Prince Blueblood [Tier 3, Ready]

[Blueblood]

Roleplay Type: Canterlot Chronicles

Name: Prince Blueblood

Sex: Male

Age: Stallion

Species: Unicorn

Eye colour: A light and limpid blue

Coat: Milk-white, maintained in a pristine condition with great effort

Mane/Tail: His mane and tail are of a golden flax hue, worn rather long for a stallion, and carefully brushed every morning.

Physique: Surprisingly full-bodied and fit, given his position. But again, one must make effort to keep up appearances.

Residence: Canterlot, naturally, is his home. He has a room in the Royal Palace as well as his own house in the city, though he generally rents out the latter.

Occupation: Much of his income comes from various real estate rents and investments, but most of his time is spent as a “prince of society.” That is, as a mostly ornamental figure gracing soirees, theater debuts, state dinners, concerts, etc. Lately, however, this routine has begun to be interrupted by a most inconvenient series of adventures...

Cutie Mark: An eight-sided compass rose, symbolizing his connection to and knowledge of the winds, both of the sea, and of society. Much of his young life, when not spent at some kind of school or tutor, involved being dragged out to every kind of social gathering, where he was expected to play the role of “the little prince,” rather to the annoyance of the young colt. Boating was one of the few hobbies he could unselfconsciously enjoy, in no small part because of its solitude.

The Bluebloods naturally owned a yacht, and the young Prince took instruction in sailing as soon as he possibly could. The winds of the sea, being mostly out of the control of the pegasi, took no small amount of skill and talent to read and use, and the Prince took to it with an eagerness that he did not show towards any other subject of study. In truth, he had been planning to sail away from home, and not come back to the whole society life.

His escape, however, was ill-planned and soon foiled. As he was paraded afterward around yet another soiree, a curious realization began to dawn upon him. For the first time, he looked at the movement of the ponies throughout the garden, and saw a pattern in it. They were dragged to and fro in waves, guided in currents directed by the ponies at the top of the social heap. As the party went on, the drifts changed as certain ponies made fools of themselves, or came off brilliantly in wit, as if invisible winds were changing.

When he saw the connection between what he enjoyed, and what he had to endure, and that he could apply skills in sea navigation to those in social navigation, that was when his cutie mark appeared.

History: The prince was born into the oldest and highest of the Canterlot Unicorn families, who traced their lineage fifty-four generations back to Princess Platinum herself, hence the royal honorific. While the official and legal position of the family diminished with the ascension and reign of Celestia and Luna, it has vigorously maintained its position at the top of the social scene and hierarchy in Canterlot.

Hence, the old rhyme:

Here’s to Jolly Old Canterlot,

Land of white marble and tresses.

Where nobles talk only to blue bloods,

And Bluebloods to only Princesses.

All told, a pretty accurate assessment of the company young Prince Blueblood was allowed to keep growing up. Most of his social guidance was taken up by his mother, a formidable dowager upon the social scene, while his father focused more upon the business and investments that allowed them to maintain their fortune. Both of them, however, were keen to impress the importance of their position upon the young prince, taking him around and showing off their heir to the soirees and the papers.

To be surrounded from birth by snobs sucking up to you and your family is not a particularly good environment to raise a young colt with an equal respect for all ponies. After all, if the only ponies you meet treat you as a natural-born superior, it’s hard not to believe them. Even as he grew up, and saw how mean and snobbish some of them could be, it never really occurred to him that they might be wrong.

That’s not to say he liked their company much; most of the time, he thought his peers and their parents social bores as well as social inferiors. He much preferred to spend time on the water, as he enjoyed sailing from a young age, and even harbored a secret respect for the low-class practitioners of the science. It also gave him a soft spot for tales of sea adventure, and for a while he even took saber-fencing lessons, as it was the closest thing his parents would allow him to a cutlass. Indeed, it was after seeing the parallels between ocean and social navigation that he got his cutie mark.

After his aborted attempt to run away to sea, his parents made sure he finished his education, taking an honorary degree from Canterlot University. Upon graduation, he came into his inheritance as Prince Blueblood LIV, and began to work the social scene in his own right.

Having debuted as a stallion, naturally potential suitors began to crawl out of the woodwork. At first he found the attention flattering, but after the first three gold-diggers he uncovered, he began to grow rather cynical about the whole business of courtship. He began to make a little game of it, seeing exactly how annoying he could be until all the suck-up snobs couldn’t take it anymore. All the while, of course, he still nurtured a solid sense of superiority over them.

Then came that fateful evening, the first Grand Galloping Gala since the return of Princess Luna. Prince Blueblood honestly had no idea that this was going to be any different than the others, a certain cool distance having been long maintained between him and his “aunt.” When yet another unicorn approached him with obvious designs, he thought no more of her than the last half-dozen potential tuft-hunters that he’d had to deal with.

Alas, for this was, in fact, Rarity, a sincere romantic who was not inclined to put up with the Prince’s unchivalrous games. The evening ended in absolute fiasco, with her giving him a public and scathing dressing-down, all the while the runaway menagerie were making ruins of the Grand Ballroom. Blueblood was reduced to a state of shock for the remainder of the night, and in the morning, found himself doing some solid thinking.

He hadn’t gotten very far when his “Aunt” Celestia came to visit, and to ask just why he had behaved in such a manner to one of the Elements of Harmony. He very nearly choked on his ego before managing to answer her, but eventually he managed to cover his reasoning, to which the Princess was not unsympathetic. She recommended, however, that he take a long hiatus from Canterlot, as the company he’d kept up until now had given him a rather skewed version of Ponykind.

So, he once again took up sailing, visiting various ports-of-call throughout Equestria, and generally trying to broaden his company and improve his manners. This caused him to be put into various situations to which he was completely unsuited for. Some ponies are born adventurers, some ponies seek adventure, but Blueblood had adventures thrust upon him! And it has to be said, his performance in them was... mixed. He does try his best, which has won him at least a little more respect than he expected from more natural adventurers. On the other hand, he's due to appear in the next Daring Do novel as the villain's dupe...

Character Summary: Most of the time when you meet him, you’ll see a typical high-born Canterlot Stallion, a little vain of his appearance and station, but not nearly as insufferable as he might be. He has a long cultivated a fine taste in the arts, courtesy of his mother, and is not a bad head at business, thanks to his father.

While his social sense gives him insight into group behaviors, he can be slightly clueless when dealing with individual ponies, which can end up in him coming off rather badly. In addition, he doesn’t think much of lesser nobility, and sometimes will intentionally act up, just to annoy them. He’s come to think less of his class in general, without necessarily thinking better of any other pony’s. It takes a lot of patience to get on his good side, and he will be the first to admit that it may not be worth the effort.

He's definitely a dandy when it comes to dress, and if he doesn't catch himself, his narcissism becomes a little more genuine. That said, he's not completely hopeless in a fight, though he has acquired a paralyzing fear of Changelings, due to a certain incident in Ponyville on Nightmare Night.

He has self-esteem issues, which run the gauntlet from egotism to inferiority complexes, but he's gotten more self-aware over the past couple of years. It's rather hard to keep a high opinion of oneself when ponies all over Equestria are reading about how you got taken in by a villain who was literally twirling his moustache. All told, he'd prefer a peaceful society life of soirees and mild scandal, but it seems as if that's not what life has in store for His Royal Highness...

[Armony]