So I had this idea a while ago to do a weekly post taking about TGH/ROTR characters, theories, and any other randomness involving the books. But then I forgot about it.... Now I'm wanting to give another go at it since (not wanting to point fingers at anyone) the MB has been almost entirely focusing on RPs lately and I'd like to see some other content being posted. I'm not sure that I'll be able to post every week, but I'll try my best to do it as often as I can.

With that said, I wanted my first post to be about a theory that I've been thinking about for the past few months (since ROTR #3 came out) and I wanted to share it with you guys. But before I get into this, please be aware that this post will be containing a LOT of spoilers, so if you have yet to read ROTR #3, consider yourself warned.

Okay, so my theory is that Dewberry is somehow related to Mossberry. And no, it's not because they have the same suffix, though it is part of it. Let me explain:

Dewberry's first mention in the books was in the first chapter of Stormbound. Before that, there was zero mention of her. So what was she doing during the first book? I don't believe that there was really ever an explanation to her absence, and the only clues we've gotten about her past is that her dam was a former medicine mare. So this got me thinking, what if the reason there was never an expiation given was because she had something to hide?

Let's start with what we know about Dewberry's past; her mother was Sun Herd's former medicine mare and (I believe) was Sweetroot's mentor). If I remember correctly, Sweetroot is middle aged and for pegasi this can mean a lot of things, but I think it's a fair assumption that she is probably somewhere between the ages of 20-40. It also seems like she's a very seasoned medicine mare, and has most likely been doing her job for years, and since I believe that Dewberry is about 5ish when she is introduced, it makes sense to me that Dewberry's dam, who was the previous medicine mare, may have been retired from the role when Dewberry was born. This may be a strange to thing about, but considering the fact pegasi are full grown adults at age 2, and can live to be 90+ years old, I think that pegasi who are in positions with a lot of pressure (i.e. captain, or medicine mare) probably will not spend their entire lives with that job especially when they want to focus on raising a family. So I think that Deberry's mom wasn't exactly old, just decided that she wanted to raise a foal and so therefor passed the torch to Sweetroot. But how does this connect Dewberry to Mossberry?

Well, I think that since Dewberry's mother never makes and appearance in the books, and her sire is never mentioned, I think that it's sadly safe to assume that they both might be dead. I doubt this happened when Dewberry was a foal/weanling because she does have a working knowledge of how to heal other pegasi -- a skill she learned from her dam -- so I think that this may have happened later in her life, possibly when she was a yearling. Because of the absence of her parents, I think she would have had another family member looking out for her, and for the sake of this theory, I think that her 'guardian' may have ended up being her grandmother; Mossberry. I think that Mossberry would have been quite close to Dewberry, and helped her granddaughter over come the grief of loosing her parents. I think that Mossberry may have also played a similar role with Sweetroot in the wake of her loosing her mentor (a.k.a. Dewberry's mother), and that's how they became such close friends as mentioned in Starfire. But why would Dewberry not mention this?

I think that despite her best efforts to not portray this, I think Dewberry is actually a very privet individual. I don't think she likes the idea of other pegasi taking pity on her (as shown by the fact she crossed the dark waters while several months pregnant with twins right after she lost her mate and didn't tell anyone she was pregnant). So, in the context of her past actions, I'm not sure Dewberry would be jumping at the bit to tell everyone that she is an orphan that had lost all her parental figures within her relatively short life. However, despite Dewberry 'covering up' her past, I would not be surprised that the fact Mossberry had befriended Star right before her death, would have been a reason why Dewberry chose to join River Herd, and that she was even doing it to honor her grandmother. But wouldn't Star and the gang already know? They were in the same herd after all.

Well, the herds of Anok aren't exactly small. There could quit easily be 10,000+ pegasi in every herd, so it would be pretty easy for Star and his friends to not have crossed paths with her until after River Herd was formed, meaning they would have no clue about who she was related to. Further more, I think another reason Dewberry would have joined River Herd in addition to honoring Mossberry, she may have wanted to get a fresh start to her life. A fresh start would mean not having to worry about others taking pity on her anymore. And some thing she could have done to kind of 'erase' her past, would for Dewberry to possibly change her name; choosing 'Dew' as her prefix as in morning dew to symbolize her fresh start, and choosing 'berry' as her suffix as a reminder of what she comes form. This may be part of the reason why there is nothing known about her before TGH #2.

Additionally, Dewberry named her daughter Windheart, which just so happens to be the name of Mossberry's dam. Wouldn't be so interesting for Dewberry to name one of her foals after a family member?

I know this seems like a somewhat far fetched theory, but idk, maybe it is possible for these two mares to be related. What do you guys think?