YMMV / Loved and Lost

• Alternate Character Interpretation:
  • Who is Shining Armor apologizing to at the end of the 10th chapter? To Jewelius who's smugly reproaching the fugitives for upsetting Twilight? Or is his apology directed to Twilight and/or Cadance, with the former having left to check on the latter who's injured and taken to the medical wing? Twilight claimed that Jewelius intended to let Cadance return to Canterlot, expressing in her "The Reason You Suck" Speech the opinion that the others caused Cadance's wounding by bringing her to Canterlot before Jewelius could reinstate her.
  • When Hildread decides to choose her Knight Templar convictions over her conscience in the climax, her reasons behind it can be debatable. Is she refusing to admit Shining Armor is right to call her out of her hypocrisies because she doesn't want to think that her actions under Jewelius' orders have brought more damage than good, or does she hate Shining Armor that much? Perhaps she's too afraid of Jewelius to turn against him?
• Author's Saving Throw:
  • While the story progressed, some commenters complained about Twilight's negative change in character. Disturbed by this, the author worked on the chapters dealing with the extra details about how that started because of Jewelius as well as Twilight's Jerkass Realization and subsequent reconciliations with her loved ones.
  • In the original version of the fic, the entire Royal Guard did side with Jewelius during his coup, serving him all the way down to the attack on Ponyville. This case of Adaptational Villainy wasn't appreciated by everyone, so the author afterwards added the scene in which one guard joins Lieutenant Shackle in questioning the morality of the attack on Ponyville, only for Jewelius to kill him in response. Eventually the author rewrote a couple of chapters, making it so that most of the guards were injured by the Changelings yet remained loyal to the dismantled princesses, so Jewelius ordered these injured loyalists to be murdered as casualties of the invasion and afterwards hired bribed convicts to replace them.
• Complete Monster: Jewelius is the sociopathic nephew of Princess Celestia. Envious of the power his aunt and older cousin, Princess Cadance, have, Jewelius secretly organizes the Changeling invasion and allows Chrysalis to pose as Cadance at her wedding. Publicly accusing Celestia and the Mane Six—except Twilight—of focusing more on the wedding than on national security, Jewelius rallies up the disillusioned populace and royal guards and takes Celestia's position as ruler of Equestria by force. As king, Jewelius has his enemies exiled, orders the guards who were still loyal to Celestia to be murdered and replaced with criminals from the dungeons, raises the taxes in Ponyville and allowing the population there to starve just to spite the Mane Six, betraying Chrysalis and planning to enslave the Changelings, and ordering Celestia's execution when she returns. When he finds out Celestia and the Mane Five are hiding out in Ponyville, Jewelius orders his army to massacre Ponyville and throws one of his own soldiers out of a window for disagreeing with him.
• Harsher in Hindsight: The main antagonist is an ordinary pony who is skilled at hiding his vileness under a nice façade, cunningly schemes and manipulates ponies to turn on each other, will backstab anyone if it suits him, is extremely vain and self-serving, has similarities with Queen Chrysalis, claims a title higher than "princess", refuses to redeem himself, and ends up dying as a monster. After the fic was finished, the 8th season aired. Its Arc Villain, Cozy Glow, ends up having all those same traits (with the only exception being that she's turned to stone instead of eaten alive in the series finale for being considered Beyond Redemption.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Jewelius tries to make Twilight his queen, albeit one who only provides him with powerful heirs. Guess who has become Equestria's highest (unmarried) ruler by the series' finale?
• Moral Event Horizon: Jewelius crosses this when he reveals to the imprisoned heroes in the 11th chapter that he's been very evil all along, having convinced the Changelings to assault Canterlot and destroyed the heroes' lives of his own accord, just to take the throne and dispose of the aunt and cousin he has hated and been jealous of for years. He also heartlessly gloats about how he used Twilight's sadness and the others' shunning of her to trick her into rejecting them, is planning to use her as his broodmare to be disposed of should a more powerful unicorn mare be found, will kill Cadance while making it look like he's trying to save her, has already killed off all the Royal Guards who were injured in the Changeling invasion yet remained loyal to Celestia, and has Celestia to be hanged the next day.
• Strawman Has a Point:
  • Jewelius argues in his propaganda speeches that the entire ponykind has become too dependent on the alicorns and the Elements of Harmony to keep them safe. Vivian expresses the same sentiment during her Motive Rant to Rainbow Dash. Jewelius is hypocritical for being a coward who relies on his allies to do the fighting for him, and Vivian's logic of the ponykind becoming independent under his rule is screwed up, as Rainbow Dash states. Unfortunately, the argument is not completely invalid, given who usually solve the canon crises in the show. There's also the fact that in the fic itself, Ponyville is saved from Jewelius' army when the Elements of Harmony are used to turn them to stone, and the Changelings are then blasted out of Equestria by Shining Armor and Cadance as per canon. In principle, the ponykind toughening up a bit wouldn't be such a bad idea in case the powerful heroes weren't around...
  • As another part of his self-serving propaganda, Jewelius says that the true Elements of Harmony are in everypony instead of "six random mares". However, this warped (and somewhat misogynistic) statement can be interpreted to be a case of Right for the Wrong Reasons in a sense that anyone is capable of displaying the virtues the Elements represent (as well as other virtues) if they choose to. If everyone upheld said virtues, both in civilian and military life, that would result in greater unity and less misfortunes, magic or no magic.
• Wangst: The heroes express their remorse so often that it can become tedious to some.

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