Gilda felt her eyes burning and watering.
"No, no," Gilda found herself saying. "I didn't mean - I didn't intend - please stop?"
The bat-hen started hiccupping.
The princess wouldn't stop crying, and Gilda couldn't stop herself babbling, and hiccupping, and heaving. The white-coated hoofmaiden was back, and she'd brought two of her. Their hooves dragged the frantic griffon out of that disaster-zone of a sitting room, and Gilda found herself, found herself -
Why was she crying? She never cried! She was a free bird of Griffonstone! She ate lead slugs and spat dragonfire!
Why couldn't she stop?
The twin blonde mares pushed her into an even whiter space, and between the wavering liquid wobble which were thick greasy griffon-tears, Gilda blinked and blinked until she saw that she was sitting in a chair in the kitchen. The sobs were fading, but she felt sick, and the hiccups weren't going away.
Gilda looked around, wildly, trying to stop the unfamiliar feelings. It was a very well-stocked kitchen. The General Staff's Intelligence Section apparently ate well.
She heaved and gasped, confused by these new, unpleasant sensations. The tendency to tear up had been beaten out of her at a young age, as they were from all griffons of a certain social standing. It felt like she was about to be gutted, or drowned, or beaten by her thunderously frowning old mother, and the sickness was joined by a sudden jolting fear. Her mother! Her mother, who, in her memories, was suddenly, astonishingly, caught like a flash of light in the darkness, tear-streaked and confused. The day…
The day Grampa Gruff finally died. How had Gilda forgotten that? She remembered now, viscerally, painfully, how she and her mother had wept for the old bird's last rattles. How her mother had plotted through her angry tears their escape from the hovel they'd been hiding in, the second such hovel they'd hidden in since they'd been driven from the mansion. The first, after the great wave of fighting had left the mansions painted in her cousins' blood. The second, after the assassins had found Gruff in that back alley, and one of them had followed him back to that first hiding place. And then, after they'd hidden his broken body in that second squalid sanctuary, far from the first… he'd been so long dying.
Gilda remembered as if she was hearing it for the first time, her mother whispering father's forbidden name, the prematurely aged hen dashing away her tears and pulling out the valises for their latest bolt into the night.
They'd left Grampa Gruff's corpse cooling for the land-hen to find.
"There, there, dearie. Are you back to us yet?" asked one of the two - no, three white mares. She smiled at Gilda as if nothing at all was wrong in her world. "Close proximity to dear Cadenza sometimes takes a pony like that. You hit her hard, too. I'm guessing denial, what do you think, Livery?"
"I think Hotspur will know best, Mirror. But yes, it's usually denial that hurts the worst. Ever since that assassin that Uncle Bullion sent in her first year with us."
"Oh, Hidden Blade?" said the third pony, as blissfully even as the others, all of them wearing the same unsettling smile. "Personally, I think Cadance trapped that silly fool in depression. Catatonia, don't you know. But who could imagine it, an assassin named something so on the nose. How he lasted long enough to try for a princess of all things, I never will know. And such a fool! Did he think the wings and horn were for show?"
"Well, whatever might be the case, it couldn't have been that bad, our patient is still conscious. You are with us, dearie?"
"Yes, I hear you," replied Gilda, clawing for self-mastery. "Wait, what are you talking about? What effect?"
"Oh, lovely. You'll be fine. Sometimes, dear Cadenza turns her regard on a pony, and it can be… a powerful effect. She's an alicorn, after all, is our Cadenza."
"Aunt Celestia moves all the heavens, the sun and the moon," said one of the others. "Did you think that our darling little sister couldn't move ponies?"
"Well, Cadance isn't exactly Sol Invictus, is she?" asked a fourth as she came bustling into the kitchen. "Serene, she needs you, why don't you go and help little Twilight with the princess?"
One of the three grouped around Gilda got up and walked out without a word, smiling beatifically.
"Hotspur, one of the reasons I encouraged this trip was to get Cadance away from that assassin's bed. Visiting the pony that tried to kill you, every week. It's morbid, isn't it?" What Gilda found morbid was the way this pony said these things, without a single change in her calm, smiling face. None of them were - it was like they were reading from scripts.
"But that is our Cadenza, isn't it?" said the one holding Gilda's talon in an iron grip, calmly stroking her back with her other fore-hoof. "She may lock you into an eternal reverie, but she'll still feel for your fate. Poor dear, she simply will not ever let go."
"That's our job, isn't it, Mirror? Letting go. Shouldn't you?"
"Oh, dear me, my apologies, dearie. Didn't mean to colonize your personal space like that."
"Mirror," said the first pony, still holding her tone and expression as if the - sister? - had simply made a mild joke.
"What, are we not allowed to joke about our brutal occupation of her homeland?"
"Th-the Isles aren't my homeland, Lady - you are a lady?" Gilda would not be treated by these - nobleponies? - treated like a wounded or pampered cat.
"Ah. Did nopony introduce ourselves to the little kitty-bird?" The speaker was half a head shorter than Gilda, who was no giant among her kind. "Little one, I am Lady Livery, oldest foal of the late Princess Electrum, scion of the House of Platinum. I would have, in my time, been princess in my turn, if it weren't, well, for the lack of a horn. You see before you my darling little sisters Hotspur and Mirror, likewise disappointments to our ancient and royal blood. Sister Serene is attending to our dearest of littlest sisters, our beloved Cadance."
Royals! Gilda was surrounded by royals! They'd eat her alive!
Wait, they were all grazers, and earth pony grazers at that. Gilda looked around herself, alarmed but confused.
"Personally," one of them was saying, "it was that madpony Minister Pants I wanted to get Cadenza away from, Livery. They were never good for each other."
"Fancy Pants. Tooling around in that gold-chased wheelchair of his, refusing all medical magic to fix his hurts. As if he was the only pony to ever suffer."
"And mourning, mourning his dead whore."
"Hotspur."
"Well, she was. None of them were even betrothed, were they?"
"We say so after the fact, regardless of the facts. You're not supposed to talk ill of the dead, Hotspur."
"I don't see how the dead could possibly care."
"Well, Cadance's love for poor Shining Armor was real, that much is true."
"I wasn't calling Lieutenant Armor a whore, Livery."
"She wasn't suggesting that you were, Hotspur."
The three mares sighed, looking placidly but steady-eyed at each other, each looking each other in the face. Then one turned to meet Gilda's eyes.
"Oh, dearie," said… Gilda thought it was Hotspur, but wasn't sure. They kept shifting about in the kitchen. "The look on your face. Have we scandalized you? Oh, yes, we've heard about you. There's been talk of you in our little household. The griffon whom the little vengeful Twilight Sparkle is willing to employ, let alone tolerate. We've seen the reports, the same as our darling little sister. Not that she pays much attention. That's what she has us for, isn't that so, sisters?"
The other two nodded, calmly. The subject matter had turned suddenly, from quarrelsome to alarmingly personal, but the amiable cheer never left any of their smiling faces.
"Gilda de Griffonstone, captured last year as part of an infiltration attempt by yet another little band of Griffonstonian illegals. Forcibly recruited into dear little Twilight Sparkle's little social project, one of the Griffish Territorial Battalions. Nominally the battalion of one Dinky Doo, beloved by-blow of… well, let's not gossip about others. Especially not when they're so heroically dead. The dear child looked so charming in her regimentals at her grandmares, didn't she? Old Golden Dawn is so proud of her grandfilly, and she should be. Such a darling."
"Not charming enough for the House of Greenspire to acknowledge properly."
"Oh, hush, Hotspur, not every noble house is matrilineal." So, not Hotspur. Livery? "You've been a strikingly loyal trooper, Gilda de Griffonstone. Surprisingly so, given your apparent antecedents. And reports that I've seen just this afternoon suggest that you've been truly loyal, or else I would have never allowed you access to our darling little sister.
"You see, the House of Platinum has a great deal of experience with alicorns, born into the family, and adopted into it. We have had our successes, and our failures, but never have we been as weak as we are today. Our parents had such high hopes for all of us, and we each of us failed them, one after the other. For the longest time, we thought that little Bluey would be the solution to all of our problems, the one success that redeemed all of our shortcomings, but he failed in his turn. Such a disappointment.
"But Platinum adopts as well as gives birth, and Celestia brought us a princess, to redeem all of our despairing failures. A beautiful, wonderful little filly, good-hearted and true, sad, it is true, mournful, it was as expected, a pony who had ascended in such tragic circumstances. Of course we clasped her to our bosoms, and held her in our hearts.
"And we thought we were doing well, for all of her crotchets. She found a young colt, and he seemed like he'd bring her out of her gloom. So lovely together. Even Aunt Celly approved of the match, for Aunt Celly reasons, no doubt, but beggars can't be choosers.
"And then the bombings happened, and all of our good work, ruined. If we had any rage left to us in those moments, you can be sure, we would have been first among the crowd crying for griffon blood.
"Lucky for you. We had been drained of all grief before that moment, and we four were able to offer dear Cadance a sort of… ballast, to keep her from tipping over in those troubled seas. And though she raged against your race, and poisoned hundreds, perhaps thousands with anger in the weeks after the bombings, it could have been worse. And now, today, she feels so much guilt over her part in the beat of war, the cries for vengeance and bloody-hooved retribution."
"Well, when Fancy Pants isn't breathing fire, death and damnation in her ears," said Hotspur, cheerfully.
"Well, all that is over and done with," continued one of them. "We are here because Cadance is here, whatever our other purposes that Cadance doesn't share in. And Cadance wants the dying to end."
"She feels it, even in Canterlot she feels it," said the third.
"She feels it even as she mirrors anger and denial and grief," said Hotspur, so gripped by the thought that there was almost a wrinkle upon that unnaturally smooth brow. Although Gilda might have been imagining that wrinkled brow, it went away so quickly.
"You see," said one of the others, looking kindly at Gilda. "She doesn't really control her effect upon others. She tries, oh bless her she tries. But she's a pony like any other. And her beau, that lovely colt, if he hadn't died, oh I can't imagine where we might be today. But he died, and here we are, and here you are. And we didn't start this, we didn't."
"Those madgriffons, those were the ones at fault," continued Hotspur. "We didn't start the fire, but poor Cadenza, she blames herself for everypony burnt in the blaze."
Gilda was just starting to feel up to the task of extracting herself from this nest of madponies when she heard the sound of raised voices in the hall, muffled by the closed kitchen door. They didn't really have any time to react before a tall white horned stallion burst through said door, fuming.
"-nopony says a word, nopony sends a letter, nopony even bothers to notify me that my entire family is about to descend upon my city!"
"Bluey," said the fourth white mare, following at the stallion's heels, "Dearie, calm down. We would have sent a letter, or a pony, or-"
"It's bad enough they won't give me my necessary ponies in this harmony-forsaken stinking mouth of Hades, and that they wouldn't give me the keys to this suite as was my due. Look at how shabby everything is! This degenerate generation refuses to give the royal house our proper support and maintenance, it's because Aunt Celly refuses to treat them all like the peasants and serfs they truly are!"
"Bluey, really," murmured one of the hoofmaidens already in the kitchen. "Serfdom has been abnegated since the days of Platinum. There are certain grudges the keeping of which only makes us ridiculous. Let it go. And how have you been, my dear little north star?"
"Hotspur! So you all are here! I heard the report, but didn't credit it. Still following in the Pink Watering-Can's train? All four of you, look at that. I get deployed to the savage end of creation, and none of you could be bothered to come visit, or send one of our retainers, or even the occasional care package. But the Widow of Mysteries gets it into her weepy pink head to come visit the front lines, and it's the whole bloody house here in bloody-hoofed Trottingham!"
"My dear," one of the white mares turned to say to Gilda, she thought maybe it was Livery, "may we introduce to you our dear little brother, the hope of our house, our pole star, Prince Major Blueblood, sixth of his name?"
"Livery!" barked the tall blonde unicorn, looking incensed, "what are you thinking in that head of yours to introduce a prince to this griffish peasant? A ranker, from her looks, indeed! You, you ragamuffin, get out of my house's kitchen and our rooms entirely, unless you're here to cook for my adopted headache of a little sister, in which case, get out anyways, we don't need her getting used to the filth they call cuisine here in the barbarous hinterlands!"
"Bluey. You can't speak to the Princess's guests this way, any more than you can to Aunt Celly's guests and generals. This is why you're still a major, and exiled out here in the war-torn provinces."
"Be silent, Hotspur! Mares! I swear, mares always make a mess of things. Well, I'm here now, and I'll put this mess to rights. "
"No. No you will not," said an iron-willed voice from behind them all.
Gilda turned to look, and there was the princess, back in the pink, and her mane rippling with fury. Gleaming Shield was looking over the princess's shoulder with a strange mix of disgust, concern, and fury. Gilda couldn't tell how much of that was aimed her way, and how much towards the clearly insufferable prince major.
"Corporal Gilda, your Captain requires your services. And I have my… brother to discuss matters with. My apologies for the earlier misunderstanding, we will have to talk later, when tempers are cooled. For now, I clearly need my Anger, for there are matters I must, as Bluey says, take in hoof. Good evening, Corporal, Twilight."
Gilda bowed in a loose approximation of a courtesy she half-remembered from a half-forgotten book, and scrambled around the incensed princess, who was advancing with fire in her eyes at her apparent adopted brother.
"Captain ma'am! Time to regroup, I'll secure our lines of communication!"
"Gilda, for once in your life, shut your bloody beak and follow me," seethed Gleaming Shield, clearly smarting at the use of her forbidden name. "I think everypony has more than enough to think about. Sufficient unto the evening is the evil thereof. Go on, go!"
One of the blonde sisters followed Gilda and her officer as they fell back to the hallway.
"Gilda de Griffonstone. We all have put great hopes in you. We trust those hopes will not betrayed.
"Do not betray them. Have a nice day." The steady-eyed royal bowed, never breaking eye-contact with Gilda.
The bat-hen escaped the royal vipers' nest, her captain covering her retreat.
I will be honest here, this chapter is kinda a mess, I wasn’t shure where the flash back ended first of all maby put the flashback in italics or something? I’m personally not shure, secondly I had no idea where gilda is, is she in a room somewhere? her surroundings need a little more detail . other than that it’s a good chapter
...Those are some disturbing as heck identical sisters.
One wonders how much inbreeding is still done when a family gets such results . .
Wow, so Blueblood has quadruplet older sisters, and as earth ponies they are automatically disinherited? I'm surprised Celestia still allows that.
Now in addition to Blueblood, I'd wager his sisters could understand George.
It's hard to imagine Fancy Pants as a war-monger, but if they took Fleure I guess I could see it.
This explains a lot.
Oh, Cadence... that's power is such a curse.
I had to read this twice.
Not as much out of confusion, but to make sure I got this right.
And this, this is why cadence is a threat unlike any of them. That poison, that emotional control. Oh, how you can do such creatively destructive things. And how. There is so much said, without words here. And honestly, it speaks volumes that you can use pony as an insult and be fully in the right.
Say what you will on the instigation. But this point, yeah, if gilda has any self preservation instincts left, a body bags about the safest spot for her. Or prison. A quick death for desertion at least.
So far, I just don't see the ponies as worth redeeming. Sad to think of. Twilight, you understand. The rest, for how much of a grenade primed they are. No. Just no.
But we'll see, what wins. Loyalty, Freedom, or gilda hopefully and actually breaking things properly so that ponykind is actually forced into admitting what they've done.
9306802
Not disinherited, exactly. They are still considered part of the house. More they are disallowed to hold full power and authority. It indicates that they have to be a unicorn in order to the full noble title. Should one of them have a unicorn off-spring, that one will still be a valid member of the family and allowed to hold the family title. Although, they indicate that the house is dwindling, so it may well be moot.
As for Celestia, while she may have expressed a dislike for the practice, she would likely not interfere in the matter too directly. More so since this is a house that has been around since Equestria's founding.
Yeah ... There is a reason we killed off most of the royals.
Not sure if Gilda is ready for that weight.
WHAT IS GOING ON
How much gunpowder does Gilda have stashed away? Hopefully enough to kill off those sisters, " Bluey ", and Cadance. It seems that that would solve MANY problems.
Dead royals can't fu@# up your life, after all.
9306976
Europe disagrees. In the wrong place, at the wrong time, a single dead royal can fuck up everyone's lives.
No, they didn't light it, but they tried to fight it.
And, see, that's precisely why you aren't getting "your due," Bluey. And thank heavens for that, as by the sound of it, had it been left to you, everyone would probably be in way hotter water than they already are, and no one needs that. By the sounds of it, this situation already got blown way out of proportion to begin with, no one needs the likes of you pushing it further.
Please don't. Seriously, you've only had a handful of dialogue thus far and I already hate you with every fiber of my being. Maybe we'll get lucky and a griffon sniper will score one on you.
Oh, the fact she has to force out that word "brother" is so telling...
Well that's...ominous.
Anyway, this slew of new information definitely gives me a waaaaaaay better idea of just what the hey happened to put things the way they are. Like Twilight, it seems clear Cadance reacted to the bombings by lashing out, but while that obviously wasn't wise, I can't in good conscious blame her too much. The fact she seems filled with the want to backpedal from that and instead make amends tells me that she's nowhere near beyond recovery, and I hold more hope for her than I did when she was initially introduced. It also gives me renewed hope for Twilight by association...though I think Twi's got much farther to go before she reaches that spot.
Cadance's sisters weird me out a little, and I'm not sure I get what the deal is with their...manner of behavior, but I also have no grievances with them, as they at least made it clear that they've been trying to do damage control from the start, suggesting they don't approve of what happened, they just aren't in a position of power from which they can do something more worthwhile about it.
"Bluey" we can do without though. Can we get rid of Bluey? Like, have him in the line of fire of the next griffon rebel ambush? Or at least just get him the heck out of the way where he can't harm...basically everything, including himself (whether he realizes it or not)? Please?
Dinky's their fearless colonel, eh? Honestly, I wasn't expecting you to follow up on that, let alone with such a pertinent detail, but hey, I won't complain.
9306888
I'm not surprised that Celestia hasn't outlawed it, but she's giving House Platinum the incredible honor of adopting and raising an alicorn (I guarantee every other Canterlot Noble family would have happily killed for that privilege). That's kind of an endorsement of the current incarnation of the house, demoting earth ponies and all.
9307133
On that point, it may have been a "lesser of two evils" thing, where that house was the best house she could've entrusted such a duty with.
To be honest, it often sounds to me that the nobility both in and out of canon in Equestria are...not good ponies. Barring the odd and rare exception.
9307073
WWI, anyone?
Wow, lots of plot informations in there. Not sure how much is plot related and how much is to flesh out this world. Meat on the bone or something like that.
And those sisters are Sociopath with a capital S. Were they like that since the bigining or its over-exposure from Cadence that did this? At least Blue Blood seems to not share their fate. But damn that pony is unfuriating. You should make him see some real combat, that could help pull that humongeous stick up his arse a little.
But I think I want to see him again in this story. Lots of thing can be done with such character.
9307135 Fanon nobility as a group are a bunch of incompetent sociopaths. In canon however, there's really no evidence of that, except for Fancy Pants being kind of sleazy and Blueblood not liking mares he thinks are gold-diggers.
9307073
Especially since Ferdinand was one of Serbia's staunchest allies in the Austro-Hungarian court. I would imagine that offing Cadance, a high-ranking royal who is endorsing peace, would have horrifically similar results. Ponies wouldn't simply be calling for war after that; they'd be calling for genocide.
9307194
In canon, most of the upper-class are generally portrayed as very sleazy, uptight, and self-righteous stuffed shirts, and that would include any and all nobility, so it may not be outright stated in canon...but it is heavily implied. There's a reason why all the fanon jumped on the idea that the nobility are all grade A jerks--the show doesn't exactly refute it.
9307226 Not really, the impression of the nobility comes mostly from "Sweet and Elite," where most of the Canterlot Elite were rather stuffy, but harmless, and participated in charity fundraisers.
I think most of the fanon jumping on the idea of the nobility as almost all jerks comes from popular portrayals of the nobility in other media. Basically they gave nobles all the worst qualities on display from both Downton Abbey and Game of Thrones simultaneously.
9307333
In reviewing a full list of all the episodes in the show to date, I would still argue there have been more instances where it's been hinted than that, as well as point out that public thought among the average pony citizen seems to be that this is what they expect from them more often than not. It may not translate directly to them being flat-out monsters in the worst-case like "Bluey" here, but I feel there is an argument to be made that they are only a few short trots away from it.
But at this point we're more arguing semantics and personal opinions anyway. More important to this fanfic is how exactly it's version of the nobility may or may not mess up an already bad situation and if anything can be done to prevent it.
9307354 That's a good point. The nobility here seem to have all joined the military, and nobles may have ranks much higher than their experience and training dictates, like the British in WW1. On the other hand, Blueblood has been contained by the military, so they may have a handle on the nobles.
And honestly, I'm curious about what other episodes you'd even review, we don't often see ponies who could plausibly be nobility. There's Best Night Ever, where all the guests except Blueblood are well-behaved, and some guests at the Equestrian Games, who just sit there. Other than Fancy Pants himself being kind of sleazy again, the other delegates in Princess Spike are pretty clearly not nobles.
9307398
From other evidence, the delegates mostly seem to be mayors and other local leaders of this city and that. Fancy Pants' presence suggests he's some species of alcalde or mayor. Given Canterlot's deliberate old-world elite status, it isn't too far outside of the realm of possibility that he's Cantelot's Lord Mayor, which isn't technically a noble title, but does give you a courtesy title.
It is possible to construct a headcanon where Equestria has no nobility other than the royals. The only other named 'noble' is a guy named Earl Grey who works in a Canterlot cafe. But given Lauren Faust's apparent intention to contrast Canterlot noble stuffiness and regimentation against Ponyville's peasant individualism and free-spiritedness, I'd say that a headcanon with some limited degree of nobility is more in the initial spirit of the show. Today? Neighsay is definitely a tacking back to the old Faust days of the capital as the font of archaic old-world traditions. His EEA is exactly the sort of feudal-remnant 'even the sovereign can't tell us to set aside our traditions in our own little baliwick' refusal to budge on privileges and old 'rights'.
9307462 And, like buffoonish nobles, Neighsay is also a tribute to a classic British Trope: The incredibly cruel headmaster.
I can just see him telling students, "If you don't eat yer hay, you can't have any pudding. How can you
have any pudding if you don't eat yer hay?"
Nice bit of foreshadowing for Gilda there
Mein Got, but Cadance's "sisters" are creepy as all hell!
Well of course she looked charming, she's Dinky after all, adorableness is her thing.
(And now I want to see fanart of Dinky in a set of regimentals or a similar uniform )
Gee, veiled threats from the Princess' "sisters" (and "handlers" as well, from the look of it) regarding "hopes" that Glida literally knows nothing about ... this isn't going to go bad for our poor griffon at all ....
... Cadence ascended during the death of Shining? FROM his death? That's what it read like to me, if so that's fuckin' horrifying. Her godhead coronated with the death of her loved one.
Also, getting Blue Diamond vibes from her and White Diamond-puppet vibes from the sisters.
9919441
No, that was an accidental inference, although it's easy for someone like Gilda who only gets her information second or third-talon to conclude that. It'll be explained a bit more later down the line. But Cadance was an alicorn princess when she was dating Shining Armor. Not the vivacious young avatar of love, but still a sweetheart.
Celestia probably sent her out to foalsit more for Cadance's sake than the foals'. Hoping that the socialization would get her out of her head.
9307073
The entire fucking world and the last 100 years disagree.
Franz is assassinated after a blackly hilarious comedy of errors. Austria goes to war against Serbia. Germany joins Austria. Other countries defend Serbia. Germany begins landgrabbing. Everyone else joins and punches each other nearly to extinction.
The Treaty forces Germany into reparations that they've only recently paid off. The National Socialist Party riles up Germany's bruised pride and anger at the bankers who stuck all their money in Switzerland when the mark began crashing, and bangs the drums of war a second time. The Allies and the Soviets crib rockets, jet propulsion, nuclear theory from the German war machine.
After the war, Russia is given basically everything East of Berlin, and the Allies take everything West. Israel is carved out of Palestine. Understanding of rocketry and nuclear theory advance advance advance and combine, putting men in space and on the moon. Cuba, Korea, China, and north Vietnam decide to try out this new "communism" thing. Nukes in Cuba and stations in Eastern Europe threateningly close to Russia.
The North Koreans invade the South with Soviet Russian and Chinese backing, the same thing happens in Vietnam. The Soviets invade Afghanistan, the CIA trains and arms local militia groups such as al-Qaeda and the Taliban to fight yet another proxy war with Russia. Which leads to the radicalization of Islam, which leads to... the last 30-40 years of conflict in the Middle East.
Some time travel or alternate history stories try to stop WWII by assassinating Hitler. One I'm aware of has the Allies stomp the shit out of the German advance bogged down in the Ardennes. Eliminating every drop of bloodshed in the last 100 years is as easy as preventing the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. Literally every war, conflict, technological threatening or saber-rattling between superpowers, radical Islam, the alt-Right and the radical-Left, the current state of global politics and economics... all can be traced to the assassination of Franz Ferdinand and the Romanovs (in addition to the Tsar being an inept tyrant cunt)
9963886
Issue with that is, World War One was almost entirely inevitable. If it wasn't the assassination, something else would've sparked the war. Perhaps not as soon, or not quite as quickly. The Concert of Europe was proven entirely ineffectual, old empires were starting to smell death in the air, and revolution was breeding in the factories. If only it were as simple as one Duke not getting murdered by incompetence of almost Greek Tragedy levels, but alas the 20th century is the aftershocks of the Napoleonic Era. Were it not for that thrice-damned Corsican soldier being in just the right place; things would be a lot different. He is one of the rare individuals to by his own hands, re-write the history books, and we're all stuck with it.
It was always burnin' since the world's been turnin'.
Space-monkey mafia. (I wanted a garage metal band named this... but somebody already did it. :C )
Also, this world's too FUBAR. I wanna blow it up and start over.
Gilda and Twi I mean Gleaming Shield are a very interesting character dynamic . I also like seeing how portrayed Cadance in this universe.
Well, that must suck, having to keep your emotions in total check whenever you're near anyone else.
9963886
I may be a year late, but I'll have to correct you on one point alone. Nicky was a good boy who, while he did make mistakes, was superior to all the alternatives to his rule both in his care towards his subjects and the factual progress which his reign oversaw
But... but... I want to see Cadance eviscerate Blueblood!
So... she did a lot of rabble rousing and inflaming the masses to push for a war, okay. Also neat idea with her reflecting her own emotions into others.
Though the whole thing with the sisters.... so.. are they immortal or something?
10832148
Nah, nothing like that. They're her sin-eaters. Or possibly collateral damage. They spent most of their effort protecting little Bluey from their new sister, and thus took most of the brunt of little Cadenza's lack of control.