It’s been three seasons, people. Three seasons, and Hasbro and DHX have slipped this one right under our noses this entire time. Over the countless thousands of viewings and reviewings of the episodes, deep inspection of the underlying canon of the show, and the innumerable pieces of analysis- some done by people with actual degrees instead of the fake one I have hanging on my wall- and yet somehow we’ve all missed a deeply disturbing piece of information that threatens to change the foundation of the series.
This is big. No, that’s an understatement if I ever wrote one. This is world-changing.
Exclusively on Equestria Daily, I am proud to bring you the irrefutable evidence I have gathered to support this claim. Open your mind to the infinite possibilities that this unfurls, and join me on a journey of discovery.
1) The Perfect Disguise
Cadance is a respectable ruler in her own right. She helped unify the Crystal Empire and clearly shows leadership skills. I want to be as fair as possible to our pretty pink princess, but let’s be honest here- Princess Mi Amore Cadenza is fairly obviously missing parts of the Pony Color Coordination package. Maybe more than a few. On a good day she looks like the result of a tragic paint factory accident. She’s a bucket of loud colors in a sea of loud colors. Her wings could probably serve as beacons for landing an airliner during a rainstorm made of bricks. Her mane probably served as the catalyst of the pony equivalent of the Cosmopolitan. Maybe her mane is actually ice cream. I’m not in the state to rule anything out, here. Have you tasted it?
Let’s contrast this eyeball rock festival to Rarity, who is unequivocally the epitome of coloration. Her mane is a tasteful gradient, with a lickable off-white coat and matching cutie mark and eye color. Understated and well within the boundaries of acceptable.
That’s why Rarity’s Cadance disguise is perfect.
Having been around both of them, no one would have ever suspected that the two ponies would have anything to do with each other. If you put Rarity in the same room with a dress in Cadance’s color style, neither her or the dress would make it out alive. Her neuroticisms simply wouldn’t allow it. Rarity and Cadance appear at the same time in the show, of course- but that’s the best argument one can give for them being the same entity. Would Rarity be able to be in the same room as Cadance without goggles?
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| Oh, she's good. |
Frankly, I’m convinced the only reason any pony can is that her mane is actually ice cream.
2) Her Lineage Foreshadows It
The Hearth’s Warming Eve winter play, as we all know, is a perfectly accurate representation of pre-Equestrian society. Unfortunately, since everyone involved with those early territory wars is now quite dead, the ponies are forced to hire actors to portray the long-past chancellors and diplomats with varying degrees of accuracy. Most of them do a serviceable job. Not Rarity.
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| Seen above: the non-mainstream way to wear a crown. |
What no one has managed to notice up until now is that Rarity wasn’t merely playing Princess Platinum- she is in fact immortal, past royalty, and revisiting her pivotal role in the foundation of Equestria, presumably because, “duh, who wouldn’t?”.
I know that this may be a harder pill to swallow, but the evidence is irrefutable. Rarity’s performance in the play is impeccable down to the smallest detail. She never breaks character. Her outfit is perfect and her lines well-practiced. The fervor that she injects into each scene she’s a part of is electrifying. Watch that scene again and tell me that she’s acting out a character and not, instead, reliving her golden days as a princess with her modern-day, not-immortal friends. Her reputation as a drama queen only reinforces this point. A clever hint by DHX, and one that went unnoticed for years.
The Cadance disguise, therefore, is only a continuation of what Rarity was in a far-distant past life: royalty, a queen, and a far more powerful being than anyone had ever imagined. That leads me neatly into my third piece of evidence.
3) Magical Power Far Out Of Proportion To Reality
Let’s make a few assumptions before we continue.
Normal unicorns usually can’t be very powerful magic users on their own. If they were, or if grand magical displays were commonplace, then many scenes from the show wouldn’t have been made and all the writers would have been fired for giving every pony they saw wings and setting the ship’s sails for the horizon. Alicorns, for example, would not be revered for their freakishly long extraneous limbs but would be outcast into some secret alicorn empire where they would slowly gather strength and come back to rule Equestria in a made-for-TV movie and I had better stop this because it’s sounding way too awesome and I should keep it to myself.
The point is that if you can do magic in a way that produces more sparkles than a glitter factory, then you’re special. Alicorns are special. Trixie is special, but only because we don’t want her to feel bad.
And then there’s Rarity.
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| Holy hell. |
I don’t even want to begin to estimate how much she’s levitating in this scene. That’s got to be her entire store and then maybe some ponies that happened to be walking by across the street that she painted to look like mannequins while we weren’t looking. If you’re ready to tell me a regular unicorn can do this kind of levitation then I’m ready to tell you to roll that sentiment up in a burrito and feed it to a giraffe. You can’t, because giraffes are tall.
Of course, this fits neatly right into the Cadance hypothesis. Cadance is a powerful alicorn magic user, and so is Rarity. Correlation does not necessarily imply causation (except when I say it does) so we’re not quite there. Oh, but we’re not quite done...
4) Love Magic
Cadance is special because she’s got the Alicorn downloadable content and took her vitamins a lot- that’s pretty obvious, but it ignores her one somewhat worrying special talent: the ability to create instant sparkling friendship between any two ponies.
Ignoring for the moment the disastrous consequences of this special talent were she to, say, use it to bring herself into power by seducing and subsequently marrying the captain of the Equestrian Royal Guard (however unlikely that situation may be), it fairly easily distinguishes her as far as magical prowess is concerned. Surely if Rarity and her were not the same pony, Rarity wouldn’t be able to perform such a feat.
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| DO HO HO. |
Rarity’s restraint must be admired, but this scene wasn’t the first instance we saw of her slipping out of character to get something that she wanted. Hints, undoubtedly, and yet they were still missed by everyone. Who knows how many more times she’s used this power? How much influence does she carry as Rarity, and how does it compare with what she can wield as Cadance? Scary questions, indeed, but we’re not quite done with this tale.
There’s one last thing we should discuss: the fact that...
5) They’re Both Actually Chrysalis
Cadance is actually Chrysalis. Ergo, Rarity is also Chrysalis.
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| … wait, damn it. |
Oh.
…
Well, that still makes Chrysalis best pony by two proxies. I can live with that.
Cereal Velocity has a Twitter. You can follow him @CerealVelocity
