‘‘Friendship has lighten your heart, and we will dig it out!traitor!’’

said by CG and LT form one mile away.

It’s growing increasingly clear that neither seem to be likely to convince the other, so this will be my last post here.

They do cancel out the ones you’ve presented because the quotes you mentioned are all about Chrysalis’s immediate goal, not her motive. Her goal is to feed herself and her army to keep them (and especially her) powerful, which is a stepping stone towards her goal of conquering all of Equestria.

She herself is in literally the least amount of danger of going hungry out of everyone, because as Queen she’d get as much priority as she wishes, so it’s unlikely to be much of a personal concern to her outside of her desire for more power.

An army absolutely is comparable to a whole civilization in cases where they’re specifically presented as one and the same, which is not an unusual type of culture in fiction. Sparta is pretty darn close to a real-life example, and many civilizations in fiction go even beyond them.

It would merit consideration because Thorax was an explicit example of it in action. He was cut off from other Changelings and was clearly not unknown to the ponies he was with, but he was, as acknowledged by Queen Chrysalis (when she decided to steal all the love she could tell he had), still full of love and not starving at all.

It’s exactly clear as I think, because Starlight literally stated that she could still be their leader if she accepted. This isn’t even interpretation, it’s just explicitly stated.

Because she would no longer have the lure of satisfying their hunger to get the Changelings to obey her every whim when it comes to her goals of conquering Equestria. She had nearly unchallenged rule because she was the only one that could sate their hunger; with that gone, she loses a lot of her ability to make unilateral decisions.

In addition, even if she had accepted, it would still be in a new world situation of the ponies knowing where their main hive was and having disabled its main defensive mechanism, so there’s little chance of her succeeding in further conquest even if she still had unquestioning obedience.

The only assumptions being made here are you. Her scene was being used as exposition by the writers to give her entire plan at the moment; there was literally nothing pointing her her even caring one whit about her previous subjects when it would have been trivial for the writers to instead have her talk about regaining them instead of somehow stating an intermediate step as if it was her final step. If she cared about them, why would she not talk about using the elements to regain her old hive instead of creating a new one from scratch? There’s no reason. That’s not even counting that fact that when she DID have ultimate power for a bit in The Ending of the End, she still did not spare a single line about regaining her hive, just ruling over her new territory.

She was, but the “feeling familiar” part was about the aspect of others being there for her (which she did have even if it wasn’t actually friendship, just her subjects serving her because she was their way to get food). The part she rejected was genuine friendship, something she hadn’t felt before but immediately rejected out of pure spite for the concept.

You should assume that she knows what she’s talking about because she’s being used as an authorial mouthpiece to give exposition about the Changelings. It doesn’t matter how she knows what she does (though there are good opportunities, like Thorax for the first case and any number of ways for the second), only that there’s no reason to doubt her because the story portrays her as speaking the truth. MLP isn’t complex enough to make one of their characters mistaken when they’re literally speaking about a major moral of the episode.

It’s relevant because someone that had their motives be about the life quality of their subjects would be incredibly unlikely to have such a strongly authoritarian rule; it takes a very “it’s all about me” point of view to rule with such an iron fist that Chrysalis did.

I’m not making assumptions, I’m making inferences. The fact that not a single one of them showed a preference for her as leader, defended her, or was shown wanting her back doesn’t mean that not a single one did, but it DOES mean that the incredible majority didn’t, which would not happen if she was actually a ruler that had their best interests in mind or was good to live under.

The only changelings we saw be enthusiastic (the ones in the throne room of To Where and Back Again) were ones that were actively being fed by her plan with no knowledge of an alternate path to getting food, and could easily be just as power-hungry as Chrysalis was (made more likely by them being her apparent lieutenants, and thus more likely to have her personal favor). Thorax explicitly calls her an evil queen, and he’s the pre-transformed changeling that had the morals and viewpoints closest to that of our own.

I am not ascribing anything to you in particular, because I don’t know you. However, it is a well-established scientific fact that people in general DO more easily forgive and form emotional attachments to those that are cute, sexually attractive, or otherwise aesthetically pleasing, as an evolutionary tactic to encourage the caretaking of children (for the former) and the taking of healthy mates (for the latter two). This manifests in countless ways, such as ugly monsters being much more casually killed off than handsome ones, blatantly evil characters getting redeemed more often in fiction if they’re seen as handsome or beautiful, and more. It’s a statistical truth, not something I put on specific people unless they make it clear.

There are countless examples in many parts of the fandom where this is made clear by people regarding Chrysalis, stating things like she’s too elegant/sexy/beautiful to be evil, or that it would be a “waste” to not redeem someone as good looking as her. There are far less examples of this regarding King Sombra (though they exist), and even less than that regarding Tirek.

No, they’re quite comparable, which is made clear by the final season which puts at least Tirek and Chrysalis on similar footing in their portrayals (since Sombra got killed off immediately). Queen Chrysalis was ruling just as much of a slave empire as King Sombra, just with her method of choice being essential need-based blackmail (the type of “only I can keep you fed, so you have to serve me no matter what I ask of you”) instead of mind-control like Sombra.

There is a (very small) amount of wiggle room to give Chrysalis the benefit of the doubt in each individual example, but when every occasion is taken as a whole, that wiggle room completely disappears, showing conclusively what her actual motivations and goals were; personal power and conquest, not the well-being of her people.

She’s sadistic, petty, vengeful, power-hungry, and desires nothing more than personal power, even if said personal power required her to keep her people fed so they were able to help her attain (and then keep) it.

You allude to statements, but they don’t cancel out the ones I’ve presented. It is a fact that changelings consume love for sustenance. Whenever the question of motive comes up, the answer, straight from the horse’s mouth, is the need for love to devour. As the statement from To Where and Back Again confirms, Chrysalis is just as affected by changeling hunger as any of her drones. Even from a selfish perspective, the love motive makes perfect sense. To suggest that she would prioritise a vague conception of power over feeding her subjects and herself is absurd.

This only makes the comparison more flawed. An army is not comparable to a whole civilisation, however militaristic it might be.

Attractive or not, why would it merit consideration? Desperation is no substitute for common sense and the idea of sharing love as a solution to love starvation is troll logic levels of counterintuitive on its own. She’d have no reason to believe it from anyone, let alone the two hostile infiltrators she just caught attempting to destroy her throne.

Additionally, even if she were as selfish as you suggest, she would still have plenty of reason to want to end her love hunger. As mentioned above, it affects her too.

Also, remember that you said this while reading the second point down from this one.

It’s nowhere near as clear as you seem to think and the point about Luna is of dubious relevance, but I’d rather not waste time arguing over a tangential subject.

I already addressed the point about plans for conquest, but you have yet to address my point. If Chrysalis were truly concerned only with herself, why wouldn’t she accept an offer that lets her keep her position of power and frees her from the endless hunger inherent to changelings? Why would she choose to abandon her home, her title and however many supporters she still has for a life on the run?

You are clearly making assumptions based on what she could have said, but didn’t. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. A Hive of ponies was the end goal of her plan at the time, but that doesn’t preclude a future goal of reconquering (though I’m sure she’d say liberating) her original hive.

Wasn’t it you who called it a “momentary feeling of friendship”? In any case, watch that scene again. She was about to agree with Cozy’s statement about “When you use your power to help others…”.

Both of these speeches, I notice, are coming from Starlight Glimmer. The first was given during her infiltration of the Hive, which couldn’t have been more than a day. The second comes during what is apparently her visit to the Hive under Thorax. I see no reason to assume she discussed the subject with any changelings in the intervening time. She has, at most, a days worth of experience with Chrysalis’ rule and possibly Thorax’s account of it. Why should I assume she knows what she’s talking about?

Even if we accept everything Starlight says as fact, why is it relevant? Whether or not Chrysalis’ regime was authoritarian has nothing to do with her motive for invading Equestria.

You’re making assumptions again. It was never stated whether or not the renegade changelings wanted Chrysalis back or not. Pharynx was the only one we actually saw and his views on the matter weren’t touched upon outside of preferring what he called “the old ways”. However, most changelings we saw during her reign seemed quite enthusiastic in their support for her.

Do you realise how presumptuous it is to assume you know so much about thought processes of others? I can’t say I appreciate your ascribing of biases to me and others like me, especially when you write as if I somehow no longer exist.

In any case, the reason the Chrysalis and Sombra are perceived differently is because they are different. Sombra was a shameless tyrant who ruled a slave empire and wanted to go back to ruling said slave empire, as well as expand it. He was more or less a monster in his debut and his few lines were mostly dedicated to his desire for slaves. He’s easily a contender for the most evil character in the series. To say they’re just as bad is to significantly oversell Chrysalis and undersell Sombra.

I’d compare her to Tirek as well, but I can’t agree that nobody wanted him to reform since both underwent what easily could’ve been a redemption arc in Season 9. Even so, I know I’ve seen at least some people who wanted Sombra reformed.

That is the duty of the queen, but her numerous statements, including in that episode, make it abundantly clear that she does it not because it enhances their livelihoods, but because it grants them (and by extension her) power. She doesn’t care about whether they’re hungry or not, just whether they’re strong and fed enough to participate in her plans for conquest. Every time she talks about feeding, it’s about her first, and her subjects as an afterthought.

From every single portrayal of the hive’s situation and hierarchy we’ve seen [… ] the army IS the hive, with the only exception being the grubs too young to fight

I didn’t say she would have believed it, only that she would have considered it, even slightly, instead of instantly pulling the “I know better” card and immediately jumping to saying it’s impossible without giving a reason why. If she was someone whom was legitimately fighting against a years/decades/whatever long hunger that plagued your subjects instead of just using it to keep them in line for your army, even the slightest glimmer of hope of escaping it permanently would be incredibly attractive, regardless of who it was coming from.

No, it’s very clear that Starlight was offering her to stay as queen; she says “You can be the leader your subjects deserve”, and Luna was immediately reinstated as one of Equestria’s princesses after she turned back to good.

She wouldn’t take it because without the hunger that Chrysalis was using to keep her army under her control and the power said love was giving them, she would have no more ability to use them for her plans of conquest, especially with the closer contact they would have with the ponies from then on. As such, her going it alone where she has the freedom to plan revenge and to start over was the better choice for her current priorities. If she had actually cared about her subjects’ well-beings, that was the perfect chance for her to show her true colors; whether she’d accept her old position back as the caretaker of her people even if it meant her opportunity for conquest was no longer there, or whether she’d abandon her people and find ways to find new tools for conquest alone. She chose the latter, definitively showing her true colors (though it was plenty clear enough already).

I’m not assuming; her eventual goal as given in the episode is to completely replace her former subjects with an entirely different set of species for her new hive. She could have said she was going to retake the changelings, or maybe create a new hive of them, but no, she immediately moved on to normal ponies as her planned subjects, showing that she doesn’t care who she has under her as long as she has control.

That statement was specifically about having others that would be there for her, not friendship or a reciprocal desire to be there for them as well. That specific statement was more about her not being completely alone anymore (as she had been for multiple seasons), not anything specific about caring for others, and she immediately stamped down on the feeling before it could progress to anything else simply out of spite for the concept of friendship.

The point of Starlight’s mini-speech (the “I know what it’s like to lead by fear and intimidation! And I know what it’s like to want everypony to do what you say! But I was wrong. A real leader doesn’t force her subjects to deny who they are! She celebrates what makes them unique and listens when one of them finds a better way!”) was to act as a speaking piece for Chrysalis being a horrible leader for her people, not one that does bad things because they are necessary. Thorax, the pre-reform changeling that has morals and view closest to us as humans, called her an evil queen.

There’s also this line from To Change a Changeling that states that they had no freedom of choice, with their only option being to obey Queen Chrysalis at every point in their lives: “But remember when you didn’t have a choice! When you were forced to obey Chrysalis! You might have been unstoppable, but you weren’t free to choose!”

Finally, not a single changeling defended or desired to have Chrysalis back; even the most anti-change one, Pharynx, simply wished for a return to the lifestyle of conquering because he liked subjugating ponies, not because he wanted Chrysalis back. If Chrysalis had actually been doing things for the betterment of the changelings, there would have been SOME kind of sign of loyalty, but no, she was immediately cast away as soon as they were presented with a better alternative.

People wished more for Chrysalis to be redeemed because of of the popular view that she was doing it for her people; this was possible (if unlikely) back when we only had her initial appearance (which had real life years to cement itself in peoples’ minds, helped along by popular fan works like Fluffle Puff), but even after it was shown to truly not be the case by later appearances, it was too ingrained in many people’s views by then, which they put over what the show was presenting about her. This is the biggest reason why people object to not redeeming Chrysalis, but stay completely silent about Tirek and Sombra when they’re all similarly as vile and selfish. It didn’t hurt that Chrysalis was a “sexy” and mysterious bug queen in the same vein as The Vamp, while Tirek and Sombra were just evil males that didn’t have that kind of side appeal.

 
Do you realise how presumptuous it is to assume you know so much about thought processes of others? I can’t say I appreciate your ascribing of biases to me and others like me, especially when you write as if I somehow no longer exist.
 
In any case, the reason the Chrysalis and Sombra are perceived differently is because they are different. Sombra was a shameless tyrant who ruled a slave empire and wanted to go back to ruling said slave empire, as well as expand it. He was more or less a monster in his debut and his few lines were mostly dedicated to his desire for slaves. He’s easily a contender for the most evil character in the series. To say they’re just as bad is to significantly oversell Chrysalis and undersell Sombra.
 
I’d compare her to Tirek as well, but I can’t agree that nobody wanted him to reform since both underwent what easily could’ve been a redemption arc in Season 9. Even so, I know I’ve seen at least some people who wanted Sombra reformed.
 
Also, who says Sombra and Tirek aren’t sexy?  

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In A Canterlot Wedding, the very first thing she said after revealing herself was that finding food for her subjects was her duty as queen. In To Where and Back Again, when questioned about her motives, she answered “So I could feed, of course!” and added that once her plan was complete “my subjects and I will feed on their love for generations!”.

This is an absurd comparison. As mentioned above, Chrysalis wasn’t just feeding her army, but her whole Hive. Also, if you want to argue that Chrysalis only cared about personal power, it would probably be best not to compare her to an ideologically motivated dictator. In the words of an altogether different cartoon character “even Hitler cared about Germany o-or something”.

Hardly. Remember, Starlight and Thorax were trespassing and attempting to destroy her throne, a powerful asset for the defence of the Hive. Why would she believe a claim made by the two hostile agents she just apprehended, without any reason to think it’s even possible. Would you have believed them if you were in her position? Somehow, I doubt it.

For the sake of argument, let’s assume the part about remaining queen is true (which is hard to say based on the wording of Starlight’s offer in the episode). If she truly only cared about herself, why wouldn’t she take it? She’d keep her position and be rid of her endless hunger. If she still wanted to conquer Equestria, she could’ve contrived any number of reasons to do so.

It seems to me that you’re assuming a bit too much. Why assume she’s abandoned the Changelings completely? Even assuming she had, why do you assume that specifically is the reason?

She said herself that the feeling was familiar to her and that she hadn’t known it since she ruled the Hive.

I know I’m late, but I just had to say, it was made quite clear in A Canterlot Wedding and To Where and Back Again that Queen Chrysalis’s desire for her people to feed and be strong was solely so that she could use them as a blunt weapon for her personal dreams of conquest, which is incredibly selfish. Whenever she talked about her people and her goals, it was without fail about her personal dreams of conquest and her desire to have complete power.

In A Canterlot Wedding she specifically emphasizes her dreams of conquering Equestria instead talking about helping her people for their sake, and when she talks about gathering love for her subjects she states she wants it because it’ll make them more powerful, not because it’ll satisfy their hunger or improve their lives.

Hitler fed his army well (at least, before he started losing), but that doesn’t mean he actually cared about the well-being of even a single person who served in it, just what they could do for him, and the same was true of Chrysalis.

In To Where and Back Again she once again cackles that her plans of conquest are unstoppable in her meeting with her lieutenants, and in the throne room she immediately calls Starlight’s claim about what Thorax figured out impossible, simply because changelings not being dependent on her to feed them immediately risks them no longer having a reason to obey her and act as her personal army. If she had actually had any of their well-beings in mind, she would have at least considered the possibility that Thorax might have found a better way, instead of acting like a paranoid dictator and calling him a traitor simply for leaving her army.

Then, once she was shown that they COULD satisfy their hunger and transform into a less permanently-hungry state, she once again disregards the states of her former underlings (whom she could have continued to rule if she had only accepted Starlight’s offer) to swear personal revenge simply because Starlight took away her dreams of conquest.

The next time we see her, she’s planning to create a new hive of unicorns, pegasi, and earth ponies, showing that she has already completely abandoned the changelings simply because they no longer served her, meaning she never actually cared about them as more than just minions.

If she had any concept of what friendship or desiring for the well-being of others were, she would not have been so surprised and confused (and then angered) by the momentary feeling of friendship she felt in Frenemies.