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RogerDodger
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The 18th Brewmare of Bluey Napoleon
Author's Note: This story contains footnotes. Due to formatting limitations of the writeoff site, if you wish to see them while reading the story, I suggest you open this story again in a separate window, and scroll the second version of the story down to the bottom.
The shot that sparked the revolution was fired[1] in a rank little tavern in a remote Canterlot alleyway:
"No, thank you," she said.
Blueblood stared at the barmaid, for the first time lifting his eyes to her face. She didn't return the gaze; she was busily collecting mugs from a nearby table and sweeping peanut shells to the floor with a damp washcloth that managed to smell worse than the beer.
"Ex-cuse me?" he said.[3]
She hoisted two trays of glassware and wheeled toward the bar, frowning at him mid-pivot. "Has the beer gotten to your ears? I said no."
Poncemercy let out a clipped snort of laughter and took another long draught of the bathwater that The Sergeant At Trotaloo sold as beer. "Hard cheese, old chap."
Blueblood set his half-full mug down and drew himself up to his full height. "Now see here, you…you smirksome little trollop. I'll make some allowances for your clearly inferior brain—"
"You do know 'smirksome' isn't a word, right?" she interrupted.
Blueblood narrowed his eyes. "Says who?"
The barmaid got briefly smirksome at that, and pointed at the dictionary on her shapely, toned flanks.[4]
Blueblood huffed. "Irregardless, you're letting your wilfullness override your common sense. The only logical response would have been to fall all over me in gratitude for deigning to desire you, seeing as how I'm the closest to greatness your sorry plot will ever get."
She stared across the bar at him as she stacked glasses in the sink, her frown returning. "Look, prince, I was trying to be polite because of your station, but logically, I should have thrown you out of here already."
"Well! I never." Blueblood looked over to Poncemercy for support, and when the baron gave a properly disdainful glance at the sadly deluded commoner, Blueblood stood, bracing himself on the crooked wooden table. "If you're so eager to chase away greatness, very well." He smirked self-assuredly. "I'll leave if you can give me one logical reason why I'm not the best stallion to ever walk into your life."
"Because you can't take no for an answer," she said immediately. "Also, you're unattractively drunk, apparently racist, clearly full of yourself, and you mangle Celestia's Equuish in the cringe-inducing manner only an Academy dropout with pretensions can achieve."
"I resemble that indignation, madam—"
"I'm not finished. 'Do you want to make love to a prince?' is the single worst pickup line I've ever heard. You seem incapable of looking at me without staring at my hips—maybe that's why you completely ignored my marriage-band. You smell like you urinated on your leg before walking in here.[5] And my first impression of you was when you sat down and asked for a mug of, I quote, 'your cheapest, vilest swill.'"
"Well, how else were we to get the proper earth pony experience?" Poncemercy muttered, with Blueblood nodding vigorously in support.
The barmaid's frown flattened out and tightened, and she straightened a hoof toward the door. "Let's upgrade that to definitely racist. Pay and get out."
"Wait!" Blueblood said, spreading his hooves in a placating gesture. It was far better than this insolent peasant deserved, but he was a generous stallion—he knew he was, and sometimes he had to act extra generous because Auntie inevitably misinterpreted his actions in the worst way possible whenever the rabble told jealous lies about him. "Wait. I see…clearly we've gotten off on the wrong hoof here." He turned on the old familial charm and smiled, the gleam of his teeth outshining the old and dirty magelights hanging on the walls. "My apologies, my dear, if there have been any…awkward misunderstandings."
She narrowed her eyes, her hoof still pointed at the door.
Blueblood swaggered up to the bar with lit horn, his drink floating behind. He took a large swig—had to project confidence, after all—and leaned in, deigning to rest his elbows on the bar and trying not to think too hard about what sort of messes the typical clientele had left. "I don't think my offer came across quite in the spirit it was intended," he said suavely. "I'm a very generous pony, you see, but some ponies just don't understand subtlety. So how about this?" He scattered a few coins onto the bar. "There's our tab for the drinks, and—" he loudly clicked another bit down onto the wood, and scraped it across the polished wood with his hoof—"I'll even double your gratuity if you accept my offer and I'm satisfied with, shall we say, services rendered."
The barmaid blinked several times. She stared down at the coins, opening and closing her mouth.
Blueblood smirked. He had her now. That was the thing about the lower classes; they only understood one language. It was round and shiny, and it was a language he spoke well.
"Well, then," he said, waggling his eyebrows seductively.[6] He glanced back to give a triumphant smile to Poncemercy, then reached forward toward his new conquest—
*WHAM*
The doors burst open and slammed into the walls with such force that curios fell over on their bookshelves. A unicorn stomped through with the bearing of a warrior, hooves splayed aggressively, back ramrod-straight, fire in his eyes. His mane was stained and dripping wet, hastily pulled back from his face to reveal a ring-shaped, mug-sized bruise around the base of his horn. "Auntie!" he thundered, his voice causing the guards to flinch back out of some deep, primal fear.
"No," she said, not even looking up from her paperwork.
"But—"
Slowly, deliberately, her head not moving in the slightest, Celestia set down her quill.
"Right, then," Blueblood mumbled, feeling sweat trickle down his brow. He took one step back, then another. "Sorry."
"For once," she said, still staring pointedly at the desk as she closed her book with agonizing slowness, "you've managed to reach me before news of whatever it was you did to prompt this outburst. So I don't have anything to discuss with you right now, nephew, but I can promise you that we will have words once I've learned the whole story."
"I'll, ah, just be going then."
Celestia's head finally swiveled upward, and her eyes bored straight into his soul.
She took one look at his bruises and sighed deeply. "Blueblood Napoléon Do," she said, enunciating each word as if she were swinging a linguistic warhammer.[8] "You are supposed to be a prince. For once in your life, act like one."
"—And then Auntie said, 'Oh, my darling Blueblood! I sympathize with your plight to the utmost degree, but Equestria is so wretched and impure, it would simply burn to the ground if we applied the righteous fire of true justice!'"
Poncemercy shook his head. "Tough beans, old cheese. See, I've been saying that for years, myself."
"And I told her, 'But this, this! It cannot stand! It was assault, Auntie, pure and simple!' And she said, 'But if I tried to arrest her, we'd have an uprising in a minute!'"
"Too true! Filthy rabble, always looking for an excuse to revolt!"
Blueblood stopped and stretched out a kink in his neck underneath the statue of Great-Grandfather Napoléon II.[9] For some reason, when wandering through the Canterlot Statue Gardens, he tended to end up here. He wasn't certain why; he hated that smug son-of-a-timberwolf, hoisting a battle standard and staring implacably out to the horizon, a symbol of the impossible standard of gallantry he was supposed to meet despite his generation not having a proper war to act heroic in.
"And then she told me to act like a prince! Can you believe the nerve?" Blueblood blurted out, quite before realizing his slip.
Poncemercy blinked. "Dear me. She did?"
"Uhhh…yes! Said she couldn't help, so I'd have to step up and put the old fear of the royals into 'em." Blueblood chuckled uneasily and clopped a hoof against the leg of the statue, wincing as his leg thudded into the solid stone.
"Well," Poncemercy said dubiously, "there's not much of that these days, is there? I mean, I'm a baron myself—long ago that would have meant I was lord and master of the ponies on my land, but today it's just a word to impress the lasses at dinner parties."
"See, there's the problem! Time was, everypony would respect droit du seigneur; now they claim there's some law against perfectly respectable advances, and smash a mug into your skull the instant you touch them, and the Guard shrugs and says she was, quote, 'defending herself'."
"Right! It's an atrocious state, ponies obeying laws instead of lieges."
"Mm-hmm."
"Mm-hmm."
They stared at the statue thoughtfully.
"So what if the law told her I had the right?" Blueblood said.
"I dare say," Poncemercy dared say, "you're on to something."
"I dare say I am."
"Plum pudding, old bean! You suppose that's what Celestia was trying to tell you? You should get a law passed?"
"Not rutting likely, over her veto," Blueblood muttered. "She's got her precious public image to maintain. Has to side with the riff-raff at every turn."
"Well, with a three-quarters vote in the House of Lords—"
"Full of quislings. If Auntie said 'jump off a cliff,' we'd find a third of them at the bottom."
"Hum," Poncemercy said, then, "Hum. Well, there is another way around that veto. A simple majority in the House of Lords could send it to a public vote, and with two-thirds approval—"
"Ha! Putting it in the hooves of the rabble themselves? We'd sooner convince Auntie."
"Au contraire. Make them think a law benefits them personally, and the commoners will pass any old thing. Do you recall last year's tax reforms? For the price of five bits in every saddlebag, we took that bothersome estate levy off the books entirely."
"True, true. But how could the commoners be convinced that droit du seigneur is to their own benefit?"
Poncemercy thought. "…We could pay the mares for the right?"
Blueblood gasped. "Brilliant, Ponce! Brilliant!"
He smiled modestly. "I try."
Blueblood reared up, resting one hoof against the statue and raising the other in an imitation of his ancestor's heroic pose. For once, he felt that old family greatness stirring deep within him. "I shall introduce the law at once!"
"Marvelous!" Poncemercy said, stamping in approval. "Stars know I'd vote for it if I could!"
Blueblood paused.
"What was that, Ponce?" he asked. "I don't think I quite heard you right."
Poncemercy shrugged. "I said I'd vote for it if I could."
"You sit next to me in the House of Lords."
"I'm a proxy vote for the Baroness, old pudding. Now, I'll pour on the charm, and I'm pretty certain I can talk her into it—but as for the public ballot, all I can do is cheer."
"Ponce, stop not making sense. What's this about not voting?"
"You didn't know?" Poncemercy tilted his head. "No stallion can. Not since old Nappy's day." He patted the statue's hoof.
Blueblood blinked, and the revolution ignited.[10]
"I can. Can't I? I vote in the House."
"'Fraid not, old sausage. Technically, you're a proxy for your older sister, only nopony ever mentions her, on account of…" He cleared his throat uncomfortably.
"Of her being too simple for society life."
"Yes, that. Normally, it would fall to your younger sister from there, but she's too enamored of her wild adventures to come home and do her civic duty. And the public vote is mares-only, no two ways about it."
Blueblood gasped. "No wonder the laws are in such a state! Ponce, my lad, we've got to do something about this."
Poncemercy thought. "Pass a law?"
*WHAM*
"Auntie!"
"Still no," she said, scratching out some sums.[11]
He advanced a trembling hoof, retracting it the instant before stepping forward. "I—but—"
"Blueblood," she said with what, for Celestia, resembled impatience, "I'm busy."
"Right," he squeaked, backpedaling, closing the doors behind him with a quiet click.
"Auntie won't help," Blueblood said once he had returned to the gardens—where Poncemercy was ambling aimlessly under Napoléon's statue. "Now what?"
"Well, then, we'll have to put a suffrage law to a public vote," Poncemercy declared.
"Where only the mares will vote on it."
"Right."
"That won't work," Blueblood said. "Will it?"
Poncemercy looked around the gardens, then pointed toward an ugly statue of a dragon-thing. "We can find out."
Blueblood glanced over. Some frumpy rural schoolmarm was leading her colts and fillies on a tour, blathering on about Equestrian history.
"Brilliant, Ponce, brilliant." They cantered through the gardens toward the tour group.
"This creature is called a draconequus," the schoolmarm said, pointing toward the ugly statue. "He has the head of a pony and a body made up of all sorts of things. What do you suppose that represents?"
Blueblood strode in front of the class. "The horrifying reality of civic inequalitude!"[12]
The teacher blinked, turned, and bowed. "Oh my goodness! Class, it's Prince Blueblood, one of the four monarchs of Equestria. Everypony say hello to His Highness!"
"Hello, Prince Blueblood," they bowed and chorused.
He waved them back to their hooves, and the teacher gushed, "Thank you for the honor of your presence, Your Highness! My name is Cheerilee, and these children and I are visiting the capital from Ponyville. Would you care to say a few words to them?"
Blueblood smirked. Not only was this commoner being properly deferential, but here was a chance to win the hearts and minds of the next generation.
"You," he pronounced, summoning up his vast oratorical powers and pointing at a fat little colt standing near the back with a vapid expression on his face. "And you." He pointed to the tall, skinny colt next to him. "Did you know," Blueblood said solemnly, "that when you grow up, you won't be able to vote?"
Scissors-Butt and Snail-Butt looked at each other in unison, then back at him, and nodded. "Uh, yeah," they chorused.
"And what do you think of that?"
They looked at each other again, their movements effortlessly in synch, then back to Blueblood. A smile broke out across their faces. "It's awesome!" the little fat one crowed.
"Er," Blueblood said, "what?"
"We won't ever have to read the laws on the ballots and listen to the candidate debates the way the mares do!" the skinny one said.[13]
"It also means we can't fail civics," the fat one added.
"Miss Cheerilee puts us in Study Hall instead, and we're supposed to read, but mostly we play Game Joy games instead," the skinny one said, oblivious to the tightening of Cheerilee's smile.
Blueblood glanced back at Poncemercy for support, then gave the colts a wide, desperate grin and tried again. "But doesn't it bother you that you're second-class citizens in your own country?"
"Oh, no, we're not second class any more, sir," the fat one said earnestly.
"We graduated to third class last year."
"It only took us three tries plus extra summer tutoring."
Blueblood opened and closed his mouth. Then he did the unthinkable: he looked over at the commoner with a pleading grin.[14]
Cheerilee smiled, nodded and stepped forward. "What he's talking about, class, is an issue of fundamental fairness," she said brightly. "Sometimes, Equestria's laws mean that you can't get what you want. For example, what would happen if you, Scootaloo, wanted to play video games instead of researching the mayoral elections? You couldn't. And what if you, Featherweight, wanted to vote? You couldn't. Some ponies think it should work in a different way."
"Well, what if we did want it to be different?" a dwarfish colt lisped in an adorable Bittish accent.
"Then you can work to change the laws!" Cheerilee said. "That's the wonderful thing about the Equestrian constitution; it's a living document, designed to keep meeting ponies' needs as society grows and changes."
"And we're going to change those laws," Blueblood said, tossing his head back to catch a stray breeze, feeling his mane billow out behind him.
Cheerilee turned to Blueblood and beamed. "It looks like we're seeing civics in action, children! Your Highness, would you tell us more about that process?"
"Why, certainly! You see, we feel it would be of great assistance to have the male vote, in order to pass a law requiring mares to—"
*WHAM*
A pair of long, toothy jaws crashed through the panel of the basement door, snapping wildly at empty air.
Blueblood screamed like a little filly, in chorus with Diamond Tiara, Silver Spoon, Twist, and Snails. Cheerilee grabbed a nearby cricket bat and slugged the mutant jackalope in the nose. It yelped, and the muzzle retracted, but several more thumps rattled the door in its frame. Cheerilee threw herself against the door, digging her hooves in to brace the flimsy barricade and scrambling for lumber and nails.
"I blame you for everything!" Cheerilee shouted, as chocolate-coated thunder rolled outside.[15]
"Preposterous! How was I supposed to know the statue would come to life?!" Blueblood shouted back over the wails of the half-dozen children.[16]
"The children would have been scarred for life even without Discord breaking free—" she shouted, but her accusation was interrupted by a hand with bright candy-corn claws thrusting in through the gap in the door and grabbing her around the leg.
That time, everypony screamed.
When the claw was severed from its gooey body in a hail of gumdrops, and Cheerilee had managed to re-seal the basement door, she sagged down against the wall to gasp for breath, glaring rhetorical daggers at him.[17]
"If…we get…out of this…alive, you are in…so much trouble, mister," she said.
"Auntie will never believe you," he sneered.
She clambered painfully to her hooves, looming over him. "Try me, wolf-bait. Try me. Two of the Elements of Harmony graduated from my school, including Honesty, and I'm in a weekly book club with Twilight Sparkle. I think they—and Princess Celestia, with whom they have a personal relationship—will all be very interested to know whose quite frankly sickening ideas released an immortal spirit of chaos."
Blueblood was silent for a moment, all color draining from his cheeks, as colts and fillies wailed around him.
"Very well," he said, lowering his voice and standing up to stare eye-to-eye with her. "You leave me no choice, madam. As it so happens, I own the land upon which your schoolhouse is located—"
Cheerilee reached for the cricket bat.
"—And I will donate it to the Ponyville School Board, no strings attached, all taxes paid, in perpetuity," he said, voice rising by half an octave. "Along with a quite generous grant for building repairs and equipment."
Cheerilee rolled the bat in her forehooves thoughtfully. "And a new basement and a printing press. Several of the fillies have been clamoring to start a newspaper."
"Done."
"Also, the grant covers appearance and travel fees for educational guest speakers. At least three per year."
"Travel fees!?" Blueblood protested, then eyed the bat. He swallowed. "Only if you and your students take responsibility for releasing that…thing."
Her grim expression didn't waver. "Only if the grant's anonymous."
Blueblood gritted his teeth and stuck his foreleg out. Cheerilee, her stare never leaving his eyes, spat on her hoof and mashed the disgusting mass of saliva between their hooves.
There was silence for a moment, punctuated by what sounded like popcorn artillery firing in the distance.
Diamond Tiara sniffled, then sat up, eyes wide and quivering, smile full of feigned innocence. "What'll you give me not to tell?"[18]
"264 to 1!" Blueblood groused, striking his hoof on the base of Napoléon's statue. "It's simply not fair!"
"I must admit," Poncemercy said, pacing up and down alongside the barricade tape cautioning ponies to get no closer than 50 meters to the newly re-stoned Discord, "I hadn't expected the bill to die in the House of Lords."
"It's all Auntie's fault," Blueblood muttered. "That Filthy Rich. She must have put him up to it."
"Yes, his speech was rather…unexpectedly fiery, wasn't it?"
"He'd have gotten the right to vote out of the deal. I truly don't understand his umbrage."
"And the right to pay any common mare 150 bits for a rutting, with it legally declared not to be marital unfaithfulness. Really, there was no downside for him."
Blueblood frowned. "Why did he have to take his poor choices out on me? I mean, simply because he had the gall to marry an unlanded wife, there was no call for him to accuse me of turning her into a sell-tail."
Poncemercy tapped his chin. "Do you suppose we should have added an exclusion for married mares?"
"Oh, stars, no. That would have let that barmaid off scot-free."
"Too true, old bagpipe."
They sat in contemplative silence for a moment.
"So how come you didn't vote for it, Ponce?"
Poncemercy shrugged. "I did my best, but you know the missus. Sometimes she just gives you that stare, the one that tells you, 'Every word you say, starting now, means a week of sleeping out in the yard.' Then she said I was voting no, and that was that."
Blueblood sighed dramatically. "And again it comes down to oppressication! That's the real problem here, Ponce! And I bet that was Lord Rich's problem as well…Ah! We could set everything to rights if it weren't for that silly voting law!"
"Too true!"
"But the House of Lords voted our suffrage bill down."
"264 to 1."
Blueblood turned, walking over to the statue, and put his hooves up on its base. "Well," he said, staring up at Napoléon, "if we can't get our law passed, there's only one thing for it."
"What's that, old chap?"[20]
Blueblood held up a hoof for a moment, then trotted off to his saddlebags, fastening a Guard cloak around his neck as he returned. He signaled a pegasus up above, who moved a cloud into position, dramatically darkening the garden and kicking up a wind. With cloak and mane blowing behind him, he waited for the pegasus to buck a loud roll of thunder out of the cloud, reared back, and pronounced dramatically:
"Revolution."
The echoes of the thunder boomed and settled, casting the garden into ominous silence.
A window slammed open in the distance. "Nephew!" a voice shouted. "We are attempting to sleep! Cease thy harassment of the weather pegasi!"
Blueblood cringed. "Sorry, aunt Luna!" he shouted.
The window slammed shut.
A surging, seething, murmuring crowd of beings that were pony only in name, for to the eye and ear they seemed naught but savage creatures, animated by vile passions and by the lust of vengeance and of hate.
But they were his rabble, Blueblood thought proudly. All nine of them, plus Poncemercy.
"Gentlecolt! And non-landed stallions! And…others!" Blueblood shouted, stepping up onto one of the overturned crates that their revolution had liberated from the adjacent farmers' market. "I hereby call to order our First Annual Insurrection And General Upswelling Against The Mareiarchy!"
Poncemercy stomped his hooves enthusiastically. The most attentive of the rabble, an earnest young Guard stallion in full regalia, nodded and earnestly scribbled down notes. The others—who had responded to Blueblood's advertisement in the Equestria Daily classifieds—glanced around sleepily, huddling together for warmth in the first chilly light of pre-dawn, their breath steaming in the mountain air. One of the two homeless stallions—who had wandered by and joined in as the revolutionaries were setting up—cleared his throat loudly and picked his nose.[21]
"With this intrepidatious and galleous action," Blueblood continued, "we shall strike a fatal blow against the interstructure of the machinery of the state! And as society crumbles, we stallions—true stallions, manly stallions—will be there to pick up the pieces and guide Equestria into the dawning of a new age!"
The sun rose. Blueblood's rabble cheered and stomped. Even some of the bystanders on the far side of the makeshift wall of boxes applauded.
Blueblood grinned, the warmth of pride filling his heart and surging through his veins. He clambered up onto the barricade. "Now, onward!" he shouted. "To glory and revolution!"
"What do y' mean, onward?" a voice called from behind him.
Blueblood glanced back, furrowing his brow. "Well, this is where the revolution starts."
"But we already moved all th' boxes. And th' sun rose. I thought that was it, the glory of the new day, et cetera."
"Yeah," a bystander called. "This has been kind of cool and all, I mean, I dig the performance art, but can we get through and get our coffee now?"
"No," Blueblood said petulantly. "That's the point."
A collective groan came up from the crowd. The door of the business behind the barricade swung open, with an altogether-too-cheery tinkling of the bell mounted on its frame. "With all due respect, your highness," Pony Joe said, "I'd appreciate it if you could move the boxes before it starts costing me customers."
"No," Blueblood repeated. "That's the point."
Pony Joe sighed. "No, really. There are two other pastry shops down the block. All you're doing is driving ponies to them."
"Spoken like the true machinery of the state," Poncemercy spat.
"…It wouldn't actually help if I asked you to start making sense, would it?"
Blueblood turned around, nearly slipping as the wobbling stack of boxes shifted underhoof. "Look, it's very simple. You serve Shining Armor's favorite coffee. If he can't get it, the Guard falls into chaos, and Auntie's tenebrous grip upon the levers of power is revealed for the sham it is."
Pony Joe sighed and facehoofed. "Just so it's clear," he yelled past the barricade, "I am open for business."
Poncemercy pointed over the boxes. "Speak of the devil," he said. "There's Old Cap himself."
Shining Armor, eyes squinted closed against the sun, mumbling something unintelligible to himself, tromped heavily down the street toward Pony Joe's, his mane a matted mess and every muscle in his body sagging. He stumbled up to the wall of fruit crates, squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed at them with a pastern, then regarded the barricade for a moment before lighting his horn with a few quiet invectives. With a flash of light and a soft pew, he disappeared, the accompanying bang of rematerialization coming from within the donut shop.
"I say," Poncemercy said, "that's dirty cricket."
"Hey," Blueblood said, then shouted: "Hey!" Shining Armor ignored him, though several of the pegasi from the surrounding crowd who had flown over the barricade did glance back.
A minute or two later, Shining Armor walked back outside with a spring in his step. His mane had been hastily hoof-smoothed down, he was humming a familiar little ditty, and a cup of steaming coffee floated behind him in his horngrip.
"Morning, Inside Job," Shining Armor said, and the guard who had been taking notes saluted before returning to his feverish scribbling. The guard captain stopped at the barricade, seeming to notice it for the first time, and then glanced up at Blueblood, his tune faltering, the smile falling away from his muzzle. "Prince. Dare I ask what all this is about?"
"It's our First Annual Revolution Against Auntie, et cetera, et cetera," Blueblood said. "You're not allowed on this side of the barricade."
Shining Armor sighed. Pew-bang. "What's it about this time?" he asked from the street side, in the morose tone of one not being paid nearly enough to do their job.
"Giving stallions the right to vote."
Shining Armor blinked.
"Really?" he asked, some energy returning into his voice.
"Really," Blueblood said, thrusting his chest out. "Do you hear the stallions sing, Captain?" He gestured behind him to where several of the revolutionaries had picked up the ditty Shining Armor had been humming earlier. "It is the song of angry men."
"That's…huh." Shining Armor opened and closed his mouth and tried again. "That's…wow. Really?"
"Really!" Blueblood said, the fires of his righteous cause snuffing out into the familiar, smoldering coals of irritation. Why didn't anypony in the corridors of power take him seriously? "We couldn't get our bill passed in the House of Lords, so we're here to gum up the mastication of state…"
Blueblood trailed off as he glanced behind him. His revolutionaries had disassembled one side of the barricade and were wandering off into the morning.
"Wow," Shining Armor repeated. "That's…I mean, I'm actually…"
Blueblood hopped down from his perch atop the barricade. "Oh, forget it," he snarled, bucking at the center until the flimsy structure collapsed in a tumble of timber, and galloped off into the city.
Blueblood was lying alone in the moonlight, head resting on the base of Napoléon's statue, staring at the frustratingly perfect hooves of his great-grandfather, when he felt a shadow fall across his back.
"Go 'way," he said morosely.
There was silence for a moment, then he heard the soft fall of hooves approaching him across the grass of the gardens. He pushed himself up to a crouch and snapped his head around, feeling the chill of the evening kiss his tearstained cheeks. "Go away," he snarled, before recognizing the glimmering mane of Aunt Luna atop the visitor's silhouette.
"We came not to gloat," she murmured. "We, too, have felt the sting of rejection for our failures." She walked up alongside him, sat down, and spread a wing across his back.
Blueblood sniffled and choked back his misery. "'M fine," he said, wiping his traitorous nose with a pastern.
Luna said nothing, then, merely tightened her wing against his side.
Blueblood drew in a shaky breath and sat up alongside her, shoving his mane out of his face with an awkward hoof. "I should leave," he said. "Like my sister. Dare had the right idea. My mark is useless here."
"Perhaps," Luna said. "Wouldst thou be happier?"
"Yes," he said immediately.
"Truly?"
Blueblood was silent.
At length, she refolded her wing and craned her neck upward, staring at the statue looming over them. "Blueblood," she said, "dost thou know why thy great-grandfather's statue stands here in the garden?"
"He was a magnificent warrior," Blueblood said bitterly. "He was smarter than me, and braver than me, and everything I can never be."
"Thy answer is wrong in its entirety."
Curiosity tugged Blueblood loose from the quicksand of self-loathing. "Oh?" he said cautiously.
"What dost thou know of thy grand-sire's military career?"
"He led a suicidal charge at the Battle of Trotaloo which singlehoofedly defeated a Griffonian invasion and save Equestria."
"True enough," Luna said, "but his sacrifice would not have been necessary had he not led an ill-fated invasion of the Griffonian capital the previous autumn. The griffons destroyed their aeries rather than allow them to fall into Equestrian hooves—leaving our soldiers nowhere to overwinter, and pegasi unable to control the bitter northern weather. Stallions by the thousands perished in the ice, and the vast majority of Equestria's army did not return home. Emboldened by our losses, the griffons counterattacked that spring, which led to Napoléon's later pyrrhic victory."
Blueblood swallowed. "I…never heard of this."
"Most ponies have not. I myself only learned of it from my sister. And are you aware of why he led such an ill-fated invasion?"
"No."
Luna shifted, bringing a hoof to Blueblood's and laying it across his pastern. "There was a groundswell of anger at Griffonia's increasingly daring incursions into our borders, but my sister's government was opposed to any official action. Napoléon led a coup, and marched armed Guardsponies into the House of Lords to demand the matter be put to a then-unheard-of popular vote, and the monarchy bound by the results."
Blueblood's jaw dropped. "Are you serious?"
"Indeed so. Popular anger carried his motion—spurred largely by the passion of our stallions—and within a month the cream of Equestria had volunteered for Napoléon's armed forces and marched north to their doom."
Blueblood stared at his aunt in shock.
"Know this, nephew," Luna said firmly. "My sister had the right of it; thousands upon thousands of ponies died needlessly that winter. And yet—when Napoléon took the wrong action, for the wrong reasons, at the wrong time, with the most terrible of outcomes…his passionate defense of our homeland, combined with the destruction of the Gryphonian capital, compelled them to sue for peace for the first time—a peace which has lasted to this day, under terms far more favorable than my sister had ever expected to receive. His posthumous crowning was no accident of fate, nor salve for a nation's guilty conscience. He acted with righteousness in his heart, and from that seed sprang forth a bounty even my sister could not have predicted."
"I…never knew," Blueblood said, feeling very small.
Luna smiled. "I do not believe Auntie Celestia would speak to thee of this directly; she dislikes being so unsubtle. But, nephew…if thou art, as Shining Armor attests, willing to stand up for thy beliefs, even at the greatest cost…there is great power to that, and from that seed might grow an unexpected bounty."
Blueblood stared up into Napoléon's face, which was locked in a blank gaze out to the darkened lands beyond. "…Aunt Luna? Thank you," Blueblood said, and turned back to her, but she was already gone.
When Shining Armor stepped out of Pony Joe's the next morning, there was a single overturned crate set down at a respectable distance in front of the door. Prince Blueblood was reared up atop it, with one hindleg on the crate, his fores clenched around a large metal pole that he was using for balance. Tied around the top of the pole was a small Canterlot Aces pennant, which lay flaccidly, awaiting a breeze.
Shining Armor smiled and bowed. "Your Highness. You took off yesterday before we could really talk. I was afraid you wouldn't come back."
"The fires of righteousness never rest in their emblazonment," Blueblood intoned, eyes out to the distant horizon.
Shining Armor sipped his coffee, then rubbed his hoof hesitantly against the sidewalk. "You…are serious about this, right? I…well, I thought, yesterday…and then you…"
Blueblood hesitated for a moment, then looked Shining Armor calmly in the eye, and nodded. "Mock me all you like," he said. "Think what you wish. But great-grandfather was a hero, Captain, and sometimes one must stand upon principle."
Shining Armor let out a relieved breath. "Oh, thank goodness."
He turned his head and let out a sharp whistle. A flight of Guard pegasi fluttered down from the nearby rooftops, landing in formation on the street behind him.
"Men," Shining Armor said, emphasizing the word, "how long have you devoted yourselves to Equestria?"
"All our lives, sir!" they chorused.
"Can you vote for your elected representatives?"
"No, sir!"
Shining Armor trotted stiffly up to Blueblood and whirled to face his soldiers, clicking his hooves together into rigid attention. "And if a duly recognized Prince of Equestria thought that was unfair," he shouted, "and something stood in the way of him fixing that, would you do your sacred duty as Royal Guard and defend the honor of the crown?"
"Yes, sir!" they roared, and saluted as one.
Blueblood's heart leapt and fluttered.
"Captain Armor," he said, his second thank-you in as many days forcing its unfamiliar way to his lips.
But Shining Armor cut him off, shouting at the top of his lungs: "Squadrons 2 through 28, assemble!"
"Oh, great," one of the lords stage-whispered as Blueblood and Shining Armor marched into the Hall of Parliament. "It's the Rutting Rebellion, home to roost."
Blueblood glanced around the building. It looked like most of the 265 lords were in attendance—the actual ones, the baronesses and duchesses and marquesses, along with the husbands that Blueblood joked and chatted and made deals with all day. There were also several hundred Royal Guard crowded into the building, occupying nearly every square foot of floor space and much of the air above.[22] And Celestia and Luna themselves were sitting upon the dais at the front of the room.
The room was overcrowded. It was altogether too hot.
Blueblood walked calmly up to the front, guards parting in front of him like the tide. "Auntie," he said.
Celestia smiled. "Nephew."
He couldn't quite resist the jab. "Not too busy for me now, I hope?"
Her eyes sparkled. "Not when you've gone to such extremes to make your point."
He stared at her suspiciously for a moment, then adjusted his tie and harrumphed. "I hope," he said loudly, "it is clear now that justice requires my bill be decided by the will of the masses."
"I believe that's all too clear," Celestia said.
The room erupted in groans and catcalls.
Celestia held up a hoof for silence. "As a lawfully chosen member of this House, I must register my personal objection to its…more lewd provisions, but clearly there is something in it which has set afire the public consciousness, and sometimes it is the duty of a good ruler to do little more than listen."
Blueblood nodded, suppressing a smirk. He gave Auntie a clipped little bow and then turned to leave.
Celestia cleared her throat. "Er, nephew," she called after him, "is that all?"
Blueblood turned back and raised an eyebrow. "We got our vote," he said. "I suppose it is."
She cleared her throat again, seeming for the first time concerned. "Are you certain?"
Shining Armor subtly jabbed Blueblood in the side. "Prince," he hissed.
"Ah, one moment." Blueblood leaned in to the guard captain. "What is it?" he whispered crossly.
"Er," Shining Armor whispered back, "don't you want the stallions to be able to vote on this?"
"Well, of course," Blueblood explained patiently. "That's right there in the bill itself."
Shining Armor stared at him expectantly.
"…Oh." Blueblood coughed and turned around. "Oh, Auntie? And also, the stallions need to be able to vote on my bill."
"Of course," Celestia said. "But since that's part of the bill you introduced, the only way to make that happen would be to split the suffrage provision into a measure of its own, and vote on that first." She stopped and gave Blueblood a significant look. "That…would be an acceptable solution, yes?"
Blueblood suddenly felt every eye in the room on him.
"…Yes?"
The shot that ended the revolution was the sigh of relief heard 'round the world.
Footnotes
[1] From the muzzle of a breech-loader, if one takes Blueblood at his word.[2]
[2] He was, however, incorrect. Like most ponies outside the Canterlot nobility, the serving-maid hadn't loaded her breeches since she was a newborn foal.
[3] The return fire indisputably came from the muzzle of a smooth bore.
[4] The barmaid, it should be noted, was not a pony with a special talent related to her occupation, but rather a Canterlot University student supporting her education with a night job. Connoisseurs of irony may appreciate the fact that her name was Synecdoche.
[5] Not actually true. He stood too close while Poncemercy was relieving himself in the alleyway.
[6] If you don't believe this is possible, then you've never watched Blueblood do it.[7]
[7] At which point you will know for a fact that it is impossible.
[8] Celestia did not, in fact, own a linguistic warhammer. However, one of her relics from the days of the Qilinese empire was a linguistic sickle, which grammarians referred to in reverent whispers as the "Oxford kama."
[9] If you didn't catch the bilingual pun there, I probably shouldn't have ruined it by pointing it out.
[10] And promptly ran around screaming about being on fire, before having the presence of mind to stop, drop and roll.
[11] To be precise, calculating the payments necessary for Synecdoche to resolve the matter of Blueblood's assault quietly.
[12] Cheerilee, under her overly generous "Three Strikes" policy, restrained her eye-twitch and let this one pass without comment.
[13] It should be noted that, instead, modern stallions fulfill their civic obligations via jury duty. This didn't occur to Snails as a downside, because when the subject came up, his father told him to "jes' fall asleep when ya get ta th' courtroom, and they'll dismiss ya in a jiff."
[14] In his defense, she was a teacher. Teachers are supposed to be smart.
[15] Literally rolled by. Think tumbleweeds.
[16] The others (as well as Poncemercy) had been picked up by palace guards when the tour group got separated, and were huddling in safety in the palace kitchens. Except for the Cutie Mark Crusaders, who met up with Princess Luna and had an adorable and wildly improbable adventure full of tree sap in which they failed to earn their cutie marks in Draconequus Fighting.
[17] These were technically Celestia's, but everypony was too busy with Discord to pay attention when Cheerilee grabbed them from the display case next to the linguistic sickle.
[18] "Ice cream for a year." "Done." [19]
[19] Negotiations later broke down over whether the agreement covered unlimited usage or reasonable daily usage; acceptable flavors; and the payment of shipping charges.
[20] The preceding days had been so wildly eventful that Poncemercy had run completely through his stock of catchphrases, and was being forced to recycle them.
[21] Yes, with a hoof. This is exactly as horrifying an image as it sounds.
[22] That was, it should be noted, nearly the entirety of the Royal Guard. Equestria, of course, had been at peace for a hundred years (with the singular exception of Nightmare Moon's return), so there was no worry of hostile agents infiltrating the city while its protectors' attention was elsewhere.
The shot that sparked the revolution was fired[1] in a rank little tavern in a remote Canterlot alleyway:
"No, thank you," she said.
Blueblood stared at the barmaid, for the first time lifting his eyes to her face. She didn't return the gaze; she was busily collecting mugs from a nearby table and sweeping peanut shells to the floor with a damp washcloth that managed to smell worse than the beer.
"Ex-cuse me?" he said.[3]
She hoisted two trays of glassware and wheeled toward the bar, frowning at him mid-pivot. "Has the beer gotten to your ears? I said no."
Poncemercy let out a clipped snort of laughter and took another long draught of the bathwater that The Sergeant At Trotaloo sold as beer. "Hard cheese, old chap."
Blueblood set his half-full mug down and drew himself up to his full height. "Now see here, you…you smirksome little trollop. I'll make some allowances for your clearly inferior brain—"
"You do know 'smirksome' isn't a word, right?" she interrupted.
Blueblood narrowed his eyes. "Says who?"
The barmaid got briefly smirksome at that, and pointed at the dictionary on her shapely, toned flanks.[4]
Blueblood huffed. "Irregardless, you're letting your wilfullness override your common sense. The only logical response would have been to fall all over me in gratitude for deigning to desire you, seeing as how I'm the closest to greatness your sorry plot will ever get."
She stared across the bar at him as she stacked glasses in the sink, her frown returning. "Look, prince, I was trying to be polite because of your station, but logically, I should have thrown you out of here already."
"Well! I never." Blueblood looked over to Poncemercy for support, and when the baron gave a properly disdainful glance at the sadly deluded commoner, Blueblood stood, bracing himself on the crooked wooden table. "If you're so eager to chase away greatness, very well." He smirked self-assuredly. "I'll leave if you can give me one logical reason why I'm not the best stallion to ever walk into your life."
"Because you can't take no for an answer," she said immediately. "Also, you're unattractively drunk, apparently racist, clearly full of yourself, and you mangle Celestia's Equuish in the cringe-inducing manner only an Academy dropout with pretensions can achieve."
"I resemble that indignation, madam—"
"I'm not finished. 'Do you want to make love to a prince?' is the single worst pickup line I've ever heard. You seem incapable of looking at me without staring at my hips—maybe that's why you completely ignored my marriage-band. You smell like you urinated on your leg before walking in here.[5] And my first impression of you was when you sat down and asked for a mug of, I quote, 'your cheapest, vilest swill.'"
"Well, how else were we to get the proper earth pony experience?" Poncemercy muttered, with Blueblood nodding vigorously in support.
The barmaid's frown flattened out and tightened, and she straightened a hoof toward the door. "Let's upgrade that to definitely racist. Pay and get out."
"Wait!" Blueblood said, spreading his hooves in a placating gesture. It was far better than this insolent peasant deserved, but he was a generous stallion—he knew he was, and sometimes he had to act extra generous because Auntie inevitably misinterpreted his actions in the worst way possible whenever the rabble told jealous lies about him. "Wait. I see…clearly we've gotten off on the wrong hoof here." He turned on the old familial charm and smiled, the gleam of his teeth outshining the old and dirty magelights hanging on the walls. "My apologies, my dear, if there have been any…awkward misunderstandings."
She narrowed her eyes, her hoof still pointed at the door.
Blueblood swaggered up to the bar with lit horn, his drink floating behind. He took a large swig—had to project confidence, after all—and leaned in, deigning to rest his elbows on the bar and trying not to think too hard about what sort of messes the typical clientele had left. "I don't think my offer came across quite in the spirit it was intended," he said suavely. "I'm a very generous pony, you see, but some ponies just don't understand subtlety. So how about this?" He scattered a few coins onto the bar. "There's our tab for the drinks, and—" he loudly clicked another bit down onto the wood, and scraped it across the polished wood with his hoof—"I'll even double your gratuity if you accept my offer and I'm satisfied with, shall we say, services rendered."
The barmaid blinked several times. She stared down at the coins, opening and closing her mouth.
Blueblood smirked. He had her now. That was the thing about the lower classes; they only understood one language. It was round and shiny, and it was a language he spoke well.
"Well, then," he said, waggling his eyebrows seductively.[6] He glanced back to give a triumphant smile to Poncemercy, then reached forward toward his new conquest—
*WHAM*
The doors burst open and slammed into the walls with such force that curios fell over on their bookshelves. A unicorn stomped through with the bearing of a warrior, hooves splayed aggressively, back ramrod-straight, fire in his eyes. His mane was stained and dripping wet, hastily pulled back from his face to reveal a ring-shaped, mug-sized bruise around the base of his horn. "Auntie!" he thundered, his voice causing the guards to flinch back out of some deep, primal fear.
"No," she said, not even looking up from her paperwork.
"But—"
Slowly, deliberately, her head not moving in the slightest, Celestia set down her quill.
"Right, then," Blueblood mumbled, feeling sweat trickle down his brow. He took one step back, then another. "Sorry."
"For once," she said, still staring pointedly at the desk as she closed her book with agonizing slowness, "you've managed to reach me before news of whatever it was you did to prompt this outburst. So I don't have anything to discuss with you right now, nephew, but I can promise you that we will have words once I've learned the whole story."
"I'll, ah, just be going then."
Celestia's head finally swiveled upward, and her eyes bored straight into his soul.
She took one look at his bruises and sighed deeply. "Blueblood Napoléon Do," she said, enunciating each word as if she were swinging a linguistic warhammer.[8] "You are supposed to be a prince. For once in your life, act like one."
"—And then Auntie said, 'Oh, my darling Blueblood! I sympathize with your plight to the utmost degree, but Equestria is so wretched and impure, it would simply burn to the ground if we applied the righteous fire of true justice!'"
Poncemercy shook his head. "Tough beans, old cheese. See, I've been saying that for years, myself."
"And I told her, 'But this, this! It cannot stand! It was assault, Auntie, pure and simple!' And she said, 'But if I tried to arrest her, we'd have an uprising in a minute!'"
"Too true! Filthy rabble, always looking for an excuse to revolt!"
Blueblood stopped and stretched out a kink in his neck underneath the statue of Great-Grandfather Napoléon II.[9] For some reason, when wandering through the Canterlot Statue Gardens, he tended to end up here. He wasn't certain why; he hated that smug son-of-a-timberwolf, hoisting a battle standard and staring implacably out to the horizon, a symbol of the impossible standard of gallantry he was supposed to meet despite his generation not having a proper war to act heroic in.
"And then she told me to act like a prince! Can you believe the nerve?" Blueblood blurted out, quite before realizing his slip.
Poncemercy blinked. "Dear me. She did?"
"Uhhh…yes! Said she couldn't help, so I'd have to step up and put the old fear of the royals into 'em." Blueblood chuckled uneasily and clopped a hoof against the leg of the statue, wincing as his leg thudded into the solid stone.
"Well," Poncemercy said dubiously, "there's not much of that these days, is there? I mean, I'm a baron myself—long ago that would have meant I was lord and master of the ponies on my land, but today it's just a word to impress the lasses at dinner parties."
"See, there's the problem! Time was, everypony would respect droit du seigneur; now they claim there's some law against perfectly respectable advances, and smash a mug into your skull the instant you touch them, and the Guard shrugs and says she was, quote, 'defending herself'."
"Right! It's an atrocious state, ponies obeying laws instead of lieges."
"Mm-hmm."
"Mm-hmm."
They stared at the statue thoughtfully.
"So what if the law told her I had the right?" Blueblood said.
"I dare say," Poncemercy dared say, "you're on to something."
"I dare say I am."
"Plum pudding, old bean! You suppose that's what Celestia was trying to tell you? You should get a law passed?"
"Not rutting likely, over her veto," Blueblood muttered. "She's got her precious public image to maintain. Has to side with the riff-raff at every turn."
"Well, with a three-quarters vote in the House of Lords—"
"Full of quislings. If Auntie said 'jump off a cliff,' we'd find a third of them at the bottom."
"Hum," Poncemercy said, then, "Hum. Well, there is another way around that veto. A simple majority in the House of Lords could send it to a public vote, and with two-thirds approval—"
"Ha! Putting it in the hooves of the rabble themselves? We'd sooner convince Auntie."
"Au contraire. Make them think a law benefits them personally, and the commoners will pass any old thing. Do you recall last year's tax reforms? For the price of five bits in every saddlebag, we took that bothersome estate levy off the books entirely."
"True, true. But how could the commoners be convinced that droit du seigneur is to their own benefit?"
Poncemercy thought. "…We could pay the mares for the right?"
Blueblood gasped. "Brilliant, Ponce! Brilliant!"
He smiled modestly. "I try."
Blueblood reared up, resting one hoof against the statue and raising the other in an imitation of his ancestor's heroic pose. For once, he felt that old family greatness stirring deep within him. "I shall introduce the law at once!"
"Marvelous!" Poncemercy said, stamping in approval. "Stars know I'd vote for it if I could!"
Blueblood paused.
"What was that, Ponce?" he asked. "I don't think I quite heard you right."
Poncemercy shrugged. "I said I'd vote for it if I could."
"You sit next to me in the House of Lords."
"I'm a proxy vote for the Baroness, old pudding. Now, I'll pour on the charm, and I'm pretty certain I can talk her into it—but as for the public ballot, all I can do is cheer."
"Ponce, stop not making sense. What's this about not voting?"
"You didn't know?" Poncemercy tilted his head. "No stallion can. Not since old Nappy's day." He patted the statue's hoof.
Blueblood blinked, and the revolution ignited.[10]
"I can. Can't I? I vote in the House."
"'Fraid not, old sausage. Technically, you're a proxy for your older sister, only nopony ever mentions her, on account of…" He cleared his throat uncomfortably.
"Of her being too simple for society life."
"Yes, that. Normally, it would fall to your younger sister from there, but she's too enamored of her wild adventures to come home and do her civic duty. And the public vote is mares-only, no two ways about it."
Blueblood gasped. "No wonder the laws are in such a state! Ponce, my lad, we've got to do something about this."
Poncemercy thought. "Pass a law?"
*WHAM*
"Auntie!"
"Still no," she said, scratching out some sums.[11]
He advanced a trembling hoof, retracting it the instant before stepping forward. "I—but—"
"Blueblood," she said with what, for Celestia, resembled impatience, "I'm busy."
"Right," he squeaked, backpedaling, closing the doors behind him with a quiet click.
"Auntie won't help," Blueblood said once he had returned to the gardens—where Poncemercy was ambling aimlessly under Napoléon's statue. "Now what?"
"Well, then, we'll have to put a suffrage law to a public vote," Poncemercy declared.
"Where only the mares will vote on it."
"Right."
"That won't work," Blueblood said. "Will it?"
Poncemercy looked around the gardens, then pointed toward an ugly statue of a dragon-thing. "We can find out."
Blueblood glanced over. Some frumpy rural schoolmarm was leading her colts and fillies on a tour, blathering on about Equestrian history.
"Brilliant, Ponce, brilliant." They cantered through the gardens toward the tour group.
"This creature is called a draconequus," the schoolmarm said, pointing toward the ugly statue. "He has the head of a pony and a body made up of all sorts of things. What do you suppose that represents?"
Blueblood strode in front of the class. "The horrifying reality of civic inequalitude!"[12]
The teacher blinked, turned, and bowed. "Oh my goodness! Class, it's Prince Blueblood, one of the four monarchs of Equestria. Everypony say hello to His Highness!"
"Hello, Prince Blueblood," they bowed and chorused.
He waved them back to their hooves, and the teacher gushed, "Thank you for the honor of your presence, Your Highness! My name is Cheerilee, and these children and I are visiting the capital from Ponyville. Would you care to say a few words to them?"
Blueblood smirked. Not only was this commoner being properly deferential, but here was a chance to win the hearts and minds of the next generation.
"You," he pronounced, summoning up his vast oratorical powers and pointing at a fat little colt standing near the back with a vapid expression on his face. "And you." He pointed to the tall, skinny colt next to him. "Did you know," Blueblood said solemnly, "that when you grow up, you won't be able to vote?"
Scissors-Butt and Snail-Butt looked at each other in unison, then back at him, and nodded. "Uh, yeah," they chorused.
"And what do you think of that?"
They looked at each other again, their movements effortlessly in synch, then back to Blueblood. A smile broke out across their faces. "It's awesome!" the little fat one crowed.
"Er," Blueblood said, "what?"
"We won't ever have to read the laws on the ballots and listen to the candidate debates the way the mares do!" the skinny one said.[13]
"It also means we can't fail civics," the fat one added.
"Miss Cheerilee puts us in Study Hall instead, and we're supposed to read, but mostly we play Game Joy games instead," the skinny one said, oblivious to the tightening of Cheerilee's smile.
Blueblood glanced back at Poncemercy for support, then gave the colts a wide, desperate grin and tried again. "But doesn't it bother you that you're second-class citizens in your own country?"
"Oh, no, we're not second class any more, sir," the fat one said earnestly.
"We graduated to third class last year."
"It only took us three tries plus extra summer tutoring."
Blueblood opened and closed his mouth. Then he did the unthinkable: he looked over at the commoner with a pleading grin.[14]
Cheerilee smiled, nodded and stepped forward. "What he's talking about, class, is an issue of fundamental fairness," she said brightly. "Sometimes, Equestria's laws mean that you can't get what you want. For example, what would happen if you, Scootaloo, wanted to play video games instead of researching the mayoral elections? You couldn't. And what if you, Featherweight, wanted to vote? You couldn't. Some ponies think it should work in a different way."
"Well, what if we did want it to be different?" a dwarfish colt lisped in an adorable Bittish accent.
"Then you can work to change the laws!" Cheerilee said. "That's the wonderful thing about the Equestrian constitution; it's a living document, designed to keep meeting ponies' needs as society grows and changes."
"And we're going to change those laws," Blueblood said, tossing his head back to catch a stray breeze, feeling his mane billow out behind him.
Cheerilee turned to Blueblood and beamed. "It looks like we're seeing civics in action, children! Your Highness, would you tell us more about that process?"
"Why, certainly! You see, we feel it would be of great assistance to have the male vote, in order to pass a law requiring mares to—"
*WHAM*
A pair of long, toothy jaws crashed through the panel of the basement door, snapping wildly at empty air.
Blueblood screamed like a little filly, in chorus with Diamond Tiara, Silver Spoon, Twist, and Snails. Cheerilee grabbed a nearby cricket bat and slugged the mutant jackalope in the nose. It yelped, and the muzzle retracted, but several more thumps rattled the door in its frame. Cheerilee threw herself against the door, digging her hooves in to brace the flimsy barricade and scrambling for lumber and nails.
"I blame you for everything!" Cheerilee shouted, as chocolate-coated thunder rolled outside.[15]
"Preposterous! How was I supposed to know the statue would come to life?!" Blueblood shouted back over the wails of the half-dozen children.[16]
"The children would have been scarred for life even without Discord breaking free—" she shouted, but her accusation was interrupted by a hand with bright candy-corn claws thrusting in through the gap in the door and grabbing her around the leg.
That time, everypony screamed.
When the claw was severed from its gooey body in a hail of gumdrops, and Cheerilee had managed to re-seal the basement door, she sagged down against the wall to gasp for breath, glaring rhetorical daggers at him.[17]
"If…we get…out of this…alive, you are in…so much trouble, mister," she said.
"Auntie will never believe you," he sneered.
She clambered painfully to her hooves, looming over him. "Try me, wolf-bait. Try me. Two of the Elements of Harmony graduated from my school, including Honesty, and I'm in a weekly book club with Twilight Sparkle. I think they—and Princess Celestia, with whom they have a personal relationship—will all be very interested to know whose quite frankly sickening ideas released an immortal spirit of chaos."
Blueblood was silent for a moment, all color draining from his cheeks, as colts and fillies wailed around him.
"Very well," he said, lowering his voice and standing up to stare eye-to-eye with her. "You leave me no choice, madam. As it so happens, I own the land upon which your schoolhouse is located—"
Cheerilee reached for the cricket bat.
"—And I will donate it to the Ponyville School Board, no strings attached, all taxes paid, in perpetuity," he said, voice rising by half an octave. "Along with a quite generous grant for building repairs and equipment."
Cheerilee rolled the bat in her forehooves thoughtfully. "And a new basement and a printing press. Several of the fillies have been clamoring to start a newspaper."
"Done."
"Also, the grant covers appearance and travel fees for educational guest speakers. At least three per year."
"Travel fees!?" Blueblood protested, then eyed the bat. He swallowed. "Only if you and your students take responsibility for releasing that…thing."
Her grim expression didn't waver. "Only if the grant's anonymous."
Blueblood gritted his teeth and stuck his foreleg out. Cheerilee, her stare never leaving his eyes, spat on her hoof and mashed the disgusting mass of saliva between their hooves.
There was silence for a moment, punctuated by what sounded like popcorn artillery firing in the distance.
Diamond Tiara sniffled, then sat up, eyes wide and quivering, smile full of feigned innocence. "What'll you give me not to tell?"[18]
"264 to 1!" Blueblood groused, striking his hoof on the base of Napoléon's statue. "It's simply not fair!"
"I must admit," Poncemercy said, pacing up and down alongside the barricade tape cautioning ponies to get no closer than 50 meters to the newly re-stoned Discord, "I hadn't expected the bill to die in the House of Lords."
"It's all Auntie's fault," Blueblood muttered. "That Filthy Rich. She must have put him up to it."
"Yes, his speech was rather…unexpectedly fiery, wasn't it?"
"He'd have gotten the right to vote out of the deal. I truly don't understand his umbrage."
"And the right to pay any common mare 150 bits for a rutting, with it legally declared not to be marital unfaithfulness. Really, there was no downside for him."
Blueblood frowned. "Why did he have to take his poor choices out on me? I mean, simply because he had the gall to marry an unlanded wife, there was no call for him to accuse me of turning her into a sell-tail."
Poncemercy tapped his chin. "Do you suppose we should have added an exclusion for married mares?"
"Oh, stars, no. That would have let that barmaid off scot-free."
"Too true, old bagpipe."
They sat in contemplative silence for a moment.
"So how come you didn't vote for it, Ponce?"
Poncemercy shrugged. "I did my best, but you know the missus. Sometimes she just gives you that stare, the one that tells you, 'Every word you say, starting now, means a week of sleeping out in the yard.' Then she said I was voting no, and that was that."
Blueblood sighed dramatically. "And again it comes down to oppressication! That's the real problem here, Ponce! And I bet that was Lord Rich's problem as well…Ah! We could set everything to rights if it weren't for that silly voting law!"
"Too true!"
"But the House of Lords voted our suffrage bill down."
"264 to 1."
Blueblood turned, walking over to the statue, and put his hooves up on its base. "Well," he said, staring up at Napoléon, "if we can't get our law passed, there's only one thing for it."
"What's that, old chap?"[20]
Blueblood held up a hoof for a moment, then trotted off to his saddlebags, fastening a Guard cloak around his neck as he returned. He signaled a pegasus up above, who moved a cloud into position, dramatically darkening the garden and kicking up a wind. With cloak and mane blowing behind him, he waited for the pegasus to buck a loud roll of thunder out of the cloud, reared back, and pronounced dramatically:
"Revolution."
The echoes of the thunder boomed and settled, casting the garden into ominous silence.
A window slammed open in the distance. "Nephew!" a voice shouted. "We are attempting to sleep! Cease thy harassment of the weather pegasi!"
Blueblood cringed. "Sorry, aunt Luna!" he shouted.
The window slammed shut.
A surging, seething, murmuring crowd of beings that were pony only in name, for to the eye and ear they seemed naught but savage creatures, animated by vile passions and by the lust of vengeance and of hate.
But they were his rabble, Blueblood thought proudly. All nine of them, plus Poncemercy.
"Gentlecolt! And non-landed stallions! And…others!" Blueblood shouted, stepping up onto one of the overturned crates that their revolution had liberated from the adjacent farmers' market. "I hereby call to order our First Annual Insurrection And General Upswelling Against The Mareiarchy!"
Poncemercy stomped his hooves enthusiastically. The most attentive of the rabble, an earnest young Guard stallion in full regalia, nodded and earnestly scribbled down notes. The others—who had responded to Blueblood's advertisement in the Equestria Daily classifieds—glanced around sleepily, huddling together for warmth in the first chilly light of pre-dawn, their breath steaming in the mountain air. One of the two homeless stallions—who had wandered by and joined in as the revolutionaries were setting up—cleared his throat loudly and picked his nose.[21]
"With this intrepidatious and galleous action," Blueblood continued, "we shall strike a fatal blow against the interstructure of the machinery of the state! And as society crumbles, we stallions—true stallions, manly stallions—will be there to pick up the pieces and guide Equestria into the dawning of a new age!"
The sun rose. Blueblood's rabble cheered and stomped. Even some of the bystanders on the far side of the makeshift wall of boxes applauded.
Blueblood grinned, the warmth of pride filling his heart and surging through his veins. He clambered up onto the barricade. "Now, onward!" he shouted. "To glory and revolution!"
"What do y' mean, onward?" a voice called from behind him.
Blueblood glanced back, furrowing his brow. "Well, this is where the revolution starts."
"But we already moved all th' boxes. And th' sun rose. I thought that was it, the glory of the new day, et cetera."
"Yeah," a bystander called. "This has been kind of cool and all, I mean, I dig the performance art, but can we get through and get our coffee now?"
"No," Blueblood said petulantly. "That's the point."
A collective groan came up from the crowd. The door of the business behind the barricade swung open, with an altogether-too-cheery tinkling of the bell mounted on its frame. "With all due respect, your highness," Pony Joe said, "I'd appreciate it if you could move the boxes before it starts costing me customers."
"No," Blueblood repeated. "That's the point."
Pony Joe sighed. "No, really. There are two other pastry shops down the block. All you're doing is driving ponies to them."
"Spoken like the true machinery of the state," Poncemercy spat.
"…It wouldn't actually help if I asked you to start making sense, would it?"
Blueblood turned around, nearly slipping as the wobbling stack of boxes shifted underhoof. "Look, it's very simple. You serve Shining Armor's favorite coffee. If he can't get it, the Guard falls into chaos, and Auntie's tenebrous grip upon the levers of power is revealed for the sham it is."
Pony Joe sighed and facehoofed. "Just so it's clear," he yelled past the barricade, "I am open for business."
Poncemercy pointed over the boxes. "Speak of the devil," he said. "There's Old Cap himself."
Shining Armor, eyes squinted closed against the sun, mumbling something unintelligible to himself, tromped heavily down the street toward Pony Joe's, his mane a matted mess and every muscle in his body sagging. He stumbled up to the wall of fruit crates, squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed at them with a pastern, then regarded the barricade for a moment before lighting his horn with a few quiet invectives. With a flash of light and a soft pew, he disappeared, the accompanying bang of rematerialization coming from within the donut shop.
"I say," Poncemercy said, "that's dirty cricket."
"Hey," Blueblood said, then shouted: "Hey!" Shining Armor ignored him, though several of the pegasi from the surrounding crowd who had flown over the barricade did glance back.
A minute or two later, Shining Armor walked back outside with a spring in his step. His mane had been hastily hoof-smoothed down, he was humming a familiar little ditty, and a cup of steaming coffee floated behind him in his horngrip.
"Morning, Inside Job," Shining Armor said, and the guard who had been taking notes saluted before returning to his feverish scribbling. The guard captain stopped at the barricade, seeming to notice it for the first time, and then glanced up at Blueblood, his tune faltering, the smile falling away from his muzzle. "Prince. Dare I ask what all this is about?"
"It's our First Annual Revolution Against Auntie, et cetera, et cetera," Blueblood said. "You're not allowed on this side of the barricade."
Shining Armor sighed. Pew-bang. "What's it about this time?" he asked from the street side, in the morose tone of one not being paid nearly enough to do their job.
"Giving stallions the right to vote."
Shining Armor blinked.
"Really?" he asked, some energy returning into his voice.
"Really," Blueblood said, thrusting his chest out. "Do you hear the stallions sing, Captain?" He gestured behind him to where several of the revolutionaries had picked up the ditty Shining Armor had been humming earlier. "It is the song of angry men."
"That's…huh." Shining Armor opened and closed his mouth and tried again. "That's…wow. Really?"
"Really!" Blueblood said, the fires of his righteous cause snuffing out into the familiar, smoldering coals of irritation. Why didn't anypony in the corridors of power take him seriously? "We couldn't get our bill passed in the House of Lords, so we're here to gum up the mastication of state…"
Blueblood trailed off as he glanced behind him. His revolutionaries had disassembled one side of the barricade and were wandering off into the morning.
"Wow," Shining Armor repeated. "That's…I mean, I'm actually…"
Blueblood hopped down from his perch atop the barricade. "Oh, forget it," he snarled, bucking at the center until the flimsy structure collapsed in a tumble of timber, and galloped off into the city.
Blueblood was lying alone in the moonlight, head resting on the base of Napoléon's statue, staring at the frustratingly perfect hooves of his great-grandfather, when he felt a shadow fall across his back.
"Go 'way," he said morosely.
There was silence for a moment, then he heard the soft fall of hooves approaching him across the grass of the gardens. He pushed himself up to a crouch and snapped his head around, feeling the chill of the evening kiss his tearstained cheeks. "Go away," he snarled, before recognizing the glimmering mane of Aunt Luna atop the visitor's silhouette.
"We came not to gloat," she murmured. "We, too, have felt the sting of rejection for our failures." She walked up alongside him, sat down, and spread a wing across his back.
Blueblood sniffled and choked back his misery. "'M fine," he said, wiping his traitorous nose with a pastern.
Luna said nothing, then, merely tightened her wing against his side.
Blueblood drew in a shaky breath and sat up alongside her, shoving his mane out of his face with an awkward hoof. "I should leave," he said. "Like my sister. Dare had the right idea. My mark is useless here."
"Perhaps," Luna said. "Wouldst thou be happier?"
"Yes," he said immediately.
"Truly?"
Blueblood was silent.
At length, she refolded her wing and craned her neck upward, staring at the statue looming over them. "Blueblood," she said, "dost thou know why thy great-grandfather's statue stands here in the garden?"
"He was a magnificent warrior," Blueblood said bitterly. "He was smarter than me, and braver than me, and everything I can never be."
"Thy answer is wrong in its entirety."
Curiosity tugged Blueblood loose from the quicksand of self-loathing. "Oh?" he said cautiously.
"What dost thou know of thy grand-sire's military career?"
"He led a suicidal charge at the Battle of Trotaloo which singlehoofedly defeated a Griffonian invasion and save Equestria."
"True enough," Luna said, "but his sacrifice would not have been necessary had he not led an ill-fated invasion of the Griffonian capital the previous autumn. The griffons destroyed their aeries rather than allow them to fall into Equestrian hooves—leaving our soldiers nowhere to overwinter, and pegasi unable to control the bitter northern weather. Stallions by the thousands perished in the ice, and the vast majority of Equestria's army did not return home. Emboldened by our losses, the griffons counterattacked that spring, which led to Napoléon's later pyrrhic victory."
Blueblood swallowed. "I…never heard of this."
"Most ponies have not. I myself only learned of it from my sister. And are you aware of why he led such an ill-fated invasion?"
"No."
Luna shifted, bringing a hoof to Blueblood's and laying it across his pastern. "There was a groundswell of anger at Griffonia's increasingly daring incursions into our borders, but my sister's government was opposed to any official action. Napoléon led a coup, and marched armed Guardsponies into the House of Lords to demand the matter be put to a then-unheard-of popular vote, and the monarchy bound by the results."
Blueblood's jaw dropped. "Are you serious?"
"Indeed so. Popular anger carried his motion—spurred largely by the passion of our stallions—and within a month the cream of Equestria had volunteered for Napoléon's armed forces and marched north to their doom."
Blueblood stared at his aunt in shock.
"Know this, nephew," Luna said firmly. "My sister had the right of it; thousands upon thousands of ponies died needlessly that winter. And yet—when Napoléon took the wrong action, for the wrong reasons, at the wrong time, with the most terrible of outcomes…his passionate defense of our homeland, combined with the destruction of the Gryphonian capital, compelled them to sue for peace for the first time—a peace which has lasted to this day, under terms far more favorable than my sister had ever expected to receive. His posthumous crowning was no accident of fate, nor salve for a nation's guilty conscience. He acted with righteousness in his heart, and from that seed sprang forth a bounty even my sister could not have predicted."
"I…never knew," Blueblood said, feeling very small.
Luna smiled. "I do not believe Auntie Celestia would speak to thee of this directly; she dislikes being so unsubtle. But, nephew…if thou art, as Shining Armor attests, willing to stand up for thy beliefs, even at the greatest cost…there is great power to that, and from that seed might grow an unexpected bounty."
Blueblood stared up into Napoléon's face, which was locked in a blank gaze out to the darkened lands beyond. "…Aunt Luna? Thank you," Blueblood said, and turned back to her, but she was already gone.
When Shining Armor stepped out of Pony Joe's the next morning, there was a single overturned crate set down at a respectable distance in front of the door. Prince Blueblood was reared up atop it, with one hindleg on the crate, his fores clenched around a large metal pole that he was using for balance. Tied around the top of the pole was a small Canterlot Aces pennant, which lay flaccidly, awaiting a breeze.
Shining Armor smiled and bowed. "Your Highness. You took off yesterday before we could really talk. I was afraid you wouldn't come back."
"The fires of righteousness never rest in their emblazonment," Blueblood intoned, eyes out to the distant horizon.
Shining Armor sipped his coffee, then rubbed his hoof hesitantly against the sidewalk. "You…are serious about this, right? I…well, I thought, yesterday…and then you…"
Blueblood hesitated for a moment, then looked Shining Armor calmly in the eye, and nodded. "Mock me all you like," he said. "Think what you wish. But great-grandfather was a hero, Captain, and sometimes one must stand upon principle."
Shining Armor let out a relieved breath. "Oh, thank goodness."
He turned his head and let out a sharp whistle. A flight of Guard pegasi fluttered down from the nearby rooftops, landing in formation on the street behind him.
"Men," Shining Armor said, emphasizing the word, "how long have you devoted yourselves to Equestria?"
"All our lives, sir!" they chorused.
"Can you vote for your elected representatives?"
"No, sir!"
Shining Armor trotted stiffly up to Blueblood and whirled to face his soldiers, clicking his hooves together into rigid attention. "And if a duly recognized Prince of Equestria thought that was unfair," he shouted, "and something stood in the way of him fixing that, would you do your sacred duty as Royal Guard and defend the honor of the crown?"
"Yes, sir!" they roared, and saluted as one.
Blueblood's heart leapt and fluttered.
"Captain Armor," he said, his second thank-you in as many days forcing its unfamiliar way to his lips.
But Shining Armor cut him off, shouting at the top of his lungs: "Squadrons 2 through 28, assemble!"
"Oh, great," one of the lords stage-whispered as Blueblood and Shining Armor marched into the Hall of Parliament. "It's the Rutting Rebellion, home to roost."
Blueblood glanced around the building. It looked like most of the 265 lords were in attendance—the actual ones, the baronesses and duchesses and marquesses, along with the husbands that Blueblood joked and chatted and made deals with all day. There were also several hundred Royal Guard crowded into the building, occupying nearly every square foot of floor space and much of the air above.[22] And Celestia and Luna themselves were sitting upon the dais at the front of the room.
The room was overcrowded. It was altogether too hot.
Blueblood walked calmly up to the front, guards parting in front of him like the tide. "Auntie," he said.
Celestia smiled. "Nephew."
He couldn't quite resist the jab. "Not too busy for me now, I hope?"
Her eyes sparkled. "Not when you've gone to such extremes to make your point."
He stared at her suspiciously for a moment, then adjusted his tie and harrumphed. "I hope," he said loudly, "it is clear now that justice requires my bill be decided by the will of the masses."
"I believe that's all too clear," Celestia said.
The room erupted in groans and catcalls.
Celestia held up a hoof for silence. "As a lawfully chosen member of this House, I must register my personal objection to its…more lewd provisions, but clearly there is something in it which has set afire the public consciousness, and sometimes it is the duty of a good ruler to do little more than listen."
Blueblood nodded, suppressing a smirk. He gave Auntie a clipped little bow and then turned to leave.
Celestia cleared her throat. "Er, nephew," she called after him, "is that all?"
Blueblood turned back and raised an eyebrow. "We got our vote," he said. "I suppose it is."
She cleared her throat again, seeming for the first time concerned. "Are you certain?"
Shining Armor subtly jabbed Blueblood in the side. "Prince," he hissed.
"Ah, one moment." Blueblood leaned in to the guard captain. "What is it?" he whispered crossly.
"Er," Shining Armor whispered back, "don't you want the stallions to be able to vote on this?"
"Well, of course," Blueblood explained patiently. "That's right there in the bill itself."
Shining Armor stared at him expectantly.
"…Oh." Blueblood coughed and turned around. "Oh, Auntie? And also, the stallions need to be able to vote on my bill."
"Of course," Celestia said. "But since that's part of the bill you introduced, the only way to make that happen would be to split the suffrage provision into a measure of its own, and vote on that first." She stopped and gave Blueblood a significant look. "That…would be an acceptable solution, yes?"
Blueblood suddenly felt every eye in the room on him.
"…Yes?"
The shot that ended the revolution was the sigh of relief heard 'round the world.
Footnotes
[1] From the muzzle of a breech-loader, if one takes Blueblood at his word.[2]
[2] He was, however, incorrect. Like most ponies outside the Canterlot nobility, the serving-maid hadn't loaded her breeches since she was a newborn foal.
[3] The return fire indisputably came from the muzzle of a smooth bore.
[4] The barmaid, it should be noted, was not a pony with a special talent related to her occupation, but rather a Canterlot University student supporting her education with a night job. Connoisseurs of irony may appreciate the fact that her name was Synecdoche.
[5] Not actually true. He stood too close while Poncemercy was relieving himself in the alleyway.
[6] If you don't believe this is possible, then you've never watched Blueblood do it.[7]
[7] At which point you will know for a fact that it is impossible.
[8] Celestia did not, in fact, own a linguistic warhammer. However, one of her relics from the days of the Qilinese empire was a linguistic sickle, which grammarians referred to in reverent whispers as the "Oxford kama."
[9] If you didn't catch the bilingual pun there, I probably shouldn't have ruined it by pointing it out.
[10] And promptly ran around screaming about being on fire, before having the presence of mind to stop, drop and roll.
[11] To be precise, calculating the payments necessary for Synecdoche to resolve the matter of Blueblood's assault quietly.
[12] Cheerilee, under her overly generous "Three Strikes" policy, restrained her eye-twitch and let this one pass without comment.
[13] It should be noted that, instead, modern stallions fulfill their civic obligations via jury duty. This didn't occur to Snails as a downside, because when the subject came up, his father told him to "jes' fall asleep when ya get ta th' courtroom, and they'll dismiss ya in a jiff."
[14] In his defense, she was a teacher. Teachers are supposed to be smart.
[15] Literally rolled by. Think tumbleweeds.
[16] The others (as well as Poncemercy) had been picked up by palace guards when the tour group got separated, and were huddling in safety in the palace kitchens. Except for the Cutie Mark Crusaders, who met up with Princess Luna and had an adorable and wildly improbable adventure full of tree sap in which they failed to earn their cutie marks in Draconequus Fighting.
[17] These were technically Celestia's, but everypony was too busy with Discord to pay attention when Cheerilee grabbed them from the display case next to the linguistic sickle.
[18] "Ice cream for a year." "Done." [19]
[19] Negotiations later broke down over whether the agreement covered unlimited usage or reasonable daily usage; acceptable flavors; and the payment of shipping charges.
[20] The preceding days had been so wildly eventful that Poncemercy had run completely through his stock of catchphrases, and was being forced to recycle them.
[21] Yes, with a hoof. This is exactly as horrifying an image as it sounds.
[22] That was, it should be noted, nearly the entirety of the Royal Guard. Equestria, of course, had been at peace for a hundred years (with the singular exception of Nightmare Moon's return), so there was no worry of hostile agents infiltrating the city while its protectors' attention was elsewhere.