Characters / Friendship Is Magic: Queen Chrysalis

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Main Index The Main Cast: Twilight Sparkle, Fluttershy, Rarity, Applejack, Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie, Spike, Starlight Glimmer, the Cutie Mark Crusaders Supporting Cast: The Princesses (Princess Celestia, Princess Luna), Mane Family Members, the School of Friendship, Ponyville, Other Locations, Animal Companions Antagonists: Major Villains (Queen Chrysalis, King Sombra, Lord Tirek, Cozy Glow), Dangerous Creatures, Jerks and Bullies, Redeemed Antagonists (Discord) World of Equestria: Races, Historical Figures, The 2017 Movie, Expanded Universe, Toyline Exclusive, Miscellaneous Minor Characters: One-Shots, Other Characters, Background Ponies (Common Background Ponies, Special Background Ponies, Other Background Ponies) Equestria Girls: Heroines (Sunset Shimmer), Villains, Supporting Cast

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This day is going to be perfect.

"You know what's stronger than friendship, Twilight? FEAR!"

Debut: "A Canterlot Wedding"^note She appears in Part 1 masquerading as Princess Cadance. She makes her full physical debut in Part 2.

Voiced by: Kathleen Barr^{Foreign VAs} Irina Índigo (Latin American Spanish); Kaori Nazuka (Japanese), Joanna Węgrzynowska-Cybińska (Polish)

The former Queen of the changelings, creatures that can transform into other ponies and feed on their love for sustenance. She masquerades as Princess Cadance during the Season 2 finale in a bid to conquer Equestria, but is discovered by Twilight and defeated by Cadance and Shining Armor. She returns in the Season 6 finale with a more ambitious plan, but her subjects turn on her and follow Thorax as their new leader, causing Chrysalis to flee swearing revenge. In the final season, she forms an alliance with Tirek and Cozy Glow to take down Twilight and her friends after being summoned by Grogar.

She appears in IDW's comic books as the main antagonist through the first four-issue Story Arc, and makes several subsequent appearances.

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Tropes # to F

• 0% Approval Rating: In the Season 6 finale, Queen Chrysalis is abandoned by her subjects after learning from Thorax that they don't need to steal love anymore, and are no longer hungry. Once adored by her subjects, Chrysalis promptly becomes their enemy when King Thorax takes over.
• Abnormal Limb Rotation Range: She can turn her head 360 degrees, both horizontally and vertically. The effect is very unsettling.
• All There in the Script: Her name isn't mentioned in her debut episode and was initially revealed byinvoked Word of God. The comics and show have since used it. Her name was first mentioned in "The Cutie Re-Mark".
• Apple of Discord: In "The Summer Sun Setback", Chrysalis transforms into a unicorn and briefly gets the firework troupe to turn on Twilight by insisting that, as unicorns, they are better than other ponies and should be doing more with their magic than just making pretty-colored things.
• Arch-Enemy: Has the distinction of being the most frequently recurring major adversary faced by the ponies.
  • In the comic, she was focused solely on Twilight since she was the one who stopped her plan the first time, with the crux of her revenge being that she would drain Twilight and make her destroy her friends.
  • Following her defeat in "To Where and Back Again", Chrysalis now considers Starlight Glimmer to be this. She is intent on making her suffer for turning her hive against her. And indeed, in the S9 finale, she goes after her personally.
• Arc Villainess: She's the main threat in the second season's finale, the sixth season's finale, and the first arc of the IDW comics.
• Ax-Crazy: She's the most unstable villain in this series.
• Bad Boss: As shown in My Little Pony: FIENDship Is Magic, she thinks nothing of punishing a commander for complaining by throwing him to his death in a lava pool and then promoting a random new changeling to take his place.
• Battle Trophy: That distorted black tiara she wears? According to FIENDship Is Magic #5, it was originally the golden crown of King Orion of Timbucktu, which she stole and magically warped after conquering his city, which is when she started calling herself Queen Chrysalis rather than just Chrysalis.
• Beam-O-War:
  • Chrysalis is able to cast an offensive magical beam, and thanks to draining Shining Armor's love she can overpower even Princess Celestia!
  • In "The Mean 6" however, she is way less powerful thanks to being deposed as queen and lacking in minions, and is almost beaten in a Beam-O-War against a Twilight Sparkle clone of her own creation if it weren't for the Tree of Harmony interfering.
• Benevolent Boss:
  • While she is a sadistic bitch to just about everypony else, she seems to care to some extent about her subjects. She is the only major antagonist in the show whose primary motivation (at least according to her) is to do something for others (that is, to find food for the changelings), while most of the others have motivations centered on themselves.
  • This comes up in FIENDship Is Magic — while being imprisoned, Chrysalis tells the Mane Six that she has no-one left to talk to because she sent all her minions into hibernation, so that they would not waste their energy in vain. Rainbow Dash remarks that it's a surprisingly noble act coming from her. She may have been lying to gain the ponies' sympathy and facilitate her escape, since as soon as the opportunity presents itself the whole army is shown to be very much awake. Either that, or Chrysalis has a way to wake up the changelings instantly. If she had been informed the Six were coming, she may also have woken them up ahead of time in anticipation of an escape attempt.
• Big Bad: By virtue of being the most active antagonist. She set off the conflict of "A Canterlot Wedding" by kidnapping and impersonating Cadance to conquer Equestria; and that of "To Where and Back Again" by kidnapping the princesses and Mane Six to, once again, conquer Equestria. She's also the Arc Villainess in the first arc of the tie-in comics, and returns in Season 8 as a major villainess again, but is Demoted to Dragon in Season 9 until the finale, where she becomes part of a Big Bad Triumvirate along with Tirek and Cozy Glow.
• Big Bad Friend: Towards the Mane Six and Princess Celestia when she's disguised as Cadance in the Canterlot Wedding arc.
• Big Bad Triumvirate: With Tirek and Cozy Glow during the series finale after Grogar is revealed to be Discord.
• Big "NEVER!": In "The Beginning of the End – Part 2", when Cozy Glow suggests she say something nice about ponies as part of a team-building exercise.
• Big "NO!":
  • In classic villain tradition, she gives one just before her defeat by the real Cadance and Shining Armor.
  • She gives one in "Frenemies", upon realizing she, Tirek and Cozy Glow are on the verge of becoming friends.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: As Cadance, she acts snotty and unpleasable. This is what tips Twilight off that it's not really Cadance. To her credit, she does do a better job pretending to be a sweet-natured unicorn in her appearances as "Crackle Cosette", though.
• Body Horror:
  • Her body is like a grotesque parody of Celestia or Luna's body types, with insect wings instead of feathery ones, and holes in the legs, tail and wings.
  • In the S6 finale, she makes her entrance by crawling from between a few cocoons like a...well bug and twisting her neck 360 degrees as she speaks to Starlight.
• Bond Villain Stupidity: In both halves of "The Ending of the End".
  • In Part 1, she dismisses Cozy Glow's suggestion of going after the depowered Discord. This allows Discord to overhear the villains' plans, and warn the Mane Six.
  • In Part 2, she insists that the villains don't destroy their captives right away, instead letting them live long enough for Equestria to see how their heroes have been "broken". Moments later, Discord arranges for the Mane Five and Spike to escape and reunite with Twilight.
• Brainwashed: She magically brainwashes Shining Armor to feed off his love for Cadance and prevent him from maintaining the force-field stopping her minions from invading Canterlot.
• Breakout Villain: Season 9 notwithstanding, most major villains of the show don't make an appearance after the season premiere or finale where they featured, and if they do return it's usually for a minor cameo or to be reformed. Chrysalis however returned as a major villain again after her initial appearance, and then came back again as the antagonist of a standalone episode before joining Season 9's Villain Team-Up. She's also the antagonist of the inaugural story arc of the official comics, and later in their run joins another Villain Team-Up. This overall makes Chrysalis the most persistent and recurring villain the Mane Six have.
• Broken Ace: She's the powerful Queen of the Changelings, and also a master of disguise, commanding, strategic planning, and inducing fear. However, she still has more than a few Didn't Think This Through and Villain Ball moments, and when her hive and subjects turn on her, she's reduced to The Remnant living alone in the wilderness and finding little success in her planning for Revenge, losing herself in the process.
• Broken Pedestal: "Frenemies" reveals that Chrysalis once admired Discord, before friendship "ruined" him.
• Card-Carrying Villain: In "Frenemies", she takes part in the Villain Song titled "Better Way to Be Bad".
• Character Development: Throughout Season 9, she gradually learns to work better with her allies in the Legion of Doom.
• The Chessmaster: As she points out, she outsmarted everyone, even Celestia, in "A Canterlot Wedding". The Mane Six are a little more wise about this in the comic, but she still leaves them with no choice but to play into her hooves.
• Chronic Villainy: She just won't stop her villainous and prideful ways, even though doing so would give her a much better life.
• Classic Villain: Pride, Lust and Ambition. She fails her first attempt to take over Canterlot out of the perception that she understands love better than Shining Armor and Cadance do as a source of power, and gets blasted out of the city for it. Then, her pride leads her to reject Starlight Glimmer's offer to join the rest of the changelings in turning good, wanting to be the one in charge and to have all of Equestria to herself. And ultimately leads to her downfalls when she doesn't kill Twilight when she has the chance due to wanting to break her spirit first.
• Color Motif: Dark green. Her hive has shades of dark green, and her magic aura is a Sickly Green Glow. In color psychology, dark green stands for greed and selfishness. She deliberately misled her former subjects and kept them starving to keep herself in power, which come Season 6, cost her everything but her life.
• Companion Cube: As a sign of her Sanity Slippage, she's taken to talking to cut-out logs with faces on them. Once she's pressed into Grogar's service, it's shown in "Frenemies" she now spends her time talking to a specific purple log (very likely all that's left of Mean Twilight) and gets defensive when the other members of the Legion of Doom point it out.
• The Conqueror: Her comics incarnation seems to have this trope as her MO during her first rampage a thousand years ago, having conquered at least two other kingdoms before Princess Celestia finally stepped in and decisively defeated her.
• Control Freak: Seen mainly when she's disguised as Cadance, but given how her insectoid appearance and control of an insectoid pony army both strike similarity to that of a Bee Queen, this can be seen as thematically justified. Her Control Freak tendencies were what kept her (now former) subjects literally starving for love and unable to achieve their final Metamorphosis. Once the changelings break free from her, Chrysalis ends up with nothing but her life.
• Cool Chair: Her throne. It doubles as a Power Nullifier strong enough to block even Discord's magic.
• The Corrupter: In "The Summer Sun Setback". With a few choice words, she is able to convince Fire Flare and her fireworks troupe to refuse to perform for the celebration, on the grounds that it is supposedly beneath unicorns like them.
• Crocodile Tears: Whenever someone calls Chrysalis as Cadance out on her questionable ways, she bursts into fake tears and accuses that they "just want to ruin her special day". Fools everypony, even Princess Celestia. Except Twilight Sparkle.
• Cute Monster Girl: Despite being a villain, there's no denying Chrysalis is quite adorable for a bug-like creature.
• Dark Action Girl: She's a vindictive, power-hungry, and cruel manipulator who's notably the first villain to win a straight-up fight with Celestia.
• A Day in the Limelight: Season 8's infamous "The Mean 6" largely focuses on Chrysalis as she makes Evil Doppelgänger lookalikes of the mane cast (except Spike) to revenge against Starlight. She shares the limelight with Cozy and Tirek in "Frenemies" as they work to retrieve Grogar's bell.
• Defiant to the End: Chrysalis is not one to go down easy.
  • In season 6 finale, she is more then willing to keep fighting after her throne is destroyed, only wisely backing down when it is clear she is outmatched. Though she utterly refuses to be reformed and opts to escape for the time being.
  • In the show's Grand Finale, she's the only villain who continues to scream at the heroes after being de-powered (whereas Cozy and Tirek back down immediately). Chrysalis even makes a final lunge at the Princesses and Discord as she's being turned to stone.
• Demoted to Dragon: In Season 9, she goes from a recurrent Big Bad to one of Grogar's flunkies. This is until the finale, when Grogar is revealed to be Discord and she instead becomes part of a Big Bad Triumvirate.
• Determinator: She won't stop seeking out Revenge against all of Equestria, and tends to come back from her defeats.
• Devil in Plain Sight: Not the most obvious example, but the very first time we see her in disguise, she smiles wickedly, and then proceeds to mistreat everypony around her. Thankfully for her, everypony readily writes it off due to the circumstances except Twilight Sparkle.
• Dick Dastardly Stops to Cheat: By teleporting Twilight Sparkle away at the end of "A Canterlot Wedding Part 1", she singlehandedly derails her own entire plan. At that point, Twilight — the only one to see through her ruse — has been discredited, rebuked and abandoned by absolutely everyone she cares about: her beloved mentor, her friends, even her own brother. In fact, Twilight has become convinced that she is the one who made a mistake and that "Cadance" is the real deal. The Queen's victory is all but assured — the sole threat to her has been neutralized and emotionally broken. Instead, she ends up not only confirming to Twilight that she was right all along and giving her a Heroic Second Wind, but on top of that, she leads her straight to the real Cadance.
• Didn't Think This Through:
  • Her revealing herself during "A Canterlot Wedding" in full view of Celestia. While she ends up winning the ensuing battle thanks to the strength of Shining Armor's love, it's clear that she was worried about the matchup. A much safer way would have been to stall for time waiting for the Changeling army to break the shield before confronting Celestia and overwhelm her with sheer numbers without unnecessary risks.
  • In "The Mean 6", Queen Chrysalis's plan to steal the Elements of Harmony is hampered considerably by the fact she has no idea where they're specifically being kept — she knows they're somewhere in the Everfree Forest, but that's as close as she's been able to find out. Chrysalis also doesn't know how to use the Elements, she just knows they are attuned to the Mane Six somehow, and also assumes her knockoffs will be able to wield them. She also believes the Mean Six will be as loyal to her as her hive once was, but in practice, she can barely control them, with the group ultimately rebelling against her.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?:
  • She won a Beam-O-War with Princess Celestia after absorbing enough of Shining Armor's love. Even she was shocked at her victory (because according to the comics, Celestia was the only one who ever decisively defeated her before). Unfortunately for her, the exact same love is used by Cadance and Shining Armor to return the favor.
  • In "To Where and Back Again", she outdoes herself by capturing all of the Royals, all of the Element-bearers, and eventually even Discord — courtesy of her Power Nullifier throne.
• Disc-One Final Boss: She serves as this in the midseason finale for Season 8, though unfought and never even noticed. Her appearance is the setup for the actual villain, Cozy Glow.
• Dumbass No More: In Season 9, she nearly manages to get to the top of Mount Everhoof all on her own, does most of the work even after agreeing to team up with Cozy and Tirek, successfully infiltrates the Canterlot Archives, easily manages to turn the three pony tribes against each other, and traps all of Equestria's heroes minus an escaping Twilight in cells using shards from her Power Nullifier throne.
• Enfant Terrible: While we don't see her as a child, she admits she's dreamed of watching her minions ransack a city, causing mass panic and suffering, since she was small. According to FIENDship Is Magic, she was never technically a child, being the last of the changelings to be spawned from their "mother plant", effectively born into her current state of mind.
• Engineered Heroics: In "The Ending of the End — Part 2". Upon seeing the Windigos return, she suggests that the villain wait until they turn Equestria into a wasteland before vanquishing them, believing the ponies will be so grateful for the act that they'll do whatever she wants.
• Et Tu, Brute?: Completely beating the one pulled by Twilight's brother, friends, and mentor when Twilight straight out accuses her of being evil while she masquerades as Princess Cadance, after she pulls a Wounded Gazelle Gambit to alienate Twilight from them, she returns and imprisons Twilight underground, ultimately confirming her suspicions. Lampshaded later on when she takes pleasure in gloating about how Twilight's peers were too caught up in their wedding planning to give Twilight's suspicions any consideration, thus allowing her plan to carry on smoothly.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • A minor example. In "Frenemies", she screams "Betrayal!" when she thinks Tirek and Cozy Glow are going to permanently steal her magic.
  • Played for Laughs in "The Ending of the End – Part 2", in which she actually appears irritated with Cozy Glow for interrupting Twilight's friendship speech.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good:
  • Despite gaining strength from feeding on love, Chrysalis has no concept of the true power of the emotion... nor does she want it. As established in the comics, Chrysalis sees love as nothing more than a fickle base emotion that can be changed, warped, and destroyed in any way shape or form, In her case, consumed with the leftovers of a heart being spit out like seed, to the point where she scoffs at Cadance's statement that her love will give Shining Armor strength.
  • In "The Mean 6", Chrysalis consistently refers to the Elements of Harmony as a "weapon" and sees them as nothing more than a tool to take down all who oppose her, rather than mystical artifacts powered by friendship. She also believes that the Mean Six would be capable of wielding them simply because they're copies of the original Element Bearers, not realizing that the Elements run on The Power of Friendship and require their bearers to both have a strong bond (which the Mean Six don't) and embody the virtues that the Elements represent (which the Mean Six definitely don't).
  • In "Frenemies", she believes that Starlight Glimmer "corrupted" her hive.
  • In the finale, After she's depowered, she's still carrying on that friendship won't save the heroes... despite the obvious proof that it just did even when Tirek, Cozy and she had boosted magic backing them.
  • In general her main deal is essentially just about raw power and nothing else. Any defeat she takes, she'll always make an excuse that her enemies "cheated" through some other means rather then admit their power for what it truly is and can't fathom it being more beyond a base concept.
• Evil Counterpart: To both Princess Cadance (both empowered by love) and Princess Celestia (tall, powerful queen with The Chessmaster streak). As of Season 6, she becomes this to the newly appointed changeling king Thorax, with him being a benevolent leader with a majestic form, while Chrysalis is selfish and cruel with a holed, withered body.
• Evil Gloating: She saves most of it for when she's alone or when it's smart to do so. Both season finales that she appears in see Chrysalis engage in gloating when she's almost won.
• Evil Laugh: Engages in evil laughter, especially when the odds favor her.
• Evil Plan: Impersonate royalty, invade the rest of Equestria, and transform the country in a love buffet for herself and her subjects. She likes this plan so much she uses it twice.
• Eye-Dentity Giveaway: On occasion, when she takes on another form, the only sign of her true identity is that it retains her distinctive blue-green eyes with concentric sclerae and slit pupils, or at last the eyes briefly flash that color.
  • In "A Canterlot Wedding, Part 1", when Queen Chrysalis-as-Princess Cadance reveals herself to and banishes Twilight, Cadance's pink eyes briefly flash Chrysalis' vivid blue-green.
  • In "Frenemies", this is zizagged. When in her cragadile, goat, and ophiotaurus forms, Chrysalis retains her eyes. While this is absent in her ursa form, several of its component stars shine the same color as her eyes. Her roc and monkey forms don't bear any signs of this, however.
• Fake Ultimate Hero: When the Windigos show up as a result of her, Cozy Glow, and Tirek dividing the three pony types again, Chrysalis is the only villain who wants to let them stay so she and the others can "save" the ponies from them to get them to easily submit to her rule. Tirek and Cozy Glow do not approve of this plan.
• The Farmer and the Viper: Issue #3 of the comic shows that Chrysalis and her changelings landed in a village of happy kittens who welcome them with open arms, and they immediately conquer it and drain the love from them, turning them into husks.
• Fatal Flaw: Two of them — her ego and her Control Freak tendencies. Chrysalis has come close to winning multiple times, but her inability to recognize threats and her need to control her minions with an iron hoof always spells her doom.
  • Her impersonation of Cadance to take over Canterlot failed when she let the real Cadance embrace Shining Armor, freeing him and letting them combine their powers to cast them out of Canterlot while Chrysalis sneers it won't work.
  • Her plan in Season 6 failed when her deception to the changelings was revealed and she didn't get rid of Starlight and Thorax when she had the chance, allowing them to demonstrate what happens when they share love rather than feed on it, blowing up her throne, her hive, and turning the changelings against her.
  • Her plan in the first arc of the comics fails when she underestimates just how powerful the comet has made Twilight and tries to fight her only to be summarily crushed.
  • Her season 8 plan fails because of her inability to command respect from the Mean Six, and when she tries to bully them into submission she just drives them to side with Mean Twilight against her.
  • In "Frenemies", she tries to get up the mountain her own way. While capable, the mountain winds ultimately prevent from continuing and she's forced to regroup with Tirek and Cozy. When the three start to bond, she's the first to reject they become friends, seeing it as a "disease" since it would mean she would have to agree with Twilight's ideals... something her pride won't let her do.
• Final Boss: Successfully backstabs Grogar/Discord to become the final villain of the series, sharing the role with Tirek and Cozy Glow.
• Forgot About Her Powers: Downplayed. Like all changelings, she can take on the forms of big and powerful beasts (like Cragadiles, Rocs, and Ursa Minors) if she so chooses, yet she has never utilized this ability in combat, instead relying on her offensive magic capabilities.

Tropes G to P

• Giggling Villain: She giggles rather menacingly when she's overlooking her handiwork.
• Glamour Failure: When posing as Cadance, her eyes briefly flash to their true form. She also lacks the same color magic aura as Cadance, but no-one seems to notice.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: The first sign something is off with Cadance is her eyes lighting up green.
• God Save Us from the Queen!: She resembles an Alicorn (albeit a twisted, insectoid one), she calls herself "Queen", and she's evil. Also, in a literal example of this trope, Celestia tries to fight her once she reveals herself. However, Chrysalis had absorbed enough of Shining Armor's love to defeat Celestia at that point. She's the first villain ever to physically defeat Celestia (though it's implied Discord could do so if wanted to).
• Good Eyes, Evil Eyes: She has green eyes with vertically slitted pupils that are more like those of reptile than those of a pony.
• Goth: Her sinister, eerie and broken appearance makes her stick out in a cheerful cartoon.
• Goth Girls Know Magic: She has a gothic appearance and is a capable magic caster, able to shapeshift and fire magic beams from her horn.
• Handshake Refusal: In "To Where and Back Again", when Starlight offers her a hoof up and chance at redemption, Chrysalis slaps her away, refusing her chance to be good.
• Harmful to Minors: Kills a Luvcat in front of the Cutie Mark Crusaders in the comics.
• Hellish Pupils: They're almost reptilian. One way to tell it's her in disguise is looking at the eyes when they briefly shine and reveal this.
• Her Own Worst Enemy: Despite having many enemies, Chrysalis still manages to fit this trope. The things that keep her from achieving peace within herself are: her sheer cruelty, her extremely stubborn refusal to reform, her greed, her tendency to underestimate her opponents, and her unwillingness to admit her mistakes. Assuming it isn't outright impossible for her to ever overcome all these, her transformation into stone means she'll likely never be able to achieve peace within herself.
• Hidden Depths: "Frenemies" reveals that she finds the feeling of having others being there for her to be pleasing. She had this feeling back from when she had her hive, and has it again when she nearly befriends Tirek and Cozy Glow.
• Hoist by Her Own Petard:
  • Became as powerful as she did from Shining Armor's love for Princess Cadance, which she notes is stronger than she imagined. In the end, Cadance and Shining Armor let her have it with that same love.
  • In the comics, she intended to drain Twilight Sparkle of her magic once the supernatural-enhancing Secretariat Comet caused her powers to reach their peak. The thing is, the comet bolstered Twilight too, and she knows destructive spells beyond anything that Chrysalis had ever expected.
  • In the Season 6 finale, she attempts to drain Thorax of his love to show the others what happens to traitors. She didn't expect Thorax to actually share his love with her, leading to her defeat.
• Honey Trap: In "Frenemies", Chrysalis disguises herself as a female ophiotaurus to both "save" Tirek and Cozy Glow from the male and to get a free meal by seducing him and draining his love as he falls for her.
• Horns of Villainy: As a grotesque perversion of an alicorn, Chrysalis's horn is long, twisted, and gnarled. Her Fiendship issue shows it was originally straight and Celestia's attack that beat her resulted in its current state, with it being implied Celestia melted it.
• Horrifying the Horror: In "Frenemies", she is approached from behind by what looks like a cloud of shadow with eyes. She scares it off by hissing at it.
  Chrysalis: As if anything on this mountain is scarier than I!
• Humiliation Conga: Her defeat at the end of the comics. While she clearly survived, she received a humiliating defeat at the hooves of Twilight and she and her army were temporary trapped inside of the very castle they were using as their evil lair, and were forced to endure a giant singing and dancing Pinkie Pie doll as a guard. She ultimately arose from this humiliation at the end of FIENDship Is Magic, but still, this was definitely not one of her proudest moments.
• Hypocrite: Several times in "Frenemies".
  • She openly complains about how Grogar has done practically nothing since gathering the Legion of Doom together. This in spite of the fact that, before Grogar summoned her, she had been spending all her time sitting alone in a forest, doing nothing but rant about wanting revenge on her enemies.
  • During the Villain Song, she mocks Tirek over how badly he was defeated in the past, in spite of the fact that she has suffered more defeats than he has (which required far less effort for the heroes to do so).
  • She also dismisses teamwork as a "fad". The only reason her hive was so effective in the past was due to swarming their enemies through sheer numbers, a tactic that requires heavy teamwork.
  • While mocking Twilight, she claims the Princess of Friendship has "made a detailed list of all the ways [she's] a failure". Chrysalis is really in no position to criticize the failings of others.
• Ignored Epiphany: Closer to an outright rejected epiphany when she realizes she, Tirek, and Cozy Glow are beginning to appreciate the benefits of friendship during the climax of "Frenemies," angrily calling it a disease that she refuses to succumb to.
• I Have You Now, My Pretty: As Cadance, she nuzzles, clings to, and otherwise gets really close to Shining Armor. Just her keeping up the pretense of being a bride-to-be, right? Nope! She also does the same to the mannequin serving as her surrogate groom during her Villain Song (where there is nobody around to fool), despite singing about how she "doesn't love the groom", and indulges in a little privacy invasion towards Shining Armor after she's transformed and revealed herself, though in this last case she probably did it to mock the real Cadance.
• I Have Your Wife: In the comic, she ensures that the Mane Six will obey her orders by holding the Cutie Mark Crusaders hostage.
• Imposter Forgot One Detail: She doesn't understand Twilight's "Sunshine" rhyme that she used to sing with the real Cadance, which results in the latter being suspicious of her. Her snide behavior during the wedding preparations also rings extremely false to Twilight, who remembers a very sweet, positive and caring Cadance.
• Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: "The Mean 6" sees Chrysalis at her most pathetically inept, failing to command respect from the Mean Six, spending the episode trying to keep them on-task as they want nothing to do with her, and then being betrayed and overpowered by the evil Twilight. There are moments where you just feel sorry for her having to deal with them.
• Insect Queen:
  • Queen Chrysalis is the leader of the insectoid/equinoids called changelings, who imitate other ponies and feed on their love. Her goal is to take over Equestria and use the land as a virtually infinite food source for her colony. Aside from this image, there's no evidence regarding their reproductive methods that she fills this role in any fashion other than symbolism. This is further compounded by her origin story, which states that she was born amongst the first of the changeling hordes.
  • This is no longer the case as of the Season 6 finale, as Chrysalis is defeated and is ousted as the leader of the Changelings, who are now taken lead by the new Changeling King Thorax.
• Irony:
  • She is powered by love, yet her first defeat was caused by a spell powered by love. She also has no concept of love outside of its use as a food source.
  • As of season 9, she is the only changeling who hasn't changed.
  • Back in "A Canterlot Wedding" she had commanded her Changelings to stop the Mane 6 which they attempt to do by turning into the six to attack them. In the "Ending of the End" finale, said Changelings, now pitted against her, use their powers to turn into the Mane 6 to both help attack and confuse her, along with Tirek and Cozy, to prevent them from attacking the group further.
• It's All About Me: The Season 6 finale reveals that she was misleading her own kind into stealing love rather than sharing it to continue exerting her own influence over them the entire time. Naturally, it bites her in the flank — when Thorax and Starlight Glimmer teach the Changelings how to share love, which results in their Heel–Race Turn and permanent Metamorphosis, the Changelings no longer see her as their Queen and turn against her.
• It's Personal: It's worth noting the sheer number of ponies who have handed her a defeat, and who she has vowed to destroy. At present that list includes Celestia, Twilight, Cadance, Shining Armor, Starlight Glimmer in the wake of the latter costing her her kingdom in the Season 6 finale and Thorax. She sure is good at making herself a lot of enemies...
  Queen Chrysalis: There is no revenge you could ever conceive of that will come close to what I will exact upon you one day, Starlight Glimmer!
• Jerk with a Heart of Jerk:
  • In FIENDship Is Magic, she looks utterly broken by her defeats, acts like she's so tired of them that she's seriously considering reforming, and seems to show a surprising level of concern for her subjects. This turns out to be an act, which ends with Chrysalis giving a questionably honest backstory implying she was always pure evil just to twist the knife.
  • In "To Where and Back Again", all of Chrysalis' prior motives had a Blue-and-Orange Morality excuse, she was only looking for a source of love for her Changeling subjects, right? Wrong. Thorax and Starlight Glimmer reveal this to a total lie. Chrysalis couldn't care less about the well being of the Changelings. She was misleading them to steal love all along, when sharing love is what get them fed. The Emotion Eater thing was only to her own benefit and nothing more. This Kick the Dog moment was huge and damaging, as it forces the Changelings to realize they were just being used and they quickly turn on their former queen, rescue their captives and destroy her plans. Cementing this is the fact that Chrysalis is the only Changeling to refuse to turn over a new leaf.
• Karma Houdini:
  • Escapes unscathed in both My Little Pony: FIENDship Is Magic and My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (IDW) Issue 34 to 37, and doesn't even carry any regret whatsoever to mitigate this with.
  • Played with in "The Mean Six", as while she spends most of it as an Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain dealing with her evil clones of the Mane Six and nearly gets overpowered by the traitorous Mean Twilight, she ultimately ends up no worse off at the end than at the beginning. She even figures out where the Tree of Harmony is (even if she couldn't take the Elements like she planned). However, she didn't get any comeuppance for nearly destroying the Mane Six's friendship as they remain unaware they've been dealing with evil clones.
• Karma Houdini Warranty: In "To Where and Back Again": she not only receives another love-powered defeat, but Thorax overthrows her and becomes the Changeling King. While Chrysalis escaped, she's lost her Power Nullifier throne, her entire army, and is now completely alone, destroying most of the threat she formerly had. By Season 9 she's a shambling wreck, alone and suffering Sanity Slippage.
• Kick the Dog: Chrysalis was never confused of being a good guy anytime soon with her callous attitude, but "To Where and Back Again" reveals that Chrysalis couldn't care less about the well-being of her own changeling subjects, as she was only using them for her own selfish goals. The Changelings don't waste time making her pay for it.
• Killed Mid-Sentence: Rather, "Cut Off Mid-Sentence". After she's de-powered from the Combined Energy Attack Tirek, Cozy and she got hit with. Her last lines have her ranting to the heroes that their friendship won't save them... right before a giant cupcake (caused by Pinkie getting Grogar's Bell) falls on top of the three. It doesn't kill them but not long after they're turned to stone by Celestia, Luna and Discord.
• Lady of Black Magic: She's the former Queen of the Changelings, and she has a variety of powerful magic at her disposal such as shape and size-shifting to an extremely high degree, brainwashing and mind-control, draining love from others to increase her power and severely weakening her target in the process, telekinesis, energy beam blast projection, creating huge omnidirectional bursts of green energy from her body, creating projections of herself to communicate with others, creating extremely sticky magical slime cocoons to imprison her enemies, creating clones of other beings, green fire manipulation and banishing others to a location of her choice. Once she absorbs enough love from Shining Armor, she proves to be capable of overpowering Princess Celestia (an age-old Physical Goddess alicorn) in a Beam-O-War with little difficulty.
• Large and in Charge: The normal Changelings are the size of other ponies in the show; she's as tall as Celestia.
• Large Ham: Par for the course of big-name villains in this show. She even gets a Villain Song in her first appearance!
• Laser-Guided Karma:
  • In "A Canterlot Wedding", she disguises herself as Princess Cadance while keeping the real one imprisoned underground, so that she can launch a full-scale invasion of Equestria and gain love from her captured victims. She and her changelings end up love-blasted across the Equestrian border into next week when Twilight Sparkle helps free the real Princess Cadance, allowing the latter to reunite with Shining Armor and perform their aforementioned attack.
  • In "To Where and Back Again", while gloating her victory over Starlight Glimmer's party, she reveals that she was keeping her subjects literally starved for love, right in front of said subjects. This leads to her getting love-blasted again when Starlight encourages Thorax to "give her all of it!", causing Thorax to transform and the other Changelings to side with him after he leads by example. Not only does this free everyone from their imprisonment, it also destroys Chrysalis's throne and leaves her powerless, leaving her vastly outnumbered against the combined forces of Starlight Glimmer, Discord, the Mane Six, the Alicorn Princesses, and their allies that are all glaring down at her. What's more, the transformed Thorax and his Changelings are now willing to fight back should she show up again.
  • The setup for Season 9's conflict has her gang-pressed into the service of a vastly more powerful villain. She's ordered around, physically beaten up and cowed into submission the same way she treated her own hive.
  • In the series finale, her former subjects come to the aid of the Mane 6 and use their powers to confuse her (along with Tirek and Cozy) to allow the real group time to regroup and allowing Twilight to realize how to defeat them. Ultimately she is petrified along with Tirek and Cozy Glow, and Discord remarks that they'd all hate that more than anything.
• Laughing Mad: Has an unstable-sounding laugh after losing most of her hive.
• Leader Wannabe: In "Frenemies", she attempts to assume command of Grogar's Legion of Doom.
• Lean and Mean: Is considerably more spindly than an Alicorn.
• Let's You and Him Fight: This is the main reason she taunts Twilight Sparkle right after she imprisons her in the Canterlot Caves right next to the real Princess Cadance; Chrysalis was hoping for a fight between them. It almost works, but Cadance uses a Trust Password to convince Twilight that she's the real deal.
• Manipulative Bitch:
  • She gleefully points out in her Villain Song that she fooled everyone.
  • Her backstory in FIENDship Is Magic #5 shows her quite skilled at the art of verbally luring her foes into traps, aided with a bit of Hypnotic Eyes if just to push them in the right direction.
  • Season 6 reveals that she has been deliberately misleading her people to further her own goals, leaving them literally starving for love. This later bites her in the flank when Thorax and Starlight Glimmer make the changelings see through her deceptions.
• Meaningful Name:
  • A chrysalis is the hard shell that envelops a caterpillar before they become a butterfly and Chrysalis, like all the other changelings, is a bug-like pony creature. On top of that, the fake Cadance is exactly that: the shell that hides her true form. She and her subjects also imprison ponies in giant green cocoons.
  • Her name takes on a darker meaning once it's revealed that her methods were keeping the Changelings from reaching their final form. The race as a whole couldn't move forward until they shed Chrysalis.
• Meaningless Villain Victory: In "The Mean 6", she discovers the location of the Tree of Harmony. The Tree's destruction in "The Beginning of the End" and rebirth in "Uprooted" nullifies any advantage this may have gotten her.
• Morphic Resonance:
  • Even when in a shapeshifted form, she seems to keep the Sickly Green Glow of her magic.
  • Her photographer disguise in "The Mean 6" also has a strand of hair that falls across her face.
  • In "Frenemies", her cragadile, goat and ophiotaurus forms, all retain her distinctive blue-green eye color (and the goat form has the same hair strand). While this is absent in her ursa form, several of its component stars shine the same color as her eyes. Only her roc form doesn't bear any signs of her usual appearance.
• Musical Spoiler: Very, very subtle one only a trained ear could catch. The song "B.B.B.B.F. Reprise" ends in a Deceptive Cadence. The moment the song ends, "Cadance" walks over and appears to comfort Twilight before showing her true colors. The original song ends in an Authentic Cadence.
• Narcissist: Deeply arrogant and full of herself. Even after she is cast out by her former minions, she still stubbornly refers to herself as a "queen", despite having no kingdom to rule anymore.
• Near-Villain Victory: On two occasions.
  • In "A Canterlot Wedding", she succeeds in mesmerizing Shining Armor, and uses the power of his love to overpower Princess Celestia herself. Her hive then invades Canterlot, successfully preventing the Mane Six from reaching the Elements of Harmony. But her victory is short lived, as Twilight frees Cadance while Chrysalis is busy gloating. Cadance uses her love to free Shining Armor from Chrysalis's influence, and together, they are able to force Chrysalis and her hive out of Canterlot.
  • In "To Where And Back Again", Chrysalis and her hive succeed in capturing the Mane Six, the royal family, and even Discord, leaving only Starlight Glimmer and Thorax left. With Chrysalis's Anti-Magic throne nullifying her powers, Starlight is helpless, and Chrysalis starts to devour all the love within Thorax, which would make her even stronger. It is at that moment that Starlight gets the idea to tell Thorax to share the love within him. This results in Thorax overpowering Chrysalis and transforming into a new, stronger form. With Starlight's prompting, the other changelings follow suit, rejecting Chrysalis in favor of Thorax, and forcing her to flee.
• Never My Fault: All of her defeats come about from either underestimating her enemies or mistreating her minions, but she never recognizes these faults as her own, and instead blames the heroes for beating her and her minions for not living up to her expectations.
  Chrysalis: Servants always fail you in the end!
• No Love for the Wicked: Despite being as close to a succubus as a G-rated cartoon will allow, she views The Power of Love as strictly a source of power to make her stronger and balks at the idea of even so much as giving friendship a try. She actually seems completely incapable of actually befriending or falling in love with anyone or anything, and instead operates by either assuming the form of someone's ideal romantic partner, whether they exist or not, and then sucking them dry when they love her without so much as a shred of reciprocating their feelings. Even when it's made explicitly clear to her, on numerous occasions, that genuinely loving someone would make her far more powerful than her one-sided love stealing she simply cannot comprehend the idea.
• Not So Above It All:
  • A throwaway gag in the Friends Forever comics shows that Chrysalis has started a petition to have herself added to a Mount Rushmore-esque sculpture featuring the princesses. She's the only one who's signed it.
  • In "Frenemies", she agrees to attend the villain meeting when she hears there will be cupcakes.
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: She seeks conquest of Equestria with the justification of finding a source of power for her subjects to feed on, but it's made painfully obvious, due to her remorseless sadism when attacking Canterlot and her actions in the season 6 finale, that she just wants the power that comes with it.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Her reaction to realizing that a Heart Beat-Down is about to hit her head on.
  • Gets this again in the comics once she realizes that Twilight is just as empowered by the comet as she herself is.
  • In the comic story The Siege of the Crystal Empire, she reacts with this when finding out the real plan was to free the Umbrum.
  • In "To Where and Back Again", she has this again when her hive transforming causes her throne to be destroyed, along with the throne room itself. She has a bigger one when she erupts from its ruins, hissing and ready for a fight... only to be faced with all the ponies she captured who have now been freed, including all five Alicorn Princesses, the Elements of Harmony, the Master of Chaos, her freshly redeemed (former) subjects, and the now Changeling King Thorax.
  • She has this look in "The Mean 6", when Mean Twilight is overpowering her in their clash of magic.
  • In the finale, where everypony lends their friendship to power the Mane Six.
• Perfect Disguise, Terrible Acting: Being a changeling lets her transform into an identical replica of anypony, but she isn't a very good actress. When she impersonates the warm and kind Cadance, she acts cold, snobby and selfish, which tips Twilight off that something's seriously wrong with her favorite foalsitter.
• Pet the Dog:
  • In the comics, Queen Chrysalis seems to be on good terms with her changeling subjects, and even shares a laugh with them (albeit at the misfortune of their enemies) now and then. Granted, these are her minions, who delight in preying on others as much as she does... though she's completely willing to dunk a changeling that almost got them all killed into a lava pit. She claims they survived, most likely.
  • In "The Beginning of the End - Part 1", she expresses concern when Grogar berates Cozy Glow for not knowing his name.
  • In "Frenemies", she catches Cozy Glow when the latter is blown away by wind.
  • In "The Summer Sun Setback", she smiles warmly at the sight of Cozy Glow happily resting in Tirek's arms.
• Physical Goddess: Notably the first Big Bad-level villain to not be a god already, but becomes as powerful as one by the end of her first appearance. The comics indicate her usual level of power is close to Twilight's, which is still rather formidable, and FIENDship Is Magic shows that Celestia defeated Chrysalis in a straight fight at some point in the past.
• Pity the Kidnapper: In the comics, she kidnaps the Cutie Mark Crusaders to lure the Mane Cast into her trap. They proceed to annoy her such she uses that as prompt to get the Mane Cast to hurry because she doesn't know how much more she can take. By the time they reach her, she's near her breaking point.
• Power Echoes: After assuming her true form, there's a slight echo to her voice in "A Canterlot Wedding". Though she loses it subsequent speaking roles afterwards.
• Pragmatic Villainy:
  • In the comics, even she thinks releasing the Umbrum is a bad idea, because they would destroy the emotions changelings feed on.
  • In "The Mean 6", when Mean Twilight asks Chrysalis why she didn't just attack her enemies when she was close to them, Chrysalis responds that the Mane Six and their allies have defeated the entire changeling army in the past. Even if Chrysalis had the element of surprise, fighting the Mane Six and Starlight Glimmer alone was likely going to end badly.
  • In "Frenemies", she reveals that she coccoons her victims because she doesn't drain all of their love in one go, instead prefering to leave some left for the following day.
• Punch-Clock Villain: Played with. Chrysalis mentions that everything she has done is just part of her duty as changeling Queen to feed her people. Still, she enjoys making others suffer and sacking Canterlot far too much. The comics further subvert this trope, revealing that Queen Chrysalis has a vengeful and sadistic streak that has nothing to do with serving her subjects. And "To Where and Back Again" subverts this — she's been deliberately starving her subjects all along; the true way for them to be nourished involves sharing love, whereas the Emotion Eater method has only been to her benefit.

Tropes Q to W

• Really 700 Years Old: The FIENDship Is Magic comics reveal she's over a thousand years old. Unlike most other antagonists from back then, though, she seems to have actually lived through all that time.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Chrysalis gleefully points out how gullible the ponies were to her manipulation in "A Canterlot Wedding", that they were all too busy preparing for the event they never noticed what she was planning. She also points out Twilight was the only one who realized something was wrong, and that if they had only listened to her, they wouldn't be in their predicament.
• Redemption Rejection:
  • At the end of "To Where and Back Again", she's offered the chance to redeem herself by Starlight Glimmer, and share love rather than steal it. Chrysalis briefly considers it, but refuses, slapping away Starlight's hoof and vowing vengeance.
  • In "Frenemies," she briefly remarks how Good Feels Good when she has to work with Tirek and Cozy Glow. However, when Chrysalis realizes what's going on, she lets out a Big "NO!" and declares that friendship is "a disease".
• The Remnant: She becomes this after being ousted by Thorax and having the rest of the Changelings revolt against her.
• Revenge:
  • In "To Where and Back Again", she is seeking vengeance on ponykind for her defeat the first time she invaded, with her main targets being the Royal Family and the Mane Six since they were responsible for it. At the end, she vows revenge once more for losing her kingdom, her subjects, and her revenge on the Royal Family and Mane Six after being the only Changeling to refuse redemption, with her new target being Starlight Glimmer, the one responsible for her defeat this time.
  • She attempts to carry out her revenge in "The Mean 6", creating copies of the Mane Six in hopes of having them steal the Elements of Harmony and using them to destroy the Mane Six while Starlight watches — then destroy her, too. It fails due to the Elements' Loyal Phlebotinum, and the clones get destroyed instead.
  • If you count the comics, Return of Queen Chrysalis was her attempt for said wedding defeat the first time.
  • In "The Ending of the End - Part 1", Chrysalis goes after Starlight, defeating her in battle. She then captures her, intending to prolong her revenge as much as possible.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: It's her duty to provide food sources for her people, and she single-handedly makes it possible for the changelings to invade Equestria. Ironically, her duty comes back to bite her in the flank when she reveals she has been starving them on purpose for her own schemes.
• Sadist:
  • While she has some degree of responsibility for her swarm, she clearly gets a kick out of the suffering she causes, to the point of looking at her army attacking Canterlot and stating it's something she's dreamed of (since she was a child, no less).
  • In the season 9 finale, she is shown to be the most sadistic of the Legion of Doom, preferring to torment their prisoners and make everypony watch their heroes become broken rather than destroying them outright like Cozy and Tirek want. She is also the only one who wants the Windigos to stay so that they can "save the day" after the land becomes a frozen wasteland, basically wanting them to suffer until they beg for her rule. She even threatens to tear off Spike's wings while Twilight and the rest of the Mane 6 watch!
• Sanity Slippage: She has slowly lost it while she has been alone in exile, and she was always unstable. She has a conversation with herself while talking to inanimate pictures she took of the Mane Six, just to rant about her evil plan and declare how she will have her revenge. "The Beginning of the End – Part 1" shows she's gotten even worse since then, carving images of unreformed changelings onto logs and ranting madly to them about how she will have her revenge on Twilight and her friends.
• Sanity Strengthening: Following her recruitment into Grogar's Legion of Doom. While she can't stand any of them, having others to talk to and interact with has gone a long way toward restoring her to her previous levels of sanity.
• Small Name, Big Ego: She continues to boast that she is Queen of the Changelings long after she was overthrown from the position and exiled by her race. She brings up her title several times to the Legion of Doom, either to complain to Grogar about the lack of action or to boast of how superior she is to the other members, although it has no authority to it by that point and the other villains don't care about what title she does or doesn't have.
• Smug Snake: One of her Fatal Flaws is her arrogance.
  • Her plan in Season 2 is certainly a good one and she competently carries it out. Still, her impatience and vanity are established early on. She is too distracted by the sight of her victorious forces to care about the heroes she feels are already beaten. She's wrong. She also messes up when she sends Twilight Sparkle to the same caverns where she imprisoned Cadance (allowing the former to rescue the latter). To top that, she retains her arrogant mannerisms even when impersonating Cadance, which is what tips Twilight off in the first place. In the comics, for all of her planning, she didn't bother to consider that Twilight's magic would be powered up by the comet just like her own... or that Twilight's ensuing destructive potential could exceed her own.
  • Happens in "To Where and Back Again" when she basically planned ahead for her revenge against the Mane Six and Royal Family, and felt that with her Power Nullifier throne keeping them powerless, along with anyone who tried to rescue them, she feels her victory is assured this time, and moves to drain Thorax of all his love energy by force. Thanks to Starlight reminding him of giving it of his own free will, this ends up costing Chrysalis everything but her life, including her throne, the Swarm, her hostages in the Mane Six and the Royal Family, and her revenge.
• The Sociopath: Is one of the biggest in the series, along with Sombra and Cozy Glow. While she can feed off of love, she herself seems incapable of feeling it and outright admits there's no love in her heart (something she'd also said in her Villain Song). She's also a Manipulative Bitch, impatient, impulsive and narcissistic. The comics further this by showing her destroy entire civilizations and threaten children with amusement, switch between this and a more comedic mood with little provocation, and constantly fail to acknowledge or learn from her mistakes. This ends up costing her everything but her life in the Season 6 finale.
• The Starscream: At the end of "Frenemies", she and the other members of the Legion of Doom agree to keep Grogar's bell for themselves and plot against him.
• Succubi and Incubi: The changeling race as a whole are based on the succubus and incubus: grotesque demons that shapeshift into a pony's loved ones to get close to them and drain their life force. Chrysalis, as their queen, is no exception.
• Super Mode: Upon absorbing Grogar's bell's magic, she gains a new, powered up transformation to go with Cozy Glow's Alicorn form and Tirek's upgraded form. She gains extra armor on her hooves and torso, her wings and crown get bigger, and her eyes and the tip of her horn turn bright green.
• Sweet Tooth: In Season 9, Cozy Glow manages to bribe Chrysalis into joining a teamwork meeting with the promise of cupcakes. In the very next scene, we see Chrysalis gleefully munching one.
• Taken for Granite: Her ultimate fate, along with Tirek and Cozy Glow. Although Chrysalis tries to lash out one last time at the heroes, she can't escape the petrification spell, and is turned into a statue.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Her alliance with the other members of the Legion of Doom is just barely held together by Grogar's threats of violence. They do manage a better working relationship once they decide to put aside any differences until Grogar and all their enemies are crushed, though.
• This Is Gonna Suck: When she gets into a Beam-O-War with Celestia, she cringes in preparation of being fried, and is just as surprised as everpony else when she wins. FIENDship Is Magic makes this even more justified; she's been on the receiving end of Celestia's beams in the past, which is why she and the other changelings have their holey, melted looking forms.
• Timed Power-Up: Seems to be how her love drain works as opposed to Tirek's Mana Drain that seems to provide a permanent power boost. While absorbing Shining's love did give her a huge, godly power boost... by the time she met Twilight again in the comics, it was already gone, and her power had been reduced to what seems to be her default state (around Twilight's level of strength). In Season 8, she slowly finds herself on the losing end of a Beam-O-War with Mean Twilight (who at best couldn't be any stronger than Alicorn Twilight) and would have been defeated if the Tree of Harmony hadn't reacted.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: The tomboy to Cozy Glow's girly girl. Cozy gets what she wants via faked kindness, whereas Chrysalis prefers direct confrontation if she can't get it through manipulation.
• Tomboy with a Girly Streak: Villainous example. Her tyrannical, aggressive, hostile nature, lack of hesitance in employing physical harm and force, affinity to indulge in disgusting things like stealing love, insectoid nature, and the design and nature of her hive are certainly not feminine. Despite this, she has long hair (which carries on to her Crackle Cosette disguise), is reclusively passionate about her interests, likes cupcakes, holds the log that used to be Mean Twilight defensively when Tirek points it out, and while she's disguised as Cadance, actually criticizes things related to the wedding ceremony despite not needing to care about it.
• Underestimating Badassery: In the S9 finale, when the villains have all Equesteria's heroes except for Twilight at their mercy. Tirek is quick to point out that they should find Twilight, knowing that she is still a threat. Chrysalis is the one to reject it, claiming that Twilight can't do anything on her own. Naturally this backfires when her friends manage to reunite with her and lead into the events of the climax and in turn, their final defeat. Partially justified since Twilight (mostly) wasn't responsible for her previous defeats.
• Unexplained Recovery: In "To Where and Back Again — Part 2", Chrysalis loses her crown when her throne is destroyed, and flees her former kingdom soon after. When she returns in "The Mean 6", the crown is back on her head, with no explanation for how she recovered it.
• Unreliable Expositor: Chrysalis's account of her and her races' origins has the Plot Hole of how she would know what happened before being "born". It's possible the flashback is only experienced by readers (it's the only one without narration) and/or she was lying about their being Made of Evil to mock Twilight Sparkle's attempts to reform her.
• Ugly Cute: Her horn is jagged, and her body looks like it could be made out anything from burned wood/charcoal to black stones, and her hair looks kind of... gross. However, she's still unbelievably adorable to watch half the time, even for a villain.
• The Vamp: Poor Shining Armor was wrapped around her hoof because of brainwashing. In the comics, devastated the city of Trot at least partially by doing the same to Emperor Incitatus.
• Vampire Monarch: Queen of a race of Emotion Eaters who specialize in Vampiric Draining.
• Verbal Tic: When disguised as Cadance, she tends to give an "Ah-huh" when annoyed or unimpressed.
• Vile Villain, Saccharine Show: She provides the trope image and for a very good reason. At the time of her debut, she was easily the darkest thing to come out of the show. Her modus operandi is to replace and impersonate individuals, draining their loved ones to increase her own power and put them under Mind Control, before leading her minions in a full scale invasion so they can feed as well and drain everyone. It's implied that Equestria isn't the first land she's done this to. She became one of the most recurring villains on the show and she gets even worse in her later appearances: first it's revealed that love-draining isn't how Changelings are supposed to feed and doing so keeps them hungry forever. Chrysalis knows this, but never told them, all so she could stay in power. She refuses the Changelings' Heel–Race Turn and undergoes major Sanity Slippage alone, before coming back in the final episodes and at one point threatening to rip Spike's wings off. Oh, and her actions in the finale have a hand in bringing back the Windigoes mentioned above, and her response to this? Let them turn Equestria into a frozen wasteland, so that she can eventually destroy them and force its citizens to follow her.
• Villain Ball:
  • Right after she convinced everypony of Twilight Sparkle's suspicions of "Cadance" was merely her being jealous, her response to Twilight's apologies was to trap her in a cave with the real Cadance and sic them on each other. This proves her evilness and put the two ponies who would wreck her plan back into play, which she could have avoided by making nice to or ignoring Twilight onward.
  • In the comics, Chrysalis forced Twilight to agree to teach her powerful magics by holding her friends hostage, and was about to brainwash her into being genuinely loyal. Too bad she gloated she was going to sic Twilight on her friends during said brainwashing, cue Twilight fighting it off and delivering a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown.
  • In "To Where and Back Again", Chrysalis has already basically won. She has the Mane Six, the Royal Family, and the Master of Chaos as her trophies, cocooned on the ceiling of her throne room, home to her Power Nullifier throne, spies in Canterlot, Ponyville, and the Crystal Empire disguised as said captives, feeding on the love for them from the citizens, captured their ragtag rescue party, and prepares to drain Thorax of his love energy. She doesn't expect Thorax giving her his love energy of his own free will to lead her Swarm into following suit, resulting in the destruction of her throne, freedom of her hostages, and costing her everything but her very life, including her revenge, which was the main reason for her return in the first place. She does not take this very well.
  • She also didn't think replacing Starlight with one of her servants was even worth the effort. That oversight led to her plan falling apart, as Starlight was able to convince the changelings to follow Thorax's example, costing Chrysalis control over her hive.
  • If Chrysalis had actually taken the time to actually try Thorax's example of sharing love, she most likely would've remained Queen of the Changelings. Alas, as per usual Chrysalis chose evil over doing the smart and reasonable thing and branded Thorax a traitor. Thorax returns, Chrysalis is defeated, her revenge plot against the Royal Family and the Mane Six goes up in smoke, and the Changelings turn wise to her deception and side with Thorax. Chrysalis is ousted as the queen and lost everything except her life.
  • She never appears to do any meaningful research on Starlight and only attempts to sabotage her friendships with the Mane 6 in "The Mean 6", once again not bothering to make a Starlight doppelgänger to help along with the scheme. She also never bothers to take any of Starlight's loved ones hostage (such as Sunburst or her dad Firelight) or alternatively, shape change into Starlight herself to possibly ruin her reputation. Instead her final "scheme" in "The Ending of the End" involves her battling Starlight directly, and while she technically wins, it was only due to a sneak attack made up on the fly.
  • In the "Ending of the End" finale, when the Windigos start to appear due to the distrust she helped sow in the pony species, she wanted them to stick around so that she could use her power to save the creatures of Equestria and be branded a "hero" for doing so. Both Tirek and Cozy are completely against the idea and want them gone before they become a threat. Luckily the heroes managing to counter and redirecting the three attention prevents her from following through on this.
• Villain Decay:
  • She starts out as a major threat, with her first two major appearances in the show being her coming within a hair's breath of winning and conquering Equestria, and she actually succeeded in one Bad Future during the season 5 finale. But by the end of "To Where And Back Again – Part 2" she has lost her entire army and has become an exile of her own race. Her appearance in "The Mean 6" shows she has started to lose it, talking to herself and planning her revenge on the Mane Six and Starlight. Her plan to take the Elements of Harmony for herself with clones of the Mane Six completely fails when her imperfect clones betray her and are destroyed by the elements, and by not understanding how the elements work her plan was effectively doomed from the start. Neither she nor the Mane Six even realize that they are in the same area and completely miss running into each other, so her plan really just ended up being a small inconvenience for the Mane Six that brought them even closer together. Her only consolation prize is that she figures out where the Elements are being kept.
  • Inverted in "Frenemies". After spending her last few appearances on the back hoof with her army gone, reduced to an fugitive with a questionable loss of sanity, nearly being overpowered by Mean Twilight, and being brought into Grogar's service, she gets a chance to shine with showing off her shapeshifting abilities.
  • Completely thrown off in the series finale where she and the other members of the Legion of Doom successfully backstab Grogar/Discord to become the Final Bosses, and frighteningly competent ones at that.
• Villain Episode: "The Mean 6" mostly focuses on her. She also gets a shared spotlight with Tirek and Cozy Glow in "Frenemies".
• Villain: Exit, Stage Left:
  • In "To Where and Back Again", when Chrysalis is defeated and Starlight offers her a second chance, she rejects it, swears revenge, and runs away.
  • In "The Mean 6", when the titular clones she creates are destroyed by the Tree of Harmony and her plans ruined, she once again swears revenge and flees, without the Mane Six even knowing she was still out there.
• Villain Has a Point:
  • The Mane Six and Celestia would've been able to stop her if they had listened to Twilight, as she cruelly points out. This even prompts a Jerkass Realization from Applejack at least.
  • During the Sombra arc in the comics she's really on point, and gives an entirely accurate "Reason You Suck" Speech to most of the cast.
• Villainous Breakdown:
  • She gets one in the comics. When being overwhelmed by Twilight Sparkle's comet-enhanced powers, she's reduced to a dazed, stammering wreck who's trying desperately to convince her foe that she's unbeatable. However, she's practically on the verge of defeat, so said argument has been proven invalid by this point.
  • Once she loses her throne, swarm, hostages in the Mane Six and the Royal Family, and her revenge against them thanks to Starlight Glimmer and the new Changeling King Thorax, she is livid and swears a new vendetta against Starlight for ruining her revenge plot before making good on her escape.
  • In the finale, after everypony lends the Magic of Friendship to the Mane Six to defeat her, Tirek and Cozy Glow (despite trying to turn ponies against each other), she screams that she doesn't care how strong their friendship is, they'll never stop trying to take over Equestria.
• Villainous BSoD: She doesn't seem to have taken the above well, judging by the unstable scrawlings in the castle she was temporarily imprisoned in. Subverted, while Chrysalis is violently focused on Twilight, she hasn't lost her mind at all, and it was an act to manipulate Twilight into letting her and her minions escape.
• Villainous Face Hold: In her debut appearance, while she is boasting of how Shining Armor is under her control and she has slowly been draining his magic to weaken his shield around Canterlot, she holds her would-be fiancée by the face and turns him to face her. Later in the same episode, after her Changelings have captured the Mane Six, she holds Twilight's chin up in mock affection while bragging that she was the only one suspicious of her the whole time but nobody believed her, until Twilight slaps her hoof away.
• Villainous Friendship: In "Frenemies", she proves capable of bonding with Cozy Glow and Tirek over their shared hatred of the heroes (although she quickly shakes off the idea of actually becoming friends, instead favoring a temporary alliance until they can overthrow Grogar).
• Villain Song: Her half of "This Day Aria" is her gloating about the imminent success of her Evil Plan and how she cares nothing for "her" groom. There's a Dark Reprise later focusing on her true motives.
• Villain Team-Up: She has been involved in several:
  • In the comics' "Siege of the Crystal Empire" storyline, she agrees to work with the Flim-Flam Brothers, Iron Will and the resurrected King Sombra. Ultimately, she balks at the alliance when she realises it will lead to the release of the Umbrum.
  • In season 9, Grogar forces her, Lord Tirek and Cozy Glow to work together to defeat the Mane Six. They eventually usurp him and steal his powers, and become the final bosses of the series all together.
  • In the My Little Pony/Transformers: Friendship in Disguise! Crossover, she joins forces with Megatron and the Decepticons after her attempt to summon changelings from other realms accidentally brings the Autobots and Decepticons to Equestria.
• Virtue Is Weakness:
  • She laughs at the idea of actually loving someone.
  • In "Frenemies", she voices the opinion that the magic of friendship is "like a disease", and refuses to let it "infect" her.
• Voice of the Legion: In her first appearance her voice was underscored by a subtle, insectoid buzzing. However, this was removed in all subsequent appearances as of "The Cutie Re-Mark".
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: Like all changelings, but she comes with a dramatic Transformation Sequence.
• We Can Rule Together: Tries to pull this on Twilight in the comics. It doesn't work. It should be noted that Chrysalis planned to drain Twilight's love to make her a willing servant, which is more thought-out than most instances of the trope.
• We Will Meet Again: After her defeat in "To Where and Back Again", Chrysalis flees into the desert, vowing to one day come back to exact her vengeance on Starlight for taking her hive from her. She tries to make good on this promise in Season 8 but fails, and once again seeks her vengeance before fleeing.
• Would Hurt a Child:
  • In the comics, she makes it very clear that once she doesn't need the Cutie Mark Crusaders anymore, she does not plan on letting them go...
  • In the show's season 6 finale she has her changelings kidnap Spike and Flurry Heart, both of whom are babies.
  • She threatens to tear Spike's wings off to make the Mane Six stand down. She and the rest of the Legion attempt to kill him alongside the Mane Six anyway.
• Xanatos Speed Chess: While most of her plan was likely formulated from the get go, she's able to work things she didn't expect (such as Twilight catching on and accusing her) into it and twist them to her advantage (use a Wounded Gazelle Gambit to turn everyone against Twilight in a single move).

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