Queen Chrysalis

"(laughing) Right you are, Princess. And as queen of the changelings, it is up to me to find food for my subjects. Equestria has more love than any place I've ever encountered. My fellow changelings will be able to devour so much of it that we will gain more power than we have ever dreamed of!"

- Chrysalis explaining her true plot.

Queen Chrysalis is a changeling queen. She appears in My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and serves as the main antagonist of Season 2's two-part finale "A Canterlot Wedding", as well as the comic series The Return of Queen Chrysalis set after Season 2. She is a shapeshifter who took on the form of Princess Cadance in order to invade Canterlot by taking Cadance's place and render her husband-to-be, Shining Armor, unable to perform his duties as Captain of the Royal Guard.

Appearance
Queen Chrysalis is a changeling and thus a shapeshifter capable of taking many forms. She spends the entirety of A Canterlot Wedding - Part 1 and the beginning of A Canterlot Wedding - Part 2 in the form of Princess Cadance.

Only the occasional flashes of her own green eyes and the color of her magic differ from that of Cadance's own.Her true form looks like a pony with a twisted unicorn horn, a pair of insectoid wings, and stands as tall as Princess Celestia herself. Unlike a pony however, she has black skin, a sharp pair of fangs, dark green eyes with vertical, dragon-like pupils and no visible cutie mark. Interestingly, her eyes have a double pupil: a vertical, dragon-like one within a normal round one.

She has a teal mane and tail, and also seems to have a greenish saddle, blue-green rib plate, and a small, black crown tipped with blue circles. Her voice has a layered quality, as if two people were speaking in sync. All of her hooves are full of holes in them, yet she can stand firmly on the ground. Her limbs, along with her torso, are extremely skinny.

Role
Chrysalis first makes an appearance in "A Canterlot Wedding - Part 1," disguised as Princess Cadance. Sometime before the episode takes place, when the Princess was going to marry Twilight's brother Shining Armor, Queen Chrysalis imprisoned her and took her form, becoming more powerful by feeding off Shining Armor's love for her, and making him unable to perform his duties as a royal guard.

When the main six arrive from Ponyville to help with the wedding plans, she shows disinterest both in Twilight and everything else set up for the wedding. When Twilight figured out that she was evil, and confronted her, she secretly imprisoned Twilight in the caves below Canterlot.

The next episode "A Canterlot Wedding - Part 2," begins with Chrysalis, still in Cadance's form, taunting Twilight and telling her that she's using Shining Armor for her own ends. Twilight and the real Cadance, also imprisoned by the Changeling Queen, find each other. Eventually, they escaped and confronted Chrysalis, who then revealed her true form, for the first time.

She tells everyone of her plan to siege Canterlot and managed to defeat Celestia, thanks to the power of Shining Armor's love, and imprison her in a cocoon. Her minions, the changelings, were then able to break through the barrier (which Shining Armor projected due to Chrysalis's earlier threats) and invade Canterlot, with plans to invade the rest of Equestria afterwards.

Twilight and her friends tried to get to the Elements of Harmony, but were captured by the changelings before reaching them. The episode ends with Shining Armor, no longer under the Queen's control, using the power of Cadance's love to unleash an energy explosion that sent all the changelings, including Chrysalis, flying into the distance.

In the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic comic series, subtitled The Return of Queen Chrysalis, it is revealed that Chrysalis survived her fall, returning as antagonist. In Issue 1, the changelings imprisoned the ponies of Ponyville in cocoons and replaced them with changelings, but the Mane 6 defeated the changelings and rescued all the ponies except the Cutie Mark Crusaders. Chrysalis contacted the Mane 6 and told them to come to her kingdom to rescue them, but cut off her transmission after Scootaloo commented on her monologuing and about to reveal her plan.

Summaries for the comics reveal that she will set a trap for them, and in the final issue the Mane 6 will be at her mercy, and a "sinister offer" threatens to drive them apart.

She has not yet appeared in Season 3, and will possibly be defeated for good in the comics.

Personality
Her actions in in A Canterlot Wedding - Part 1 and 2 shows Chrysalis to be a talented trickster and a master of deceit. She fools Twilight's friends, Shining Armor, and even Cadance's aunt, Princess Celestia to believe that she was the real Princess Cadance.

She is manipulative and unempathetic as she turns Twlight's family and friends against her after been confronted about her rude and strange behavior. She also enjoys seeing others suffer as she enjoys telling Twlight that she saw through her and no one believed her.While capable to mimic Cadance well enough to fool most, she was unable to fool Twilight Sparkle for long due to the demanding and insincere behavior she displays thoughout the first episode. When Twilight attempts to do a special handshake of her and Cadance's, she doesn't recognize Twilight at all, alerting her of "Cadance's" changed nature. She also acted rude and demanding toward Twilight's friends, in stark contrast to the real Cadance who Twilight describes as "caring" and "kind". Queen Chrysalis, on the other hand, is cruel, uncaring and manipulative.

In A Canterlot Wedding - Part 2, she reveals that her motivation for trying to take over Equestria stems from changelings' source of nourishment being true love and that Equestria has "more love than [she has] ever encountered [before]" and plans to have her minions and herself devour it to make themselves more powerful.

Powers and abilities
Like other changelings, Chrysalis can take the form of another, although it is unclear if she can transform into any pony that isn't an alicorn (her minions are only shown to turn into earth ponies, unicorns, and pegasi), as the only pony she has taken the form of onscreen is Princess Cadance. She gains power by feeding off a pony's love by taking the form of one he loves. By consuming Shining Armor's love for Cadance she became even more powerful than Princess Celestia.

Like unicorns, Chrysalis can use magic with her horn. Her magic is green and resembles fire. Her magic stays green even when transformed into another pony, as witnessed when she took Cadance's form. Over time she is able to brainwash Shining Armor.

Chrysalis also seems to be immune to long falls, as she survives a fall over the edge of Canterlot, which exceeds two separate falls which would have been fatal to Twilight if she had not been saved from one and cushioned from the other (although many believe that she caught herself in midair, she did not seem able to use her wings at the time, much like Rainbow Dash in the episode Applebuck Season). This immunity is shared by Team Rocket and The Joker.

Chrysalis also has the power to trap ponies inside cocoons. Whether this is for the purpose of transforming them into a demonic pony or merely a way of imprisoning them is unknown. Princess Celestia was released shortly after imprisonment when Shining Armor and Cadance defeated Chrysalis, and all the ponies captured by the changelings, except the Cutie Mark Crusaders, were quickly rescued by the Mane 6. The Cutie Mark Crusaders are imprisoned for what will likely be three days, and Chrysalis threatened that "bad things" would happen to them if the Mane 6 did not arrive in time.

In the comics Chrysalis is also shown to send a crystal ball to the Mane 6 through Spike, similar to how Princess Celestia sends letters to Twilight.

Trivia

 * She is the first major villain in the series to have a song (though the Flim Flam Brothers had a song before her, they were minor villains).
 * Queen Chrysalis and the changelings may be based off of Sinisteeds, dark, horse-like creatures who thrive on feeding off of love and emotion in the novel Gossamer by Lois Lowry.
 * Chrysalis also shares similarities to Disney villains Maleficent and Ursula, particularly employing Ursula's tactic of impersonating someone a male protagonist loves, and with a similar transformation sequence to Maleficent. She is also slightly similar to the Harry Potter antagonist, Lord Voldemort, whose final duel with Harry Potter inspired that of Chrysalis and Celestia. Voldemort's inability to love may be mirrored by Chrysalis's line about "not having any room for love in her heart".
 * Her name is never mentioned in the show, but was given by one of the show's creators and mentioned on the episode's script. Outside of the title, her name was first mentioned in the comic by Fluttershy, although it is unclear how the ponies know her name.
 * Chrysalis's defeat by an energy explosion caused by the power of love mirrors the defeat of Wiseman from Sailor Moon and Lamia from Stardust, although unlike them she is not disintegrated but sent flying into the distance in a similar style to Team Rocket, which may have been an intentional hint at her return.
 * The fiery dome she creates around Twilight looks similar to the one created by Zelda from The Swan Princess 3.
 * Not only do the above mentioned Voldemort and Lamia possess similar green magic and other slight similarities to Chrysalis, but both have also killed a unicorn in their respective series. Chrysalis nearly kills Twilight by trapping her in the forgotten caves, and manipulates Twilight's brother, although in a role reversal, he is one of the two who defeats her.
 * Ironically the character Chrysalis impersonates kills an evil unicorn.
 * One of her voice actors, Kathleen Barr, also voices another villian from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, The Great and Powerful Trixie.
 * She also does the voice of Roodaka from Bionicle, who is often compared to Chrysalis as the sinister queen of an insectoid race. Her voice is nearly the same.