(no subject)

[letteropener]

OOC SECTION
Mun name: Dragon
Personal journal: dragonoflife
Age: 34, ugh.
Contact: dragonoflife
Pronouns: He/him and so forth
Other characters: N/A

IC SECTION
Name: Princess Celestia
Canon: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
Canon point: S4E2: Princess Twilight Sparkle (Part 2)
Appearance:
Age: 1400 (headcanon; canonically it's only clear she's older than 1000.)
Gender: Female.
Personality: Celestia, being practically divine in pony terms, is the pinnacle of wisdom and virtue in Equestia. Thousands of years of life and rule had taught her patience, kindness, and empathy. In normal life she is peaceful, serene, and content almost to a fault.

Despite her position, Celestia doesn't stand on ceremony in the slightest if it isn't required. Her formal visits to Ponyville generally carry great pomp and circumstance, with her being borne in a carriage and her royal guards deployed while the town breaks its neck preparing, but that's because the ponies feel they ought to give their princess that due, and Celestia understands their need and desire to. On her own, she isn't above just dropping by Ponyville out of the blue to pick up a friendship report, without any ceremony. She doesn't really care how other ponies behave; she's completely fine with Pinkie Pie showing no real manners while eating in her presence, for example. When she's put on too high a pedestal, she's not above a harmless joke to break the ice -- when her teacup was being refilled after every sip, she only pretended to sip from it to provoke a tea-spilling refill. She has a sense of humor, and isn't afraid to laugh at herself even in private.

All that being said, Celestia does exhibit a desire to put aside the boring parts of ruling. She won't cancel the Grand Galloping Gala no matter how boring she finds it, but she's not above inviting six ponies who really don't belong there in the hopes that they'll shake it up, nor is she above ditching the event to laugh with those ponies at the local donut shop after they've wrecked the Gala.

Used to being in the limelight, Celestia is almost always on display -- calm voice, wings half-spread, and perfectly aware of her effect on others... but this isn't really her true self. In private, or in the casual presence of ponies she has a particular bond with, such as Twilight Sparkle, Celestia drops the careful serenity and calmness and sounds like a perfectly normal pony, practically like a different pony altogether.

When her subjects are threatened with harm, though, Nice!Celestia vanishes, replaced by a stern and forceful ruler who has no patience for those who would cause such chaos. Against a serious threat, Celestia is direct and to the point; she will explain the situation, but she won't beat around the bush doing so. If it's a foe she believes she can fight, she won't hesitate to directly attack; if not, she'll deploy whatever forces she has available to ensure it's stopped. And if the threat comes from someone who meant well, but really ought to know better... well, Celestia will still be very upset. But in that case, she can be talked down; she understands everyone has to make mistakes.

In the end, Celestia isn't afraid to make hard choices to do what's right. After all, she banished her own sister for a thousand years out of necessity, no matter how deep the pain it caused her, for the good of her subjects. And for the good of her subjects, she allows the creature who caused endless suffering to ponykind to be freed in the hopes that he could be redeemed, no matter her personal feelings on doing so.

And on the darker side, she has never forgiven herself for her mistakes, most particularly the heavy blame she places on herself for her little sister's conversion to the malevolent Nightmare Moon. Stemming directly from this, Celestia has all but replaced herself with the Princess; she is barely even capable of considering her own thoughts or feelings in any self-oriented capacity. Her minor indulgences in mischief or whimsy are the closest she gets to having a personality that is not oriented around the Princessly mask.
History: Celestia's history at the pony wiki
Aspirations: Princess Celestia wants people to live in happiness, with the chance to grow, strengthen themselves, and live full happy lives. Peace, prosperity, friendship, and love are her watchwords. More personally, she would like not to be needed any more -- to have her ponies rule themselves, without requiring an immortal princess to watch over them all their lives. And privately? She would like to have a vacation, if not retire. She would like to sleep in for once in her life. She'd like to take it easy... and at the same time, she wants to be needed.
Fears: Celestia fears making mistakes. She is afraid of causing harm to other ponies for her actions or inaction, and she worries that her best will not be good enough. She is afraid her sister will never forgive her, on the inside, for the mistakes she made in the past.
Inventory: Her crown and her shoes.

Magic: Light.
Reason: Canonically, light and Princess Celestia are practically synonymous. She is the Princess of the Day; her talent, the one thing she is best at and that she loves more than anything, is raising the sun each morning. She is the greatest foe to darkness and evil in Equestria, and the one every villain seeks to take down -- in some cases, to bring eternal darkness, because doing so with Celestia around is literally impossible. Her magic is glowing, warm, and brilliant, or blinding and searing when used offensively. She might as well be the goddess of light, in Equestrian terms.

Speaking more generally, she has stood against the negative side of darkness and all it stands for all her life, developing Equestria into a happy and prosperous land well-equipped to stand against destruction and malice. Where her sister fell to darkness in a very literal way, Celestia has proven incorruptible even after centuries of loneliness and pain.

RP samples:

Apologies all around.
Ponies and alchemists.
Ligh and lamps.

Paragraph sample written for another game, but copied here:

In the library, a hundred books danced and circled, each one wrapped in a warm summer glow. In the center of the circle their pattern formed, smiling wistfully, sat Princess Celestia. Even to a passerby outside, the magical manipulation shone out clearly through the windows.

Twilight Sparkle used to make the books dance like this... or at least she certainly had back in Canterlot, what seemed like a lifetime ago. She'd never seen it, but Celestia had no doubt that Twilight had set the books into motion like this, in this very room in the waking world, dozens of times.

If anypony asked, she would say this exercise had a purely practical purpose: she was searching for the Elements of Harmony. Twilight loved books, after all, and she had of course heard secondhoof of Rainbow Dash's discovered love of adventure stories. Of course, Celestia didn't truly believe that either of those could be considered where their hearts truly were, as the clue has indicated. But it didn't hurt to check.

Well. Perhaps checking hurt her heart just a little bit, even as it filled her with nostalgic memory.


Notes: Does the power-loss extend to the mundane telekinetic magic that alicorn (and unicorn) ponies use in lieu of having hands? Celestia can function without it, if a bit awkwardly, but I wondered if that would fall under just natural ability (like flying with wings).