Celestia and Luna are on the flag in "Hearths' Warming Eve" because the ponies already knew about alicorns, but they were never intended to be actual figures. When Discord arose, Celestia and Luna arose from the primal magical currents across Equestria and were given shape by the ponies' nebulous belief in two savior figures who would rescue them from the chaos.

@takashi.0: Yeah I get it. My reasons are dumb, and I'm dumb for making them.

I'm sorry.

I do like the whole Pegasi = Spartans thing myself, for similar reasons to Pannic. In Colour You Bleed canon, a country of pegasi essentially serves as Proud Warrior Race guys. My excuse had been that they lived on a mountain where everything wanted them dead, so they had to be, but still. It's also the only country to ever produce a direct child of an old soul.

It's honestly funny though, before that episode I'd always considered the pegasi to be the most... I don;t know, frail? Effite? Lithe? Of all the races. Just because I sort of assumed they'd have to be - Hollow bones, and all that. Out of all the cultural stereotypes I would have guess, "Brutes" was not among them.

You mean the rulers and their advisors merged to form Celestia and Luna

Started reading it. Interesting so far, though I've only read chapter 1

edited 13th Mar '12 9:52:47 AM by crowlover

Ehhhhhhhhh, I always thought Celestia and Luna were just two Alicorns on a road trip to make the world a better place, but the Discord incident and the Elements encouraged them to stay in Equestria

I swear, the idea that the Alicorns are just a race by themselves is SO unpopular it's unreal

edited 13th Mar '12 9:52:56 AM by gingerninja666

Celestia and Luna on a road trip. That is one awesome mental image.

Well, it's useless to theorycraft with a new alicorn on the horizon. I mean, given that Word of Faust says that Luna and Celestia have no parents, no relatives and no descendants...

^Insert Tenacious D here.

edited 13th Mar '12 9:54:55 AM by RedSavant

In my story, The Book of Friendship, the pegasus faction has sort of a hyper-militarized social darwinist thing going. And they're led by a general who, despite being female, is addressed as "sir." The earth ponies, meanwhile, run a banana republic and subsist off of supplies from the forest they grow, and the unicorns have this industrial revolution thing going and run on magitek.

edited 13th Mar '12 9:56:28 AM by Pannic

Celestia and Luna are Alicorns, while Cadence is a "winged unicorn." The difference being immortality and control over elemental forces.

@Ginger: To be fair, My 'old soul' theory sort of makes them a race... just a widely varyient one, since they can also take the form of horned hippocampi, extra-large pegasi, EP's or Pegasus, or even living elements. Like sand. Or trees. Still, technically a race.

@Kyler: In a dirty old camper van they bought for 50 bits that keeps breaking down.

@Crowlover: Thanks!

edited 13th Mar '12 9:57:08 AM by kegisak

Bear in mind that certain things might be subject to change.

edited 13th Mar '12 9:59:08 AM by Pannic

I guess I just assume that the societies in Hearth's Warming Eve are more complex then we think, so when people are quick to shove the Pegasi into the Proud Warrior Race camp it kind of annoys me.

On the subject of Alicorn's while Faust may have intended them to be one way, Pannic is right that they are still subject to change.

edited 13th Mar '12 10:00:37 AM by Mio

Well, they were pretty clearly painted with cultural shorthands for the sake of the play... they were likely more complex, yeah, but the elements got distilled. Maybe the playright was an EP, since they were portrayed most sympathetically, and he sort of painted the other two rather broadly since he didn't know them perfectly.

In Asimov's The God Themsleves, there are aliens with three genders, and their way of having sex is by fusion, when they temporarily become a single being, with a merged mind. When individuals reach adulthood, the fusion is permanent. Then they're called the Hard Ones.

One "Soft One" asks a Hard One if they don't have other genders or make sex and she/he smiles and say something like "we are used too". It happens that the Hard Ones are in permanent union in their minds, not the ephemerous thing the Soft Ones experience by fusion.

That's the way I understand Celestia and Luna: They don't have parents, relatives and/or companions because...

Of course, if Cadence is a God like them and not just a regular Alicorn, her wedding Josses everything.

Pegasi have a bit of a racial aggressiveness that stems from their fraility, as a sort of deterrent to potential predators.

That WMG I had about pre-classical Equestria also ties other pony canon into the mix, even (shudder) G3. Of course, it was their post-scarcity pseudo-utopian civilisation that collapsed as a result of the Love Poison going too far (seriously the G3 ponies are even more hopeless than the easily-panicked present-day Ponyville herd! Even Team "Didn't think this through enough, lol", aka the CMC, they are MORE competent than most of the G3 ponies!), and everypony blamed each other and martial law and what have you and after a few years of unrest, the three tribes had formed to stand for themselves. Three lost pony races are unknown of in the present: Flutter Ponies (although the magic to gain wings like theirs remains), Sea Ponies (hopefully making a comeback, shoo bee doo~), and Lesser Winged Unicorns (not Deity- or Royalty-tier like the Princesses, and this breed is unfortunately the slave race of the evil Mary Sue writers, who must be cleansed with fire for imprisoning this race of ponies ).

a bit: Cadance is a Lesser Winged Unicorn? Hmmm, fairly plausible.

edited 13th Mar '12 10:10:07 AM by AceOfScarabs

Perhaps. It did have the feeling of a "school play" to it, which was probably at least some what intentional.

edited 13th Mar '12 10:05:45 AM by Mio

Wait, you want to cleanse the Lesser Winged Unicorns with fire?

edited 13th Mar '12 10:09:49 AM by crowlover

@crowlover: No, silly, I want to cleanse the Mary Sue Writers with fire and free the poor lesser Winged Unicorns from being forced to take embarassing names and get dyed terrifying colours and basically be slaves for these evil writers.

Am I the only one who thought that fanfic where pinky pie dies from diabetus was funny?

I don't even consider the Princesses "deity"-tier powerful, just ridiculously strong when compared to ponies.

My fanon is that Celestia and Luna are actually below average in terms of Alicorn power

You mean Bitter Sweet? I never read it.

Really? Then what would a "normal" Alicorn be like?

edited 13th Mar '12 10:13:00 AM by Mio

Great, now I have an image of fanfic writers conscripting (couldn't think of a better word) characters to be a part of their story...

@ginger Thrice as strong (Man, I will not let that go...)

edited 13th Mar '12 10:15:22 AM by crowlover

I keep thinking I have something to contribute to this discussion, but every time I go to add a post, it all flies out of my head.

Well as long as it flies into the keyboard that's ok.