@Background Pony #E217
You have to do a bit of detective work, but the G4 fandom used to love doing that. Specifically, you need to cross-reference Sunny’s version of events in
The Traditional Unicorn Sleepover, Misty’s version of events, Twilight’s message in
Growing Pains, and Spike’s story in
The Isle of Scaly. The timeline is:
- Twilight rules peacefully for many moons (Spike’s story)
- Opaline gets banished from the alicorn homeland (Spike’s story)
- Opaline tries to steal all the magic in Equestria (Twilight’s recording, Spike’s story)
- Opaline is defeated, stripped of her magic, and banished from Equestria (Spike’s story, Misty’s story)
- Twilight creates the Invisi-Bubble to keep Opaline out, and from spying on Equestria (Misty’s story, Spike’s story)
- Twilight places the magic into The Unity Crystals for safekeeping. Opaline doesn’t know about the crystals at this point, so we can conclude that they were created after The Invisi-Bubble was created. (Twilight’s recording, Sunny’s story, Spike’s story)
- The dragons go into hiding so that Opaline can’t regain her power by stealing theirs (Spike’s story)
- The accident happens, and the tribes split up (Sunny’s story)
We don’t know where Twilight is, but we know what her legacy is. We know that Pris-Beam is the name of the magic stored in the crystals. As far as I know, there’s nothing to suggest that Opaline can’t leave her castle. The Crystals are never described as “something that’s always existed”.
@CloudMistDragon
Like you said, it’s okay to recognize flaws in something you like. But that involves opinions more complex than a binary “good” or “bad”, and he seems to have a hard time with those.
Good summary.
But according to Spike, Opaline had attacked twice, and that ties in with what came out during the Discord Arc in the IDW comics. The first attack was stopped by Twilight and her friends. Spike did not explain when the Unity Crystals were created, only in response to Opaline’s attacks. Opaline was not exiled or imprisoned, she managed to escape before being taken into custody. We know Opaline knew about the Unity Crystals from the very beginning in MYM, and she had admitted that they may have played a role in her losing her magic.
So;
- Opaline attacking Equestria for the first time, was beaten by Twilight.
- Opaline attacked the dragons, took their magic and attacked Equestria a second time.
- Opaline is defeated, stripped of her magic by Twilight.
- Twilight creates the Invisi-Bubble to keep Opaline out, and from spying on Equestria
“ - Twilight places the magic into the Unity Crystals for safekeeping - “
It’s really hard to place. Logic dictates that Twilight could not take the magic from Opaline without storing it, for this she needed the Unity Crystals. From the Discord Arc, it is said that the Unity Crystals were created during the first attack to bring the magic under control. With it, Twilight can take the magic from Opaline, the alicorn powers, pony magic and dragon magic that had been stolen in the meantime. Spike explained that the dragon magic was placed in the Dragon Stone after this. Opaline somehow managed to escape.
- The dragons go into hiding so that Opaline can’t regain her power by stealing theirs
This is actually a logical conclusion because Opaline was still at large and they knew that she can use her elemental magic to steal magic from others, especially fire magic that the dragons possess. The dragons had to go to their homeland. And since, according to Zipp, the dragons had been observed several generations before, it was believed that they did not live in isolation, but probably could not leave their homeland. But Spike and the dragons chose to hibernate, possibly at Twilight’s encouragement. They likely woke up the last time Equestria had magic, but re-hibernated as Opaline suggested when she observed them, in reaction to the loss of magic in Equestria.
After that, it is not known what happened for several centuries between Opaline’s defeat and the ANG movie. Opaline sought refuge in the dark castle which she refused to leave, where she found/created a together tree which may have been her source of being able to use magic. But Twilights had left behind a series of spells, not just a lone spell, that wasn’t just aimed at her. It’s very strange that Twilight and Spike didn’t try to find Opaline. Because she was never far away.
- The accident happens, and the tribes split up
This is partly contradicted by MYM ch. 3 where a book was found and read, where it is written in black and white the guardians who were responsible for each part of the Unity Crystals, which were separated without the magic disappearing, began to forget. When these split up, as Sunny’s story in MYM revealed, the magic was probably not gone. Sunny thought Twilight had removed the magic to stop the ponies from attacking each other. But we learned that the magic does not disappear if the Unity Crystals are separated. Then came an important revelation from a partially published book that had been retracted by Hasbro. It was at the same time that MYM ended. It was then explained that if the Unity Crystals are separated from each other for too long, the magic will disappear by itself. Izzy said it; “pop!” No wonder Hasbro withdrew the book.
No one knows why or how the guardians started to forget or why the tribes are separated from each other, when there are many indications that it happened without conflict and that they had magic when it happened. And after the magic was gone, they accused each other without being able to remember how it happened. Opaline had probably not been involved.
And it was after Twilight had disappeared, the glass window suggests that the Unity Crystals had come from the sky as the book in MYM ch. 3 meant. This in itself is a contradiction, for the Unity Crystals were created while Spike watched, and these were in Twilight’s possession.
And lastly, why was Ponyville evacuated? It is possible that Zephyr Heights is on the mountain above Canterlot that had been abandoned, while Cloudsdale is being evacuated because the magic had begun to fail. All references to middle Equestria with the valley where Ponyville once stood are gone from G5.
- Opaline settled in the dark castle
- Ponyville evacuated
- Twilight disappeared
- The Unity Crystal guardians forgot their duties
- The tribes split up
- The magic disappeared.
The book in MYM ch. 3, Elderflower in MYM ch. 5, ep. 4 showed traces of having lived when the tribes were together in her youth, and several other examples indicate that the magic disappeared three and a half generations ago. A generation for a man is thirty years. Then it means that it is between 90 and 120 years. IDW comics has shown several times, most recently in SYS, that the time of the disappearance of magic was three generations.
I think G4 and G5 are about 800 to 1,000 years apart. Twilight may have ruled for many centuries until she disappeared, while Opaline waited and waited in her self-made prison. It is possible that Twilight and Spike had wanted to wait out Opaline who may have become a normal pony, but the together tree that was in the dark castle may have restored the latent alicorn magic in her.
So we don’t know about Twilight’s fate. Why Ponyville had to be abandoned. Or most tellingly, why such a large part of the equestrian fauna - chimeric monsters and mythological monsters - has completely disappeared. If the Unity Crystals came from the sky, how did they get there if they were with Twilight on the ground? And why does it feel like the Winter Wishday was a commemoration?
There are still many mysteries. But unfortunately these involve Twilight and the connection with G4. And it is possible that this is unavailable because Discovery and Hasbro may have been in conflict regarding the G4 rights, although this is not confirmed - but not rejected.
