Thread:Redfork2000/@comment-31727837-20180929122335/@comment-26888167-20181120012518

Well, Equestria is mainly governed by princesses. First Princess Celestia, with her younger sister Princess Luna being the second-in-command. Then there's Princess Cadance (Twilight's sister-in-law), and Princess Twilight Sparkle.

Celestia, Luna and Cadance have many royal guards at their disposal, which are the first line of defense against anything that could threaten the well-being of the ponies. It should be noted that Celestia's guards are white with golden armor, which symbolizes the fact that Celestia is the princess of the day and the sun, while Luna's guards are dark blue with dark colored armor, symbolizing the fact that Luna is the princess of the night. Luna is moon in spanish, by the way.

Cadance is the princess of the Crystal Empire, which is one of the many locations in Equestria. She has crystal ponies as her guards. The princesses themselves are the most powerful ponies in the entire kingdom, by the way. There was one episode where a villain managed to steal the magic from every pony in Equestria except the princesses, who had transferred their magic to Twilight for safe keeping. And with the magic of the four princesses, she was able toreach a stalemate with the villain, who had the magic of all the other ponies in Equestria.

Twilight is the only princess to not have royal guards with her. However, since the IaLR timeline includes my OCs, there's an exception, since Red Fork was given the title of "Guardian of Harmony" due to his heroic actions, saving Equestria just as much as the Mane Six have. So in theory, Red Fork would be Twilight's guardian, but Red Fork usually only ever mentions this title when he's trying to protect Twilight from some villain.

But besides the princesses and the royal guards, Equestria has several powerful and magical objects to protect it from evil. The most important ones are the Elements of Harmony. Each of the Mane Six is connected to one of these elements. It's canon that other characters have been able to use the elements before. For example, once Princess Celestia and Princess Luna used them to defeat Discord. However, the elements are only at maximum powerful when being used by the Mane Six, due to how each of them is connected to each of the elements. That's why in stories I have Red Fork turn into a super form using the elements, similar to Super Sonic with the Chaos Emeralds.

Besides the Elements of Harmony, there's the Crystal Heart. The Crystal Heart is a powerful magic item that is in the Crystal Empire. First of all, it keeps the empire from freezing (since the empire is located in an area with arctic weather), and it also protects the empire from powerful villains, such as King Sombra, a villain who tried to take over the Crystal Empire in the third season of MLP.

If we include all my stuff, there's also the Golden Orb, which can be found in a faraway island in Equestria's east ocean. This orb contains powerful magic too, but not nearly as much as the Elements of Harmony.

However, it doesn't stop there. So far I've mentioned the princesses, the royal guards, and the magic artifacts, but there's one more thing. There's several other characters that help protect Equestria some villains. These are the heroic characters that have defeated villains that attacked Equestria in at least one occasion. The best example are the Mane Six. Before Twilight was a princess, she and her friends saved Equestria several times from different villains, such as Discord, Queen Chrysalis or King Sombra.

Red Fork and some of his friends could also be classified in this group. Dark Shadow and Black Gem are neutral characters that also protect Equestria on occasions. Dark Shadow's backstory is interesting because he's King Sombra's nephew, and used to be a villain himself, but he went through a process, and became one of Equestria's heroes.

In some later seasons of MLP there's other characters that have saved Equestria, but since they haved appeared yet in the IaLR timeline, we'll leave them out for now.

Oh, and there's one more thing: every town in Equestria has a mayor, and people in charge of keeping the town in order. For example, Ponyville's mayor has appeared in several episodes of MLP.

So in conclusion, all of this helps to keep Equestria in order. Sure, when a large-scaled villains shows up the only thing that matters are the heroes, princesses and magic artifacts, but the entire system helps to keep things under control during the average day-to-day life.