The Royal Sketchbook
is a Tumblr blog themed around My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. In particular, it's based around the life of Princess Celestia, her sister Princess Luna, and their extended family. It also serves as a Ask a Pony blog known as Ask the Royal Family.
On top of being a group of connected comics and fan-arts, there is the aptly titled Ascension comic. Ascension is an in-progress comic detailing how Celestia and Luna ascended from Earth Ponies to Alicorns.
The Royal Sketchbook provides examples of:
- All Animals Are Dogs: Played for Laughs when Twilight thumps her leg like a dog when Luna rubs her belly.
- Ambiguously Bi: Discussed. The comic runs on a fluid view of sexuality, so characters might identify as straight or lesbian but still fall in love with ponies of a gender that would usually be incompatible simply because they're an exception to the rule. Celestia, notably, is straight but has had female lovers because a thousand years is a lot of time to find exceptions.
- Butch Lesbian: A gay stallion in Luna and Celestia's backstory advices the former to join the military, since it would be her best shot at meeting another mare like her. Downplayed with Luna herself, who is the more masculine of the sisters but not by a lot.
- Clingy Jealous Girl: Downplayed. Luna has a jealousy streak towards Starlight because she lives with Twilight.
- Closet Key: Rarity considered herself straight before she grew close with Celestia.
- Dad the Veteran: In the lore of the series, Luna and Celestia's father was an ex-soldier who when retired became a blacksmith.
- Discriminate and Switch: When Twilight comes out to her friends about dating Luna, Spike tells her that it's "gross", which causes her to faint. It turns out Spike, being a kid, was grossed out by the romance, not Twilight dating another mare.
- Embarrassing Nickname: Twilight has "Sparkly Froggy" (or "Froggy" for short). The nickname comes from how she'd puff up her cheeks as a baby when she tried to use her magic.
- Eternal Love: All of Luna's previous lovers were mortal. However, she's since fallen for Twilight Sparkle, which leads into marriage later in the blog. Both are alicorns and both are functionally immortal (or are at least long lived).
- Eyepatch of Power: Celestia and Luna's father wore one, likely due to being an ex-soldier.
- Face Doodling: A drunk Luna scribbles on her passed-out-drunk sister's face.
- Fantastic Racism: Grogar refers to Celestia and Luna as "mud fillies".
- I Want Grandkids: Celestia and Twilight Velvet really wanted Cadance and Shining to have kids.
- Heteronormative Crusader: It's mentioned that some ponies don't like Luna and Twilight's romance.
- Immortality Bisexuality: Luna and Celestia are mostly lesbian and straight respectively, but have had lovers of different genders over the centuries. A thousand years is a lot of time to find exceptions to the rule.
- It Began with a Twist of Fate: Celestia and Luna's backstory and how they ascended began with a call for the town leaders to meet in Canterlot. Their mother, the actual town leader, didn't wanna bother with some boring formal meeting, so she sent her daughters in her place, and the rest is history.
- Mayfly–December Romance: Celestia has had numerous lovers through the centuries.
- Mythology Gag: Grogar from My Little Pony 'n Friends is the villain in Ascension.
- Official Couple: Shining and Cadance are a married couple, while Twilight and Luna are dating and later end up married as well. Celestia and Rarity begin dating as well.
- Not Quite the Right Thing: As a child, Celestia tried to help Luna with her Gayngst by taking her to see a gay couple who lived in the next time over. The gay couple in question gave her the advice that if she lies low, never makes her sexuality obvious, and always hides who she is, then she might not get killed for it. Needless to say, this does not make Luna feel better.
- Origins Episode: Ascension is set roughly 2000 years in the past. It takes place when Celestia and Luna were younger and deals with their ascensions.
- Our Zombies Are Different: In Ascension, Canterlot gets attacked by zombies created through magic.
- Puppy-Dog Eyes: Shining does this in order to get back on Cadance's side after accidentally insulting her. The cake didn't hurt too, though.
- Rags to Royalty: Princess Celestia and Luna started out as ordinary foals. They were children of the village leader, and were next in line for the job, but they otherwise weren't that important in the grand scheme of things.
- Secret Relationship:
- Twilight and Luna had one until tabloids published a picture of them together.
- Celestia and Rarity start a secret relationship later in the series.
- Shipper on Deck:
- Shout-Out:
- One Ask references Pinky and the Brain.
- An Ask has Luna and Celesta getting ready to rap battle like in Epic Rap Battles of History.
- Cadance quotes Star Wars after Twilight and Luna have Their First Time. The same sketch has Shining reading a Supermare comic.
- Luna mentions a certain
memetic Harry Potter spoiler ("Snakes kills Dumbledork"). Twilight is less than pleased. - One Cadance-centric ask parodies How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, more specifically the part where the Grinch smiles at getting his "awful idea".
- Shining and Flurry play around as Batman and Robin.
- Snowball Fight:
- One of the sketches depicts one between Luna, Celestia, Twilight, and Cadance.
- There was also a Spike-Twilight-Shining vs Luna-Celestia snowball fight.
- One of the sketches
- Unrelated in the Adaptation: Blueblood isn't related to Celestia. His title derives from his being a descendant of Princess Platinum.
- Youthful Freckles: Luna was covered in spots and freckles as a young foal. She eventually outgrew them.
- Wacky Cravings:
- Celestia's past pregnancy cravings included pickled beets with honeyed oats.
- Cadance liked peanut butter ice cream with tomatoes while pregnant.
