Greetings, all. TheSlorg here with another Pony Spotlight.
There was a time when this week's pony would have a Spotlight consisting of a single sentence: She's mean. Thankfully she was recently given a bit more personality to work with. It's Diamond Tiara!
But was Diamond always as mean as we remember her, or was there a little more to her even early on if you know where to look? Head on down below the break to find out!
Aliases: Di
Cutie Mark: Tiara
Appearances: 18 Episodes, Equestria Girls, Rainbow Rocks, Friendship Games
First Appearance: Call of the Cutie
Speaking Roles: 11
Random Fact: Diamond Tiara earned her cutie mark mere days before Twist earned hers.
Beginnings
Diamond Tiara, unlike most of the ponies to be featured to this point, was not in the show since the very beginning. She also wasn't meant to just look good in the background. No, Diamond Tiara was created with a very clear purpose in mind: she was to be the mean girl right from the get-go. Season one's Call of the Cutie would be her first appearance and speaking role, and it didn't take long for her and her friend Silver Spoon to establish themselves as pests by bragging about their cutie marks and inviting Twist and Apple Bloom to Diamond's cute-ceañera just so they could make fun of the two if they happened to show up.
We had seen antagonists before Call of the Cutie, but they had all targeted either adult ponies, or Ponyville in general. Diamond and Silver were the first ones to specifically target colts and fillies.
Diamond's next appearance wasn't quite so clear-cut, however. In The Show Stoppers, she and Silver Spoon perform together in the school talent show against the Cutie Mark Crusaders, Twist, Snips and Snails, and Peachy Pie and Sunny Daze. It is unknown what their performance was, but Diamond and Silver did not earn any awards. One might imagine that they would be openly annoyed at missing out on any awards when the Cutie Mark Crusaders earned one, but they actually just calmly stand there and watch.
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| The things Diamond Tiara puts up with. |
Growth
Season two opened with The Return of Harmony: Part 1, which was also the return of Diamond Tiara. In the opening scene she is walking with the rest of the class on a field trip. What's interesting here is both her location relative to the other ponies, and her actions. She and Silver Spoon are walking at the head of the class with Cheerilee, when you might imagine a bully to walk near the end of the line as far away from the teacher as possible. Not only does Diamond stay near her teacher, but she is focused and attentive to everything Cheerilee says. Could this mean that Diamond is actually a good student? Maybe, but what follows is even more shocking. When the Cutie Mark Crusaders begin fighting over what Discord's statue stands for, Diamond actually looks disgusted; not at the CMC themselves, but at the fact that they could behave in such a manner.
Sure, she does eventually laugh when the Crusaders are punished, but so does the rest of the class. It's an interesting glimpse at her behavior when she isn't specifically tormenting anypony.
In The Cutie Pox, Diamond was back to her old ways, attempting to downplay Apple Bloom's loopty hoop 'cutie mark' as being lame. She gets annoyed when Apple Bloom takes a chance to mock her by saying "Keep practicing and you might get half as good as me." In fact, Apple Bloom decided to take it a step further by explaining that her next loopty hoop moves were advanced and not for beginners. She then got in Diamond's face and said, "Got that, Diamond Tiara?" She actually hurls more direct insults than Diamond in this episode.
Family Appreciation Day sees Diamond taking the chance to enjoy seeing Apple Bloom's discomfort when she explains how embarrassing Granny Smith's antics are. Diamond's the only pony in class paying attention with her father, Filthy Rich, gives a lecture on retail, and is shocked into silence when Granny Smith gives her speech. It isn't until after Apple Bloom once again decides to take a shot at her by pointing out how her father's business wouldn't exist without Granny that she loses her temper and calls Granny a kooky old lady.
Diamond appears briefly in Hearts and Hooves Day, showing delight at playing 'pin the heart on the pony.' Her next appearance is in Ponyville Confidential, where she becomes editor-in-chief of the Foal Free Press. There is some interesting, and probably unintentional, foreshadowing here when Scootaloo says "We can take a little bit of Diamond Tiara for a lifetime of cutie marks," in reference to having to deal with Diamond if they want to try to earn a reporter's cutie mark. Another interesting tidbit is that Diamond Tiara actually does a good job as editor-in-chief. She understands what ponies want to read and, despite the paper's downward spiral into a trashy rumor mill, readership skyrockets. As she would later go on to say: "No matter what be the cost of the path I take, whatever I have to do to win in the end." Diamond knew what it took to get readership up, and she was willing to do it despite potential consequences.
It could be argued that up until Ponyville Confidential, nearly all of Diamond's antics were directly linked to her feud with Apple Bloom. For the most part, she stayed out of trouble and payed attention in class. This was the first episode where her actions harmed anypony other than the CMC directly.
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| Pretty much every day after school. Think about it. |
Current Status
Season three brought us One Bad Apple, and Diamond's deeper descent into darkness. She brought on Babs Seed as a friend when Babs destroyed the Crusaders' pumpkin float to impress her, and proceeded to take over the Crusader Clubhouse with her help. She was rewarded for her efforts by getting dumped into a muddy pig pen.
Diamond's first appearance in season four is Flight to the Finish, which is arguably her most cruel performance. It began with Diamond once again paying close attention in class, but ended with her mocking Scootaloo's possible disability in her inability to fly. There is a notable progression in cruelty here, though. Diamond first tried to throw the Crusaders off by using the old 'blank flank' routine. It's only when this doesn't work that Diamond takes it a step further and resorts to picking on Scootaloo, all in an attempt to win a chance to carry the flag at the Equestria Games.
In Pinkie Pride she admitted that Pinkie did a good job on her cute-ceañera. In Twilight Time, Diamond took a new approach when she pretended to be friends with the Crusaders in order to appear closer to the recently-crowned Princess Twilight. There are a few more appearances here and there, but it was her appearance in season five's Crusaders of the Lost Mark that revealed the main source behind her behavior.
Crusaders of the Lost Mark began with Diamond attempting to be re-elected as student pony president. It is clear in this episode that she has long had enough of losing to the Crusaders, as she resorts to bribes and extortion in order to win the election, and eventually lashes out at Silver Spoon and loses her as a friend. This, and immediately being berated by her mother, was Diamond's breaking point as we see her true motivations revealed in the song The Pony I Want to Be. Her entire life she was taught that she was better than anypony with less social and financial status than her, and that to maintain that status she had to win at everything she tried. All along, however, she just wanted to be herself and not be made to live up to such expectations.
If you watch each episode Diamond appears in, you can actually see the progression towards her breaking point. In season one she mocked Apple Bloom as a blank flank because she was taught that having a cutie mark elevated her to a higher status. Beyond that, she mostly just studied and kept to herself. She began retaliating back and forth with Apple Bloom throughout season two, but it was again confined to a single grudge. As Diamond continued to lose face to Apple Bloom in the following seasons, one can imagine the kinds of talks her mother had with her, and you can see her actions become worse and worse as she struggles to do whatever it takes to get ahead and regain some kind of worth in her mother's eyes. Her motivation through all her appearances was to be accepted, and it took having her greatest enemies see her at her most vulnerable for her to realize that it was up to her to make the change and see it through. She eventually goes beyond any of our expectations when she stands up to her mother and defends her long-time enemies in front of the entire school.
Anyone who has ever had parents knows how difficult it is to open up and state an opinion that is directly opposite of their own, regardless of how they may eventually take it. It's nerve-wracking, and can lead to deep emotional trauma. With Crusaders of the Lost Mark, we got a chance to see just how deeply disturbed Diamond had been, and how she longed to have a normal, loving family life. Remember, this filly is the equivalent of maybe an eight year old girl, and she was singing lines like "there's something jagged in me," and "I can't see what I need to do to be the pony I want to be." That speaks of some serious emotional scarring right there, and it will be interesting to see if season six will explore her a little further.
Diamond Tiara Fanfics:
Diamond Tiara Hunts Down and Systematically Murders Bad OCs
The Fight for Cranberry Hill
Accidentally on Purpose
Diamond Tiara Buys a Little Sister
Why Am I Crying?
Bonus Videos!
Warning: Filly violence!
