then, draining it in a single gulp. Her hoof was trembling as she put it down. “Jack Pot and I, we’re…we’re getting a divorce.”
“Pixie! Oh, you poor dear!” Reaching out, she pulled the other mare into a hug, taking the opportunity to turn her eyes up toward Gladmane’s office again. There was no telling how long they’d be in there, which meant that she’d need to stay where she was until they were finished. “I have a better idea. Why don’t we stay right here? I think a few drinks and a winning streak at roulette will be exactly what you need to lift your spirits.”
“Here?” Pixie blinked, clearly surprised by the counteroffer. “I don’t know. I’m not feeling very lucky right now.”
“Trust me,” smiled River. “I am, and I’ll be right here with you for as long as you need.”
At least until she had her chance to get what she wanted.