Some thoughts about how things went down with the various princesses: [Obsessive Fan Mode: On]
If Celestia and Luna are physical godesses of the sun and moon respectively, then Cadance seems to be a young godess of love. I say young as she looked sort of teenaged in Twilight's flashbacks. As a young and inexperienced godess of a non-physical concept, she lost a physical confrontation with the Changeling queen. Said queen was then chowing down on the power of a pony with magical muscle on Twilight's level and love for the goddess of love herself, converting that love power to a physical/magical form which let her take on Celestia.
As a side note: I suspect Celestia wasn't expecting that, didn't bring her "A-game" to the first exchange, and paid the price for trying to brute force things sloppily. She's clever and I would expect her to fight with cleverness as well as power when she's serious.
Second side note: I wonder if Nightmare Moon managed to take Celestia out of the picture in the pilot becasue she had been spending that 1000 years thinking of tactics and tricks to fight someone of Celestia's power. I wonder if this would have resulted in a smackdown by Luna if she had woken up earlier.
Third side note: Either Luna is a really sound sleeper or she has chaimbers somewhere other than Canterlot Castle and teleports over when she needs to. That second option would explain why she was still socially isolated about a year later and why we don't see her that often.
Back to the episodes: At the end, things moved from a physical confrontation to something firmly in the realm of the power of love. That's Cadance's turf as she showed in her victory and semi-ascension with her hubby-to-be.
I still have questions about how these crazy-powerful winged unicorns come into being and how many of them are there. Are they "just" a different breed of pony? A one-in-millions quirk when latent unicorn and pegasus genetics kick in at the same time? Something that "regular" ponies can become with enouogh power?
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No, I don't believe the world has gone mad. In order for it to go mad it would need to have been sane at some point.
If Celestia and Luna are physical godesses of the sun and moon respectively, then Cadance seems to be a young godess of love. I say young as she looked sort of teenaged in Twilight's flashbacks. As a young and inexperienced godess of a non-physical concept, she lost a physical confrontation with the Changeling queen. Said queen was then chowing down on the power of a pony with magical muscle on Twilight's level and love for the goddess of love herself, converting that love power to a physical/magical form which let her take on Celestia.
As a side note: I suspect Celestia wasn't expecting that, didn't bring her "A-game" to the first exchange, and paid the price for trying to brute force things sloppily. She's clever and I would expect her to fight with cleverness as well as power when she's serious.
Second side note: I wonder if Nightmare Moon managed to take Celestia out of the picture in the pilot becasue she had been spending that 1000 years thinking of tactics and tricks to fight someone of Celestia's power. I wonder if this would have resulted in a smackdown by Luna if she had woken up earlier.
Third side note: Either Luna is a really sound sleeper or she has chaimbers somewhere other than Canterlot Castle and teleports over when she needs to. That second option would explain why she was still socially isolated about a year later and why we don't see her that often.
Back to the episodes: At the end, things moved from a physical confrontation to something firmly in the realm of the power of love. That's Cadance's turf as she showed in her victory and semi-ascension with her hubby-to-be.
I still have questions about how these crazy-powerful winged unicorns come into being and how many of them are there. Are they "just" a different breed of pony? A one-in-millions quirk when latent unicorn and pegasus genetics kick in at the same time? Something that "regular" ponies can become with enouogh power?
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No, I don't believe the world has gone mad. In order for it to go mad it would need to have been sane at some point.