History Characters / FriendshipIsMagicTwilightSparkle

* TheHeroine: Her first scene is her taking action to save Equestria from an ancient evil (Nightmare Moon) and from that time forward she continues to protect her new home, Ponyville, spread the Magic of Friendship etc.

[[caption-width-right:350: Our Protagonist ([[PowerGivesYouWings wings sold separately]])]]

* ReincarnationFriendship: Issue 29 of the IDW Comics lightly implies Twilight to be the reincarnation of Baast, a purple cat from the distant past who led her own team of identically mane six-colored cats against their own version of Nightmare Moon. On top of the Mane Six coming together again in the present, Twilight also holds (mostly) amicable relations with Discord in both lives.

** "Amending Fences" has Moondancer — not malevolent but opposing all efforts to befriend her, as she ends up in a similar position — who has similarities to Twilight Sparkle if Twilight had stayed where she was and become even more of a grump dedicated only to studying instead of learning the value of friendship. In flashbacks before they diverted, she is mostly a Palette Swap of Twilight, but at the time of the episode, she has subverted the inherent style of the design with uncouth nerdiness.
* ForgotAboutHerPowers: There are '''SO''' many moments of troubles she faces that could have easily been solved by her just using her magic. The only mitigation may be that we are never really told how most of Twilight's powers work in any real detail, what their limits are, etc. Also, a number of times where she tries a huge magical solution (such as with the Vampire Bats or Parasprites) it tends to backfire.
* ForgottenPhlebotinum: She fails to use her teleportation for most of the first season, starting after "[[Recap/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicS1E4ApplebuckSeason Applebuck Season]]".

* ReincarnationFriendship: Issue 29 of the IDW Comics lightly implies Twilight to be the reincarnation of Bast, a purple cat from the distant past who led her own team of identically mane six-colored cats against their own version of Nightmare Moon. On top of the Mane Six coming together again in the present, Twilight also holds (mostly) amicable relations with Discord in both lives.

->'''Voiced by:''' Creator/TaraStrong[[labelnote:Foreign [=VA=]s]]Creator/CarlaCastaneda (Latin American Spanish); Creator/MiyukiSawashiro [Seasons 1-2], Manami Hanawa [Season 3-onwards] (Japanese)[[/labelnote]]\\

** She is a certified BadassBookworm, her brother is the captain of the Royal Guard who possesses one of Equestria's most potent defensive spells. Then he marries Princess Cadance, (who he saves the country with) and [[AllThereInTheManual Princess Celestia's niece]], making her now part of Celestia and Luna's family too. If the MythologyGag about her mother [[AllThereInTheScript Twilight Velvet]] being the G1 Twilight is correct, she counts too.

* BeneathTheMask: Twilight's, emotionally distant, cynical surface she presents in the pilot is revealed to be hiding a much mellower, kinder, and even humbler mare buried underneath.

* AllForNothing: Subverted in the movie. It appears that Twilight single-handedly renders the quest to find the hippogriffs virtually pointless when, after losing faith in her friends to do anything right, she tries stealing the hippogriffs' magic pearl, turning the queen and the rest of the Mane Six against her. However, the other allies the Mane Six have made over their adventure end up playing an instrumental role in defeating the Storm King.

* AntiHero: Twilight comes dangerously close to falling into this during the movie. She knowingly manipulates her friends' trust in order to commit theft of a pearl that an entire race relies on. And then verbally lashes out at all of her friends in the scene immediately afterwards. What downplays this example is that she ultimately felt like she had no choice in doing this if she wanted to save Equestria, and she immediately felt remorse after her verbal lashing.

** The movie hits her particularly hard. Not only is she forced to deal with the ungodly stress of being Equestria's last hope against a threat bigger than anything else she's faced, she's constantly frustrated by how her friends are treating the crisis as just another adventure despite what the stakes are. It eventually gets so bad that Twilight tries to steal the Seaponies' prized Pearl of Transformation in a desperate attempt to gain ''some'' sort of advantage over the Storm King. When she's caught and called out, she ''explodes'' in fury, accusing the Mane Five of treating the fate of Equestria like a joke and calling them terrible friends (but she's not wrong).

* AntiVillain: Twilight comes dangerously close to falling into this during the movie. She knowingly manipulates her friends' trust in order to commit theft of a pearl that an entire race relies on. And then verbally lashes out at all of her friends in the scene immediately afterwards. What downplays this example is that she ultimately felt like she had no choice in doing this if she wanted to save Equestria, and she immediately felt remorse after her verbal lashing.

* HumanityEnsues: When Twilight entered the [[AlternateUniverse human realm]] to get back her stolen crown from Sunset Shimmer in ''Equestria Girls'', she freaks out when she was now in a human body complete with hands, fingers, and only two legs and had a hard adjusting to walking upright and learning about human customs. She even told Spike, she doesn't want to be in the human realm longer than she needs to. Although, she eventually got the hang of being a human and has no problem going from Equestria and back to meet and help out her new friends: the Humane 6.

** First, Twilight not taking kindly to Spike's joking nicknames for the ponies' Poison Joke-afflicted ailments. Of course, it's later deconstructed at the end when the Mane Six learn that the effects are just harmless, even if somewhat ironic, jokes played on them. Second, albeit unintentional, when ** Twilight realizes that the effects of the Poison Joke are just little jokes played on them, the shrunken Applejack takes great offense to the "little" part, most likely due to being overly sensitive about being small.

* HardWorkHardlyWorks: It should be noted that Twilight zig-zags this trope; she spends her entire life studying magic to the exclusion of all else (except friendship) to become as powerful as she is, but Celestia took her on as a student [[BecauseDestinySaysSo because she already knew the significance of Twilight's Cutie Mark and set her on the path to fulfilling it]]. So basically Twilight worked pretty hard studying magic, but this was largely immaterial because she was only picked because she was the ChosenOne who won the SuperpowerLottery.

* SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome:
** In the series' two-part premiere, "Mare in the Moon" and "Elements of Harmony", Nightmare Moon shows up at the Summer Sun Celebration and announces her intention to bring about The Night That Never Ends. Twilight Sparkle then confronts Nightmare Moon in front of the crowd, and announces that she knew about the prophecy of Nightmare Moon's arrival. While a brave move, it suffers a few big drawbacks:
*** Twilight quickly loses her nerve against the larger and more powerful pony. Twilight may know who Nightmare Moon is, but that doesn't get her very far. Before long, Nightmare Moon shoots down most of the Royal Guard and escapes, with Twilight unable to do anything about it.
*** Rainbow Dash gets suspicious about how Twilight knew exactly when and where Nightmare Moon was going to show up, so she aggressively confronts and accuses Twilight of working for Nightmare Moon. While Applejack gets Rainbow to back off and allows Twilight to tell her side of the story, the rest of the Mane Six still demand Twilight to explain how she knows what's going on. In order to clear up any suspicion, Twilight is forced to explain both how she came across the prophecy of Nightmare Moon's arrival and that she was trying to find the Elements of Harmony.
** When Twilight participates in the Running of the Leaves in "Fall Weather Friends", Rainbow Dash and Applejack assume Twilight will struggle due to her generally unathletic nature. When the two tie for last place (due to their attempts to sabotage each other), they see Twilight with a medal. They both initially assume that she won, but Twilight explains that she only came in fifth place. She had never been in a race before, after all, and the only reason she did as well as she did was because she paced herself.
** At the Grand Galloping Gala, Twilight can't spend any time with Princess Celestia, because even as Celestia's personal student, Celestia is too busy greeting all the guests and is mobbed by other ponies with the same goal in mind. Twilight tries to help Celestia with greeting the guests, but she tires out quickly due to being unaccustomed with having to greet guests.
** Twilight (along with her friends) attempt to slip into the palace unnoticed in "It's About Time" with laughably bad sneaking, which the guards don't notice. When she is finally caught trying to jimmy open a door... the guard greets her and unlocks it for her. Twilight has been in the palace many times before by virtue of being Celestia's personal student, so she has full authority to come and go as she pleases. The guards weren't being mind-numbingly stupid (for once), they were simply doing their patrols while paying her no mind.
** In "Princess Twilight Sparkle", Twilight is learning how to fly from Rainbow Dash... and is doing a rather terrible job of it. Magical wings or not, Twilight doesn't have years of experience in flying like most pegasi, and she's already shown to be unathletic. It takes her most of the season before she can even reliably fly in a straight line.
** In "Amending Fences", Twilight's last-ditch effort to apologize for snubbing Moondancer's party from the first episode is to throw another party, even bringing her "secret weapon" Pinkie Pie, whose immediate answer to nearly any problem is a party. Moondancer's response? She rips into Twilight for thinking that could possibly make up for all the heartache she felt, since that party was meant to help Moondancer lower her guard and make new friends. Fortunately, Twilight went the extra mile and invited other ponies who care for Moondancer to prove that one failed attempt at making friends doesn't mean she's all alone. This is what convinces Moondancer to accept Twilight's apology. The context of why Moondancer is angry is also important. She's not just angry because Twilight snubbed her party; she's angry because Twilight moved to another town without telling her Canterlot friends, severed all contact with them, and essentially forgot they existed. Even though Twilight thinks that Moondancer will welcome her with open arms, Moondancer thinks that Twilight is a fair-weather friend, which Twilight cops to when Moondancer gives the aforesaid speech.
** In "All Bottled Up", Twilight and company attempt to solve a puzzle room in record time. Once they find the key in record time, they break out into a song and dance number before opening up the door and officially breaking the record. This costs them the chance to break the record, something that's even lampshaded by the announcer. Celebrating a victory before it's actually achieved backfires more often than not, and singing is not a free action.
** While in Seaquestria, Twilight tries to steal the Pearl of Transformation while using her unknowing friends as a distraction. However, because the Pearl is a treasured object, the throne room has a security system - which she sets off, resulting in her and her friends getting kicked out of Seaquestria.
** Twilight wants to open a school to help teach everyone about the magic of friendship. However, she first has to get approval from the Equestrian Educational Association (EEA) to do that and make sure that she follows a strict set of guidelines. Even after all of her paperwork is in order, the school only gets provisionally approved until the EEA actually sees the school after it's been up and running for a few days.
** Twilight sinks into a deep depression because her school is rejected. The rest of the Mane 6 try to cheer her up by giving her presents, sweets, and hugs, but she drives them off because things like that aren't going to help her get through having her dream crushed. She only gets better when Starlight Glimmer steps in and talks about it with Twilight, and states why following the EEA rules was stupid in the first place.
** The teachers having the best intentions and intending to develop as time goes on does not impress the EEA, who expect most of them to already have some level of experience, and the chancellor's actual motivations don't negate these concerns. Twilight has to use her authority as a princess to declare "friendship schools don't need EEA approval" and sidestep their authority.
** Twilight's "disguise" consists of [[PaperThinDisguise an eyepatch]] and a sticky note covering her Cutie Mark. While Rarity was able to fool other ponies with her more elaborate disguise, Film and Flam don't buy Twilight's disguise for a second.
--->'''Flim:''' Twilight Sparkle! Did you really think an eyepatch was enough of a disguise?\\
'''Twilight:''' No! I didn't!
** While Twilight's friends are excited over the prospect of ruling Equestria together, Twilight has doubts on whether she's ready for such a responsibility, as she has no formal training in ruling. When Starlight tries to reassure Twilight about taking on Celestia and Luna's responsibilities as rulers of Equestria by pointing out her success with the School, Twilight points out that running a school is much less difficult than running a nation.
** A long overdue library book doesn't result in a Shockingly Expensive Bill for Twilight Sparkle, because the library caps off the overdue fee after a month. The reason they don't tell anyone about this is to keep patrons from taking books for too long. Even then, the book Twilight has is so old that by the time she tries to return it, it's out gone of circulation because of newer editions being printed.
** In the first ''Equestria Girls'' movie, Twilight is a quadrupedal horse that turns into a bipedal human being after going through the magic mirror. Not being used to walking on two feet, Twilight spends the majority of the first act getting the hang of acting how humans actually act, such as trying to figure out how to walk and how technology works -- particularly with computers in the library. Sunset uses the latter incident to her advantage by recording embarrassing videos of Twilight and posting them on the internet to smear her chances of becoming princess of the fall formal.
** In ''Rainbow Rocks'', after Princess Twilight returns, she and the Rainbooms join hands together in the gym where the Dazzlings are, with Twilight shouting "Friendship is magic!"... and nothing happens. The DVD commentary claims that this was intentionally done to make fun of how often The Power of Friendship was used as a Deus ex Machina in the show.
** In ''Friendship Games'', Sunset gets worried when Princess Twilight hasn't been answering her book messages recently. When she talks to her friends about this, Applejack and Rarity point out that Princess Twilight is a ''princess''. Chances are, she's going to be busy with her own duties in Equestria, and the Rainbooms can't expect Princess Twilight to drop everything she's doing to pop into their world all the time, especially if it's for something as relatively minor as the Friendship Games. She ''was'' busy with something, even if it wasn't obvious within the film: [[Recap/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicS5E25TheCutieRemarkPart1 trying to fix Equestria's]] timeline [[Recap/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicS5E26TheCutieRemarkPart2 from being destroyed by Starlight Glimmer]].