@Princess♠Molestia  
You’d be surprised what kind of things a true ChessMaster (especially if they have a Mentor subclass) would be willing to do.

So. Was getting their asses kicked like 3 times also part of the plan?

@Background Pony #36B8  
“Celestia hate”
 
Ah. How original.

@NorrisThePony  
@Background Pony #0B4F  
Someone on DeviantArt asked that same question and here’s their response:
 
No it’s nothing like that at all. It’s not like Luna is evil and the bad guy.  
In this situation they are like gods. They don’t care which side they are in. They don’t care which pieces they use and what pieces they lose. They are just playing and it got nothing to do whit Lunas hardships. Actually I wanted to make this more like “Celestia is actually evil, she doesn’t care about her subjects, she is doing all this just for entertainment.” thing. I though about Discord too, but I thing he wouldn’t fit the role of god. Discord would make Celestia look like the “Good guy”, and I wanted to make them look like bored gods.
 
Trust me, there we never this idea that Luna would cause all the troubles. In the beginning it was always two gods, playing because they were bored. And reason Celestia has white pieces, the “good guy” chess pieces, it’s because Twilight is her student, she choose Twilight to be her chess piece. And naturally it would have been boring if Luna were to choose some other pony, all the fighting would probably been only some rivalry between two gifted ponies. So Luna choose herself, the evil inside of her, believing that power of Nightmare Moon would give her advances to win. But as we know it, Twilight won. And it just happened to continue that Luna challenged Celestias ultimate weapon, whit other ultimate weapons. And well, that is why Celestia is looking bored in the picture, Twilight is too powerful. And Luna is amused to see how this one Pony and her friends can beat them all.  
I think it will continue to go like this. They will continue play this game, until Luna finds a way to beat Celestia. Except then they will continue again and again, until there is nothing left to play whit. I think if Celestia loses Twilight, she will find someone like discord to be her next piece.
 
And you have to keep in mind, this is breaking somethings that are cannon. So not all things are accurate.  
(Sorry about my English can be really bad sometimes.)
 
So Celestia hate.

@Background Pony #0B4F  
I agree. It’s a very nice picture, but I can’t really see the sisters in these roles. Celestia being an apathetic and uncaring chessmaster or Luna being a troublemaker hell-bent on victory both seem to be too great a stretch.
 
Still, very nice art.

I don’t get why Luna would be the one to send all the villains and cause trouble. I hope the artist doesn’t see her as a “reason of all hardships”. That was a long time ago and would have fitted Discord better, if he had the power to actually control the antagonists(which he probably has).

@Background Pony #DBD1  
“The king and the land are one.”
 
I don’t know how I made that typo.

@CMIZAX  
Equestria, if “Excalibur” is to be believed: “The kind and the land are one.”
 
@cdcdrr
 
If we go back to chaturanga, the bishop was the elephant, the term still used in Russian for the piece. I’d say that’s the earth pony. The rook was a chariot. As they’re most effective on an open board, I’d say they work best for pegasi. This leaves knights to the unicorn, less mobile than the bishop, but a better teammate for a queen, and the best blockader of pawns.
 
This leaves the crystal ponies as the pawns. Philidor called pawns the soul of chess, while Celestia pretty much called the Crystal Empire the soul of Equestria when she first described it to Twilight. That seems like a good fit to me. It’s because pawns are so important that a king is considered to be as strong as a rook.

@CMIZAX  
I have a feeling the King in this situation would be Equestria itself.

Luna: You know it isn’t fair to just use Twilight as your only piece. She always wins at these games.

@CMIZAX  
Better yet, what would any piece be?
 
If you seperate the pieces by race, there are four races and six types. Only three races if Equestrians invented chess before the two sisters became alicorns.
 
If the two sides are made to represent Celestia and Nightmare Moon in the struggle against eachother, wouldn’t these sets be discontinued after Luna is restored by the Elements of Harmony?
 
Would it not be racist to have one race represented by the less useful pieces such as pawns?
 
Would the roles of kings and queens be reversed to represent a matriarchal society?
 
What would the bishop be called if there is no evident religion in Equestria? Would the name default back to vizier or some anti-papist equivalent from northern Europe?

@FanOfMostEverything  
True. Perhaps the king could represent any important, high-value target depending on circumstance.

@CMIZAX  
I think it’s context-sensitive. God chess rarely syncs up with mortal chess on a one-to-one basis.

@FanOfMostEverything  
Well, who would the king be?

@cdcdrr  
Capturing the queen does not guarantee victory.

Well, Chrysalis did strike down Celestia, so in a sense, Luna must have finally beaten her.