#on secrets

Starting with the easiest: Spike. There isn’t too much that our favorite little dragon bud has to hide, but he does like to keep his worries that being a dragon is a problem for the ponies around him a secret. And his little crush on Rarity, but he’s also terrible at keeping that one. The fact is, though, between Smolder and Ember, that fear has been diminishing.

If older dragons, even the Dragon Lord, can get along with ponies fine then he really doesn’t have much to worry about. He still worries, and keeps it to himself, but it’s no more than that anymore.

Scootaloo is likewise a rather simple character for secrets, as most of them she is just plain terrible at hiding. A longing for flight, a fear for... well, most normal things for the young, and a fear of being seen as a coward. She tries to hide them, but adores the Wonderbolts and Rainbow Dash, still attempting to fly when no one is looking. And no one that sees Scootaloo camping can pretend she’s not afraid of the dark.

The biggest secrets she has to hide are ones that are (meta-wise) subject to change. She doesn’t know what happened to her parents (partially because I’m still of two minds on it), and she fears rejection when it comes to adoption, to the point where she runs away and skips school on days where potential parents were scheduled to visit the foster home. That whole backstory could vanish if canon ever decides to give me more information on her aunts (that book apparently isn’t sold up here, I tried to find it.) but until then, that’s all for her.

It might not seem like Pinkie Pie has much to hide, she’s pretty open and honest with her friends, and she sees almost everyone as a friend. That said, when it comes to feeling down, or basically anything that isn’t ‘pleasant and chipper’, she has a real problem letting anyone know. She fakes being happy at times, pulling jokes or letting on that she’s just being silly when something goes wrong.

Cheering others legitimately makes her feel good, though, so often times a little faking goes a long way with her, which only means she tries even harder to not let on if she’s feeling down. Pinkie tends to hide how hard she works on parties as well, for much the same reason.

If ponies think she’s some kind of silly cheer machine that can have a party prepared like sneezing, they won’t worry themselves about cost or how much time it takes to do all of the things she does, which means they tend to have more fun at her parties. At least, so she believes.

Coming to the harder nuts to crack, we have Trixie. She has more than her fair share of secrets, even starting with her name. Legally her name was changed to Trixie Lulamoon, but she keeps ‘Lulamoon’ under tight wraps, preferring her own ‘Trixie’ and acting as though the other does not exist. The only pony that still knows and uses Lulamoon is her own mother. She has her reasons, of course. Beyond that, she’s kept secret a grudge she’s held for half her life on one Twilight Sparkle.

That one she is attempting to come to terms with, but most other ponies could be forgiven for thinking that the strained relationship between the two was born of Trixie’s first visit to Ponyville.

Beyond that she likes to hide the fact that her magic is almost entirely illusion, willing to boast still about how Great and Powerful she can be. Her shows almost entirely shirk unicorn magic regardless.

Now for the big one, good ol’ Queen Chrysalis. Our favorite changeling tyrant keeps virtually everything secret from ponies, but a great deal is kept from her own Hive as well. Where she came from, the history of changelings, their connection to ponies, all of it is either fabricated or just not given. What’s more, she has been learning things in the Crystalverse in particular that she’s hiding even from herself.

Speaking of the Crystalverse, that would be the one instance where she did give an accurate account of her beginnings, locked up in Cadance’s dungeons and on her deathbed. She may not have given the story had she known the Princess planned to keep her alive. How embarrassing.

As far as anyone knows in the main verse, she lets them think that she has sprung out of the ground a full blown changeling Queen, destined to rule Equestria. Not a bit of that is true, of course.

Last but not least is Princess Celestia. Ruling a nation leads to secrets, of course, and while she does regret having to keep them, some of them are so highly classified that only herself and Luna actually know about them.

Ranging from her long term goals to the nature of the sun and the earth, even her reasons for classified information can vary. Some of them are secret because knowledge could lead to panics, others because having them known would make other goals more difficult, or even impossible.

She is not fond of holding secrets, no matter how many she keeps to herself. Every few years, she goes into solitude to review classified information to decide if they should remain classified. Unfortunately it is rare that any secrets are let free. The latest was on the story of a so-called Nightmare Cult that led to the formation of the race of bat ponies. Obviously this was not kept secret from bat ponies themselves at the time, but now new-printed history books include it. Actions of several other cults remain classified, including one that attempted to destroy the sun; though in this case it remains hidden because the spell they had attempted should have worked if it had been targeting a star, and revealing it would only force her to reveal more classified information.