Hues Noble House

The Hues Noble House is a family of minor nobility living in Sparkle City.

Notable Members

Members of the Hues family include Emerald Hues, her sisters Topaz and Sapphire Hues, and Diamond Hues and Shining Facets, the mother and father respectively of all three siblings.

Background and Eugenic Practices

It has been a normally expected practice of this family for many generations, apparently beginning soon after the Catastrophe, to select for ponies (often, but not always, unicorns) of high magical potential when choosing mates. This has been 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, as well as lacking a permanently stable social infrastructure that can be relied on for protection, and that probably the only force capable of saving both the planet and the ability for ponies to retain a civilization is the power of pony magic, leading to a desire to produce magically powerful descendants. Although not a formal or planned eugenic program with any actual enforcement of selection criteria, the result has nonetheless been a successful concentration of genetic predisposition toward unusually strong magic in many individuals within the family tree, including Emerald and her sisters.

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 individual unicorns 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 the strain of magically powerful ponies, hoping that this power can help save Equus from its current slow death, and one day even ultimately regain for ponykind all the powers and abilities of the Royal Sisters by producing strongly multi-tribe descendants, or possibly even a new line of alicorns. The tiara denotes the noble status of the family, although it is jeweled for no recorded reason of particular note other than perhaps that jewels are pretty.