You know, I had forgotten this, but the Princess Bumble's first characterization was actually a lot more impatient and impulsive. In fact, her biggest story was how she got it in her head to actually do everything in the song, "Much More" from The Fantasticks, and started with "swim in a clear blue stream where the water is icy cold," since Bumble Lake was a pretty close match and nearby. Disregarding the fact that she couldn't even swim. Fortunately, she took her entourage to watch, and they rescued her, but she got a very bad cold. In some versions, this was the catalyst that brought Princess Gloria to visit her, but in other versions, they first met when Gloria made an impromptu visit to see the fabled Land of the Bees, but came again anyway when she heard her friend was sick.
Also, the idea of a coup was influenced by the finale to Pippin. I know what it's really about, but just listening to it, it could be about a group influencing him to do anything, really.
As I mentioned last time, everything written in the previous entries was all to lead up to this last part. But what I really mean by that is I came up with this next section first, and created the other two to bolster it, as it were. In this third part, the daughter of the former Princess Bumble, granddaughter of Bumble the Reformed, decided she was not satisfied with a cold and frigid Bumbleland, and set off on a quest to do something about it. She only took one bee with her, named Juniper, although in the very first concept she had three followers, and one was a girl (named Honey, naturally. This was before I came up with the "themed-naming done by queen" idea). I eventually took most of the details of her quest and turned it into my first NaNoWriMo novel, only I turned a couple of characters she met along the way into the main characters, saving only their reason for joining Bumble (they had to turn their friend, bewitched into a coat, back to normal) and making it the main quest catalyst. For the Bumble version, though, I toyed with a few different ideas for the end of the quest. In most versions, she found something, usually at the Royal Wonder Academy (blatantly stolen from the second season of Fushigiboshi no Futago Hime). My very first thought was the Moonstone, to go with the Sunstone in Flutter Valley, and thus tied to its power. It actually made the seasons progress in a week, so Bumbleland essential experienced a full year of seasons in a month. I also considered having her garner a favor from the Princess Ponies and use their wands to make Bumbleland as she wished it, but since I either never saw that episode or completely forgot what happened (and never bothered to watch it again, even though it was released on DVD), I never really considered this seriously. And in at least one version, she decided to just leave things as they were in Bumbleland, having a greater appreciation for it now that she'd seen the world.
Whatever the outcome, eventually her mother stepped down as queen and she took over. I came up with a very small concept of her own daughter's adventures, mainly that she became friends with Princess (now Queen) Gloria's grandson (he was good at playing the piano, she was good at coming up with lyrics), and he fell in love with her. When he asked her to become his queen, she declined, stating that she couldn't abandon her hive (never mind how they would produce an heir. In MLP-universe, anything is possible, either with magic or friendship or true love). This threw him into such despair that he was easy prey for some evil guy. Evil Guy filled the prince with a dark aura, causing him to act upon his basest desires: he had his Princess Bumble captured and locked up in a cage inside a labyrinth so that when the Bumbleland Army came looking for her, they got horribly lost. Fortunately, the Princess was able to sing and lead them to her. Meanwhile, the Queen Bumble took matters into her own hands and confronted the prince, somehow knocking the dark aura out of him. Just in time for the Evil Guy to announce himself, and a new age of Evil to dawn... Personally, I left it at that, because when it comes to thwarting evil, it's best left to the Little Ponies, right? They certainly have a knack for it, anyway.
And that's all she wrote, as they say.
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