Astartecorn

Doodle thingy.

So I had a thought after the season finale. Who’s Cadence’s mom? She’s not really presented as Luna’s daughter, nor Celestia’s, so presumably there’s another alicorn out there somewhere. Then I got to thinking about Celestia basically being a sun goddess, Luna being a moon goddess, and hey, there’s a bunch of celestial bodies out there. So I got to lookin’ at Venus/Aphrodite, thinking, hey, didn’t Venus have a daughter named Harmonia? (Harmonia, Cadence, eh? Eh?)

But Aphrodite wasn’t as interesting to me as Astarte, an earlier goddess who the Greeks may have borrowed aspects of for Aphrodite. Both are goddesses of love, but Astarte is also a goddess of war. War/love struck me as an interesting duality.

So, uh, I turned Astarte into an alicorn. With one of Astarte’s symbols as her cutie mark (a star inside a circle, to represent the planet Venus/the evening star). Her hair’s meant to be fiery, like love AND war. I also saw a statuette of Astarte with a two-horned crown on, so I stole that too. And my explanation is either "Astarte was the predecessor of Aphrodite, goddess of love, so Cadence is equivalent to Aphrodite in that equation because of her love powers" or "Astarte is equivalent to Aphrodite, who had a daughter named Harmonia, which is kinda musical sounding like Cadence, and who was also the goddess of harmony and concord (Cadence made those two ponies stop fighting!)". Which is a lot of thought put into a doodle-pony.

Definitely overthinking it, and may have missed any canonic declarations of whose daughter Cadence is during my self-imposed, pre-expensive-test-taking internet hiatus, but whatever.

I may finish this if I figure out a background and don’t decide the pose is too boring. Or I don't decide that I have basically made Rapidash with wings.