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Looks like I never got around to actually posting a clear shot of JB’s invitation with all of the fancy and absurd titles I spent too long making, and it amuses me too much not to post.
Juicebox’s Royal Invitation from A Morning With The Night Part 1, where he meets Princess Luna for the first time.

From

https://bsky.app/profile/stellarator.bsky.social/post/3lck5nud6is27

Comments

Gnot Even

Apparently some small independent countries in Europe have been referred to as principalities and called their ruler a prince or princess, despite being a monarchy with a sovereign monarch, for political reasons I haven’t been able to suss out. Liechtenstein being an example. Apparently the prince of Liechtenstein, despite being a monarch, is traditionally styled as “His Serene Highness”.

At one time there were a whole bunch of princes regnant, archdukes regnant, archbishops regnant, marquises regnant and probably more I’m forgetting. In feudal times the title seems to have depended on how big a force the relevant lord could supply to his feudal overlord, and when those feudal obligations disappeared in the middle ages the various lords became regnant. Most of them were in the Holy Roman Empire and disappeared when Germany became unified.

Maybe, but that’s a stretch. Japan is only a bit larger than Great Britain, and it would be weird to call that an Empire, when the English crown only controlled England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. If I had to place a bet, I’d put my money on international flattery.

England, Scotland, and Wales all had the same king (at least from the time of James the first and sixth). There were no lower rulers. I just don’t know how the Shoguns ranked in Japan to know if it’s the same or not.

So I’m going to go with flattery based translation, again.

You’re probably right :-)

Yeah, the word “empire” seems to be abused to the point of meaninglessness.

Emperor is from the latin “imperator”, which more or less means “giver of orders”. So assuming there’s someone giving orders, I guess anything can be an empire.

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Stellarator

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@tu160
Feudalism and its titles are maddeningly complicated. I can’t imagine the headache that the developers of Crusader Kings go through just to even approximate it.

And yeah, those words are spelled annoyingly similarly.

Posted about a month ago Report
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tu160

@Stellarator
“Apparently the prince of Liechtenstein, despite being a monarch, is traditionally styled as “His Serene Highness”.

Yes, According to wikipeadia there are only two ruling princes. Hans-Adam II of the Principality of Liechtenstein and Albert II of the Principality of Monaco, both are styled “His Serene Highness”

Interestingly, and related to Equestria, there exists a Co-Princedom; the Principality of Andorra. The co-princes of Andorra are the Bishop of Urgell and the president of France.

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tu160

@Paaaad

@Stellarator
The term would be Princess Regnant in this case- like how Queen Elizabeth was Queen Regnant while Camilla is only Queen Consort. A regent rules until the proper ruler comes of age, recovers from their illness, or returns from their trip abroad. IRL the rulers of Lichtenstein and Monaco are Prince or Princess Regnant.

Yup, I’m aware of the distinction. “Princess regent” only came up because I was responding to tu160’s use of the term, and the styling thereof. Though “regent” and “regnant” are annoyingly close together in spelling.

Oh doggone it. Did I screw that up?

Regnant – refers to a person that is currently ruling or reigning, while regent refers to someone who governs a country when the monarch is unable to rule.

Yes, I did screw that up.

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Stellarator

User is CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

@Stellarator
The term would be Princess Regnant in this case- like how Queen Elizabeth was Queen Regnant while Camilla is only Queen Consort. A regent rules until the proper ruler comes of age, recovers from their illness, or returns from their trip abroad. IRL the rulers of Lichtenstein and Monaco are Prince or Princess Regnant.

Yup, I’m aware of the distinction. “Princess regent” only came up because I was responding to tu160’s use of the term, and the styling thereof. Though “regent” and “regnant” are annoyingly close together in spelling.

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Stellarator

User is CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

So, regarding the use of “Her Majesty” to refer to Celestia and Luna…

I’ve already said my reasoning for the choice. And I will add that, while I don’t think it has come up, in my Equestria, Twilight is formally styled “Her Royal Highness” or similar, NOT “Her Majesty”, since she is not at present a sovereign. In my AU, as in the show, it seems pretty clear that “princess” just means “alicorn”. See also, Cadance. And Twilight was instantly considered a princess the moment she sprouted wings.

That said, I used https://poneponepone.org/ to search the show’s scripts for “majesty” and “highness”. Princesses (including Twilight) are called variants of “your/her highness” 17 times in the show, more often in earlier seasons.

A similar search for “majesty”, discounting instances of the word that referred to other things or characters, by my count gives 9 instances of princesses being referred to as “her/your majesty”, including two instances of Twilight Sparkle in The Last Problem, in which she is the reigning sovereign. She is only referred to with this title there, as far as I can see.

So yeah…even the show, while not totally consistent, does at least some of the time style a sovereign of Equestria as “Her Majesty”. So there 😝

To build off what Gnot Even posted:

A reigning Prince or Princess is called a “Prince/Princess Regent” and is styled “His/Her Serene Highness”.. So Luna’s proper title is “Her Serene Highness, The Princess Regent of Equestria”. Or, perhaps, “Her Serene Highness, Diarch of Equestria”.

I mean, a regent is someone who rules in the stead of an actual ruler, because they are unable to discharge their own duties, so that doesn’t apply.
Apparently some small independent countries in Europe have been referred to as principalities and called their ruler a prince or princess, despite being a monarchy with a sovereign monarch, for political reasons I haven’t been able to suss out. Liechtenstein being an example. Apparently the prince of Liechtenstein, despite being a monarch, is traditionally styled as “His Serene Highness”.

This is kind of a silly language game, but I suppose everything involving titles is. XD

In any case, principalities are always tiny little things, whereas Equestria is a huge nation, so that doesn’t seem apropos.

And why doesn’t Celestia validate parking?

Because by that time it was known that Juicebox doesn’t have a car. :)

Also, did Princess Twilight issue a similar invitation? Can we see it? I have a feeling hers would be much less formal.

When she had him summoned, he thought he was seeing Celestia again, and was surprised to find it was actually Twilight he was there to see. A clever switcharoo! >>2642991 And after that first time, she just sends him a text or an email, or calls him. She’s much more modern than the older princesses.

I’m not much for Japanese history, but I can think of two reasons why their Emporer is called an emporer (neither of which might be right): one is if the Shogun were considered to be subsidiary rulers with territories equivalent to European kingdoms.

Maybe, but that’s a stretch. Japan is only a bit larger than Great Britain, and it would be weird to call that an Empire, when the English crown only controlled England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. If I had to place a bet, I’d put my money on international flattery.

The other is that many things in Japanese culture are copied from China, and if the ruler of the Celestial kingdom was an Emperor then the ruler of Japan should be one too.

China would have had more claim to be an empire than Japan, to be sure. Though again, we’re talking about translating words between totally unrelated languages, and the Chinese Imperial government at least always fancied itself as ruling over one homogeneous inseparable whole, which again, isn’t really an empire. So I’m going to go with flattery based translation, again.

@Stellarator
*cough cough* crystal empire *cough*

Yeah, the word “empire” seems to be abused to the point of meaninglessness.

And, given that the Crystal Empire seems to consist entirely of crystal ponies, but is currently ruled by two distinctly NON-crystal ponies from Canterlot, put there by the Equestrian royal government…I hate to say it, but the word for that isn’t “empire”, it’s “colony”. And in the old “British colonial territories” sense of the word, not the “colony on mars” modern sense. Oof.

Posted about a month ago Report

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Paaaad

@Stellarator
The term would be Princess Regnant in this case- like how Queen Elizabeth was Queen Regnant while Camilla is only Queen Consort. A regent rules until the proper ruler comes of age, recovers from their illness, or returns from their trip abroad. IRL the rulers of Lichtenstein and Monaco are Prince or Princess Regnant.

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Ponylooker

We Crossdress Harder

@Stellarator
*cough cough* crystal empire *cough*

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Gnot Even

Except for a few decades in the late 19th and early 20th century, this has never applied to Japan. By contrast, from something like 17th to early/mid 20th century, the English monarch unquestionably ruled over an empire. So what do you call that but an emperor? But they have always used the titles “king” and “queen”. (Except weirdly, for a while “Emperor/Empress of India” was used in their giant list of official titles, for reasons of political dick-waving)

In European usage, an Emporer ruled over subordinate kings. Prior to Victoria, from time immemorial (*) I don’t think any English monarch ruled over any other king. Victoria ruled over various Rajahs and other king-like rulers in India, and thus justified the title Empress of India. Similarly, Wilhelm became Emperor of Germany when the kings of Bavaria, etc submitted to the unification of Germany.

I’m not much for Japanese history, but I can think of two reasons why their Emporer is called an emporer (neither of which might be right): one is if the Shogun were considered to be subsidiary rulers with territories equivalent to European kingdoms. The other is that many things in Japanese culture are copied from China, and if the ruler of the Celestial kingdom was an Emperor then the ruler of Japan should be one too.

(* time immemorial means before 1189. Before that some of the Anglo-Saxon kings ruled over other kings, altho I don’t think they called themselves Emperors. And of course there was the Empress Matilda, who was Queen of England, but she got her title by being the widow of the Holy Roman Emperor.)

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tu160

@Stellarator
Nice explanation. It’s nice and tidy and makes sense, especially the part about how the honorific “princess” seems to be a term to designate an alicorn.

As such the Royal Sisters would need to differentiate themselves from the other, non-regning, alicorns. Majesty works quite well for that.

Besides, they’re the Diarchs. The bosses. The head honchos. The big cheeses. They can call themselves whatever they want. Who’s going to contradict them?

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tu160

To build off what Gnot Even posted:

A reigning Prince or Princess is called a “Prince/Princess Regent” and is styled “His/Her Serene Highness”.. So Luna’s proper title is “Her Serene Highness, The Princess Regent of Equestria”. Or, perhaps, “Her Serene Highness, Diarch of Equestria”.

And why doesn’t Celestia validate parking?

Also, did Princess Twilight issue a similar invitation? Can we see it? I have a feeling hers would be much less formal.

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Stellarator

User is CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Think we discussed this way back when, but technically Luna and Celestia would be “Her Highness”. Kings/queens and emperors get “Majesty”. (FWIW, Dukes/Duchesses are “Your Grace”. I think Archdukes are “Your Highness”. Bishops and Archbishops are “Your Grace” or “Your Excellency” depending on where you are. I think the Pope is “Your Emminence”.)

That was a conscious decision on my part, rather than a mistake or oversight.

Warning, huge infodump incoming! 😆

While they have the nominal title “princess”, they are in reality the diarchs and joint heads of state, which I opted to consider functionally equivalent to a king or queen in a real world European monarchy, thus entitling them to style themselves “your majesty”, as would a European monarch.

My thinking was that, in Equestria, the title “princess” seems to simply mean that the holder of the title is an alicorn, rather than our human terrestrial use of the word generally meaning the daughter of a ruler.

A vaguely similar example, to my mind, is how if we were addressing the emperor of Japan in English, we would be expected to address him as “Your Majesty”, even though his actual, real title is not “emperor”, it is “Tennō” (天皇/てんのう) and “emperor” is just the conventional English translation. So, since the word “princess” means something fundamentally different in Equestrian, I went with the decision that the same principle applied.

As an aside, something that has always bothered me: That translation has always bothered me. We use that title as a courtesy, but it is inaccurate. Except for a few decades, Japan has never been an empire. Merriam Webster defines an empire as “a major political unit having a territory of great extent or a number of territories or peoples under a single sovereign authority”, and that is in line with the definition political scientists and historians use.

Except for a few decades in the late 19th and early 20th century, this has never applied to Japan. By contrast, from something like 17th to early/mid 20th century, the English monarch unquestionably ruled over an empire. So what do you call that but an emperor? But they have always used the titles “king” and “queen”. (Except weirdly, for a while “Emperor/Empress of India” was used in their giant list of official titles, for reasons of political dick-waving)

“Parking validation is available.”

Oh, he parked something somewhere, that’s for sure… 😜

Heyooooo!

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Gnot Even

Think we discussed this way back when, but technically Luna and Celestia would be “Her Highness”. Kings/Queens and Emperors get “Majesty”. (FWIW, Dukes/Duchesses are “Your Grace”. I think Archdukes are “Your Highness”. Bishops and Archbishops are “Your Grace” or “Your Excellency” depending on where you are. I think the Pope is “Your Emminence”.)

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T6J2E5

Verified blank-flank

“Parking validation is available.”

Oh, he parked something somewhere, that’s for sure… 😜

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Stellarator

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@AndwhatIseeisme
Yup. That is the date of Luna’s return from her exile on the mion. That is the anchor to my timeline.

I even have a spreadsheet to make sure the characters’ ages work out the way I want them to.

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AndwhatIseeisme

Praise the sun!

So, has it been twelve years since Nighmare Moon’s defeat? Did that mark the start of the second Era of The Sisters?

Good to know that the castle validates parking.

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