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I’ve decided that becoming an alicorn should come with a cost, different for each pony. Ascending to a different form won’t be so easy, right? Cadence ascended from a pegasus to alicornhood in her early teens- I imagine she and Shining are late 20s-early 30s now

When she got her horn she lost the ability to recognize and mentally picture the faces of ponies around her/herself. I think it’s called Prosopagnosia? For most this would be an easy price to pay, in return for immortality and all the other powers that alicorn royalty possess! It’s pretty rare that one would be required to recognize somebody purely on their facial features, after all.

Unfortunately for the Princess of Love, being saddled with an enormous and unexpected transformation is only worsened by it :( what happens when her loved ones grow old and pass away now? They’re young enough, she has time, but how much? What if she can never remember their faces? Her husband’s face? What would her subjects think if they knew their embodiment of love couldn’t even picture her spouse’s face anymore?

She spends a lot on portraits of him in an attempt to memorize- a manifestation of her immense anxiety about outliving her family. She refuses to have children (Flurry Heart comes along in a different manner) because she doesn’t want to saddle them with that baggage. Two things happen that require her to sort all that out later:

-Twilight becoming an alicorn, which gives Cadence mixed feelings. On one hand she grieves for Twi’s eternal future, which they can bond over. They have the same struggles now. Twilight has Cadence to talk to when she can’t get used to her wings, or her new responsibilities are heavy, or maybe when one of her friends becomes just a little too sick for her liking and she realizes for the first time that one day it could happen again and they might not recover. On the other hand, it could be just a little bit nice to know she won’t be alone…

-When Chrysalis invades the Crystal empire, she impersonates Shining Armor instead of Cadence (my AU gives alicorns a power boost lol). Starving changelings can’t keep their forms perfect all the time! Cadence lives a nightmare for a while of her subjects raising alarms that Shining looks a little different somehow, but no matter how hard she tries she can’t see it. Even after forming her shaky alliance with the changeling queen, it makes her uneasy knowing Chrysalis could take his form again if she wanted.

Ok as for this mess! Princess Luna isn’t the only alicorn to have a nightmare form :] Cadence has one too! This is Heartbreaker. I haven’t finalized her design yet, but I do like her a lot… in this form Cadence’s usual flowing hair changes to mimic a torn wedding veil, her horn turns to an arrow, and she generally takes on the characteristics of a neglected pet bird. Somebody get her some enrichment and a beak trim so she quits plucking her feathers :(

Sketch form that I recycled bits of instead of tossing it in the WIP graveyard ⬇️