Princess Celestia is a tyrant/dictator

Princess Celestia is a tyrant. A tyrant is defined by Merriam Webster as a ruler who exercises absolute power and uses their power in a cruel or unfair way - http://www.merriam-webster.com.... Using these two elements that define a tyrant, we must first ask: does she exercise absolute power? It"s pretty evident that she does. She is the sovereign of Equestria, a position that according to EP1S1, she had held for just over a thousand years. There is no evidence of any sort of parliamentary checks on or judicial balancing of her decisions. The only challenges to her authority thus far have come from outside sources and were not domestic political challenges. She is the monarch, or diarch, and her authority is absolute. Having established that she wields absolute power we find that the crux of the matter is whether or not she is a benevolent dictator or a tyrant. Is she cruel and/or unfair in her rule? Yes she is. We can examine her conduct using how she treats her subjects. Is she just and measured or is she capricious and cruel? The first extended sequence we have interaction between her and her subjects is in "A Bird in the Hoof." Before this she made cameos and last minute appearances to congratulate ponies on a job well done (more on that later), but in this episode we get see how ponies react to her in person. What we see is not reassuring. She attends a brunch/tea at the local bakery in Ponyville hosted by the Cakes at SugarCube Corner. How do the Cakes react to her? They are terrified. They run around frantically attempting to make sure absolutely nothing goes wrong and bend over backward to do things like fill her teacup after every sip. Witness the sequence where they hover over her cup waiting to refill it and kowtow to the Monarch. The Princess seems embarrassed by all this, but that does not seem to stop any of her subjects" genuflections in the least. This is because it is learned behavior. The Cakes fear her. If she was the omni-benevolent ruler that we are meant to believe she is, why would the Cakes worry? There"s not any evidence that they are naturally nervous or fearful creatures, so this fear of reprisal must come from somewhere. The idea of learned behavior ties into Twilight Sparkle and how the Princess deals with her. Twilight Sparkle has apparently lived in isolation as a prot"g" of the Princess since childhood. In the first episode we see that she spends most of her life studying in the library and ignores social interaction. She could be a natural shut-in, however there is something quite sinister about her mentor never mentioning that she should go be social able until it is absolutely necessary to ensure national security. Perhaps the Princess just wasn"t paying attention to her most faithful student. Yet, if we go forward to the same "Bird in the Hoof" episode we hear something much more sinister about the nature of the Princess. After her friend Fluttershy absconds with the Princess"s pet bird, Twilight begins to obsess over what will happen to her claiming the princess will either "banish [her] from Equestria, or put [her] in a dungeon, or banish [her] and then put [her] in a dungeon in the place that she banishes [her]." To be fair, Twilight is a spazz and she admits that she doesn"t know exactly what the Princes will do, however she also knows the Princess better than any pony in town. She would not even mention these things if they were not in realm of possibility. Why would she even conceive of banishment if she had never seen her do it? Why would she bring up dungeons unless dungeons both existed and she had seen the princess sentence someone to them? She needs to have a frame of reference for the mere existence of these possibilities. These are learned behaviors and if they weren"t something that had happened before for an infraction of a similar level she would not even be able to consider them. The level of fear she exhibits only confirms that draconian punishments are an occurrence in Equestria. This brings us to "Lesson Zero", the infamous Twilight freak out episode. Upon realizing that she will be late in submitting her weekly report, Twilight begins a journey down a spiral of madness which culminates in her using mind control magic on others. Just when everything falls completely out of control, the Princess shows up (for once) to fix everything with her magic and to dress her student down. Twilight"s friends intercede on her behalf to spare her punishment and Princes Celestia spreads out the punishment among all six in the form of essay writing. There are a few problems here: 1)How does the Princess know to show up? Informants. She has a network of informants spying and reporting on her student"s activities. We can refer to this particular Quisling as "Spike." She admits to this. 2)Again, learned behavior. Why does Twilight think the Princes will bring her back to the city away from her friends and send her back 12 grades to Kindergarten? She"s seen her do something similar. 3)The interaction with the other Ponies. They all rush in and beg to the Princess forgive Twilight and attempt to accept responsibility for their friend"s actions. At no point does the Princess show to them any sign of remorse for creating the problem that is Twilight"s neurosis. In fact, she dodges all responsibility and seizes the opportunity to punish everyone else; now they have to submit reports too. 4)That spell. Why, out of all the times that they have been in trouble, does the Princess pick this time to take personal action? Why does she do a complete 180 in regards as to how she interacts with Twilight and then her friends by pouncing on an opportunity to deflect blame. Most importantly, why does she never mention the specific thing that Twilight did wrong? The answer is that Twilight has a date rape spell in her repertoire and apparently it "works every time." The ability of powerful unicorns or alicorns to fiddle with the brains of others is a secret that the Princess does not want getting out. Perhaps she has a spell that she can use to make everyone love Big Sister and cement her power. At the very least she doesn"t want anyone to know that someone taught her most precious student the date rape spell that she has practice in using it. Finally there is the callous indifference to other ponies that the Princess shows to others throughout the series. This is much like the problem of evil: if God is all powerful and all loving, why does he not stop evil? The existence of evil shows that he lacks at least one of these qualities as he either is incapable of stopping evil or does not care to do so. There are counters to this argument, but we don"t have to go nearly so far with Celestia. She has demonstrated that she is the most power entity in their world,yet she always seems to find a way to avoid any action or responsibility. She almost lets the Wonderbolts die (twice) and her plan for every crisis and villain is to throw her interns at the problem despite being the most power pony there is. Only once has she ever faced a foe head on, and that was only because it was both staring her in the face and upstaging her at a wedding. Princess Celestia is the most powerful pony on the planet. Her subjects recognize her power and have demonstrated that they fear her. Even her most faithful/brainwashed prot"g" fears her wrath for the slightest of offenses. She knows of magic that can alter emotions and guards the secret jealously. She lazily sends her intern to fight battles she could easily win herself, and will not lift a finger (err"hoof) to save any of her subjects when there is the remotest possibility that someone else could do it instead. She is callous and indifferent to the fears and suffering of her people, and when this is combined with wielding absolute power one can only conclude that she is indeed a tyrant.