Top 10 MLP:FiM Characters  
#8: Princess Cadence and Shining Armor
 
I decided to lump these two together, even though if I’m being honest I do like Cadence a little more. It’s my opinion that married couples in fiction need to work as both individual characters and as two halves of a whole, one because no character should be tied down by another and two because the audience needs to actually believe they love each other. Now in the show these two don’t quite hit the ‘two halves of a whole’ part, if only because the writers never give them time to breath in between crises, but in the comic these two become an absolute riot together. They play off of each other so well and I wish that could have carried over into the show. It’s probably the biggest reason I want more of them, I want to see that bond they share.
 
Now individually, Cadence wins out just by virtue of having more screen time and the fact that not every appearance she has involves her getting her flanked kicked in some manner. Poor Shining Armor can’t seem to catch a break, to the point where I’m starting to think the royal guard has some of the worst combat training this side of the Red Shirt Army. And it’s a shame too, because Shining actually looks like he could be a badass. He’s definitely cut from the same cloth as Twilight as far as his magic is concerned, but he keeps getting pared against opponents that would give the Princesses a problem. Give him a dragon or a couple of changelings to beat up, then we might see that Knight in Shining Armor.
 
Cadence, I will admit, started off pretty low in my book. Not to the point where I immediately wrote her off as a replacement for Pinklestia like so many people seemed to do, but I was worried that she might not have anything to do. Thankfully we were given yet another instance of the writers proving that they know what they’re doing when Hasbro throws them an executive decision like this, and I will maintain that “The Crystal Empire” is one of the best episodes of the series partially because of that ending scene with the Wifapult. Silliness be damned, Shining Armor tossing Cadence like a BAMF to rescue Spike and the Crystal Heart from Sombra was the crowning moment of awesome for those two.