“You will marry him! It is your duty as a princess, and as my daughter.” Queen Chrysalis paced back and forth in her daughter's chambers, frustration building with every step.

“But he’s so ooooooold, and groooooooooss!” the younger changeling moaned.

“You are lucky his family would even accept you. He is an upstanding member of our society.”

“I bet Dad wouldn’t want me to marry that old bug.”

“Your father doesn’t even know you exist, and if he did…” Chrysalis cackled maniacally. She really hadn’t had an opportunity to cackle recently. “Do you really think he would want anything to do with you?”

“I don’t know, maybe if you let me meet him. He’s certainly been a better parent than you have ever been.”

“Fine!” Queen Chrysalis turned away from her daughter. “You really think that stallion will have anything to do with you? Go to him, find out! Have him clap you in irons, throw you in prison. I am done. Maybe one of my other, pureblood daughters will see fit to follow their Queen’s advice.”

Chrysalis stormed out of the room, the vase her daughter sent flying at her head narrowly missing. It wasn’t the first time dealing with her daughter that Chrysalis lamented the iris style doors that separated the rooms. Maybe she should implement a few pony style doors. They were satisfying to slam.

“This door is not to open under any circumstances!” she barked at the two black-chitined guards standing either side of the door. She kicked at the soft detritus floor, muttering darkly as she made her way to her throne room.

“Another invasion. That is what I need. A nice, long, protracted military campaign.” Chrysalis hummed to herself, the idea of another war cheering her disposition drastically. “The ponies are a bust, but maybe the Minotaurs. Iron Will certainly had enough love of himself.”

By the time she was at her throneroom she had a positive bounce in her step, having planned the infiltration and subjugation of the entire Minos nation. She knew the council would never approve it, her failed invasion of Canterlot had barely met approval. A mare can dream, she told herself.

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!” the young changeling screamed as the vase shattered on the wall. It was her favorite vase; why did she have to throw that one?

She stomped across the room, she needed to go out and have some fun. Stupid mothers and stupid betrothals and stupid pure-blood sisters being better than her. She tapped the iris door to her room, but it didn’t respond to her magic.

“Ummm, a little help here?” she called out to the guards she knew were on the other side of her door.

“Sorry, Princess, but Queen Chrysalis has ordered that you stay in your room.”

“Fine. Fine!” She stomped back across the room, kicking a few more priceless artifacts she would regret breaking later. They were her things, after all. “Fine!”

Changelings are nothing, if not adept at lying, stealth, and subterfuge. A sharp-fanged grin spread across the young princesses muzzle. “Fine…” she whispered, smirking.

It wasn’t the first time the fat bug had locked her daughter in her room. Actually, if the princess thought about it, it was happening with greater frequency these days. She was a princess, Queen Chrysalis’ oldest daughter. She should have been the Queen’s heir, not that upstart little pupa she called a half-sister.

The princess opened her wardrobe, pulling out a few of her favorite pieces of minor regalia. Changelings weren’t in the habit of wearing clothes, unlike many of the other races of Equus, but they did so love their jewelry. She packed them into a saddlebag (a gift from a suitor, stolen from Equestria three years earlier) and slung it over her back. She scribbled a quick note for her mother, then escaped through the small tunnel she’d used to sneak out as a pupa, conveniently hidden behind a pinup-poster in the back of her wardrobe.

Why she ever needed a wardrobe, given the previously established disdain changelings had for clothing, she never knew. Whatever. It was convenient.

Her mother wouldn’t be back to check on her for hours, and by then, the princess would be well on her way to freedom.

Queen Chrysalis strode through the hallway to her daughter’s chambers, a haughty look on her face. She had left her daughter in her room hours longer than she normally would. That should teach the little pupa to respect her mother.

“Has the whelp been begging for her freedom?” Chrysalis sneered as she approached the guards.

“N-no, Your Greatness,” the changeling guard on the left clicked.

“Aside from one outburst, she has been quiet ever since,” the other added.

Chrysalis’ brow furrowed. That was awfully suspicious behaviour on her daughter’s part. She eyed them, her words not even needed, the question unspoken.

“W-we were going to check, but…” the first guard stammered.

“‘But’ what?” Chrysalis snarled, already suspecting the answer.

“Your orders were…” the changeling adjusted his vocal chords to mimic the Queen’s exact voice. “‘This door is not to open under any circumstances!’ A-and we dared not disobey you, Oh Might Queen.”

Both guards were well aware they were stuck between a rock and a hard place. Queen Chrysalis helped dislodge them, with two powerful bursts of her green magic.

Disregarding the two piles of dust at either side of the door, Chrysalis unlocked the iris and stepped into the room.

Many priceless heirlooms, along with spoils of wars kept in the family for generations, were bent, broken, smashed, and just generally strewn across the floor. Chrysalis felt a small amount of pride. “You certainly have a temper, my daughter. That rage would do you well in the future, should you temper it with patience.” Chrysalis laughed at her own pun. If only there were a guard to hear.

There was no response from the room. Complete and utter silence, save for Chrysalis’ own breathy chuckling.

Looking around the room, the Changeling Queen spied a piece of parchment, lying atop her daughter’s sleeping ring. Levitating it in front of her eyes, she read.

A scowl deeper than the one she had when the Queen thought of that Twilight Sparkle formed on her brow.

Changeling culture is not what most of the other races would have you believe. It is a rich and varied culture, with wondrous works of art, magnificent spires of obsidian, a beautiful and complex written language, filled with enough ambiguity that the most eloquent of Changeling poetry could be interpreted many ways.

The letter before the Queen’s eyes was either a declaration that her daughter was going to find her father, or an obscene description of how the Grand Ruler of the Changeling Empire could go and make love to a caramel flan.

Possibly both.

The letter burned in her telekinetic grasp. Chrysalis looked around the room, there was no way her daughter could have escaped, those two incompetent smears had made sure of that, at the very least.

Her daughter was nowhere to be found. The only other changeling she could see was the lewdly leering lascivious perverted poster-pupa peering back at her. Chrysalis levitated a china doll, one of the few unbroken items left in the room. “Where is she?” she screamed, as she threw the doll at the poster.

Instead of the satisfying sound of shattering porcelain she expected, she heard the tearing of paper. Walking closer to the poster, she saw a small tear in the paper. Pushing a holed hoof into the tear, it widened as Chrysalis felt no resistance. She tore the poster off the wall, revealing the small hole in the wall hidden behind it.

“Gone?” Chrysalis slumped back on her haunches. “She’s… she’s gone?”

Chrysalis staggered back from the wall, unable to believe her daughter was gone. Her first hatchling. Chrysalis looked down at her holed forearms. She had held her, with these very hooves.

“Oh, Peleides, my daughter!” she whispered. “What have I done?”

“All the time I could have spent with you was wasted complaining and wishing you were gone!” Chrysalis slumped over her daughters sleeping ring, sobbing into the soft green detritus for her lost daughter.

After a moment, she abruptly stopped. “Oh, what do I care? I can just make another one.”