A Great Endeavor
is a My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fan fiction.
"On July 3, 1943, Equestria declared war on the Axis Powers. These are the stories of those times."
In an Alternate History where Equestria and its sapient magical ponies are present on Earth, World War II initially begins without their involvement. When Nazi hatred of the lesser races spreads beyond anti-Semitism to include Equestrians, however, the Princesses refuse to stand by any longer.
Tropes:
- Alternate Universe: Equestria is an island located in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, They've been living alongside humans since the beginings of time.
- Artificial Limbs: Spitfire gets a crude but functional wing as a replacement for one the Nazis took from her.
- Awesomeness by Analysis: Twilight ends up as an advisor to the Allied forces at Bastogne, initially treating the strategy "as a big logic puzzle".
- Been There, Shaped History:
- Twilight was at Bastogne.
- Rarity helped found Amnesty International.
- Being Good Sucks: Leslie chooses to vote in favour of legalising human-Equestrian marriage and gets his political career killed for it.
- Good Is Not Nice: Applejack turns into this due to her wartime experiences.
- The Greatest Story Never Told: Just like in reality, General Stanislaw Sosabowski never spoke of his wartime deeds.
- Historical AU: Takes the characters of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic and imagines an alternate world where they lived alongside humans. The story is then set in World War II.
- Interspecies Romance: Between "Big" Lee and Silverwing. His bigoted neighbours did them no favours and he became one of the few human immigrants to Equestria under the “Defense of Love” decree. The US eventually passed a "Marriage Equality" bill in the 1960s, too late for them.
- Muggles Do It Better: For all their magical powers, it's ultimately a big question mark if Equestria made a significant contribution to the war effort on the grand scale. Justified, as it stated many times in the story that Equestria was ill-prepared for war due to its neutrality in many conflicts in the past.
- Older and Wiser: The war put paid to Rainbow's impatience and ego.
- Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: "Purple. Pony. Girl!" is General McAuliffe's disbelieving response to seeing Twilight.
- Shell-Shocked Veteran: Several characters become this, including Rarity and Blueblood.
- Shown Their Work: The author states that he did a lot of research on World War II.
- Super-Empowering: It turns out that ground-up unicorn horns can be snorted to grant humans magic. The Nazis make extensive use of these "warlocks", but it ultimately doesn't help stop the Allied tide.
- Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: Invoked when Rarity marries her scarred minder Guardspony Stern Glare.
- Vigilante Execution: Just like in reality, Joachim Peiper eventually met a violent end decades after escaping the gallows at Nuremberg.
