Cadence was not made into an alicorn but born one. The book twilight sparkle and the crystal heart spell means nothing. It is not canon, it is just a fanfic that has hasbro’s name on it. The book was never written by the true writers, therefor not canon with the show.

@Beau Skunky  
true, but at that time in the show they were still saying she and luna qualified as unicorns, so that means twilight was at the very worst more powerful than luna. (by “very worst” I mean if celestia had never looked in a mirror, or seen her reflection, meaning she’d never seen herself)

@AthrunZala  
At the same time, that love blast was incredible powerful. It stands to reason that it was several orders of magnitude stronger than Celestia herself… and judging from how the spell looked and worked, it might actually have been Shining Armor’s magic.

@AthrunZala  
And then somehow she regained her full strength after being thrown by Shining Armor.

@Beau Skunky  
Don’t forget that Cadance can struggle with magic; she needed Shining Armor’s help to defeat Chrysalis with The Power of Love(TM), and in The Crystal Empire, she became tired having continuously used her magic to repel Sombra.

I like to call Luna and Celestia celestial alicorns. We have seen Cadence being alicorn when young and she still have tipical traits like a bigger body and a more squared muzzle, i think the only artificial one is Twilight.

>beta  

@Itsthinking  
Frankly yes.

@Background Pony  
Great Idea.

@PonyPon  
What if Sombra is a wingless Alicorn? Plus his cape could be hiding the scars that are now the place of his lost wings.

@greaterlimits
 
Actually, the only available comparisons between their powers demonstrate pretty clearly that Celestia is out of Twilight’s league for raw power. More that once she’s been shown able to undo anything Twilight can pull off without much effort.

It’s so easy to see, but there are just too many who don’t want to understand…

@Greenjack  
To be fair, Celestia was still shown as a “winged unicorn,” in the opening midevil-style art animation. The term “alicorn” wasn’t canonized in the show yet, so the makers of the show just called Celestia & Luna “winged-unicorns” back then.

@greaterlimits  
celestia is called a unicorn in the show’s opening animation (from season one) then in a later episode (in the same season) celestia says she’s never seen a unicorn as powerful as twilight. celestia at that time was considered a unicorn, so celestia pretty much admits that at age… well, in human years it’d be five, twilight had more power than the immortal sun goddess.

I think Twilight is more powerful than Celestia, course can’t prove that

@Beau Skunky  
Changelings are a different species. All Changelings have a horn and wings, so “Alicorn Changeling” is redundant.

This arrangement makes sense to me.

I think having control over F*CKING MAGIC counts as control over a major force in the universe.

I think many of us have come to similar conclusions.

Canon.

Headcanon accepted.

I’m not sure if it isn’t just age. Celestia and Luna are at least 1000 years older than the other two, and that’s absolutely canon. I suspect they were also coronated into royalty; it was just a millennium or more before the current storyline. We know Discord ruled Equestria before them (absolutely canon), and before that the ponies were split into three tribes led by Commanders, Chancellors, and Kings/Princesses (which were unicorns, not alicorns); hence, they weren’t Princesses until that time. Moreover, since the three tribes hated each other (fairly canon, depending only on how much myth vs. truth there was in the Hearth’s Warming story), and (word of Faust) alicorns are equal parts Earth, Pegasus, and Unicorn, it’s very likely Celestia and Luna hadn’t even been born in that era. They almost certainly had to have been born after the events of Hearth’s Warming, in the first place. So the question really is, in 1000 years, will Twilight have gotten as powerful as Celestia?

@B2C  
*Non-contact forces

@thps48  
on-contact forces: Gravity, electromagnetism, strong nuclear force, weak nuclear force

this pic makes a lot of sence to me