Hello! My name is-
Well, actually my name kinda depends. My birth name is Moondrop Rose. A name I've gone by for most of my life, however, is Yvanna. It's kind of a long story, but my closer friends and associates, and I suppose anyone who would like to, call me Yvanna, whereas everyone else calls me by my birth name.
I came into this world 112 years ago. And 7 years before that, Princess Twilight's reign came to a very abrupt end. Not for any standard reason, as she never stepped down, she didn't resign, she didn't die or go into retirement or have a successor rise in her place-
She went missing. She and her advisor, Spike the dragon, both did.
No one knows why or how, or by whom. One day she was there, and the next she was not. At this point it had been well known that all of the original elements she was associated with, her friends from a formerly known Ponyville, had long since died. By nearly 200 years, in fact. Princess Twilight's reign had, to date, been the 4th longest in history. My classes taught me of her predecessors, Princess Celestia and Princess Luna, and the rulers before them, and before them.
Because of Princess Twilight's unexplained disappearance, which had no other accompanying events or attacks, Equestria brought itself into a panic-based Chaos. With no ruler, nopony could decide for sure what needed to be done, and no one could agree with anyone else.
Another Princess, Princess Flurry Heart of the Crystal Empire, finally took a stand and sent an invitation to other major rulers throughout not just Equestria, but other lands beyond it, to meet with her and discuss plans moving forward. When one of our world's largest leaders goes missing, you can't take it lightly. So, every one of those rulers responded willingly.
Prince Rutherford of Yakyakistan. Queen Skystar and Prince Novus of the collective kingdoms of Seaquestria and Hippogriffia. Queen Nadia of the Changelings, and her uncle, retired King Thorax. These among many others including Dragonlord Ember, Prince Blueblood, and many minor Royalties.
Including my mother.
Together, all these rulers met, and Princess Flurry Heart, with her mother and father by her side, conducted a meeting that split the rule of Equestria between the many instead of the few. Every royalty of any note had been given an area to protect and help rule over, and the more experienced royalties remained major leaders. The last thing they did in this meeting was to call for Discord. Being the only notable draconequus and a trusted advisor of Princess Twilight, he had been made a sort of guardian of our lands. He was given a royal status that no one could quite define, but I've always looked up to him as a protector. His job was to travel, almost all the time, and to transfer information, and do everything within his power to keep royalties and citizens alike, safe.
In the end, Flurry Heart's mother, Princess Cadence took residence in Canterlot, and reclaimed her responsibilities as a ruler, becoming our main power and protection in Equestria. Flurry Heart herself stayed behind as ruler to the Crystal Empires, with her father Shining Armour working as her advisor.
Of course, most of this is common knowledge. Or it would be, if anyone paid attention in history classes. Frankly, it's pretty boring stuff. I used to think so, at least, being bored by it as a filly. You can't blame me, really. There are so many names and territories to remember, so many different passings of power. Then they started bringing ridiculous economic values and racial statuses into it all, and it just becomes too easy to lose track of.
For one, did you know that alicorns became much more common? Of course, alicorns still always retain some form of royalty to their names, but not all of them are made princes and princesses with Rule. Until the division of rulers' power I mentioned before, I mean.
My mother, Princess Gemstone Rouge, seemed at first a stately and kind mare who used that power wisely. And my father, Prince Barley Mist, who used to work on a farm, was credited as a cowardly alicorn stallion, who took no part in the rule of our small, forgotten kingdom. However, this information could not have been more wrong. Gemstone was an incredibly vain and greedy mare, and she became violent if she felt disrespected. My father wanted nothing more than peace, but because he grew up, even as an alicorn himself, a common farmer, he had no idea how to go about any of this business, and chose to keep his silence, to keep the peace.
And then I was born. Alicorns birthing alicorns was no longer a rare thing, as I mentioned, and I was born one myself. My mother became filled with paranoia and greed, and was convinced that my existence would rob her of her throne and her power. She began to lose her mind and sought to take my life as a child.
My father, on the other hoof, loved me dearly, and I wish very much that I could have met him. Or that I could at least remember his face. To save my life, he had me sent away to one of the most remote and earthy kingdoms in our lands.
Yakyakistan. As wild as folks expect the yaks to be, and that they are, their settlements are very nature-oriented and follow valuable traditions that honour their ancestors. This is why my father sent me there, and that is where I grew up. And, this is where I got my second name, Yvanna.
In order to become "one of them", I had to show the yaks that I was dedicated to the whole and not the one. Where most other civilizations value individualism, yaks more value being able to see a whole picture. Of course they value individual traits too, but there are some kinds of rules that they insist upon.
Such as the "no flight, no magic" rule. I loved my adoptive family very much, and I adapted to the culture very quickly. I had a special wing binder made for me, and a very pretty little gold ring that was put on my horn as a reminder not to use it. I was never bothered by this. You can't mourn the loss of magic or flight if you never experience them to begin with, yes?
As it turns out, when an alicorn or a unicorn, whose horn is not already dormant, resists their magic, it finds another, subtle way to show itself. In my case, my hair grew very long. It needed to be cut once every month in order to prevent it from dragging too far on the ground. It didn't matter if you cut it up to my ears; it would be to my hooves again after two weeks!
Anyway, all this to say that I grew up very differently from any other pony I've ever met. And I'm okay with that.
Another way I was different was in how I got my cutie mark. The problem? I got it when I was 2 years of age. I was barely more than a foal. No one can remember how I got it even, except that I may have been arguing with several other young yaks about a squashed bug whose life I thought should have been spared. But I did that all the time. So why now?
My host family was at a loss. Village leaders were at a loss, too. And when I was taken to meet Elder Prince Rutherford, even he was at a loss. Rutherford, however, and a few other very old yaks, told me of the Princess of Friendship and her many friends, and said that ponies would be able to help me better than they.
So, at the age of 3 years (for it took a very long time to sort this all out), I was taken to meet the great, great granddaughter of one of the Cutie Mark Crusaders, whose name was Pear Seedling. She was reaching her golden years, and none of the other Cutie Mark Crusaders' descendents was any longer alive. This was truly the last of the line.
Pear Seedling told me that every now and again, a pony gets their cutie mark when they are young as I was because they have very strong purposes in life. She told me all about the original Cutie Mark Crusaders, and about how they once met someone like me, too. They were also becoming very old when they met him, and it was an experience Pear Seedling had always wanted to have.
This because the one they met was one of MY ancestors. My great grandfather, who was a descendent of… Well, one of the Princesses of the time. No one can quite remember. The problem is that there were a lot of royal lines mixing at that time, with both each other and with regular pony folk.
Though this was all valuable information to me, I have to be honest; the one thing I remember most about the experience was that I was extremely confused by this old mare's name. Pear Seedling? That didn't make any sense! Her Cutie Mark Crusader ancestor was of the Apple family!
But, ah, it didn't matter. I went home feeling prouder of myself than I had ever been. Not only had I been told all about how special I was for getting my cutie mark so young, but I had been told a little about what my mark might have meant, too.
See, my cutie mark depicts a yin-yang pulled apart, so the black and the white are separated. Above it is a flower, and below it is a noose. Pear Seedling told me that it probably meant I had a heightened sense of good and bad, and life and death.
When you're little, that sounds all well and good, but the older you get, the more confusing it becomes. Especially not knowing what caused it to appear to begin with. I had some kind of… what? Great purpose? Set aside for me from the moment I was old enough to speak, and it did nothing for me. I didn't understand what that great purpose was, I didn't know what I was supposed to do with it. It didn't seem a talent to me. You can't feed anyone with this. You can't charm anyone with this. You can't do anything at all. "Heightened sense" did not at the time mean talent to me, and it left me feeling like there was nothing in the world I would ever truly be good at.
While I continued to grow up as adopted alicorn 'Yvanna', there were other troubles happening within Equestria.
A very small group of rams, some of the last in existence, began to struggle and dwindle on the other side of Equestria. Through a series of very poor circumstances, one of the male rams, who had grown to be taller than the rest and thus thought himself of a greater status, began to lose his mind. He was obsessed with the villains of Equestrian history and believed that he himself was the reincarnation of Grogar, who was a very evil and powerful wizard-like ram that brought chaos and destruction to our lands thousands of years ago.
With his mental state continuously fading, this particular ram began to attack other small villages surrounding his own. Initially, he tried to convince himself that he was doing it to protect the last of his race, but truth won out in the end and he was hurting innocent creatures because it made him feel powerful.
He started by attacking those small, close villages. Then small towns. Cities next. When that aforementioned truth was revealed to him himself, he truly lost his mind and destroyed his own village, rendering him the very last ram.
From there he began to branch out.
He attacked creatures of every kind. Travelled and pillaged and stole and attacked everything and everywhere, and there seemed to be no stopping him. Rams were not traditionally considered because they were so rare. Even hippogriffs and dragons were more widely known citizens, and with this in mind he was able to catch folks by surprise.
After months and months of this, he began to attack the biggest kingdoms in Equestria. The most important rulers. Including Princess Cadence.
This really set the alarms blaring. Even Discord could not keep up with this ram, and so he was immediately sent out to locate every known alicorn in Equestria and beyond it. Every helping hoof available was pulled into the fight, and because of my association with Pear Seedling, I was found and brought out also.
I was barely full-grown, a young adolescent at best. For two weeks, I and nearly 200 other alicorns were stationed all throughout Equestria to keep constant watch. I spent quite a bit of time missing my yak family and village, and because of my very yak-like behavior, I didn't know how to properly get along with anyone else, regardless of three other alicorns who had been making efforts. I had never felt stranger or more alone than when I was standing guard in an obscure city with several dozen armoured ponies marching all around me. I had never felt more hopeless either. The one week of magic and flight training I'd gotten for this wouldn't be enough.
And it just happened to be my area that this Grogar-wannabe attacked. Not more than an hour into my second day on duty and the city erupted into chaos. Buildings were pulled from their roots, ponies woken and set under paralyzation spells. The sun hadn't even risen yet, and our villain had finally shown his face. With the wind billowing all around me and rubble and shrubbery and creatures all alike being thrown about, I had never been more terrified.
Believe it or not, the battle ended rather quickly in a stalemate. I was virtually unscathed, and when Discord showed up, this odd character took his leave. Discord was able to identify a weapon the ram carried as being Grogar's "Bewitching Bell". It gave the ram immense power and skill with potions and spells, which seemed to suit him fine considering his infatuation with old fashioned antagonists.
Many other princesses had arrived shortly after this discovery, and after being asked the same questions about 50 times, I was taken to the Canterlot Palace to speak with Princess Cadence herself. We spoke only a few minutes, and I was then granted three days to travel home and rest before I would be put back on duty.
So I put my wing binder back on, my horn ring, and I boarded an overnight train back to Yakyakistan.
What I found turned my blood ice-cold.
My village was gone. It had been completely destroyed. There were no yaks left in it, and there were no buildings left standing. There was nothing.
The first thing I had done was sprint toward my own hut. I grew so desperate to reach it quickly that my wings broke through my binder and I half-flew the rest of the way.
I got there. I found my host parents' favourite things in pieces in the dirt. I found my old binders and rings in rags. I found our rugs torn to shreds. And then I found myself, weeping on the ground.
I spend nearly 20 continuous hours travelling on hoof to the center village to speak with Prince Rutherford. Every village I passed on the way had been destroyed as well. And when I found Prince Rutherford's hut, it was surrounded with other yaks, each looking so forlorn that I didn't even need to ask what was happening.
Our prince was gone.
Or he was about to be.
That was my family, gone. My neighbors and my friends, gone. All of our material possessions, things that held memory, gone! And I didn't even have a leader to turn to.
I didn't know a single thing of being a pony. I couldn't just go to the princesses, because they didn't speak like me, or act like me, or think like me! They knew nothing of me whatsoever!
Never before had I been so alone. And never had I been so angry. I had been done such a misdeed, been inflicted with an injustice so intense, and it just wasn't fair! Was it not enough that I knew not my birth mother or father? And that I never would? That I grew up in a place where I was the only one like me, that I could not fit in? I had just lost everything I'd ever known, and there was no restoring any of it.
But I could seek justice. I could avenge my family and my home and my Prince, and everything else that had been so wrongly taken from me. I could bring justice to them all and allow them peace! I would! I was going to find this ram, and I was going to kill him.
My heart had been turned over and emptied out. I was dangerous. I was without control. I figured that you had to fight fire with fire, and so I threw down my wing binder and my ring and swore to use magic to fight magic. I was going to be rid of this problem once and for all.
Even if I had to take a life to do it.
I spent days tracking him down. I followed every trail of anything even remotely chaotic, and after ruling out Discord playing his harmless tricks, I followed.
Along the way I bumped into some other minor alicorns. Princess Aura Breeze, Prince Broad Wind, and Prince Chestnut Tart are alicorns who had been stationed very near me when we were all of us out in Equestria, the ones who had first tried to befriend me. They were having a short meeting before they went back to their own stations, talking about who would take a turn watching my station since I was late to return myself.
Though they had done their best to convince me not to, I brushed all of them off when we bumped into each other, and continued to chase this ram. Nothing would stop me in my mission.
When I finally found him, I found myself wishing that I had listened to Aura, Broad Wind, and Chestnut, for he had grown more powerful than I had even imagined.
When I confronted him, he laughed. Destroying Yakyakistan was nothing to him, like squashing a….
Like squashing a bug, whose life did not deserve to be taken.
I had tried to attack him. Tried to kill him, right then and there. My magic, uncontrolled and dangerous, sparked and glowed and exploded every which way with no kind of direction or intent except to hurt. It was then that this villain introduced himself to me.
Calling himself Re-Gar. I thought it was an awful name, personally.
To make a long story short, though our battle continued only a short while longer, I left the scene damaged and scarred and defeated. He'd used some kind of potion or spell that got into my right eye. The burning sensation it created was unlike anything I'd ever felt before and I cried. The effects of its magic were so strong that it affected my other eye as well, and every tear that fell down my cheek left a scar.
For the rest of my life, I will have permanent tear tracks on my right cheek, and I will be without my vision.
I was left in a burned down field, severely wounded and devastatingly broken-spirited. My three alicorn friends found me soon after, having followed me, and they took me to the nearest Kingdom they could, which happened to be that of the Crystal Empire.
Princess Flurry Heart had treated me kindly, and healed my wounds as best she could. When I woke two days later, I spoke with her father, Shining Armour. He had grown very old, and a part of me was surprised that he was still there that day after so very many years.
But he was kind, and very paternal. Some of the things he told me, about some of the things he had learned, and some of the silly stories he shared of his sister, Princess Twilight, were encouraging to me. I carry those messages with me even now.
Shortly after, this news got out about what I had done, about how I had lost control. New rumours began to spread about my true identity and genealogy, so much so that I couldn't go anywhere without being recognized and pulled aside.
At the peak of all this, Princess Cadence finally took note and personally summoned me to Canterlot to speak directly with her.
I told her my birth name. My yak family had been told my birth name when they took me in, and they told it to me when I was old enough to remember it myself.
Moondrop Rose. I felt uncomfortable with it. I had gone by Yvanna for my whole life, and Moondrop Rose felt so regal and… unique. I didn't understand it. It didn't seem to hold any relevance to me or my so-far useless cutie mark.
But Cadence knew it. She recognized my name where even I did not. She told me that a distant relative of hers, Gemstone Rouge, was a princess who ruled in an obscure settlement out West, known for its trading market. She'd heard that Gemstone had given birth to an alicorn some years before, and then gone mad.
Several years after I had been sent to Yakyakistan, apparently with no other pony's knowledge of this having been done, my father, Prince Barley Mist, had died at the hands of my mother. Gemstone Rouge had immediately and permanently been stripped of her powers of flight and magic, and then banished to a desertscape very far East, where few thrived.
After telling me all this, Cadence apologized. She said that it was my birthright to inherit the small kingdom that my mother had forfeit, but that it had been destroyed. Not by Re-Gar, but by its citizens. The trade market grew unstable and the area became dangerous, which led to its eventual abandonment only a few years before. The land was mine to claim, but there was nothing and no one on it to rule over.
I told her that it was of no matter to me. I did not need to rule. But, given that the land was open to me, I desired only to repair it. I realized, in learning about my mother's downfall in greed and instability, that I did not have to become like her. My greed was in vengeance. My instability was in thinking of myself as unfortunate.
I had lost my birth family. I had lost my yak family. I lost my village, my leaders, my friends, my sense of identity, and my eyesight. I was hurt, I was betrayed, I was lonely, and I still didn't know who I was. I hadn't asked for any of those things, but they were given to me anyway. They were mine.
And I realized- that trying to fix my losses; that seeking so fervently after revenge, after a death to make up for a death, did nothing. It was an endless, repetitive, self-destructive cycle that would never in any way end happily.
So, my only desire with this land was to restore it. To clear away its damages, to plant new life, and to make it beautiful. Truly beautiful, not like my mother had made it. A kind of beautiful that could be loved and appreciated, even without eyesight to see it with. And to expand on that, I wanted to repair Yakyakistan, too. If I had any kind of power in this way, that was how I wanted to use it. Not in trying to take another life. And Princess Cadence agreed wholeheartedly.
All at once, in that moment, I understood. Something in my mind clicked, and I rushed to inform Cadence that I knew how to approach Re-Gar.
As it turned out, Grogar's Bell had actually been next to useless. It took only a little research to figure that out. The Bell's power had been nearly dormant. What made it work for Re-Gar was his belief that it worked, and his unstable mind. The chaos he created is what fed power into that bell. It was self-generated.
And the reason we couldn't follow him or defeat him was because we were- as I had been- trying to fight fire with fire. Any kind of resistance or attack was feeding his energy.
I proposed a plan. And when all the most important princesses met with Cadence and I to hear it, they chose to carry it out. Discord rather disliked this plan, however.
But, it worked. With help from several Zebra tribes, we created a new form of plant life that absorbed, and I quote, "negative energy". What it really did was absorb chaotic magic. Instead of reflecting or countering it, as we had been doing, it sucked it up and made it harmless.
Princesses everywhere took seeds for this plant all throughout Equestria, and into the dragon lands, and to Yakyakistan, and everywhere. These seeds were planted on the borders of every single community.
From there, it didn't take us long to find Re-Gar. An entrapment spell that had been designed especially for this was given to Discord, and using his own chaotic magic, quite ironically, he was able to banish Re-Gar, which saved all of Equestria.
I was accredited for so much of this that I didn't even know what to do with myself. I was unaccustomed to compliments of any kind, and ponies and creatures were saying now that I had cleverly fixed everything.
Very shortly thereafter, because of my plan and its ingenuity, I was officially crowned the Princess of Wisdom.
I personally like to think of it more as strategy or tactics, but the word felt so right, and still does.
Since then, quite a lot has happened. I restored Yakyakistan, and I restored my mother's kingdom, which I renamed the Mist Domain in honour of my father.
Twenty years into my reign as Princess of Wisdom, things became chaotic once more. In its simplest terms, a massive investigation into Princess Twilight's disappearance yielded evidence of draconequus magic. Discord was sentenced to life or eternity in prison for his kidnapping of Princess Twilight and her advisor Spike.
We began to discover new realms and new creatures that you would never imagine… Forms of magic I didn't even know existed! There were ghoulish creatures and nightmare-worthy places of shadow and substance so dark I can never scrub the images from my mind. And twenty years after that…
Twilight was found.
But that's another story. And it happened nearly 30 years ago, now.
So, hello. My name is Moondrop Rose, or Yvanna, Princess of Wisdom, of the Mist Domain. I have seen so much, even since losing my eyesight. And I have yet more to see and to learn and to understand.
And this is how I became a Princess.