Hues Noble House
The Hues Noble House is a family of minor nobility living in Sparkle City.
Current Members
Members of the Hues family include Emerald Hues, her sisters Topaz Hues and Sapphire Hues, and Diamond Hues and Shining Facets, the mother and father respectively of all three siblings.
Background and Eugenic Practices
Many details about the precise origin of the Hues are lost to distant history, but their lineage apparently began when a close relative of Twilight Sparkle (or possibly even a direct descendant of Twilight herself, records are unclear and may have been deliberately destroyed for unknown reasons) found herself stranded on the Isle of Yore in the wake of the Catastrophe and the abrupt collapse of most of pony civilization. Their naming convention began when she named her children after the precious gems they reminded her of, which stuck and became traditional.
This founding ancestor also began the family's tradition of selecting for high magical potential when choosing mates (most often unicorns, but also including some extraordinarily magical pegasi and earth ponies). The practice has continued unbroken for centuries, motivated by a generationally passed-down belief that the planet of Equus in its current condition is slowly dying as an environment that can sustain ponies and the only force capable of saving both the planet and ponykind is the power of magic. This is reinforced also by the highly practical consideration that the family has often had to fend for itself in the face of the challenges presented by the uncivilized post-catastrophic dark ages, and ensuring extraordinary magical advantages has enabled them to survive and thrive.
As this eugenics program is completely voluntary, some branches of the family tree have diverged and broken away into other bloodlines. This is not necessarily seen as a loss by the family, since these intermarriages often infuse other lineages with significant gains in magical potential, which helps advance the goal of improving magicality in ponies in general. Along the "main trunk" the results have been the most profound, however; resulting in a highly successful concentration of genetic predisposition toward unusually high magical strength in many individuals, including Emerald and her sisters. A highly desired end goal is to one day reliably produce bitypical descendants (pegacorns, earth-unicorns, or earth-pegasi) with strong magic in both of their types, or possibly even a new line of alicorns.
See also the Hues Family Tree.
Coat of Arms
The Hues family uses the following coat of arms:
These arms serve very little practical purpose in most areas of life and are rarely displayed outside of decorative elements within the home, but have been maintained unaltered through the family line for many generations and their preservation is considered important.
Symbology
The coat of arms of the Hues house incorporates a gem of many colors superimposed over a shield bearing a field of purple and the cutie mark of Princess Twilight Sparkle, flanked by two keys as supporters, one of gold and bearing the cutie mark of Princess Celestia in its handle on the left and one of silver and bearing the cutie mark of Princess Luna in its handle on the right, and surmounted by a jeweled crown (a tiara) of gold.
The shield is blazoned with the color and cutie mark of Twilight Sparkle in reference to family lore extending back nearly a thousand years rumoring direct descent from her bloodline. The gem over it in its many colors both represents the exceptional individuals produced by the family bloodline through subsequent generations, and reflects the name of "Hues" in having every hue of the rainbow. The use of keys as supporters is an unusual and arguably incorrect heraldic device (or at least would be by human standards), but the Hues family has never been focused on adhering to convention. Keys are a heraldic symbol of guardianship. The long-standing belief of the Hues family has been that in the pre-catastrophic era, Princess Celestia used subtle and skillful planning to direct the merging of the best magical qualities of unicorns to produce the genetics of the Sparkle family, a project that culminated in the accomplishments of Twilight Sparkle in overcoming of Nightmare Moon and the restoration of Princess Luna, followed soon after by her ascension to an alicorn showing even further incontrovertible proof of success. As purported descendants of this bloodline, the keys represent that the Hues family sees themselves as the guardians and continuers of the task begun by Princess Celestia of maintaining and improving a strain of highly magical ponies, hoping that this power can help save Equus from its current slow death. The tiara denotes the noble status of the family. An old family joke is that the tiara is jeweled for no reason in particular other than "because jewels are pretty."