The engagement of Sir Ink Spot and Princess Twilight Sparkle was announced the very next day. It was a story right out of a fairy tale(1): a humble bookkeeper racing against time across the world to save his beloved from an unwanted betrothal.

The nobility, of course, freaked.

An immortal Princess, marrying a commoner? Not merely a commoner, but a drudge laborer(2) for some book factory or other? At least he was a unicorn, darling-- imagine if he was a pegasus or, Maker forbid, an Earth Pony!-- But still, how appalling--

Twilight had been hearing this sort of thing muttered quietly under ponies' breaths, and not so quietly, for days. So it was just really the Duchess of Canterbury's bad luck to be within earshot when the princess and her mother were walking past in the castle hallway.

Twilight Velvet and Night Light had all but moved into the royal quarters. The moment the engagement had been announced, Velvet had gotten together with her daughter and her daughter's staff. They'd spent the past few days with their heads together, giddy as fillies, plotting out the wedding details.(3) But as they were walking down the hallway that day they happened to pass the redoubtable Duchess and two of her hangers-on, and it was impossible not to hear what the three were whispering about. Almost against their wills, They slowed to a halt and stood there, eavesdropping on the little royal tete-a-tete.

"...Turned down the Blueblood family for this... Ink Spot character! I don't know what to think! Is it really true?" One of them said.

"Oh, absolutely," the second one tittered. "They tried to marry her off properly-- she threw a tantrum. Flung the betrothed out a window and left his father hanging by his neck from a chandelier!"

"What is the world coming to?" the Duchess tut-tutted. "First Nightmare Moon, and now this... unstable filly, up on a throne."

"The marriage is set for exactly one year from now."

"The reason for that is obvious," the Duchess sniffed.

"Do tell?"

"Well the bookish little thing has been slumming in Ponyville for the past two or three years," the Duchess said with a raised eyebrow. "They have to make sure and account for any.... indiscretions she might have gotten up to amongst the commoners."

"Indiscretions?" her two gossip-mates pricked their ears up.

The Duchess cleared her throat and leaned in. "Did you say the wedding's in one year... or did you mean in just over eleven months?"

The two sycophants "ooooh"ed in understanding. "You mean they think she's already...?" one said, hiding her scandalized grin behind a feather fan.

"I mean they think that she's gone so, ahem rustic that they have to make sure she isn't," the Duchess clarified. She gave an officious sniff. "And if she is, well-- I wonder what poor little foundling she'll have 'adopted' between now and then?"

Velvet felt her daughter stiffen, then heard her clear her throat. The three gossips turned about in surprise; they had obviously not noticed the very Princess they were insulting coming down the hallway towards them. They went from a twirl of surprise to a bow of obsequiousness with grace that bespoke years of practice. Velvet wondered cynically how often Celestia had padded silently up behind them during an indiscreet round of lip-flapping to engender that sort of reflex. "Your Highness," the three said reverently, as if they hadn't just been calling Twilight a gutter wench a moment before.

"Ladies. Duchess." Twilight's response was as smooth and cool as a glass of iced tea. Velvet wasn't fooled. It took a mother's eye, but Velvet could see the pain at the hurtful words behind her daughters eyes. She gave the three nobleponies a gleaming smile. One could almost hear the tzing! as Twilight's mother pulled the metaphorical razor out of her mental purse.

"Duchess Canterbury, Lady Wintergreen, Lady Pumpkin Patch!" she said. "What an unexpected pleasure. So nice to see you out and about. Especially you, Duchess, it's always important to stay active at our age, don't you think?"

Duchess Canterbury looked a touch miffed; it was an open secret(4) that the Duchess refused to acknowledge her actual age and had even gone so far as to have any record of it altered.(5) "...Quite," she managed to say.

"Oh, and how is your son doing? Is he feeling well?"

"My son?" The Duchess blinked at the non sequitor.

"My, yes. After all, despite his age he was born six months premature," Velvet said. Her smile was all teeth. "That can cause a few lingering problems, I suspect. And the first pegasus in a 300 year old family of unicorns! Quite the surprise he was, I'm sure."

The Duchess didn't even blink. "Well, these things do tend to skip a generation or two..." her face would have been the pride of the professional poker circuit.

"Or three, or ten, or twenty, but who's counting?" Velvet said breezily. "Oh, don't look like that, dear," she pouted, "I'm not insinuating anything-- oh, excuse me--" She paused to pluck out a handkerchief and gave an explosive sneeze that sounded rather like PEGASUSGROUNDSKEEPER!-- "Do excuse me, it must be the pollen in the air..."

"Mother--" the mortified Princess hissed.

"Oh, I'm quite all right dear," Velvet said without missing a beat. "But he's a nice strapping lad. At least he didn't inherit that... jaw... thing like his Hapsburg cousins did."

"Jaw... thing?" Pumpkin Patch asked.

"Oh, you're going to be marrying into that line of the Canterbury family, aren't you, Pumpkin dear? Betrothed, I'd forgotten about that." Velvet said.

"His name is Chinly Habsburg," the filly said uncertainly. "We... haven't met yet. What about his jaw?"

"Oh surely you know." Velvet made a gesture with her hoof, indicating an enormous lower jaw. "You know, that, ah, facial quirk where the lower jaw sticks out like so?"

Wintergreen grimaced. "Isn't that the defect that crops up when you..."

"When you marry first cousins, yes," Velvet said offhoofedly. "But well, the Patch family stallions seem to um, have rather understated chins so I'm sure your foals will all balance out." Pumpkin Patch said nothing but the growing horror on her face spoke volumes. "I'm sure he has a nice personality though. If you can ignore the slurred speech. And the unibrow. WEll, I'm sure his comfortably wealthy style will make up for any inconveniences(6)"

"Mo-ther!" Twilight Sparkle hissed, stamping her hoof.

Velvet never took her eyes off the three gossips. "Just think, dear," Velvet said, turning to Lady Wintergreen, the youngest of the three. "You're so fortunate to be of noble lineage." She rolled her eyes back. "Imagine if you'd been born a commoner! You'd have to actually go out and find somepony you were emotionally compatible with, and be courted and dated and asked for your hoof in marriage. Why, you'd have to go out and learn a trade and make a living, be part of a community-- and you might even get it in your head to never marry at all!

"No, none of that nonsense for you. Your parents will pick out a perfectly suitable family name and bank account to trade y-- ah, betroth you." She simpered and patted a hoof to her mouth. "Do forgive that slip; I wouldn't want you to think your parents have anything but your best personal interests at heart when they pick a husband. I mean," she darted meaningful glances at the Duchess, "It's not like they'll marry you off to some stallion three times your age, or a drunken boor, or a loutish cretin who just happens to have a politically advantageous pedigree. I mean you're their daughter.

"Right?"

The Lady Wintergreen looked ill. Her family was known in Canterlot circles to be ruthlessly ambitious; one could see the visions flashing behind her eyes of just what sorts of marital sacrificial pyre her parents would throw her to, given half a chance.

Twilight had enough. With a barely smothered "ugh" of frustration she turned and strode off down the hall. Velvet waited until her daughter was out of earshot and then addressed the threesome under her breath. The toothy smile never left her face. "Now listen up you jumped up tramps, that isn't just your Princess and it isn't just some other female obstacle in your petty little power games, that is my daughter. I once put the beatdown on a manticore who went after her baby carriage, some bedraggled old bat and her two guttersnipe sidekicks wouldn't even make me break my stride.

"She is about to marry the stallion she loves. If I find out you three hags have hurt her or ruined her special day by spreading your nasty, petty little gossip about her and him, you won't have to worry about what Celestia will do to you because the last thing you will see in this world will be me taking a bite out of your still-beating hearts." She started to walk away, and turned back.

"Oh, and don't think I won't do it. My grandson is a dragon. I know how to get rid of the bodies." With that, she trotted off serenely after her daughter, leaving the three noblewomen standing amidst the tattered shreds of their flayed egos, in a state somewhere between shock, humiliation and outright mortal fear.

1)Or, more truthfully, a really good saddle-ripper(*) romance novel.

(*)They would have been called bodice-rippers, if ponies actually had bodices to rip.

2)To some unicorns, anything that earned a salary was drudge labor.

3)While Night Light was busy doing his fatherly duty by cheerfully terrorizing the groom.

4)As plain as the triple layers of pancake makeup on her face.

5)According to the age she would admit to, she had given birth to her first son at the age of six.

6)Everyone present mentally adding the typical fortune-cookie suffixes to her words.