Fanfic / Changeling Courtship Rituals

The happy couple, after their long and romantic courtship.

Ponies call what happens when two people attack each other, thwart each others' plans, and generally do their best to make the other's life miserable 'bitter enmity'. Changelings, on the other hand, call it 'dating'.

One Twilight Sparkle is surprised to discover that her uncovering Chrysalis's plan in Canterlot was, to Chrysalis, a proposal to a relationship. And their bitter rivalry afterwards was highly romantic. Oh, and that last letter she received from Chrysalis was a proposal to marriage. Which she accepted. So now she's married to Chrysalis.

Hilarity Ensues.

It can be found here, and has a sequel: Pony Courtship Rituals.

Tropes:

• Accidental Marriage: The premise — what Twilight thinks is foiling yet another plan to take over Equestria is actually an invitation to marriage by Chrysalis... and Twilight successfully stopping it is considered accepting the proposal.
• Accidental Proposal: Twilight didn't know it at the time, but seeing through Chrysalis's disguise at the wedding (and being the only one there to do so) is pretty much the changeling equivalent to asking Chrysalis out.
• All Love Is Unrequited: Turns out that attacking ponies and trying to ruin their lives does not inspire them to love you. Pony Courtship Rituals is about Chrysalis trying to rectify this.
• Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: Twilight's mother is far too free talking about sex with her children, especially in the sequel.
• Armor-Piercing Question: When Cadence goes on a rant about how Changelings take love, not give it, and it's impossible for them to love a pony, Twilight's shouted response makes her pause (before going right back to her rant).
  Twilight: WHY NOT?!
• Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: Chrysalis interrupts Twilight's explanation of her marriage to ask why she isn't the Princess of Love instead of Cadence. She feeds on love and Cadence doesn't even live in Equestria.
• Bait-and-Switch: In the epilogue of the sequel, Shining Armor is talking to the statue of Cadence saying he's sorry for how things turned out but that she had to face the consequences of attacking Chrysalis and Twilight and that he'll miss her. Then Cadence speaks up from nearby and it turns out she has a restraining order against a certain someone and thus can't attend the wedding reception.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Rainbow Dash wants to fight changelings again so Chrysalis agrees, but she'll have to fight on their terms. As Chrysalis dislikes Rainbow considering her changelings to be a punching bag, she dictates that at any given moment, Rainbow might be attacked by disguised changelings. Maybe by her best friend, or her worst enemy, or a random passerby, or even all of them at once.
• Bearer of Bad News: Not a position one wants to be in in the changelings, as Chrysalis's Hair-Trigger Temper will cause her to attack them.
• Becoming the Mask: The changeling sent to act as a "long lost twin" for Prince Blueblood got so into his role that he's basically a clone of the pony.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Apparently everyone who's ever scared Fluttershy has ended up reflexively punched in the face, and she has a mean right hook. Pinkie Pie even had a black eye for a week afterward when she threw her a surprise party once. Unsurprisingly, Pinkie never tried to throw that kind of party for Fluttershy ever again.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality:
  • Changelings have an odd idea of what constitutes dating in the eyes of ponies and vice versa. This trope is both the central premise and the driving force of the story. Chrysalis also really doesn't get the concept of friendship outside the hive, and Changeling drones don't use names, as the hive mind means that they always know who the others are.
  • Even Twilight investigating Chrysalis back during the Canterlot Wedding was/is seen as advertising her interest and availability by changeling customs. Twilight, for her part, was just trying to find out what was wrong with her old babysitter. Twilight responding to Chrysalis' letter in chapter one and fighting what she thinks is a duel to the death is considered completing a wedding ceremony by those same customs.
• Brick Joke: When Rainbow Dash mentions wanting to fight the changelings again, Chrysalis warns her of how they could ambush her at any moment. A few chapters later, Dash is tackled by her squad during the wedding.
• Casual Kink:
  • When he thinks he lost a Side Bet against Cadence, Shining Armor just mentions he'll have to be bottom for the next month.
  • Celestia offers her services if Chrysalis and Twilight are ever interested in a threesome.
• The Chessmaster: In the sequel, Chrysalis preempts the anti-changeling groups she knows will form by making her changelings form said groups themselves. If anypony gets too extreme, she arranges for them to be dealt with (such as getting a couple real extremists to try to firebomb a "changeling business" just as some royal guards walk by).
• Crazy-Prepared:
  • Rarity has matching wedding dresses prepared for Twilight with every member of royalty on the continent, including Chrysalis and Sombra.
  • In the sequel, Pinkie Pie has several banners already made for Twilight marrying Chrysalis, breaking up with her, or marrying half a dozen other ponies.
• Dating Catwoman: From Chrysalis's point of view, her and Twilight's rivalry was/is Chrysalis Dating Batman.
• Despair Event Horizon: Realizing that Twilight still doesn't love her in the sequel causes Chrysalis to head back to her hive and consider entering a self-induced coma for the rest of her life.
• Didn't Think This Through: Because Twilight doesn't tell her friends why she needed them to come with her (as backup for a raid on the changeling hive), Chrysalis is able to replace her with a changeling that took them on a picnic instead.
• Do Wrong, Right: In the sequel, Princess Luna is quite disappointed that Chrysalis literally stabbed her in the back, because she did it wrong.
• Dramatically Missing the Point: Cadence refuses to believe that Love Redeems a changeling, and does everything in her power to destroy Chrysalis' relationship with Twilight out of a desire for revenge.
• Epic Fail: Twilight's attempts to use someone else to break up her marriage all fail miserably. Celestia admits that she was in love with Twilight, congratulates Chrysalis on winning her student's heart, and gives a standing offer for a threesome. Luna cheerfully discusses ways to overthrow Celestia with Chrysalis. Twilight's parents were merely upset she didn't invite them to the wedding.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Chrysalis has a bit of trouble with the concept of friendship.
• Exact Words:
  • Queen Chrysalis agrees to not invade or overthrow Canterlot. Instead, she poisons Celestia as then Twilight would inherit Canterlot.
  • In the penultimate chapter of the sequel, Twilight sends Chrysalis a letter declaring her intent to "take possession of everything in [Chrysalis'] hive that belongs to her, without exception", including Queen Chrysalis herself.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Chrysalis cannot control her emotions (which Twilight theorizes is the result of her being an Emotion Eater) and her reaction to everything is maximum emotional investment. This includes her rage at a Bearer of Bad News.
• Hilarity Ensues: Regularly.
  • Chrysalis offers to compensate Rarity for making their wedding dresses by having Prince Blueblood killed and replaced by a far more polite Changeling who is interested in dating her. Despite her assurances to Twilight, Rarity is highly tempted.
• I Want Grandkids: Twilight's parents. Her mother is overjoyed to realize that technically the entire changeling race are now her grandkids, crowing how she'll rub that in her neighbor's face.
  Twilight Velvet: Your grandkids have all been in the top 5% at the university? Mine conquered Equestria!
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Upon learning Twilight has gotten married to Chrsyalis, Celestia confesses her feelings but insists she doesn't want to come between the two.
• Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: When Twilight refuses to break up with Chrysalis after learning that Cadence has been sabotaging their relationship, Cadence decides to brainwash her into loving someone else instead.
• Let Us Never Speak of This Again: After reviewing photos of their bachelorette parties, Twilight and Chrysalis destroy and burn the camera and insist no one can ever know what happened that night (especially whatever Celestia and Nightmare Moon did to each other). They're still going to hire Pinkie for their next party though.
• The Matchmaker: Cadence has planned out the next fifty years of Twilight's love-life with the intention of it ending with Twilight marrying Celestia. Notably, she doesn't remotely consider Twilight's feelings in her plans.

• Meaningful Echo: In the penultimate chapter of the sequel, Twilight gives Chrysalis the same speech Chrysalis gave her during their Changeling wedding.
• Mood Whiplash: Twilight and Shining go from a magical tug-of-war as he tries to attack Chrysalis to convincing their mother that they're not roughhousing upstairs.
• No-Sell:
  • Discord finds it quite irritating when he attempts a Forced Transformation on a pony only for them to immediately change back, having actually been a changeling.
  • Chrysalis has apparently set Celestia on fire several times during her engagement to Twilight, but Celestia is naturally immune to fire as the Princess of the Sun.
• No Social Skills:
  • Twilight's main excuse for not realizing Chrysalis's letter was a marriage proposal, apart from believing her to be declaring another evil scheme.
  • Chrysalis seeks aid from Cadence in how to date Twilight in the sequel... the same person who was vehemently against her courting Twilight in the first place. Cadence's suggestions are intentionally the opposite of helpful. Chrysalis trusts Cadence to the point of Cadence's plan to drive the two apart almost succeeding.
• Noodle Incident:
  • Twilight is the reason Pinkie Pie Parties are allowed to serve alcohol again.
  • According to Celestia, she's been lit on fire several times since Twilight and Chrysalis started dating.
• Odd Friendship: Luna and Chrysalis bond over their attempts to overthrow Celestia and in the sequel are shown to be good friends.
• Our Nudity Is Different: When Chrysalis questions the point in strippers if everyone's normally naked, Pinkie Pie corrects her that it's not about what they aren't wearing, but how they take it off.
• Properly Paranoid: After demanding the antidote for the poison Chrysalis just used on Celestia, Twilight asks her if the vial she just presented to Twilight is the antidote or simply more poison. Chrysalis then hands her a different vial.
• A Rare Sentence:
  Twilight: Chrysalis has probably already sent a letter to your palace, requesting a divorce from me. I never thought I'd say anything even remotely like that.
• Revenge Before Reason: Cadence is too caught up in wanting to destroy Chrysalis' relationship with Twilight to consider what Twilight realized right away; a marriage between the two would mean the changelings would no longer be enemies of Equestria.
• Selective Obliviousness: Considering she's the Princess of Love, one would think Cadence would be able to tell that Chrysalis' feelings for Twilight are genuine. While spying on a date between the two, Cadence believes a splash fight in a park fountain is Chrysalis trying to drown Twilight.
• Sincerity Mode: An in-universe example. Chrysalis's letter asking Twilight to marry her is entirely this, but Twilight thinks all of it is a challenge to a final battle written with mocking sarcasm.
  Twilight(thinking): Ooooohhhh. Oh sweet Celestia, none of that was sarcasm.
• Sickeningly Sweethearts: Chrysalis acts like this to Twilight.
• Side Bet:
  • Apparently Shining and Cadence had a bet on who Twilight would marry. Shining bet on Rainbow Dash and Cadence on Celestia.
  • The sequel reveals there's an actual betting pool going as well, with a far wider range of choices for bets. Pinkie at one point asks Twilight to marry Fluttershy, even if only temporarily, because she could really use the win in the pool.
• Skewed Priorities:
  • Your daughter got married to one of the worst villains in Equestria's history, how do you react? Why, expressing disappointment at not getting invited to the wedding of course.
  • Rarity is disappointed that Twilight didn't marry Sombra or Celestia, stating the dresses she planned for either of those weddings would have been to die for.
• Take Our Word for It: All that's shown of the bachelorette parties is Twilight's and Chrysalis' reactions to a set of photos that aren't described to the audience.
• Title Drop: This line.
  Chrysalis: I was impressed you knew about changeling courtship rituals.
• We Are as Mayflies: Since Twilight is now a princess, she is immortal. Celestia mentions that she was planning to wait for all of Twilight's friends to die of old age before making a move. She's more than a little put out that Twilight managed to get married to one of the few other immortals in the world before Celestia could express her feelings.
• What Did I Do Last Night?: The aftermath of Twilight's and Chrysalis's bachelorette parties.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Twilight rips Cadence a new one in the sequel for destroying her relationship with Chrysalis.
• You Are Number 6: Changeling drones are numbered.