Six coronations. Six. Six new alicorn princesses, all appearing in a single night, who would now each have their own staff, their own servants, their own royal quarters, their own royal powers and, let's not forget, their own coronations. The consternation this caused amongst the royalty, the Houses of the Equestrian Parliament, the Guard and the Castle staff was commensurate.

In other words, everypony freaked.

Orders and paperwork flew, ponies galloped hither and thither, platoons were mobilized and immediately fell into disarray as they stumbled over each other, grown stallions screamed in hysterics like fillies, and at least one klaxon was going off somewhere in the hallways of the castle.(1) It was the fourth worst state of chaos Canterlot palace had ever been in.(2)

It was a pell-mell riot in the great rotunda when Celestia teleported in. She stood in the middle of the great open room, spread her wings, and used the Royal Canterlot Voice.

"ENOUGH."

Ponies basically screeched to a halt all over the rotunda. There was dead silence; all that could be heard was the faint sound of the klaxon blaring somewhere in the labyrinthine depths of the castle. "Thank you," the Princess said, keeping her voice loud enough to be heard by everypony there.

"My Little Ponies, calm yourselves. The ascendency is not a crisis! It is a proud and glorious day for Equestria. There is no reason for anypony to succumb to panic--"

She was interrupted by the sound of oddly muffled galloping hooves. Out of one of the many hallways branching off the rotunda came Princess Luna, still wearing her pajamas and bunny slippers, running as if Tirek himself were on hot on her heels. "The snails! The snails are finally here!" She shrieked, standing in the middle of the roomful of frozen ponies and spinning in a circle. "Raise the drawbridge! Lower the portcullis! Man the battlements! Fetch the Morton's Salt! It is the end, the sticky sticky end!!" She turned and bolted off down another hall, her bunny-muffled hooves fading in the distance.

"--No rational reason for anypony to succumb to panic," Celestia amended. "If we all keep level heads and work together and, most importantly, exercise some horse sense, everything will be fine."

"Now, what seems to be the problem?" she asked with just a tad of excessive cheer. Naturally everypony started clamoring again, this time gathering around her to do it. This time around she used a thunderclap to call for silence. "You first," she said, rolling her eyes and pointing at a random pony with a hoof.

"Your majesty," the bespectacled pony in question said. "Parliament is in a tizzy over the sudden appearance of six-- six!-- new Princesses, they're wanting to know what this does to the Diarchy--"

"Nothing more than what Princess Cadence's birth did," Celestia said. "The title of Princess was given to Mi Amore Cadenza as an honorific with certain minimal privileges and authority; they just need to run off six copies of the same decrees issued back then. It was only twenty five years ago; honestly, tell them to look it up! All right, now YOU," she said, pointing to a man-at-arms.

"Your Highness, the royal Guard is grossly understaffed for six Princesses," he said severely. "We need--"

"More soldiers? Congratulate all the recruits in basic training, they're Guards now," Celestia deadpanned. "Fit them for their gilded armor--- spray paint the training armor if we don't have enough yet--- and divide them up between the six."

The guard's jaw dropped in horror. "But... Your Highness... they're raw recruits! Worse than raw recruits! They..."

"Welcome to the world of on-the-job training," Celestia said. "Mix them in, Captain. Put at least one of the experienced guardsponies with two or three of the new. Give the experienced guardsponies responsibility over the rookies and put them through their paces. Lighten up on the spit and polish for a while; I'd rather have them a little disorderly looking than understaffed... and with what the new princesses are going to be up to, they'll need ready and willing hooves to help them more than they need shiny armor and stiff poses. YOU."

The mare almost jumped out of her hooves but rallied. "Your majesty, we're having some difficulty planning out six coronations in such short--"

Celestia facehooved at that. "Combine them into one big coronation, you silly thing," she said. "Main throneroom, decorations themed on the Elements, everything else more or less the same. ---Oh, and burn that damned coronation chariot. It's as ugly as sin. It looks like a, a cheap toy designed for a mentally handicapped child. Come to think of it, burn those dresses we wore at Cadence's coronation. Maroon and gold? What in the Maker's name were the dressmakers thinking? In fact... give the job to Princess Rarity."

The mare's quill stopped in mid-scribble. "Princess Rarity? Really?"

"She was a dressmaker par excellence before she was ever an alicorn," Celestia said. "Tell her  white with gold trim for me, midnight blue and silver for Lulu, and lavender and pink for Cadence. Simple white with gold filigree for all the new Princesses... they'll be wearing the Elements for jewelry. " the mare nodded as she scratched down the instructions. "Very good. And you?"

It was the majordomo. "Your majesty, the staff of personal servants---"

"Hire more. Next?"

This pony was a tweedy looking fellow with a ledger in one hoof. " Bean Counter, Royal treasury, your Highness. What with the royal allowance, new accommodations to be constructed for their new Majesties, staffing, necessary expansion of the--"

"The chase, my dear Counter. Cut to it."

The pony slipped into a rather Southern patois. "How we gon' pay for all dis?" he drawled, raising an eyebrow. He was quite obviously picturing six new princesses driving Equestria into bankruptcy.

Celestia sighed and rolled her eyes. "Congratulations, you're the new keeper of Emergency vault number Thirteen(3)," she said. With a flick of her horn she manifested a rather large, ornate skeleton key hanging from a chain. "Have the set of royal jewelry in there auctioned off. That should cover the immediate expenses, and use whatever is left over to start a trust fund for each of them."

"Y'all gon' trus' me t' invest awl dat??" Bean Counter stammered as the key settled around his neck. His accent got thicker the more alarmed he was, Celestia noted.

"You're on my financial staff. I trust you," Celestia said.(4) "The Princesses will be rather busy abroad for... the foreseeable future; I want a suitably regal lifestyle waiting for them when they return." Bean Counter nodded; he knew precisely what she meant.... or at the least he was certain he knew what she meant, which was what Celestia was counting on.(5)

A few more rounds of one-on-one instructions and soon the rotunda was... well, still chaotic, but at least it was no longer bedlam. The panicked rushing about had some purpose to it. Celestia sighed and wiped her brow with one hoof. "Good, things are back on track. Now if somepony would please turn off that damn klaxon?"

1)It was the alert klaxon marked "in event of invasion by giant snails." Commissioned by Princess Luna at the age of six, after reading one rip-snorter of a monster story right before bedtime.

2)Preceded, in ascending order, the return of Nightmare Moon, Discord's escape, and the time the Gryphon ambassador's wife had been overheard saying that Princess Celestia had a fat ass.

3)There were quite a number of those "emergency vaults" scattered about the castle, remnants from a time when she and Luna had been rather busy kicking the snot out of uppity dragons. After getting whomped crosseyed by a pretty pony princess, most dragons were more than eager to pay a tithe of dane-geld just to keep the story from getting around.

4)Celestia prided herself on the fact that it was her own money, not any tax revenue, that funded her lavish lifestyle. A job in her royal treasury was more than just counting stacks of coins like Scrooge McDuck.

5)Long ago Celestia and Luna had realized that if they didn't live in a lifestyle that the average pony regarded as appropriately lavish for the Princesses of the Moon and Sun, their little ponies would actually spend ruinous amounts of their own money to give them one. Celestia found it simpler and more compassionate to give them her own money and let them purchase the lifestyle they thought she and Luna should have. It was rather like a doting mother giving her child money to buy her a mother's day gift, but it all worked out.

Next Chapter: Chapter 4 Estimated time remaining: 9 Hours, 12 Minutes