@Background Pony #670E  
We do what we must because there is often no other choice.

Of course–not trying to start an argument here–it is entirely possible that Celestia’s response would be to say that she knows what burdens fall onto the shoulders (withers?) of her personal students. And that it has to be this way, because what she does is for the good of Equestria first and foremost. That means there is sometimes a conflict with what would be best, or easiest, or most convenient, or happiest, for one particular pony. Even a personal student she loves as though she were her own daughter.
 
It isn’t fair. It isn’t right. But there is no clearly labeled “better way” here. Someone–and until the very recent return of Princess Luna, “someone” meant Celestia–had to make the magic-powered trains run on time. Someone had to be in charge and lead the fight during the raids and invasions by Changelings and the Monster-of-the-Week–and when her soldiers die, their blood runs red too, just as much as any of her personal students who have died protecting the nation. And Celestia is very intelligent, and very wise, and very powerful. She is certainly vastly more powerful than most individual ponies.
 
She is tremendously powerful. She is not a god.
 
Her powers aren’t infinite, nor are her resources. She can’t make good stuff happen for everybody all the time, much though she would wish she could. She doesn’t have that kind of power.
 
And that means sometimes, with tears in her eyes, she has to make a horrible choice. That’s part of being a head of state, of leadership. (“In order to be a good soldier you must love your army. In order to be a good general, you must be willing to send what you love to die.”)
 
It doesn’t mean she doesn’t know exactly how much pain she’s inflicting on those who will be left behind. It doesn’t mean she doesn’t care, or doesn’t mourn. It doesn’t mean she doesn’t have days when she wants to throw the crown and peytral out the nearest window and flee, to spend the rest of her life in a little hut on the side of a mountain, privately weeping for those she loved, who died for her, and living with what she’s done.
 
But in an imperfect, unjust world–and, I suspect, one in which ponies are, outside their own country, probably a smallish minority, given how many other intelligent species we’ve seen (dragons, griffins, minotaurs, Diamond Dogs, even talking sea-serpents)–she is in the position anyone with good intentions in an imperfect, dangerous world is. She does what she can with the power she has, helps whom she can, when she can, and tries to make tomorrow better than today. She seems to have done a pretty good job of that over the centuries, and from what little we’ve seen of the rest of the world, Equestria is a better place to live than most.
 
But there are limits. And the power she has as Princess binds her, restricts her choices in some ways more so than ordinary folk. Every decision she makes will be scrutinized for any appearance of favoritism, of nepotism. Everything she does has to be, HAS to be, for the good of her people as a whole. You know, that whole “social contract” thing Hobbes and Locke wrote about–the people consent to obey the rules of the State, in exchange, not only for security and stability, but also for the knowledge that the State will protect them and their interests. Not a “personal student’s” interests, however loved she may be, and sometimes she does have to make that choice.
 
In a thousand years, she hasn’t yet found a better way.

It’s getting real up in here.