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Both the Castle of the Two Sisters (Princesses Celestia/Luna) and the Crystal Empire (Princess Cadence) contain several guards and other useful servants to help maintain things. Yet, the only ponies we regularly see in Princess Twilight Sparkle's castle are the Mane 6 themselves and Spike.

While it is noted that Twilight's castle tends to be pretty quite with the occasional visitor, there has been at least one instance of an unwelcome guest.

Is there a reason why Twilight's castle lacks guards and other servants? If so, what is it?

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    It is a seed of the tree of friendship? Moichandising?. She doesn't need the guards. It isn't engineered for defense, or offense, or military use. It is more of a center of commerce and transactions dispatching folks across Equestria on quests.
    – EngrStudent
    Mar 10, 2016 at 3:29
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    @EngrStudent: Sure. Well... except for that one time that Starlight Glimmer broke in and used the Cutie Map to travel back in time and prevent the Mane 6 from becoming friends. Otherwise, sure, it's for commerce and dispatching people on quests..
    – Ellesedil
    Mar 10, 2016 at 4:49
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    I'm not up to date on the latest episodes. There is a rule in engineering: form follows function. You make something do what it has to do, then you can make it look how you want it to look. The castle is not built for warfare, neither defense nor offense. A relationship built around isolation and self protection is a contradiction in terms. The primary function is dispatch across equestria. ... Maybe it should get guards. Flash sentry perhaps?
    – EngrStudent
    Mar 10, 2016 at 11:41
  • @Ellesedil took a while, but I found something backing the whole "she probably decided she don't want guard" idea in the books. Not much, but I fear this is the most "canon" reference we have so far. Will check if the comics have something related too and in case update the answer.
    – SPArcheon
    Oct 13, 2016 at 18:00

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Pony princesses don't generally need guards. They aren't despotic nobles who have to enforce their rule with an army of soldiers. They are the simply the wisest ponies of the land, universally popular among their subjects, so they don't have to fear of attacks from ordinary ponies. There are times when the princesses are in danger, but in those cases, an army of low-ranking guards won't help much to protect them.

Princess Celestia does have guards, but this seems more like a historical accident than a necessity. Let me quote Twilight Sparkle's lecture from S4 E21 about this.

Prior to the great Celestia/Luna rift, there was no need for the Earth, Unicorn, Pegasi, or E.U.P., Guard. But after Luna's banishment, the Protective Pony Platoons were formed.

Princess Celestia doesn't really need guards anymore, but she's stuck with them and can't just fire them now.

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  • Hmm, I'll try to re-watch that episode. It seems like Twilight is forgetting/ignoring the fact that Princess Cadence has a boatload of guards of well. In fact, Cadence married the Captain of the Royal Guard: Shining Armor. The wiki on Shining Armor seems to imply that Celestia/Luna and Cadence share the same force of guards between themselves. And based on previous episodes, the Crystal Empire really does need some protective force considering it's recent history.
    – Ellesedil
    Mar 28, 2016 at 17:00
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The above answers are fairly good reasons. To be fair, I haven't watched in a while, so I may be out of date, but I believe another reason is that Twilight Sparkle has also been reluctant to be a Princess and does not like the idea of being a "ruler" per se. I would assume she wants to be just like a normal philly and not have servants. Just an assumption on my point.

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Twilight is the princess of friendship. And a new princess at that. She may have yet to get her guards. Or perhaps she wishes to be more of a pacifist and peace keeper. Having a large number of guards around when having a meeting with a neighboring area that they're at conflict with could put them on edge and one wrong move could start a war.

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  • So you're aware, good answers around here tend to have sources to back them up. While personal speculation can be fine, speculation only really withstands review if based on facts. I've noticed a lot of your answers tend to be your own opinions without any references supporting them.
    – Ellesedil
    Mar 28, 2016 at 8:20
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    In this answer, you have no support for "new princesses don't get guards right away", "she doesn't wish to have guards", and "having a large number of guards could start a war." In fact, that last one is highly unlikely since both Princess Celestia and Princess Cadence have vast numbers of guards and do receive high-level visitors at their castles without causing a war. So, what sources do you have to back up your answer here?
    – Ellesedil
    Mar 28, 2016 at 8:20
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As far as I know, there in no canon answer to this question in the media.

That said, something related to Twilight status as a princess, the castle and guards can be found in one of the characters-book that have been released as side-works to the main show.

In the book "Twilight and the Crystal Heart Spell" Twilight is described as having some trouble in finding her role as a princess. Without giving in too many details about the actual story, one of the scenes has Twily asking the other main six what they would do in her place: among the various answer, Rainbow Dash suggests to create a royal guard force made from the best pegasi around.
That "royal guard force" is never actually created, and at the end of the book Twilight decides that she don't want to be considered more important than other just because of her princess status but instead focus on be a friend for others like she always did.

The actual collocation of this story in relation to the main show is a little unclear (it must happen after the "alicornification" but probably before Tirek escape), but it is worth to notice that this "I am not worth more than any other pony" is the same lesson Discord teaches deliberately avoids her to skip during season 4 premiere - a lesson that will come oddly useful to the purple one when she will give up the magic of four alicorns to save her friends... and a spirit of chaos that just happened to have betrayed her at the right moment to get a random amulet and be able to react the same "test of friendship" he did before.

I guess that this may be the only reasonable answer so far: she doesn't have any guard because she prefers to avoid any display of importance/power and just want to still see herself as just "the pony from the library" (season 5 premiere partially confirms this - she feels very uncomfortable at the idea to have to live in a castle).

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Ok, ok, there is another possible explanation. Maybe Hasbro had in mind to have the castle have just one single guard, an orange pegasi with blue mane. Sadly, that pegasi debut as a guitar player with almost no character background in a side project didn't go that well... and knowing that they may have to face a mob of angry fans armed with torches and pitchforks , the dropped any idea of Twily getting a bodyguard.

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  • Also, the tree chest spawning a castle looks nice, but the tree chest spawning pony guards for the castle would be a bit creepy.
    – b_jonas
    Oct 13, 2016 at 19:09

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