Talk:Princess Cadance

GNG

Fletcher, Kevin (2018). "My Little Pony, Communalism and Feminist Politics". Orienting Feminism. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 25–42.

"It undercuts the storybook-princess wedding by centring the story arc around Twilight and her group of friends instead of the betrothed pair, Princess Cadance/Mi Amore Cadenza and Twilight’s sibling, Shining Armor. The producers give Shining Armor the traits of a romantic hero, but he is under the grasp of Queen Chrysalis, who is impersonating Cadance and feeding on Shining Armor’s love. [...] Three of the alicorns are linked to traditional images of planetary gods: Luna and Celestia appear to represent the moon and the sun, respectively; Cadance could correspond to Venus. There are different types of alicorns. For example, Flurry Heart, the alicorn foal and daughter of Princess Cadance and Shining Armor, is born an alicorn rather than transforming from a pony into one (by contrast, Twilight earned her alicornhood). Returning to “A Canterlot Wedding,” Twilight Sparkle sings from the conservative song sheet about the hetero-familial institution. “Love is in bloom/A beautiful bride, a handsome groom,/Two hearts becoming one/A bond that cannot be undone ...,” Twilight Sparkle sings. In an environment where trust is possible, however, Cadance (the real Cadance) and Twilight can rediscover their old, effectively familial love and work together to escape. Cadance’s love can reach Shining Armor, persuade him to break free of Chrysalis’ power, and together overthrow her and free Equestria. Love is a potent force against power. What, then, to make of the hints last episode that emotions are socially constructed? If love is something we construct, and make up slightly differently for each person in each culture, how can Cadance have magical power over it? How can the Changelings feed on it?"

Valiente, Christian; Rasmusson, Xeno (2015). "Bucking the Stereotypes: My Little Pony and Challenges to Traditional Gender Roles". Journal of Psychological Issues in Organizational Culture. 5 (4): 88–97. doi:10.1002/jpoc.21162.

"In episode 25 of season 2, “A Canterlot Wedding (Part 1)” (McCarthy, 2012) females appear as primary roles and males are peripheral. Shining Armor is the captain of the royal guard and is responsible for keeping a protective shield around the castle. The royal guard is made up of male ponies that follow the orders of the princesses, again reflecting the show’s challenge to gender stereotypes in general, but perhaps reinforcing the notion of male as protector. Even though Shining Armor is the one getting married, he is relegated to a supporting role. He is brainwashed by the shape-shifting antagonist, Queen Chrysalis, who has taken the form of Princess Cadence, his love interest. Even with a pack of male ponies on screen, the main dialogue and action belong to the females Twilight and the shape shifter. [...] Episode 26 of season 2, “A Canterlot Wedding (Part 2),” concludes the wedding story arc and the plot of devious shape-shifter Queen Chrysalis is revealed and the issue resolved, with emphasis on action. With groom-to-be Shining Armor in his weakened and brainwashed state, and Twilight now imprisoned with the real Princess Cadence, Queen Chrysalis continues with her plan to invade Canterlot with an army of male changelings. This episode contains examples of all three challenges to gender stereotypes, but especially features women driving the action and dialogue while males are rendered inept or under the command of females"

Blue, Jen A. (2021-12-27). "Cadance Is Best Pony". My Little Po-Mo: Unauthorized Critical Essays on My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic Season Four and Beyond. pp. 99–103.

"For starters, Cadance has one of the best names in the series, and almost certainly the most oversignified. Start with the first name given for her, Princess Mi Amore Cadenza. Mi amore is, of course, Italian for “my love,” and likely a title indicating the nature and source of her power: much as Twilight Sparkle is the Princess of Friendship, Cadance is the Princess of Love. But cadenza has a very different meaning: it is a musical term, referring to an ornamental passage, usually a solo designed to show off the virtuosity of one musician, placed near the end of a work. This is very much Cadance’s role in her first appearance. Let us go back, a moment, to the end of Season Two. It has been something of a triumph, with a number of episodes that stand among the series’ best: “The Return of Harmony,” “Lesson Zero,” “Sweet and Elite,” “The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000,” “Read It and Weep,” “It’s About Time.” Now, here at the end of the season, we’re introduced to a new character, Princess Cadance, and just as swiftly (a mere couple of minutes into “A Canterlot Wedding, Part Two”) introduced to the real Princess Cadance, bedraggled, scratched up, desperate to save Shining Armor. What follows can only be described as a virtuoso solo passage, as the two Cadances sing “This Day Aria.” It is easily the best song in the show to that point, alternating verses in which the true and false Cadance sing light and dark versions of each other’s lines, with the false Cadance, Queen Chrysalis, wanting to control and devour, while the true Cadance mourns the disruption of her special day and worries about the loss of her love, Shining Armor. But wait, how is this a solo? Simple: Chrysalis isn’t just disguised as Cadance; in a sense, she is Cadance, another side of the same coin. Their song together is an aria–a piece generally performed by one singer–not a duet, and their power is the same: love. Chrysalis devours while Cadance creates, yes, but such is the nature of love: it can be grasping, greedy, possessive, or it can be giving, nurturing, healing. Usually, it’s both at once. And within a universe where friendship is magic, love is pure power; Chrysalis is able to defeat Celestia in a direct battle of power against power, and Cadance in turn is able to empower Shining Armor to do what Celestia can’t, and drive the Changelings from Equestria. Because, of course, one lover alone can only be selfish; it’s when love is shared by two or more people that it becomes able to accomplish something good. This is the power of love: connection, binding, bridging gaps, enabling sharing and cooperation. Cadance is, in more ways than one, a bridge. She is, for example, a unicorn that became an alicorn princess: according to Lauren Faust, Cadance was not an alicorn when “A Canterlot Wedding” was first planned, and only became an alicorn princess sometime after Faust left the show. This, perhaps, is why she is so different from Celestia and Luna: less distant, smaller, more down-to-earth and approachable. She is a living bridge between “ordinary” magical ponies and the goddess-like Princesses of Sun and Moon, someone who has ascended extradiegetically, and thus traced the path for Twilight to do so diegetically a season later. But Princess Mi Amore Cadenza is only one of her names. She has two more: Cadence and Cadance, the former her name according to the credits and closed captioning of some episodes, the latter her name in other episodes, most merchandise, and the Elements of Harmony guidebook. Cadence has multiple meanings, all related to sound. First, it is a musical term, the sequence of chords that ends a passage, with different types of cadences used to different effects–deceptive cadence, for instance, generates a feeling of hanging incompleteness. (As something of a joke, “B.B.B.F.F. (Reprise)” in “A Canterlot Wedding” ends with a deceptive cadence, moments before Chrysalis-as-Cadance attacks Twilight.) It can also mean a particular style of speech or intonation, or a rhythm."