I always thought they were more or less equal, myself.

Oh sun, to tell thee how I hate thy beams that bring to my remembrance from what state I fell, how glorious once above thy sphere.

I'm running out of lines that I remember, though, and also ones that are relevant.

@condot - I haven't actually read Paradise Lost, but I really would like to.

I have Divine Comedy and Faust to read before that, though.

Hehe, Faust.

edited 2nd Sep '12 12:29:52 PM by dRoy

Ha ha, Faust. (Though you ninja'd me on that)

I am always thinking about that when we talk about Lauren.

edited 2nd Sep '12 12:30:26 PM by condottiera

Oh another note in my headcanon, Luna was more powerful than Celestia. When the Elements of Harmony took away her dark powers (most of her powers) she's a lot weaker now and has to gain power all over again. Hence the difference of appearance between Elements of Harmony and Luna Eclipsed.

There's one that is like, "What is dark in me, illumine, what is low, raise and support, " which could so work for the transformation to NMM.

I don't remember that one exactly, and looking it up would be cheating.

Better to reign on the Moon than to serve in Equestria.

edited 2nd Sep '12 12:32:43 PM by condottiera

That makes me wonder, though: wouldn't exiling Nightmare Moon TO THE MOON make her only more powerful?

It's not like she gets her power from the moon, though.

I think she may have become the moon, a la Princess Yue.

Seeing as the sun, the stars, and the moon all preceded Celestia and Luna by some time (and that their duties fell to all unicorns for generations prior), it's difficult to draw parallels between the princesses and any Real Life mythology.

As for relative power levels, it's possible that Celestia's been holding back her full power. When fighting NMM, she would be reluctant to hurt her sister; it's possible that she didn't put up any fight during NMM's return so as to prevent any collateral damage from another fight (and since she was expecting the Elements of Harmony to incapacitate NMM anyway).

I don't have a dog in the race, but it's interesting to consider.

Luna is best waterbender?

Which would make Celestia best firebender.

@d Roy Why would it? They control the celestial bodies, nothing says that they gain power from them.

All this NMM talk reminds me: Isn't there a Touhou villain who plotted Eternal Night too?

@Kyler: I would so rather be a firebender than anything else.

Yeah, the sun and moon were around long before Celestia and Luna, which muddies the waters a bit.

Hence the pun:

edited 2nd Sep '12 12:37:30 PM by KylerThatch

The first two stanzas of The Walrus And The Carpenter work pretty well.

On the collateral damage aspect, I like to think that the Everfree Forest was made from the collateral damage of their fight. So much power was thrown at each other that the laws of nature broke in the Everfree and it became what it is now. So I do think that Celestia held her duty to her kingdom (and the whole world ultimately) being more important than her duty to her sister.

edited 2nd Sep '12 12:39:17 PM by Badwolfwho

Explain?

Right, the celestia objects exist before Celstia and Luna and neither of them gets any particular power from those.

Now this begets further question.

Did Alicorns come into existence with celestial objects? If they didn't, who moved the latter before the former came into existence?

edited 2nd Sep '12 12:45:01 PM by dRoy

Well if she fought they would have destroyed Ponyville, even more than it's usually destroyed.

@story: Oh, wow, I could totally see that.

Except it kinda takes the epic out of it. I like whimsy, though. Whimsy and epic are moods I cycle between.

I believe it was stated in "Hearth's Warming Eve" that the entire unicorn tribe moved the sun and the moon, before the arrival of the princesses.

The real problem is that the sun is male in the poem.

@Badwolf: If anything the Everfree Forest is the most natural place in Equestria, because weird things happen like, y'know, plants growing by themselves, and clouds not needing to be pushed around.