Publiq World-Building: the Nobility of Canterlot
Something from the comics or EqG may have answered this already, but today's topic is on the Canterlot nobility.
Appearances in recent seasons?
They were more relevant during the early seasons, especially to Rarity. However, their importance seems to have been entirely dropped once Lauren Faust left. Considering they had the same attitude as the Wonderbolts of being cliquish and petty, it's probably for the best that they are in the past.
Politics of the Nobility
Canterlot nobles clearly are sinecures.
That said, there are plenty of nobles who do have real power from their positions as leading staffers and bureaucrats in Equestria's government. There are also top officials from outside the nobility, such as Twilight's parents (presumably) and Neighsay.
However, it's my HC that the Canterlot nobility used to have real duties. Specifically, after NMM got banished, Celestia needed a new center of government after the previous home of Equestria's government got turned into a magical Chernobyl. The unicorns of Canterlot were happy to lend their old facilities to be used as the capital of Equestria and also to take over the governance tasks to allow Celestia to focus on raising the sun and getting over her grief. Over the centuries, Celestia took on being the point pony for an increasing share of Equestria's governance until she was once again the de facto boss mare of all Equestria.
The biggest difference between Celestia being the active monarch and her recovery period as serving in a purely advisory role for administration (raising the sun was her only actual duty) is that she is now the clear head of government. Once she started to hold court to be the unified face of Equestria, the Canterlot nobility was replaced with professional bureaucrats and they could devote themselves to their true passion: the petty minutiae of Canterlot.
Origins of the Nobility
There are two origins of Canterlot's noble families. The style of "Prince" or "Princess" is a holdover from the pre-Equestria days when "Princess" was the title of the boss mare of Canterlot. It began to be applied less literally once it was apparent that Celestia was fundamentally different than other ponies (in both stature and longevity) and nopony would confuse a princess from the nobility with the princess.
1. Ancient lineages
These families at least claim to have their roots in the pre-Equestria times. No one is really sure if these ever existed or are true.
2. Celestia's bloodline
By the time the cameras start rolling for FiM, Celestia has clearly established that she is married to Equestria and nopony else. However, she used to take on husbands once a century or so and look around for her next prince consort once her previous grand foals were elderly. It's my HC that unicorn ability is highly heritable—Earth pony families are more likely to have similar CMs, but unicorn families have much more consistent magical power than earth ponies have in their CM or pegasi have in flying ability (barring genetic abnormalities in either direction, any improvement over baseline is purely from nurturing).
Unicorns Elsewhere
What Celestia contributed to the unicorn talent pool was a diversity of magic. Canterlot unicorns already had significantly higher power than other unicorns before Celestia moved there because raising the sun selected for high magic throughput. However, after Celestia's descendants faded into the general Canterlot population, ponies with generalized magic talents were no longer a once a generation prodigy: how they applied those talents suddenly mattered much more to their reputation.
Due to the increased baseline talent in Canterlot and Celestia opening her magic school, Canterlot became more central to unicorn culture than it was when they were responsible for raising the sun. In the old old days, any unicorn living outside Canterlot did not have to think about Canterlot one way or the other so long as they did their job. After Equestria was founded, Canterlot viewed itself as a preserved city for Equestria's historical society. However, it slowly became a place that every unicorn paid attention to after Celestia moved there to rule solo: their foals had dreams of acceptance in the gifted unicorns' program and relocating there. Celestia liked to send star students on adventures and long-term assignments in other cities to prevent brain drain: in an Equestria that may take days to travel between cities, it's a bad idea to have 100% of your top talent in one city.
Once major integrated cities such as Fillydelphia and Manehattan became established, Canterlot's centrality to unicorns was lessened, as these sufficiently-large population centers could run their own talented unicorn programs instead of shipping all their top students to Canterlot. If you imagine Celestia's school for gifted unicorns to be like Harvard or Cambridge, then Fillydelphia and Manehattan have schools like MIT or Purdue.
Submitted December 05, 2019 at 06:22PM by PUBLIQclopAccountant
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