Hello and greetings everypony! We're back with a true blast from the past, something potentially long overdue: the origins of Princess Mi Amore Cadenza, a.k.a. Princess Cadance, a.k.a. the Princess of Love, a.k.a. the Princess of Food (if you're a changeling), a.k.a. the pink one!
What secrets will be revealed? Let's crack this open and have a look, but beware of spoilers!
We start with Cadance in the Crystal Empire, her inner monologue dwelling on just how she ended up here and thinking back to where it all began. She remembers it all as if it was--a flashback.
We start with some earth pony villagers finding a fairly big-headed looking baby Cadance abandoned in a basket.
I guess Pipp in G5 was continuing the trend from Cadance.
After seeing the little pegasus flying around, they name her Cadance because she dances in the air like a song. Seems like a bit of stretch to explain the name but then I kinda stink at naming things myself. She's adopted by the apparent village leader, named Alloro Legarra. I tried looking it up, but that doesn't appear to mean anything. It's not even Italian like Mi Amore Cadenza is, it just vaguely sort of looks like it might be. So I'm not sure what that's about.
Still, Cadance is very welcomed and loves the town and the villagers, who all love her right back. She's apparently the only non-earth pony in town, even describing herself as an earth pony with wings rather than a pegasus. I suspect she's just trying to emphasize how at one she felt with the town, rather than being ignorant of what a pegasus was.
Everything was great until the day the loving stopped.
No, not like that.
A wicked unicorn named Prismia comes to town and steals the love from the villagers, leaving them as morose and loveless as a comic book executive. She's wearing a gold amulet that helps her steal love, like you do.
Part of this retells the origin Cadance was given in the novels, Twilight Sparkle and the Crystal Heart Spell and Princess Cadance and the Spring Hearts Garden. After stealing the love from Legarra, the young Cadance stands up to her. Prismia tries to steal Cadance's love but it doesn't go great for her. I can't be more specific because the art doesn't really convey whatever it was Cadance actually did.
I strongly believe in the Power of No, but I do think it could be depicted a bit better.
The upshot is that Prismia is laid out, defeated, while Celestia swoops in right in the nick of somepony-else-solved-it-before-she-got-off-her-royal-cake-repository. Again.
I give Celestia points for consistency at least.
Celestia is prepared to sent Prismia to Tartarus, but Cadance has apparently become Counselor Troi--in the sense of becoming empathic, not "state the bloody obvious and/or crash the Enterprise-D." She senses that the village feared and repelled Prismia for ... undefined reasons (her darker color scheme? Being a unicorn? No idea) ... and she ended up as somepony afraid to show love who instead wanted to steal it from others.
Cadance speaks up, asking Celestia to show Prismia mercy instead; asking that she be allowed to stay and live in the village. Celestia and Alloro agree and Prismia, touched, gives Cadance her necklace which becomes part of her signature appearance. Again, this is Equestria so rapid reformations and quick forgiveness really don't make me bat an eye here. It is funny how I was okay with this, given past incidents, but the recent G5 special with Sunny wanting to befriend Allura really rubbed me the wrong way. Might be the fact that Allura enslaved ponies and wasn't at all sorry or apologetic for it.
Anyway, this is when Cadance earns her cutie mark.
In a somewhat questionable character moment, Celestia, following a private word with Alloro, informs Cadance that she needs to come and live with her in Canterlot. Cadance, for her part acting more like an adult in a tiny body than a young filly, tells them she doesn't want to but "will do as you wish."
Yeah, I'm not a fan of this on either front. More on this later.
In Canterlot, we see Cadance at Celestia's School but is baffled by why she's even there when she's a pegasus and not a unicorn. She asks what good it is for her to learn these spells--while I'm wondering just how non-unicorns can even learn a spell. It's not like Harry Potter with words to memorize or anything so I'm not even sure how that works.
Regardless, Cadance does enjoy the ponies of the city (I'm guessing she never ran into Jet Set or Upper Crust), and gets along well with her classmates. There's none of the potential snobbery or school bullying one might expect, especially considering Cadance is the only non-unicorn there yet is living at the castle with Celestia. You might expect that to cause some issues but everyone seems to adore Cadance and nopony has any issues with her.
Everypony gets along with Cadance, but concerns about the size of her head remain.
She improves her flying skills by training with the royal guard--notably not the Wonderbolts and I am not at all surprised by this. There's also a preschool for potentially gifted unicorns, apparently, and Cadance spends part of her time there and absolutely loves it.
That's one way to tire them out...
But she's flummoxed by Celestia including her in things like being introduced to foreign dignitaries, being taught proper etiquette, and all that. We see some familiar faces, though I'm half-surprised we didn't encounter Sunset Shimmer. Maybe I'm just thinking too much of the webcomic by Lummh.
One of these things is not like the others...
Celestia is mum as to the reasons, simply saying that it's important for Cadance to know these things and the reason why will be revealed later.
But then, everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked. That's barely a joke as Canterlot is besieged by a "swarm" (their term) of dragons. Trust me, the moment is as abrupt and out of the blue in the comic as it sounds here.
Oh Sweet Celestia! It can't be! It's the royal guard and they're ... actually doing something?!
But it's no more abrupt than Cadance rushing headlong out her window to battle the dragons, her narration stating that she had "grown strong" and "was fearless." It feels off for Cadance, even as a teen. This is so different from how she was when she faced off against Prismia and I don't really see what she did in Canterlot between now and then that would cause this shift. If it had been framed as her being motivated by fear or love of the ponies of Canterlot whom she'd grown close to, like it was back in her village, I could see it.
While Cadance does put up an impressive show of maneuvering around the dragons and causing some to crash into one another, she doesn't really have a chance and is swatted out of the sky, bouncing off a tower, and needing to be caught by Celestia before she hits the ground.
Cadance must've really taken a knock to the knoggin, because her first words following this are "Celestia? Lead me into this fight!" which is awkward dialogue in general and especially so for Cadance in particular. The awkwardness keeps on going when Celestia instructs Cadance to lead the "younglings" out of the city.
Yes, seriously.
This isn't a one-time usage, the comic after this keeps referring to the foals as younglings and it is as goofy and awkward as you might think. I get that sometimes in fantasy settings its good to use different terms so things don't feel too modern or similar to our own world, which can be distracting--but inserting new, generally silly-sounding, terms can be just as distracting if not more so. I'm reminded how the tension and drama in Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith tended to be reduced a bit whenever someone talked about how Anakin killed "younglings" instead of saying he killed children or kids, which I believe was insisted on for ratings reasons.
I know this doesn't sound like the biggest deal, and it honestly isn't, but it did make my brain slam on the breaks when I heard a pony comic use this term for what, as far as I'm aware, is the first time ever. It was really distracting and moments like this made it not really feel like it was part of the show, which is an issue several characters have had throughout, like Cadance's bit just before this. The tone just feels off.
At any rate, Cadance leads a group of foals away but they're confronted by the self-proclaimed leader of this dragon swarm, Liebe, who proclaims that the time for her revenge has come.
While Alloro Legarra doesn't seem to mean anything, Liebe is German for love. You can guess where this goes.
Cadance's empathic abilities kick in again and she senses that underneath Liebe's rage is the pain of a lost love. While this normally would result in her becoming part of the Red Lantern Corps over at DC, the comic goes someplace that's only a little less unexpected. Cadance asks Liebe if her fury at the ponies involved something terrible happening to baby dragons, which Liebe tearfully confirms.
(If I'm being very generous I suppose using the term younglings is meant to have there be a universal term for both young ponies and dragons so there's more of a connection here--but it's still very silly and unnecessary and kinda undermines the gravitas they were aiming for.)
That is quite a bit darker and a more negative portrayal of ponies in relations to dragons than I'd come to expect from this series. It oddly intersects my own headcanon surrounding where and how Celestia's School acquired Spike's egg, inspired in part by the classic fanfic It Takes A Village by determamfidd. This also reminds me quite a bit of a signature event in the dragon-based book series, Wings of Fire, known as The Scorching. Humans, after stealing dragon eggs, are face with an enraged mother dragon leading an army of dragons wanting revenge. They, well, scorch humanity off the face of the continent, reducing them to a more primitive existence. But it feels a bit out of the blue here in this comic.
Cadance offers Liebe an apology, understanding her pain, but implores her to call off the attack and spare the foals. Her dialogue is about what you would expect her to say: that none of this would make her pain go away and would just perpetuate more hatred in the future, and so on. Liebe is initially resistant, but an additional appeal from Cadance convinces her to end the attack.
Fluttershy's not the only pony capable of making a dragon cry.
Once again, Celestia shows up after things have already been resolved. It's actually worse than with Prismia, as she almost manages to undo Cadance's efforts. But Liebe leaves and takes the dragons with her.
Celestia's face says it all.
After the dragons are gone, Celestia tells Cadance it's time to fulfill her destiny (a phrase I really do not care for) and you can guess what happens.
Yep, Cadance is now an alicorn. Celestia decides now's the time to exposition dump a bit, that she knew from the moment Cadance got her cutie mark that she was a descendant of Princess Amore, the ruler of the Crystal Empire we saw back in King Sombra's origin comic. The one who was turned to crystal and was shattered and Word of God states that she's still alive and conscious despite this. Which is some pretty High Octane Nightmare Fuel.
Celestia suggests that Cadance's parents left her near the village because they "knew the challenges you were destined to face" and were trying to "hide you from your destiny."
I mean, it could be worse. Her parents could've abandoned her in the middle of some desert because her father was a clone of King Sombra who had somehow returned and they wanted to keep her 'grandfather' from finding her and making her part of his schemes to reconquer the Crystal Empire. Because that would be stupid.
In another really questionable character moment, Celestia informs Cadance that she has to focus on mastering her magic and can't work with the foals every day--despite Cadance loving it so much she had earlier considered if being a teacher was her destiny. However, Celestia does at lest suggest Cadance can still foalsit on occasion (what, not youngling-sit?), introducing Cadance to Twilight Sparkle... despite Celestia not really having a reason to know Twilight before her entrance test. I'm also not a fan of Celestia being the one directly responsible for characters meeting like this, or the depiction of Celestia knowing and arranging everything involving the Mane Six in "Celestial Advice."
If it weren't for Cadance being on the small side, would you ever guess that was meant to be a filly Twilight?
Cadance calms the panicky Twilight and teaches her the Ladybugs Awake dance to close us out. With that, the comic is over.
Thoughts
There's a bit to unpack here. The story has a very unpolished feeling, as if it was jury rigged together from disparate parts and wasn't given time to be smoothed over into a more unified whole. Considering that parts of the story come from the chapter storybooks and other parts are original to the comics, I can well believe that's the case. The story doesn't flow too well, with the dragon attack on Canterlot happening so abruptly as to come clear out of left field. The rest of the story after that is just an onrush of "and then this happened" with not a whole lot of time to sit and digest things.
The tone of the comic is also a bit off, especially in regards to dialogue and characterization. The characters, simply put, don't speak the way that people (even fictional ponies) would naturally speak. When Cadance, after becoming an alicorn, asks Celestia what's happening to her, Celestia's reply is "That which has always been meant to happen." The syntax is deeply confusing and feels more like a poor Google Translation (or even ChatGPT) of a manga panel. This is not an isolated incident, recall Cadance's "Celestia, lead me into this fight!" When Celestia is about to confront Liebe after Cadance made peace, Liebe responds with "Hold down, Celestia!" That is not an expression I've ever heard. There's "Hold on" or "Stand down" but not "hold down." Maybe she meant something like "hold down the fort" but that (a) has a different meaning than what the context is going for and (b) is never cut off and said as "hold down" on its own. This is not something I have ever heard or read anyone say, ever. There are quite a few bits of dialogue like this and it is confusing and distracting enough in its own right, but coming from these characters makes it even worse.
I also have to question the depiction of the characters, principally Celestia and Cadance. While I tend to personally eschew away from interpretations of Celestia as the eternally patient and wise, all-but all-knowing princess that some view her as (I have a rather critical view of her track record as a teacher and mentor), even I balked at how she was portrayed here. With both Prismia and Liebe, we saw Celestia arrive with punishment or threats as her first recourse and needing to be talked into giving them a chance. With Cadance, Celestia was giving her a lot of "this is the way things are going to be for you now" and not offering choices in the matter, or even explanations until the very end. While Celestia has at times done that with Twilight (including most egregiously at the start of Season 9), much of the time she still gives Twilight choices, including the most important ones (like whether or not Twilight wanted to be her pupil in the first place, which Cadance did not get) but I struggle to think of her giving Cadance any choices throughout this whole comic.
In another example of odd behavior from Celestia, she instructs Cadance on things like proper dinner etiquette (something Twilight clearly never learned, going by how she eats hayburgers), meeting ambassadors, having formal dinners, and all that.
Just saying, images like this are usually used to depict the distance, physical and emotional, between two characters. This is not something I see Celestia doing on the regular.
While I could maybe see
Celestia doing this on occasion just so Cadance knew how to do this herself, I'd imagine she'd more regularly want
something less formal with Cadance. But we never see any moments like that. This doesn't feel like the Celestia who playfully messed with the Cakes to try to put them at ease.
In the original storybooks, Cadance is just sort of teleported to Celestia after defeating Prismia which is arguably not the best storytelling technique, but to have Celestia being prepared to uproot Cadance from what she knows and loves not once but twice just doesn't feel like the Celestia I know. I can understand teachers and mentors sometimes having to give students a push out of their comfort zones, but again, we never see Celestia really bonding with Cadance emotionally so she comes off as very stiff and even verging towards cold--which does not work for Celestia.
Cadance doesn't seem written out of character, but that may be in part due to the fact that I struggle to get just what her character is here. Cadance is met with universal love and support wherever she goes. Nopony ever has a problem with her and both antagonists who appear in the story are talked down after a single discussion with her. It's not that Cadance has no struggles at all, she grapples at the start with the question of if she earned this and felt a bit lonely and lost in Canterlot, but it's all resolved a bit too easily.
The worst things to happen to her, aside from being struck once by a dragon during the fight, all stem from Celestia's decision to take her to Canterlot. But even then she's mostly happy in Canterlot and makes new friends but is just a bit doubting of herself for learning things that she doesn't think she can use and doesn't truly belong there (which makes Celestia the single biggest cause of distress to Cadance in this comic--a rather wince-worthy realization).
Perhaps the story would've been stronger if we had seen how Cadance formed these connections and relationships with other ponies in a more social setting rather than having the unexpected and kinda bizarre dragon attack. There's a montage of her at school and there's a cute scene with her and the pre-school ponies, but it's not too much to go on.
It's a fine line between being someone who is attuned to the emotions of others and can just read other people versus having empathic powers that simply tell you what other people feel without any real effort on your part. This story skirts that line and I think goes a bit into the latter territory.
The preview copy I'm working from doesn't list the writer or artist, I had to take to Google and MLP wikis to find that one. Apparently the writer is Christina Rice, who has done quite a bit of work with the MLP comics in both the main series and miniseries. She wrote Friendship is Magic #87 featuring Ocellus, which is one of my favorite issues. She also wrote Issues #55 and #56, "Wings over Yakyakistan" which is one my least favorite--which also featured a kinda random dragon invasion. Huh. In any event, I don't recall her dialogue in those issues having the sort of problems I kept having here so I'm not sure to even say.
That said, there are
plenty of interesting ideas and concepts in the story itself and, to be
honest, their ones that I've drawn on myself. It's actually a bit of
uncanny valley for me in terms of writing. I've written stories where Cadance is a descendant of Princess Amore, stories where ponies in bygone days did bad things with baby dragons (well, stole their eggs before they realized dragons were sapient beings in my case), and even a story where Celestia takes a new student to Canterlot and teaches her a lot of things she doesn't think she can use (diplomacy, etiquette, etc.) and is a bit vague with her as to the reason why, and questions why she's Celestia's student when she can't do any magic. So yeah, the issue is not that the story doesn't have good or potentially interesting ideas, it's that the character's don't sound like themselves and the pacing is all over the place.
The art is done by Abby Bulmer, who did several issues of the G5 comic. She's also done work on the Sonic the Hedgehog comics, which I suspect might explain certain artistic choices. The background ponies are often of a more uniform color, with matching coat and mane colors which helps make them appear rather generic, not helped by usually being younger ponies without cutie marks.
The only ponies not drawn this way are either show-characters or Cadance's foster mother. If you think about the generally uniform color scheme of a lot of Sonic characters, like Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, this makes a lot of sense. Likewise the issue I've made several jokes about with the heads. It's as though the artist made the bodies smaller to convey their age, but kept their heads closer in size to an adult to better capture facial expressions and the like. The end result are, well, bobble-headed ponies--which has also been part of some Sonic designs.
That's about all I have for this issue. Thanks for tuning and I'll see you next time!